Fourth Day

by Zoe Sharp

  Witney had re-dressed in the same simple clothes of the night before. He wore no watch or jewellery, and his feet were bare.

  There was something slightly faraway in his expression, as though he was trying to pick out the melody of a half-remembered song, played quiet at the periphery of audible grasp. I stood back from the table, waited until he finally turned his gaze onto me.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said frankly, noting the lack of bitterness in his voice. ‘To be honest, I’d be bloody livid.’

  He didn’t rise to that, instead said with near indifference, ‘May I ask how long you intend to keep me a prisoner here?’

  It was a familiar question. I’d done a few cult extractions since we’d joined Parker’s outfit, and the people concerned were rarely pleased by their change of circumstances, initially at least.

  ‘You’re not a prisoner, exactly, Mr Witney,’ I said. ‘But it’s perhaps not in your best interests to leave us just yet.’

  He reacted to that, but only to get to his feet with an easy grace that brought to mind a gymnast or a dancer. He crossed the room lightly until only the low table separated us, stood with his hands folded together in front of him. He wasn’t a big man and we were of a similar height. In the old pictures I’d seen of him, his hair had been dark, slightly floppy. The remaining shadow of it on his shaven skull indicated that it would have been retreating fast at the corners, leaving a pronounced widow’s peak.

  ‘Not a prisoner?’ he repeated then, and he smiled, a sad little upward quirk of his lips. ‘So the large gentleman with the gun under his arm lurking at the top of the stairs would not try to prevent me from walking out the front door, hmm?’ He jerked his head towards the open window. ‘Nor the one by the pool?’ His eyes flicked over me, casual, almost dismissive. ‘And you…?’

  ‘Charlie,’ I supplied.

  He inclined his head a fraction, acknowledging a lie untold. ‘And you, Charlie,’ he said with an expressive flick of his fingers towards my right hip under my open jacket. ‘Will you use that gun you carry, if I go against your wishes?’

  I hid my surprise, looked him straight in the eye. ‘I won’t have to.’

  He let his eyebrow lift. ‘Maybe,’ he said, and let his gaze drop very deliberately to the tray, as if that was the end of it.

  I’d half-expected that he would ignore breakfast as some kind of protest, but he inspected my offering with apparent interest. The food selection was nothing fancy, but included toast, coffee in a disposable cup, croissants, and fresh orange juice. Anything that could be eaten without giving him the potential weapon of a knife and fork. He paused, then picked up the plastic glass of juice and held it out to me enquiringly.

  I took the juice from him without comment, took enough of a swallow to satisfy his concerns, handed it back. He gave me another of those little bows and drank in careful sips, casting a somewhat jaundiced eye over the lofty proportions of the room as he did so. Compared to his little cell at Fourth Day, this place must have seemed a palace.

  ‘So, Charlie, would it be too much of a cliché to ask where am I? And how did I get here?’

  ‘You don’t remember,’ I said, more a statement than anything else.

  He frowned, the first outward sign of disturbance in those unnervingly smooth thought patterns. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I went to bed at home last night at my usual time, in my usual way, and everything was normal. And when I awoke…it wasn’t.’

  ‘You were in the compound of a cult,’ I said instead. ‘Locked in your room and surrounded by armed guards. Surely that hardly counts as “at home”, Mr Witney?’

  ‘Your definition of “home” clearly differs greatly from mine,’ he returned calmly. ‘However you choose to label Fourth Day, at least Randall Bane never spied on us.’ He flicked his fingers towards what I’d thought was a very well-hidden CCTV camera in one of the light fittings. ‘Randall offered me sanctuary when I needed it most, when the rest of the world had betrayed my trust. How else would you have me think of it but as my home?’ And before I could answer that, he added, ‘The key, incidentally, was on my night table. All you had to do was knock.’

  I paused, tried to remember seeing a key, failed.

  A lie, then. Aimed at me, or himself?

  ‘So if Fourth Day is all sweetness and light, why did you lock your door at night?’

  ‘To keep out strangers.’ The response was immediate, but again there was that slight shift in stance, uncomfortable. I considered calling him on it, should have done so.

  ‘Don’t you miss it?’ I asked instead. ‘The life you had before Fourth Day?’

  ‘What life? A job I’d grown increasingly disillusioned with, and a marriage that was already crumbling before….’ He stopped, smiled that sad little smile again, clasping the orange juice with both hands, as if afraid they’d give away his secrets if he turned them loose. ‘There was no life before Fourth Day,’ he said. ‘There was only an existence of sorts.’

  I put my head on one side, searched his features for sign of irony, found none, and said with care, ‘What about Liam?’

  He stiffened. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Five years ago you were so convinced that your son’s involvement with Bane led directly to his death,’ I said, needing to push now the first cracks had begun to show, ‘that you hounded every government agency you thought might listen. And when none of them did, you went in to Fourth Day yourself – to find evidence against Bane.’

  ‘And instead I found truth,’ he shot back, colour in his cheeks now. ‘Is that why you came for me?’ He snapped the empty plastic glass onto the tray and waved an all-encompassing hand to the house, the guards, me. ‘All this trouble, when all you had to do was ask and I could have told you that Randall Bane was not responsible.’

  ‘So who was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Witney’s face shut down. He shrugged, letting his palms fall outwards in supplication. I read evasion in the shift of his shoulders, in the way his eyes slipped away from mine. ‘The past is behind us,’ he said, but it rang hollow, like a mantra with no faith behind it.

  ‘Liam was your son,’ I said, stubborn. ‘Is he so easily forgotten?’

  Witney’s head jerked up in anger then, affording me a glimpse of the man who’d been willing to sacrifice everything to find a reason for a pointless death.

  ‘You are not a parent, or you would have no need to ask such a question.’ His voice was frigid and colourless, almost without emotion.

  Not a parent… Oh God, if only you knew…

  He looked right at me as he spoke, and because of that he caught the violent swirl of emotion that flashed into my unguarded face. His eyes widened as he made the kind of leap I didn’t want – and couldn’t afford – anyone to make.

  ‘You have children?’ he demanded. ‘I’m—’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ I cut in, brusque.

  ‘Maybe not. But you must realise that no parent should ever outlive their children.’ He paused a moment, choosing his words with the utmost care, then said softly, ‘If I’d had the chance I’d have laid down my life for Liam’s, without hesitation. As it is, nothing I can do on this earth will bring my son back. Throwing my own life away to go after who might have been responsible would have been an insult to his memory. Randall Bane helped me to come to terms with that. To finally let my son rest.’

  There was a curious intensity to him, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me. But how do you rest? I wondered. Knowing that you failed him.

  ‘So Bane persuaded you to give up,’ I murmured. ‘How convenient.’

  He shook his head. ‘Bane helped me,’ he said. Then offered, more tentatively, ‘He could help you, too.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen the kind of help he offers to young women, thanks,’ I said, and felt my lip begin to curl. ‘Tell me, do they all run screaming from him, or is Maria the exception? For that alone I’d gladly see him taken down.’
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  His head reared back. ‘Leave Maria alone,’ he said, sharpness to his pleading. ‘She would be harmed more than you can know if you try to take her away from her family as you did me.’ He watched me for a moment, as if trying to judge how much truth I took from that, then he said suddenly, ‘What was it that you used to abduct me, by the way? Presumably some kind of psychoactive drug – Rohypnol perhaps, or some other form of benzodiazepine?’

  This time I didn’t trouble to hide my surprise and his mouth twisted. ‘If you did your homework on me then surely you must know I was a schoolteacher. I may have started my career with general science, Charlie, but over the past five years I have been called upon to teach my little group of students a broader spectrum of subjects – chemistry among them.’

  I remembered the rapt attention of his outdoor class under the old juniper tree and wondered what the hell he was doing bringing up that particular area of chemistry amid them. Before I could voice the question, even if I’d a mind to, Witney turned and said casually, ‘I assume, from the lack of interrogation now, that you used the opportunity presented by such a drug to learn everything you wished to know?’

  I shook my head. ‘You talk as if this is some kind of extraordinary rendition, Mr Witney,’ I said. ‘To the people I work for, this was a simple rescue.’

  ‘Is that what they told you?’ His voice held a hint of pity. ‘But if that’s the case, why leave it so long? When Liam first entered Fourth Day, I did some research into cults. You will no doubt have done the same and found out, as I did, that the longer you leave someone on the inside, the greater the psychological trauma when you get them out.’

  I tipped my head on one side. ‘I thought you didn’t like the cult label?’

  ‘Not when it doesn’t fit. I didn’t know, then, what Randall Bane was trying to do,’ he said, earnest now. ‘But perhaps you should be asking yourself why wait until now to “rescue” me?’

  ‘I’m the wrong person to ask,’ I said. ‘We were hired to get you out, no more than that.’

  ‘So, you’re mercenaries?’

  ‘No – specialists.’

  Witney’s gaze was suddenly intent. ‘Whatever they’re paying you, Randall Bane will double it to deliver me back.’

  I raised my eyebrow. ‘You’re worth so much to him?’

  ‘He looks after his own.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said slowly. ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  Nodding, Witney asked quietly, ‘And when they’ve gotten what they want out of me, what then?’

  I didn’t have an answer for him. He saw as much in my face and nodded. But as he did so, something flared in his eyes. They flew to a point over my right shoulder, to the open doorway and the balcony, his expression lunging into fearfulness.

  It was so neatly done, so well-focused a piece of classic misdirection, that he almost had me. Automatically, I started to twist, reaching for the SIG, and in that fraction of a second Witney had closed in and was suddenly all over me.

  He deflected my arm down and away with an almost negligent, open-handed blow and stepped in hard against my body with his own, hooking his heel behind my ankle to force me off balance while his other hand slipped beneath my jacket for the gun.

  And as he did so, his hand brushed against the underside of my breast. It didn’t matter that it was probably a wholly unintentional caress. I still jerked, an involuntary spasm, saw in his eyes that he’d felt it.

  Muscle memory and training took over. Already overbalanced, I used the momentum he’d created, throwing my weight back to accelerate my rearward arc. As we went down, I twisted my hands into his thin shirt to control our joint descent. His fingers just managed to touch the SIG’s pistol grip and closed on empty air.

  As we hit the tile and began to roll, I transferred my hold to his arm and pivoted on my shoulders like a break-dancer. By the time the pair of us stopped spinning, I had a straight-arm lock on his left wrist across my thigh, with one foot wedged firmly into his armpit to keep it on stronger than was strictly necessary. I told myself it was purely for containment.

  ‘Jesus, Witney,’ I growled, shaken by the speed and polish of his technique. ‘Are you trying to get yourself damn well killed?’

  Since my other heel was pressed down hard onto his windpipe, it was a question to which I did not expect an immediate answer. I kept him pinned for a few seconds longer, mainly just to prove I could, then released him. It took him a moment to get his breath back. By the time he sat up, rubbing at his throat, I was on my feet again and well out of reach.

  ‘I don’t need to try,’ he said at last, still gasping. He levered himself onto his feet, not so graceful now, and for the first time, when he looked at me, I saw bitterness and despair. ‘You’ve done that for me, by taking me out of there.’

  ‘You’re safe here,’ I said, losing patience as a sudden memory of Randall Bane reaching out towards the kneeling girl bloomed and withered inside my head, leaving behind it a sense of restlessness like a bad dream. ‘I don’t know who you think is after you, exactly, but we can protect you.’

  He studied me for a moment, frowning, eyes running slowly over me as though he couldn’t quite marry my image with what just happened, then he shook his head, and I saw his face close up. ‘I doubt it.’

  I suppressed a sigh of exasperation and didn’t press him. ‘Whether you realise it or not, we are trying to help you,’ I said tartly. ‘What did you think that little performance was going to achieve? Even if you got past me, there are still half a dozen others out there to contend with, as you pointed out.’

  ‘We are judged not by what we achieve, Charlie, but what we attempt.’

  ‘What am I supposed to say to that?’ I demanded. ‘Nice try?’

  Over at his original position by the wall, he put his back to it and slid down until he was sitting at the base, knees tucked up in front of him, arms wrapped around his shins. He’d drawn that air of eerie calm around himself again like a cloak. I’d turned away before he spoke.

  ‘Bane can help you, Charlie, if you’d only let him.’

  I jerked a hand up. ‘Oh no,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll overlook the attempt to overpower me, Witney. In your position, I probably would have done the same. But, if you try to convert me, now that really will piss me off.’

  I stalked over to the door, rapped on it and waited for McGregor to work the lock from the outside. When I looked back, it was to find Witney’s gaze still fixed on me. I jerked my chin towards the tray I’d left behind.

  ‘Enjoy your breakfast.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We moved Thomas Witney out of the Calabasas house that afternoon, in a convoy of three near-identical armoured Chevy Suburbans with anti-ballistic glass and run-flat tyres, and barrelled north on I-405, heading towards Santa Clarita.

  Getting Witney into the vehicle had been done carefully, but he didn’t give us any trouble. We’d backed the vehicles into the huge garage that took up the whole of the lower ground floor. Sean and McGregor had brought him down and bundled him straight in, Sean sliding into the rear seat of the centre vehicle alongside him, as much to ensure he didn’t get any ideas about leaving us prematurely, as for his own protection.

  I was behind the wheel of the chase car, with Parker Armstrong riding shotgun. In a conservative dark-grey suit that contrasted with his short-clipped hair, Parker had a quietly prosperous air about him. He could have been a banker, or a lawyer, or a businessman, especially with those ever-watchful shrewd eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses. But the casual observer would have been hard-pressed to point to close protection as his stock-in-trade. Unless they jammed their face right up against the limo-black tint on the windows, that is, and saw the MP5K slung casually across his lap.

  The shortened version of the Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun was ideally suited as a close-quarters weapon within the confines of a vehicle, which was why Parker favoured it. As well as my SIG, I had an HK53 compact assault rifle down the side of
my seat, in the gun rack the vehicle armourers had thoughtfully provided for the purpose. When they’d said the Chevys came fully loaded, they’d meant it.

  I kept checking my mirrors for signs of a tail amid the jostling traffic, noting the drivers of half a dozen makes and models who seemed eager to match our speed and course. Maybe they just thought we might have some big-shot Hollywood type on board and they were craning to catch a glimpse.

  Not that we were expecting trouble. No more than usual. I certainly wasn’t expecting it to come from inside the vehicle.

  ‘You let him get to you,’ Parker said then, out of nowhere.

  I’d been concentrating on keeping the Chevy close enough to the car in front to practically exchange paint, and he caught me way off balance. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Witney,’ he elaborated. ‘You let him get under your skin.’

  ‘If he did, I handled it,’ I said shortly.

  Parker gave a slow nod. ‘That you did,’ he agreed with a flash of very white teeth against his tan. When I glanced over, he added, ‘That takedown was as fast and nasty as any I’ve seen – I was impressed. But that wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘Oh?’ I fought not to let my alarm show, kept my hands steady on the wheel, eyes flicking between the driving mirrors and the massive rump of the Suburban that seemed to fill my forward view. It was a difficult balance between keeping far enough back to have reaction time if we came under attack, and not giving anyone chance to muscle between us.

  Parker sighed. ‘Just be thankful I was the one monitoring the feeds this morning, and not Sean,’ he said. He waited until he saw the hint of colour, the sudden heat in the tips of my ears, before he let me off the hook of that accusing gaze. He slipped off his shades, tucked them into his top pocket as his voice turned gentle. ‘You gotta tell him, Charlie.’