Fourth Day

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘Oh, goody,’ I murmured. Still, at least I hadn’t shot anyone this time, although Nu might have been better off if I had.

  Yancy was not as good an off-road driver as Maria, so the first part of the ride was a lot rougher, leaving very little room for conversation. That might have been the idea.

  As we neared habitation, however, the terrain smoothed out and I was finally able to ask, ‘So, who’s Nu working for?’

  Yancy shrugged, eyes on the track ahead. ‘Don’t know. But he’s been acting kinda strange lately.’ His eyes flicked sideways. ‘He was harder on you than he had reason to. Thought it was because of what you are, but now?’ He shrugged again, an annoyed twitch. ‘Who knows how that mother’s mind works.’

  We reached the barn behind Bane’s quarters and Yancy swung the Jeep back into its allotted bay. The sun was rising faster now, the light changing every minute, warmth seeping through.

  As we climbed down, Bane himself appeared through the same doorway Maria and I had used the day before.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Yancy asked immediately.

  ‘Maria’s sleeping.’

  Yancy picked his M16 off the back seat of the Jeep and cradled it meaningfully. ‘I’ll go watch over her,’ he said. He nodded briefly, and strode away, head hunched into his sizeable shoulders, as though he took the attempt on the girl as a personal affront.

  Knowing this might be my last chance, I put a hand on Bane’s arm as he turned away.

  ‘Was Liam Billy’s father?’ I asked, and felt him tense momentarily under my fingers, then relax.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, so blandly I couldn’t distinguish truth from lie. ‘This way.’

  He led me back into the building and along the corridor to his study. When he opened the door and ushered me through with a gentle hand at the small of my back, Detective Gardner was sitting casually behind Bane’s desk. She was in jeans and a linen jacket today, the hem hooked back to show the gun on her hip.

  Another plain-clothes man stood by one of the bookcases, head tilted to read the titles. He was wearing a sober suit with a police shield tucked into his belt. He turned as we came in and I faltered at his grim expression.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bane,’ Gardner said. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

  Was it deliberate that her words were a direct echo of Conrad Epps, that day on the canyon road in Calabasas, or were they too throwaway to have hidden meaning?

  Bane considered for a moment, as if her order was a request, then turned to me, almost solicitous. ‘Charlie?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, zeroed on Gardner. ‘Let’s just get this done, shall we?’

  Bane’s fingers hooked under my chin, snapping my eyes to his. He stared down into them for a long searching moment before releasing me, apparently satisfied.

  ‘All right, Detective,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Please remember that Miss Fox has been through an ordeal last night, and treat her accordingly.’

  ‘We’ll be gentle with her,’ Gardner promised coldly.

  Bane nodded shortly and went out, closing the door behind him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gardner’s companion move away from the bookcase, swing to face me. I turned my head and he pinned me with a near-black gaze.

  ‘Hello, Miss Fox,’ Sean said softly. ‘Abandoned your cover pretty quickly, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was already hopelessly compromised.’ I glanced at Gardner again, but she seemed content to let Sean do the talking for now, watching us like we were playing a chess final. ‘Bane knew exactly who I was, the day after I arrived. They knew I’d brought an emergency kit, and could work out where to look for it. Either Epps hasn’t plugged that leak, or Parker has one of his own.’

  Sean said nothing. I swallowed, added, ‘And Nu recognised me.’ My lips twisted. ‘Turns out he applied for Special Forces – was part of the intake after mine. He knew all about me.’

  Sean frowned. ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘He washed out,’ I said, ‘but he remembered you.’

  Sean prowled round in front of me, narrowed eyes raking my face and lingering, as I knew they would, on the stubborn bruise around my eye. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. He was waiting for an explanation. I couldn’t find one that wasn’t far too defensive.

  At last, it was Gardner who said, in that world-weary cop’s tone, ‘So, you gonna tell us what happened?’ And I heard the unspoken this time curl around the end of her question.

  I took a breath and ran through the events of the night, quick and concise. Sean leant against the edge of Bane’s desk and crossed his arms while I spoke, shutting me out. I tried to blank the gesture, kept my voice calm and level as I recounted Nu’s ambush, Yancy’s anger, and Bane’s revelation about Maria.

  ‘It’s pretty clear that she was the one – not Dexter – who witnessed Liam Witney’s death in Alaska,’ I finished.

  ‘So, why didn’t she come forward?’ Gardner asked.

  ‘Because she’d fall to pieces under questioning,’ I said. ‘You didn’t see her after the shooting last night. She’s an emotional train wreck. I’m not surprised Bane wants to protect her.’

  Witney had tried to do the same thing, too, I recalled. Maybe he’d coaxed the story from Maria, but realised there was no way he could ever ask her to testify. Was that why he stayed close – a last link to his dead son?

  ‘And you definitely don’t think Nu was following Bane’s orders to get rid of the pair of you?’ Sean said. ‘An emotionally unstable daughter might be enough of a handicap…?

  I shook my head, aware only of the annoying buzz still present at the periphery of my hearing range, of a dragging tiredness. ‘No way.’

  He and Gardner exchanged another silent glance, but I didn’t catch the meaning. It was like being excluded from a private conversation in a public place.

  ‘It’s very unfortunate that Nu should be…incapacitated at this time,’ Gardner said then, neutral. ‘I was planning on coming out here today to question him about the kidnapping and murder of Thomas Witney.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We got security tapes from the office building across the street, puts him at the motel on Sunset right about the time Witney was getting his brains blown out.’

  ‘I thought Epps took everything and you’d been told to lay off.’

  ‘So I’m stubborn – sue me.’ She shrugged. ‘Tape quality was poor, but the lab cleaned it up some. This is not like on TV – they got a constant backlog, and we’ve only just gotten the tape back,’ Gardner said. ‘So it’s sure convenient for Bane that suddenly Nu can’t answer questions.’

  ‘Wait a minute. You think…?’ I shook my head. ‘Actually, I don’t know what the hell you think!’

  ‘We know Witney was taken by someone he trusted,’ Sean said. ‘Otherwise, they wouldn’t have uncuffed him. He thought he was being rescued – until it was too late.’

  ‘We think we can prove Nu’s involved,’ Gardner said. ‘Question is, was Bane pulling his strings?’

  I had a sudden flash of images – the kill list of ex-members now safely hidden inside the hollow leg of the bed in my room, of the circled newspaper story, the training manual and the doctored cigarette. And I knew I should tell Sean all this, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something off about the whole thing.

  Like someone was pulling my strings.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Sean let his breath out fast. ‘You’re covering for him, Charlie. Why?’

  ‘I just don’t believe Bane is the big villain he’s being painted, all right?’ I rubbed a hand across my face. ‘Epps thinks he’s Bin Laden by another name, and Sagar told me all kinds of horror stories about what goes on in here. So far, I’ve seen no evidence to support any of it.’

  Sean jerked upright, crossed to me in a couple of long strides and grabbed my arms before I could react, spinning me round. If I hadn’t been running on no sleep, I might even have countered him in time. But I didn’t.


  He propelled me forwards, almost roughly, fingers biting, until I was in line with a mirror on the far wall. In it I saw a ragged figure with slightly singed hair and a marked face. The remains of the black eye were probably at their most colourful, I realised, although the tenderness had diminished along with the swelling.

  Looming behind me, Sean’s face was tight and pale. He bent close to my good ear. ‘Just look at yourself, Charlie,’ he whispered, somewhere between anguish and savagery. ‘You think I don’t know you well enough to tell you’re in pain just by the way you move?’

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he twisted me sideways and, oblivious to our audience, slipped his hand under the loose tails of my shirt, dragging it up to half expose my back.

  I knew without needing to see them that other bruises had formed and bloomed and spread across my torso. I heard Gardner’s sucked-in breath and was unreasonably irritated by it. Clumsily jerking myself loose, I yanked my shirt straight again and backed away from him.

  ‘I had to make it look good, you know that.’

  Sean made no moves to follow, just stood expressionless. ‘Christ Jesus,’ he muttered at last. ‘Bane had the shit kicked out of you, and you’re defending him?’

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ I snapped. ‘Why the hell can’t you keep an open mind?’

  Sean folded his arms again. ‘It’s not my mind we’re concerned about.’

  ‘What?’ I demanded softly.

  ‘This operation’s over, Charlie,’ he said, final as a prison door closing. ‘You’re coming out of here with us, right now. By force, if necessary, if you feel the need to make it look good.’

  I glanced across at Gardner, but her face told me she was way past supporting any actions I might take. ‘And what will that achieve, exactly? I don’t have anything concrete to report to Lorna Witney.’

  ‘If you haven’t found out anything by now, you’re not going to,’ Sean countered, brutal. ‘What will staying here do for you?’

  I opened my mouth, closed it again, but before I could get much further than that, Gardner’s cellphone began to blare. She answered it without taking her eyes off the pair of us, spoke briefly, and closed the phone up again.

  ‘We’re ready to leave,’ she said, getting to her feet. There was a long pause and her focus switched to Sean. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  But as she strolled towards the door, she took something off her belt and tossed it to Sean, who caught it one-handed. I saw enough to recognise a set of handcuffs.

  ‘Just in case.’ She gave me a dark look and went out.

  When Sean and I were alone, I asked roughly, ‘You think you’ll need those?’

  ‘You tell me,’ he said, voice low. ‘Why are you really here, Charlie?’

  ‘Because I need to be.’ I sighed. ‘Because I’m a mess and, believe it or not, Bane is helping me to get my head together.’

  ‘And this…problem, whatever it is – you couldn’t bring it to me?’ he demanded. ‘After everything we’ve been through together?’ The bitterness was starting to leach out like contaminated groundwater. ‘I thought what we had was stronger than that.’

  I heard the past tense and closed my heart to the sudden pain. ‘Sean, you were all part of it…’ I broke off, aware from his face I’d said the wrong thing. ‘Shit, I’m making such a bloody hash of this.’ I sank into the chair near the desk, staring at my own tightly clasped hands. Sean hadn’t moved, I noted, but he seemed much further away than he had ever done. A worm of fear uncoiled deep in my belly.

  ‘You remember when we got back from Texas – after that business with my parents?’ I asked, and when he nodded I took a deep breath and said baldly, ‘I discovered I was pregnant.’

  I expected a reaction. What I got was nothing for the longest time. Anticipation pushed a narrow blade very slowly into my chest, burning as it went.

  Eventually, Sean said, ‘Pregnant,’ his voice totally without inflection. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I was in a tailspin,’ I said, aware my knuckles had turned white under the skin. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘“Do” in what way?’ he queried, dangerously soft. ‘Didn’t you think something like that was important enough to discuss with me?’

  ‘You weren’t there, Sean!’ I burst out. ‘I was freaked out. I thought I’d lose everything – you, my job, my green card. I thought I’d get sent home and I was in a total panic. You were working away when I found out.’ If that wasn’t entirely true, it was close enough to make no difference. But I felt my face heat at the minor lie, knew he’d seen the involuntary reaction by the narrowing of his eyes. Still I blundered on. ‘How could I tell you something like that over the phone?’

  He launched across the study to bend over me. ‘You’re talking in the past tense,’ he said, white-faced, grabbing my arms like he wanted to shake me until my teeth fell out. ‘What the fuck did you do, Charlie?’

  ‘What do you think I did?’ I broke his grip, shoved to my feet, hurt and angry, wanting to punish him for his lack of faith and only punishing myself. Logic didn’t come into it.

  ‘Did you have an abortion – is that why you were in hospital after Texas? Those “after-effects” you so casually mentioned?’ he demanded, face twisted with contempt.

  ‘Do you honestly believe I’d do that – abort your child without even consulting you?’ My voice had risen to an outraged squawk. I stopped, continued more quietly but no less brittle, ‘Is that how little you think of me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, weary. ‘I thought I knew you.’ He’d said that once before, I recalled bleakly, when he thought I’d betrayed him. He’d been wrong then, too, and it seemed he’d learnt nothing from the experience.

  I watched him turn away, then said in a small voice, ‘I lost the baby.’

  He stilled but didn’t turn back right away. ‘When – in here?’

  I swallowed the howl forming in my throat, found it left an acid taste behind. ‘Do you think I’d have volunteered for this – knowing what happened to Witney – if I’d still been pregnant?’

  He did face me then, ashen. ‘OK, when?’

  I groped for the chair again, grateful for the support. ‘You came back from Mexico and I was going to tell you then, but within a couple of days the Lopez boy had been kidnapped and you headed straight back down there again to sort it out. By the time you’d negotiated his release, it was too late…’

  ‘You miscarried?’

  The doubt in his voice goaded me into carelessness. ‘Yes! Ask Parker if you don’t believe me…’

  ‘Ah, so Parker knows about this.’ Sean’s tone was absolutely deadly.

  ‘He came to the hospital. I begged him not to tell you,’ I admitted, aware only that I was making the most God-awful shambles of this whole thing. I scrubbed at my face again, wished I’d had some sleep, a chance to think it through instead of stumbling into this half-cocked cock-up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, utterly wretched. ‘I wanted to tell you. You don’t know how many times I tried.’

  ‘But not hard enough. Why is that, I wonder?’ Sean murmured. ‘What were you afraid of – that I wouldn’t want a child? That I’d try and coerce you into getting rid of it?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Or maybe you were more afraid that I wouldn’t ask you do to that.’

  My face flooded with a mix of anger and confusion and shame, and I’d be willing to bet that Sean saw and identified every emotion as it surfaced. ‘I don’t know what I thought. Yes, I was afraid! I was fucking terrified, if you must know. The thought of having a baby would have meant the end of everything I’ve worked for.’

  ‘What about everything we’ve worked for? Did you really think I’d let you walk away and take my child with you?’ He paused. ‘Was it a boy or a girl, by the way? Did you care enough to find out?’

  I was so numb I hardly even flinched at that one. ‘It was too early to tell,’ I muttered. ‘Eight and a half weeks.’
/>
  I saw him still as he did the mental calculations, worked back the dates. That blade finally slid all the way home, lancing my heart and freezing the air in my lungs.

  ‘Sean, I’m so—’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t tell me you’re fucking sorry! I remember the relief in your eyes when I got back from Mexico.’

  My voice was barely a whisper. ‘So, that couldn’t have been simply because I was glad to have you home?’

  ‘It might. I even allowed myself to believe it was,’ he said sourly. ‘But all the time you were keeping secrets—’ He broke off, looked away with his jaw bunched, no doubt remembering all recent mention of secrets and lies. Small lies, one piling on top of another until their own weight finally brought them crashing down.

  ‘Sean, I love you,’ I said, heard the desperation in my voice. ‘Nothing’s changed about that.’

  ‘But you didn’t trust me to stand by you, did you, Charlie? You didn’t trust me enough to share your pain. To allow me to grieve alongside you? Instead, you wrapped yourself up in your own misery and went running off here to some crackpot guru for absolution. What kind of love is that?’

  Lashed by the bitter spill of rage, I knew that defending Bane on any level would only make things worse. ‘I can’t begin to explain it, but he’s helping me.’

  Sean’s face went black, closed down. ‘You say nothing’s changed,’ he said, terrifyingly calm now. ‘But from where I’m standing, nothing’s ever going to be quite the same again.’

  And with that he turned and walked out, closing the door with quiet finality behind him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Randall Bane found me still there, after Sean and Detective Gardner had departed. I had no idea how long it was. Part of my mind had shut down as firmly as Maria’s.

  Bane came into the room quietly, paused by the doorway as if waiting for a reaction I was too insulated by shock to give. He moved round in front of me and leant his hip on the leading edge of the desk, very much as Sean had done.