by Zoe Sharp
I looked at the others while I had the chance, but I knew I hadn’t seen either of them before. One was short and stocky, with pale gingery-blond hair. The other guy was dark skinned, slightly Hispanic, with a pencil-thin moustache across his upper lip and a single gold hoop in his left ear. I wondered if all three of them were cops and just how they were planning on explaining the dead man behind the Chevrolet.
I dropped back below the level of the kitchen cabinets. Through the doorway I could see Scott had started to twitch, going almost into convulsions. I could hear Aimee’s voice taking on an edge of panic as she whispered to Xander.
I crawled back through to the bathroom.
“It’s the same guy,” I said to Trey. He didn’t need to ask who I meant. The fear froze his face into a tight mask across his bones. “We’re going to have to give ourselves up.”
He hesitated, just fractionally, then nodded once, not arguing about it.
“OK,” I shouted. “I’ll bring Trey out, but only if you let us get the kid who’s injured out of here first.”
“You’re in no position to bargain,” Oakley man shouted back.
“That’s true, but if you have to shoot us out of here you’re likely to lose more men. This way’s easier.”
There was a pause, as though he was weighing up the merit of what I’d had to say. His voice matched his appearance, I realised. I didn’t know enough about American accents to pinpoint his origins, but it sounded educated. The kind of voice I would have expected from that attractive collection of features.
“OK, Charlie,” he said at last. “Come on out and we won’t stop the others leaving.”
“No way,” I said. “Xander and Aimee will bring Scott out first and put him into the pickup. As soon as they drive away, you get us. Not before.”
And if you double-cross us, I didn’t add out loud, then I will do my best to put a bullet in your brain, you bastard.
“OK,” Oakley man said again. “You got yourself a deal.”
“Right,” I said, more quietly, to Xander and Aimee. “Grab the biggest bath towel and get that under Scott. You’ll have to use that to carry him like he’s in a sling. Get him to the nearest hospital,” I added, trying to smile reassuringly. “He should be fine. He’ll make it.”
We manoeuvred ourselves with difficulty in the cramped bathroom, getting the towel in position. Scott’s cries had subsided into a low groaning now and his skin was chilled and clammy to the touch.
Xander was physically strong, so I put him at Scott’s head, leaving Aimee to carry the end of the towel at his feet. As they staggered into the hallway with their burden I slipped the hard drive we’d taken from Henry’s computer into Xander’s pocket.
“If we don’t get out of this,” I murmured, “that might tell you who’s behind it all.”
He nodded briefly, face tight with tension. “Good luck, man,” he said.
“Right,” I called through the door. “They’re coming out. Pull your men back to the other side of the street.”
I waited a moment or two, opened the door just far enough for the two of them to hustle through it, then slammed it shut again and moved back to my kitchen window vantage point.
Oakley man may have been many things, but at least he kept to his promise as far as Scott was concerned. The three of them watched from the far side of the Chevy as Xander and Aimee struggled to get Scott into the back of the pickup. Aimee hopped into the load bed with him, as Xander got behind the wheel. He set off fast, as though scared they’d change their mind and try to prevent him. I watched the Dodge all the way to the end of the street, until it turned out into traffic and disappeared from view.
And all the time I was furiously searching for a way out of this that didn’t involve our surrender. That didn’t involve our defeat and capture.
“OK, Charlie,” Oakley man said. The three of them had moved forwards again, taking up position just to the rear of Henry’s old Corvette which was parked to the side of the house. “I’ve kept my side of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”
“How do I know you’ve let them get clear?” I hedged. “Not exactly one for leaving witnesses, are you? Let’s give them a little longer.”
He laughed again, but there wasn’t much amusement in his voice. “If you’re waiting for rescue, Charlie, you’re gonna have a long wait,” he said. “No-one’s gonna save you this time.”
I didn’t answer right away. I knew I didn’t have many options left. Not ones that were survivable, at any rate.
For Trey or for me.
I looked down. The hands that were tightly gripping the SIG were covered in Scott’s blood. I knew I had just two rounds left in the gun and there were three bad guys left outside. Not good odds, whichever way you looked at it.
“Come on Charlie,” Oakley man said gently. “You make us come in there and get you and you’ll regret it.”
“Why?” I tossed back, reckless now. “You’re probably going to kill us anyway.”
I expected some kind of reassurance but it didn’t come. Instead there was a pause and then that bloody annoying laugh again. “True, but some ways of dying are harder than others,” he said and the very lightness of his tone made his words all the more brutal, all the more chilling. “Just ask your pal Henry in there.”
Fourteen
“There’s someone under the house.”
“What?”
For a moment I didn’t compute what Trey had said to me. His voice was little more than a whisper. I stuck my head round the kitchen door and stared at him across the narrow hallway.
He was sitting with his back ramrod straight against the open bathroom door, hardly daring to move more than his eyes.
“There’s someone under the house,” he insisted. “I can hear them.”
And when I listened, I could hear them, too. Nothing overt, just the faintest cautious scuff and slither of someone trying to ease their way into a position. I felt my mouth dry so that my tongue stuck to the roof of it. So, Oakley man was trying to keep me talking while his men outflanked us.
I looked at the floor, as if I was going to be able to spot some sign of this invasion like a lump under a carpet. I’d known when I’d first seen Henry’s house that it was constructed off the ground, hence the rotting trellis round the bottom of the outside but it hadn’t occurred to me that the gap might be big enough for a person to squeeze into. If I had I might have considered it as an escape route for Trey.
And now, it seemed, it was too late for that.
Somebody had beaten me to it.
“Get into the bath and keep your head down,” I said. The bath tub was old-fashioned enamelled steel and a heavy enough grade to offer some measure of protection – either from the side or from below.
I waited until Trey was safely in, then edged back across the hallway, trying to move very quietly. When I checked out of the kitchen window again, only the Hispanic man was visible, covering the front. There was no sign of Oakley man or Ginger.
Maybe now would be a good time to make a break for it . . .
I thought of Oakley man’s last words. So we were doomed anyway. The defeat tasted dirty, like spoiled food. Better to go out fighting, even with a pitiful supply of ammunition.
“Trey?”
He lifted just the top of his head over the rim of the bath and gave me a What now?look.
“Change of plan,” I said, urgent. I jerked my head towards the front door. “Let’s go.”
I waited until he’d climbed out and moved up close behind me. “If anything happens,” I said carefully, glancing at him, “you run like hell and you keep running, do you hear me? You don’t stop and you don’t come back, no matter what, understand?”
He stared at me, then nodded, reluctant, even a little sullen.
“Try and stay away from the police if you can,” I said and on impulse added, “Go to Walt and Harriet’s place on the beach. They’ll take care of you.” And I realised as I said it that it was true. I truste
d the canny old man without quite knowing why.
I also realised, in a detached kind of way, that I wasn’t expecting to get out of this alive. So, I’d fooled Oakley man once but that was when he wasn’t expecting me to be up to the job. I’d fooled the two men in the Buick, too – I could only assume they were his accomplices – when they hadn’t been expecting me to be armed. But now he had the measure of me, for what it was worth.
I stood in that dingy hallway and felt the full reality of it settle on me, like a sense of calm. I was twenty-six years old. I always thought I’d feel more emotion at the prospect of my own death, when I’d thought about it at all. I wondered if I would have been approaching it with such equanimity if I’d known Sean was out there somewhere, moving heaven and earth to get to me.
I tried to reach out, get a feel for him. I’d hoped for some kind of connection, some suspicion that he was alive or dead, but there was nothing. A big empty void where once he’d engaged some space in my mind. Perhaps there would be a time to grieve for him later.
If I made it.
I eased the locks clear and opened the newly ventilated door just enough to peer through the gap. Still the only person I could see in front of the house was the Hispanic man with the earring. His attention was focused off to my left, towards the corner of the house.
The blood had dried on my hands but new sweat made it tacky again. I took a moment to wipe both palms down the sides of my trousers, then yanked the door wide.
I kicked the screen door open and came out at a kind of sideways run across the porch, leading with one shoulder and the SIG straight out in front of me. I sighted on the centre of the Hispanic man’s body mass, and felt the muscles in my forearms tense as I began to take up the pressure on the trigger.
I knew I’d come out fast, but my opponent seemed to be faster, swinging his gun up with the kind of easy movement that suggested long hours of practice and a professional familiarity with firearms.
Minute pieces of detail from that moment stuck in my mind. The fact that the man’s pencil moustache had been trimmed slightly longer on one side than the other, making his face appear lopsided. The fact that he wore a wedding ring on his left hand, with an ornate turquoise signet ring on the finger next to it. The fact that his gun was a 9mm semiautomatic, a nice piece gleaming with care and pride.
The shot sent me reeling. It seemed far too loud for a handgun, an almost deafening report that I knew I hadn’t fired. I’d always been told you never hear the shot that gets you but if this was it, they were wrong. You heard it twice as loud.
And then it hit me that I wasn’t.
Hit, I mean.
I couldn’t say the same for the Hispanic man. He staggered a couple of steps backwards, tottering in much the same way Scott had done. The front of his shirt was red where only a blink before it had been white. The lower tail of his tie was ripped away and missing but I hadn’t seen it go. He looked down at the gaping mess that had been his own abdomen with an expression of puzzled surprise on his face.
The man made a last laborious, heavy attempt to bring his gun up again but the weight of it defeated him. It was all too difficult, too tiring. His feet tangled, twisting him as he fell so he described an almost graceful pirouette and dropped from sight behind Henry’s old Corvette.
And directly below my own feet, under the porch, came the unmistakable sound of a fresh cartridge being jacked into the chamber of a pump-action shotgun.
I stared. The porch was only wooden planking. A shotgun blast would come up through it like it was paper. I wheeled, grabbing Trey and shoving him back into the house. The screen door hadn’t even had time to slam behind us.
I hit the locks on the front door and hustled the boy back into the bathroom. This time, I climbed into the bathtub with him and we both squatted there, tense and breathless.
Who the hell was under the porch with a shotgun? Not one of Oakley man’s team, that was for certain. Not unless he was having severe communication problems with his staff. So who?
For a second I remembered the claims that Henry had CIA connections. Supposing he hadn’t been entirely bullshitting about that? Supposing his murder had rung alarm bells somewhere and sparked a reaction that included such a retaliatory attack?
Almost as soon as the thought had formed, I dismissed it. If that was the case they would have taken the Hispanic man out of play before Trey and I ever set foot outside the house. And they would have brought something a little quieter to do it with. Shotguns were not the kind of gun you were likely to take with you on a covert operation of this type. House clearance and intimidation, yes, but for a surgical strike after a hit? I didn’t think so. Too messy.
Outside, I heard voices, raised but not far enough to hear the words, only the tone. Anger, mainly, and not a little measure of surprise. I realised there were two men speaking, voices raised. It sounded like Oakley man and another who could only have been Ginger. He hadn’t anyone else left to argue with.
I waited for another blast from the hidden shotgunner, but the man chose to lay quiet, biding his time now. If he was so ready to kill one of the men attacking us, I wondered fiercely, why not finish the rest while he had the chance?
An engine started up, something fairly hefty that throbbed through the building as it stopped outside. It sat there ticking over for a minute or so, while doors were opened and thumped shut again. Then it set off fast, the engine note rising and falling as the auto box ran up through the gears. I listened to the sound of it disappearing towards the end of the street until it receded into the background altogether.
“Have they gone?” Trey whispered.
“That depends,” I said, “on who you mean.”
“Charlie?” called a new voice, close enough to the front door to make both of us jump. I hadn’t heard any footsteps on the porch. “You can come out now. Show’s over.”
I recognised the man who’d spoken as soon as the drawling words were out of his mouth. So did Trey. I felt him flinch beside me. He was hunched down with his knees bent up in front of him and his arms wrapped round his shins. He was holding on so tight his knuckles had gone white with the force of it.
“Tell me, Whitmarsh,” I called back, “why the fuck I should trust you.”
Jim Whitmarsh gave a kind of a snort that might have signified amusement. But then again, it might not.
“Well, I can think of a coupla good reasons,” he said. There was a pause, then the sound of that shotgun again, the oiled mechanism being snatched back and ramming another cartridge home. There was no need for it. It was just a gesture. Just for show. “How’s that for a start?”
For a second I sat huddled in the bath and tried to work out what was wrong here. Besides, the obvious, that is. Oakley man had wanted us dead and only the arrival of Whitmarsh and his men had prevented that.
But I doubted that Oakley man knew who’d killed the Hispanic man. He could even have thought it was me. Going up against someone you believe to be armed with a half-empty handgun is one thing. Suddenly finding there are people lying in wait with shotguns is something else altogether. Either Oakley man had run, or he’d gone for reinforcements.
So that just left us facing Jim Whitmarsh. The man I’d seen burst into that motel bedroom with one of his men and coldly murder two unlucky innocents because he thought they were us.
He was right, though, about his argument being a persuasive one. Choosing to stay and face a shotgun in a confined space – especially one as flimsily constructed as Henry’s house – was suicide.
If they started clearing the place room by room they wouldn’t even have to aim. The bathroom was so small that all they’d have to do was put one shot round the open door, or even straight through one of the dividing walls. Not even a cast iron bathtub would save us then. Open ground was our best chance by far.
I glanced at Trey. He looked so terrified I wasn’t even sure I’d get him on his feet unaided.
“We’ve got to go out there,” I told hi
m, almost gently. He shook his head, lip starting to tremble. I moved to brush his cheek, then noticed the blood on my hands again and ended up just touching his shoulder instead. I smiled, tentative. “Trust me,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel. “I’ll get you out of this.”
His bruised eyes called me a liar, but at least he didn’t say the words out loud.
I raised my voice. “OK, Whitmarsh, we’re coming out.”
We got out of the bath and moved through to the front door again.
“Here,” I said quietly, and stuck the SIG into the back of the waistband of Trey’s baggy shorts. His face paled even further. “For God’s sake don’t touch it,” I warned him. “They’re less likely to search you, that’s all.”
I unlocked the door and pushed the screen open, then moved out onto the porch, keeping Trey slightly behind me and my empty hands where everyone could see them.
Jim Whitmarsh was standing on the scrubby drive, not far from where the Hispanic man had fallen. My gaze swept across the space behind the Corvette but the body seemed to have gone. There was no sign of the man I’d shot on the other side of the road, either. So that’s what Oakley man had stopped for.
Whitmarsh was wearing an Oxford shirt and chinos and loafers with no socks. He was carrying a Beretta out of the neat leather holster attached to his belt and he was sweating in the heat. When he saw me his eyebrows went up as he took in the cheesy teenage outfit and the beaded pink locks, not to mention Trey’s shock of white hair.
Lonnie was the one with the shotgun, a Remington twelve-bore. He stood a little further forward but well to the side of Whitmarsh, giving him a decent line on us. The fronts of his combat trousers were coated with dirt and dust where he’d lain under the house and shot the Hispanic man through the trellis, unseen and unsuspected. Now, his eyes were constantly ranging across the surrounding houses and along the street, checking for trouble. He barely gave Trey and me a second glance.
