by Zoe Sharp
But target shooting was different. Targets fell, or developed holes. They didn’t bleed. They didn’t scream. And they didn’t die.
It wasn’t until I’d gone for Special Forces training that my temperament had been recognised for what it was. By Sean, of course. He’d been one of my sergeants then and he’d always seen too much. I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with him the year before, when we’d met again for the first time since the army.
“You were one of the best shots with a pistol I’ve ever come across, Charlie. Cool-headed. Deadly.”
“There were plenty who were just as good.”
He’d shaken his head. “A lot of people had a reasonable ability to aim. That doesn’t mean they’d got the stomach to pull the trigger for real. Not like you, Charlie. You had what it took. Still do, at a guess.”
I’d refuted it at the time, hadn’t wanted to admit he might have been right. Events in Germany had made any arguments I might have come up with redundant. I’d finally accepted that an ability to kill was part of me and I’d better learn to live with it if I didn’t want it to destroy me. Becoming a bodyguard had seemed the best way to channel such a talent, if that’s what it was.
Maybe curse would be a better description.
Trey shifted and mumbled in his sleep. Not surprising that he would have bad dreams after what he’d seen today. I watched him for a moment, but he didn’t wake.
I didn’t like him, I admitted to myself, dispassionate. When all was said and done he was just a spoilt bratty kid and I hated spoilt bratty kids. In normal circumstance I wouldn’t have crossed the road to spit on him if he’d been on fire.
Odd then, that my chosen new profession meant I was now supposed to lay down my life, if necessary, to protect him.
***
Next morning – Friday – I woke with the sunrise. My body clock was still partly tuned to UK time, running some five hours ahead.
I sat up with a groan. You think sand is nice and soft until you try spending the night with nothing between you and it except a towel. My hips creaked and grated every time I moved and I realised I should have dug hollows under them. Ah well, maybe next time.
The sun was cranking up slowly from beyond the far horizon, casting the sky with a stunning wash of pinks and pale blues. I sat, wrapped in my towel against the early chill and watched it climb steadily over the teeming bird life.
All along the shore line quick little piebald wading birds darted into the bubbling water as the sea advanced and retreated, nipping at the wet sand. The seagulls seemed like slow bruisers by comparison, lurking with their thumbs in their pockets, looking for trouble. Across the tops of the swells a strung-out flight of pelicans cruised effortlessly, as though they were air surfing just for the fun of it.
Trey was still spark out and I let him sleep, but I wasn’t the only one awake early. Lots of people were out for their morning exercise along the beach. In the golden dawn light they looked aggressively healthy as they power-walked briskly past us, elbows pumping. Most were elderly, dressed in shorts, pale shirts and those tinted sunshades that golfers wear. Nearly all were carrying insulated mugs. I smelt their coffee, and was envious.
Not everybody was in a hurry. One young couple wandered at the waterline, hand in hand, soaking up the primitive peace of the sun’s ascent. I thought of the couple at the motel, pointlessly slaughtered, and it set up a dull aching pain behind my breastbone.
Strange how I could feel more distress at the deaths of two people where I’d been little more than a bystander, rather than the one where I’d actually pulled the trigger myself.
Now, the couple paused a little way off to my right with the waves lapping gently at their ankles. They turned their faces towards the sea and embraced. I shifted my gaze, unwilling to intrude.
I suppose there’d been a time, once, when I’d wondered if that would ever be Sean and me – strolling barefoot on a subtropical beach at sunrise. Instead we’d spent more time with our backs to the wall, fighting for our lives. Violence, mostly not of our own making, had always seemed to come between us.
We’d come back from Germany after New Year, though, with the air clearer than it had ever been, promising we’d try again from the beginning. No more baggage.
And we had, to a certain extent.
The first time Sean and I had got together we’d rushed into a wild and passionate affair that had self-destruct written all over it. Sure enough, it had ended in disaster for both of us.
This time around, he’d taken his time, courted me, and I’d been bemused to discover he had a gentle thoughtful side I’d never previously suspected. It didn’t fit with everything I’d ever known of Sean. It had made me hesitate.
Looking back over the past few months I realised that I’d been holding back, hoping for something that would lend substance to my caution. Failing to find it had only made me more wary, as though I’d been afraid that he was too good to be true.
And then, only the day before yesterday, I’d let my guard down just long enough for Sean to slip through, under my skin again. It had been every bit as magical as I’d recollected. Every bit as magical as I’d feared it couldn’t be.
And now it looked as though circumstances had brought our fledgling relationship to an end in the most final way possible.
I glanced over at Trey, the cause of all this. Drool stringed from his slack mouth. He was beginning to stir, rolling over onto his back with a short grunt like a sleeping dog. As I watched, his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the sunlight.
He struggled into a sitting position, scratching at his neck as he yawned and stretched. The hair sprang up around the back of his head in tufts.
“What’s up?” he said, rubbing at his face, his voice thick with sleep. “You were looking at me kinda weird.”
“Nothing.” I said, turning my face away. I indicated the vista with my hand and added with a touch of irony. “Another day in paradise.”
A flash of black and white further down the beach caught my eye. Tense, I got quickly to my feet, shaking the sand out of my towel. “Time to go,” I said abruptly.
“Aw man, what’s the hurry?” He stared up at me, not moving. “It’s early. We ain’t gonna meet up with the guys ‘til gone eleven.”
“That’s as maybe,” I said, keeping my voice low, “but there’s a pair of cops over there, checking IDs of all the kids sleeping on the beach.”
I’d tried to keep my body language casual, but Trey immediately spun round, staring at the two cops. They were wheeling mountain bikes through the sand. I’d always thought the cosy image of the local bobby on his bike belonged firmly in the leafy villages of Agatha Christie’s England. Looks like I’d been wrong.
These two looked nothing like familiar English coppers. Both men were wearing cycling shorts, gunbelts and trendy sunglasses. The image of Oakley man momentarily overlaid on top of them, sending my pulse soaring.
The pair handed ID back to the group of kids they’d been talking to and started moving towards us. They were barely thirty metres away. I cursed my own lack of attention, that I hadn’t spotted them earlier.
“You reckon they’re looking for us?” Trey asked, jumping to his feet now, nervous.
“Best not to find out, don’t you think?” I murmured.
The only immediate way off the beach was the set of wooden steps we’d slept alongside. Trey snatched up his towel and I led the way up the short flight. I concentrated on breathing evenly, trying not to make it look as though we were in a hurry, or running away. Difficult, when we were doing both.
In the dim light of the night before I’d thought the steps were simply a way up onto the dunes, but once we were at the top in daylight, I could see they actually led to someone’s private garden.
In front of us was a scrappy lawn of tough-looking grass punctuated by stubby palms at the borders. The trees had all grown leaning away from the beach and the prevailing wind. It wasn’t a big area, not like the gard
en of the Pelzners’ rented mansion back in Fort Lauderdale, but it had a lived-in feel. A child’s plastic slide sat on a paved patio closer to the house, with a brightly-coloured football and a mini trampoline.
The house itself was low and squat and painted white, battered by its proximity to the sea and the salt. A trellis of rust trails ran down the walls from every metal fixing. Almost the whole of the wall facing the ocean was made of glass that tilted downwards, presumably to fend off the glare from the water. I didn’t know much about real estate prices in Daytona Beach, but if the view alone counted for anything, then this was right up there. Until the next hurricane hit, of course.
The two cops had almost reached the foot of the steps. They were studying Trey and me, trying to work out if we belonged in the garden, or if they had a good enough reason to follow us up.
“Keep walking towards the house,” I whispered to the kid. I let my gaze scan casually across the cops, nodded and gave them a smile and a cheery wave. Failing to make eye contact doesn’t work with people who’ve been trained to spot someone acting shifty.
I turned back towards the house, then swore softly under my breath as a grey-haired woman in a loose sacky dress appeared at one of the windows. She stilled, narrowing her eyes and sticking her chin out as though she needed glasses to positively identify us as strangers at that distance.
I glanced round, making the pretence of pointing out a diving pelican to Trey. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the cops lean his bike against the stair rail and put his foot on the first step. His partner stayed on the beach.
A trickle of sweat ran between my shoulder blades. I hunched them, feeling the SIG dig into the back of my belt. The knife I’d taken from the skinny kid the night before weighed heavy in my shorts’ pocket.
Oh shit . . .
“Morning, officers,” said a man’s deep voice at that moment. “Can I help you boys?”
We all turned to find a slim elderly man with a neatly trimmed white van Dyke beard approaching up the beach, his stride long and rangy. He wore a battered Panama hat and a very faded T-shirt that had once advertised the 1989 Daytona 500. In his right hand he carried a bulging string bag.
“Oh hi, Walt, how you doing today?” said the cop who’d been about to climb up after us. He turned and stepped down onto the beach again.
“I’m doing good, Mikey,” the old guy said. “So, you boys smell breakfast cooking, or what?”
“No.” The cop laughed and shook his head. “You have folk visiting?” And he nodded in our direction.
Walt looked up then from under the brim of the Panama and a pair of piercing grey eyes under bushy eyebrows locked onto mine, straight and steady. I stared back at him and tried to impart pleading and desperation. I suppose there was a certain amount of fear there, too.
For what I’d have to do if he said no.
For a long moment, Walt didn’t move, then he gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah,” he said, his voice was slow and rolling, like he was reading a story on the radio. “You guys hungry?” he called to us. “Harriet’s making her special blueberry pancakes.”
I checked the house again. The old woman had moved to the open doorway now. She was standing just behind the mosquito screen, looking anxious.
Walt climbed the steps and came towards us. He paused a few strides away to turn and wave a small salute to the police. The cop he’d called Mikey waved back and collected his bike. The pair of them began to move off.
Walt watched them go, then turned back to us. Close to, I could see the bag he’d been carrying was filled with seashells.
“So,” he said calmly, “can I ask you folks what you’re doing in my back yard?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “we made a mistake – took a wrong turn. We were just looking for the way off the beach and—”
I broke off as Walt’s wildly sprouting eyebrows did a strange jiggle of surprise. “English, huh?” he said. “I have a daughter went to college over there – Manchester. You know it?” He pronounced the name with all the emphasis on the Man, like it was two words.
“Erm, yeah, I’m from that part of the country. My mother and father still live near Manchester,” I said, grasping at the association. I thought of my parents’ substantial Georgian house in the stockbroker belt of Cheshire and reckoned that my mother would faint at the suggestion that they were anywhere near the outskirts of the city itself, but they weren’t here to contradict me.
Walt beamed. “Well, that’s just great,” he said. “Why don’t you both come inside and you can tell Harriet and me all about Manchester while we have a bite of breakfast.”
“Oh really, sir, we couldn’t put you out like that,” I said quickly, even though my empty stomach was already grumbling at the mention of those blueberry pancakes.
“No, no,” Walt said. “It’s no trouble. Harriet always cooks for a full house. That woman could feed a battleship. There’ll be waffles, bacon, eggs, hash browns . . .”
He let his voice trail off artfully, those canny eyes shifting between the two of us. The expression on Trey’s face was so pained at my continued resistance to food it was almost comical.
I flicked my eyes past him. The two cops were still in sight, stopping someone else further along the beach. I looked back and found Walt had been watching me carefully.
I smiled back at him. “Well, if you’re sure, then that’s very kind of you, sir,” I said. “We’d love to stay for breakfast.”
Nine
Walt led us into the house through the screen door where his wife had been uneasily observing our approach. She stepped back without speaking as we trooped into her kitchen, confining whatever doubts she may have had about Walt’s foolhardy actions to a single hurried look.
“Now, now, Harriet,” Walt said, catching it. He hooked the Panama onto a peg by the door and dumped the bag of shells on a worktop. Then he turned to face her, taking both her small hands gently in his, engulfing them completely. He was a good head taller than she was and he had to drop his chin to meet her eyes. “This young lady here’s from Manchester, where Grace went to school. How could I hear that and not invite them in for some good home cooking?”
She smiled indulgently at him, but didn’t look much reassured.
I moved forwards and put my hand out. “I’m Charlie and this is Trey. It’s very nice to meet you,” I said in my best well brought-up voice. “I’ve never been to America before and I’m overwhelmed by your husband’s generosity in inviting us into your home like this.”
Her shoulders relaxed a little. That was different, I saw. National pride was at stake. She disengaged herself from her husband and took the hand I’d offered. Her grip was firm rather than strong, the skin thin and soft.
“You’re very welcome,” she said. “I’ll get right on it. How d’you take your coffee?”
She poured us both a cup of the real stuff from a pot on the side. I added sugar to mine to try and stop my hands from shaking, aware that I hadn’t managed to keep anything down since that midday snack at the park yesterday. Besides, there’s only so much adrenaline your body can produce without giving it an outlet and mine was threatening to swamp me.
Trey and I hovered and drank our coffee while Harriet cooked and Walt fussed around, setting the table and generally getting in her way. They kept up a friendly banter between the two of them as they worked together. Trey watched, fascinated.
“OK, we’re nearly all set,” Walt announced, putting four glasses and a jug of iced water onto the large oval table near the kitchen window. “Either of you two kids need to use the bathroom before we eat?”
I glanced down at the dirty state of my hands and took him up on the offer. He pointed me in the right direction and left me to it, which was rather more trusting than I would have been, given the circumstances.
The back of the house, the one facing the water, was almost entirely open-plan, with just an island unit between the dining kitchen and the large living room, an
d a study area at the far side. Two ceiling-mounted fans lazily stirred the air in the living room.
Off that room were two hallways, one of which contained the bathroom and what looked like a couple of spare bedrooms. The bathroom was clean but shabby, the short little shallow bath marked by years of hard water.
As I scrubbed my hands I glanced at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The side of my face still looked a little bright, but you might simply have taken that for overexposure to the sun. In fact, with my reddish-blonde colouring, if I didn’t take care when we were outside today it really would be sunburn.
I pulled back my perspective a moment and looked at my whole face, realising that the eyes staring steadily back at me showed no signs of guilt for what I’d done. I’d been hoping for some mark of inner torment, something to show that I was normal, that I was just like everyone else.
Not just a cold-blooded killer.
I looked away, turning to dry my hands on the towel hanging from the rail, then walked out of the bathroom taking care not to meet my eyes again.
When I got back to the kitchen I found Harriet serving up the promised blueberry pancakes. They looked more like thick Scotch pancakes than the familiar thin-style crêpes. She handed me a small jug of what appeared to be golden syrup, but turned out to be maple instead.
Walt and Trey were chatting about car stereos by the sound of it. The old man had a way of listening with his head on one side, like what you were saying was the most important thing he’d heard in ages.
It worked really well with Trey, who was sitting taller in his seat, puffed up with pride as he enthused to Walt about the big sound-off competition going on at the Ocean Center. Trey had already cut his pancakes into strips and slathered them with maple syrup. Now he abandoned his knife and started shovelling the sodden bits into his mouth with his fork, not bothering to stop talking while he ate. He shut up abruptly when I sat down.
