Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  Again I checked on Hope’s location, made sure she was well back, and then waited for them to reach us, calling a casual hello before they got too close.

  They stopped, as I’d hoped they would, before they were among us. One man pushed forward, giving a desultory wave.

  “The aftershock came just after we landed,” he said, indicating some unseen helo off behind his group, hidden by the tumbled buildings. “We’re just checking everyone here is OK, yes?”

  He was middle-aged and slim apart from a protruding belly, but he was coping well with the heat and didn’t look out of breath having to pick his way over rough terrain.

  “We’re fine,” I said, noting the way his eyes slid to the body bags and the team members crouched by the gap between the cars with the two recovery lines stretching inside. “I didn’t know anyone else was working this sector.”

  He regarded me for a moment, his eyes impossible to read behind the aviators. “I’m Peck,” he said at last, motioning to the police insignia on the breast pocket of his coveralls. “Divisional commander.”

  His official ID was on a lanyard around his neck, with the plastic badge tucked out of the way into the pocket. I wore my own the same way and now I lifted it clear between two fingers.

  “Charlie Fox, R&R,” I said, adding pleasantly, holding it level for him to read. “And now you’ve seen mine I’m sure you won’t object to showing me yours?”

  Clearly he did object but there wasn’t much he could do to refuse. He freed his ID and would have flashed it briefly but I managed to snag it for a closer look. I matched the picture to the man in front of me and surreptitiously checked the laminated edges for tampering.

  “Thanks. Sorry about that,” I said with a shrug as I handed it back. Only following orders, guv. “But I’m under strict instructions from Joe Marcus to verify everyone.”

  Marcus hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, but the name had resonance for Peck, I could tell, even though he tried to hide his reaction behind a noncommittal grunt.

  “Of course,” he added quickly. “It would be my advice to you also.” He stepped around me and headed for the body bags. Now I’d confirmed he was there in an official capacity I didn’t see how I could reasonably object. I settled for being annoying rather than outright obstructive and ambled alongside him instead. That seemed to work.

  “Where did you find these people?” he asked.

  I let one of Wilson’s team fill him in as the final body from the car was laid with the others.

  When Peck spoke again his words might have been casual but his tone allowed little room for discussion. He pointed to the line of zipped bags and said, “I’d like to take a look.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Commander Peck pulled down the zip on the first bag, revealing the woman from the car. She’d been in the passenger seat and closest to the falling masonry. Peck zipped the bag up again quickly and moved to the next. I glanced at the faces of Wilson’s people and saw from their horrified reactions that this was a long way from normal procedure.

  To everyone’s relief, I think, Peck passed over the child’s figure and unzipped the second bag. The man who’d been driving had survived a little longer and at least had a face Peck could frown over.

  I heard movement behind me. Hope was scrambling towards us.

  “Hey, what’s he doing?” she demanded. “Leave them alone.”

  Peck barely glanced at her. “It is my duty to make immediate identifications if that is possible,” he said. “This is my area and I have received many missing persons’ reports. Some of these persons may well be known to me.”

  He took longer looking at the male corpse Wilson and Ken had dragged out, although I would hazard a guess that the man’s own mother would not have recognised his face. Peck was thorough, patting all the pockets, but he found no ID, closed the bag again and bent over the woman.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that!” Hope protested, more loudly now. Her eyes shot to mine. “Charlie, can’t you make him stop?”

  “Commander,” I snapped, “I’m sure you’ll get your chance to make formal IDs once the bodies have been transported to the official mortuary.”

  But he’d already opened the body bag and was dipping his hands into the woman’s pockets without taking any notice. When he straightened, he had a wallet in his hands which he flipped open.

  “Hmm. This one I think I do know of. I will check with headquarters,” he announced. “You will be informed.” And he shut the wallet again before slipping it into the side pocket of his coveralls.

  Hope moved forward and got in his face. Her eyes were barely on a level with the base of Peck’s nose, but she suddenly seemed bigger. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that Lemon was standing beside her, growling deep in her chest. A line of fur had risen from the back of her neck and tapered away down her spine.

  Peck was watching the dog very carefully. Lemon pulled back her lips and treated him to a display of every one of her impressive teeth. Without taking his eyes off her, his right hand slid up and meaningfully unsnapped the stud securing his holster.

  By the time he’d done so the SIG was out in my hand and lined up on the bridge of his nose.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. “She—and the dog—are under my protection. Think carefully before you act.”

  Peck shifted his eyes from the end of the SIG’s barrel to my face and beyond it. He showed his teeth in a similar way to Lemon and said then, “I would strongly advise you to do the same, my friend.”

  Behind me I heard the unmistakable metallic click of the hammer being thumbed back on a service pistol.

  “Oh, I always think before I act,” I said. “And either way it goes, the outcome for you does not look promising, does it?”

  He absorbed that in glowering silence before signalling curtly to the man behind me. I heard the hammer released, the rasp of leather, and only then allowed my arm to drop.

  Hope was staring at the pair of us, wild-eyed. Wilson’s own dig team looked as though they were praying for another aftershock—one big enough to open up a massive sink-hole and swallow the lot of us.

  The radio clipped to the shoulder of Peck’s coveralls began to squawk then. He reached for it, adjusted one of the knobs and tilted it towards his mouth, pointedly turning his back on me. I used the opportunity to glance behind me and met the stony faces of his men. It was difficult to tell which of them had drawn on me. They all looked eager for the task.

  Peck finished his transmission and rapped out orders. He turned back and gave us a nod. “I am needed elsewhere,” he said.

  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who resisted the urge to say, “Good.”

  His men had already begun to move off but before could do so himself, Hope stepped forwards. Unaccountably, I saw she was offering him a shy smile.

  “I’m sorry—about before,” she said in a slightly breathy voice. “I didn’t mean to be rude. And Lemon’s just a bit over-protective of me, aren’t you, girl?” She looked down to the dog who was staring back up at her adoringly. “She’s just a big softy really.” Hope seemed to give a little twitch that might have been a shrug.

  Lemon skipped over to Peck and butted him in the knees in a clumsy display of affection. Reluctantly, he leaned down to pat her flank and, seemingly encouraged by this, she bounced up and got her booteed feet nearly to his shoulders. He staggered back under the unexpected weight with a sharp curse.

  Hope gave a rather ineffectual cry of, “Lemon!” and dashed to grab the dog’s collar, but struggled to drag her off him. Then she started frantically brushing the dirt and dust bootprints left by the dog’s feet from his clothing. She wasn’t too careful where she put her hands and after a moment he paddled her away, face flushing. And all the time, Lemon leapt around them, barking.

  “Please!” Peck said stiffly. “Please, it is no matter. I am dressed for the work.”

  It was neatly done. The noise, the dancing dog, the profuse apologies and exag
gerated waving of hands that acted as a complete distraction. So I was probably the only one who noticed Hope’s nimble fingers slip into the police commander’s coverall pocket. When they came out again the dead woman’s wallet was pinched between them. But by the time the girl had pulled Lemon a few stride away and calmed her, her hands were empty and her face was without guile.

  Into the quiet that followed came a burst of radio static. Not from Peck’s police network this time, but from one of the handsets issued to the dig team. And then, loud and clear, I heard Wilson’s voice over the air:

  “Hey! We got someone here. We got someone. And he’s still alive!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I sat in a hospital corridor waiting to talk to a man who might or might not regain consciousness. Been there, done that. Didn’t like it much the last time.

  It was only mid-afternoon but already it had been a very long day that was barely halfway over.

  The whole atmosphere had changed out there with the realisation of a live find. A sudden energy and purpose swept over everyone as they put their strategies into operation. There was nothing worse, I was told, than finding someone alive but bringing them out dead.

  I could think of a few things that were infinitely worse, but I kept them to myself.

  Commander Peck and his men slipped away before they could be volunteered to help dig. And as soon as they were out of sight Hope used the increased level of activity to cover her return of the wallet to the dead woman’s body bag. Just for a second I debated on tackling her about that deft sleight of hand, but decided against. Her ability was curious, but until I knew if it was significant to the death of Kyle Stephens it was better to pretend I’d hadn’t seen a thing.

  That was the trouble with uncovering secrets—you couldn’t pick and choose.

  Getting the injured man out of the ground was a painstaking task that called for many different kinds of expertise. Keeping him alive until he could be freed, and not bringing down the rest of the building on top of him in the process were the two main difficulties. Wilson radioed in for reinforcements and it did not surprise me that the two figures next on scene were Joe Marcus and Dr Bertrand, arriving in the khaki-coloured Bell with Riley at the flight controls. He set down with a casual elegance onto the uneven piles of bricks at the end of the street.

  Dr Bertrand swept past us and immediately started interrogating the dig team about the condition of the casualty. But Joe Marcus took a moment to have a word with Hope. She seemed bursting to tell him something, but he put a hand on her arm to stay her. Even from a distance I could see his lips form a single word: “Later.”

  As he turned away and caught me watching the pair of them, his gaze issued a flat challenge:

  You may think you’ve just seen something but you haven’t, and if you’re wise you won’t push this further.

  What makes you think I’m wise?

  But the most interesting thing about the encounter, to my mind, was the fact that when Joe Marcus touched her, Hope didn’t flinch at all.

  Lemon was sent in twice more, under Hope’s direction, to pinpoint the position of the trapped man more accurately. I heard her barking in there as if to say, “It’s so obvious. What’s the matter with you people?”

  I helped load the three bodies into the Bell. They had each been tagged with a Unique Reference Number, with the same URNs added to the bags of personal items collected from close nearby.

  It was not the first time I’d handled body bags but I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed the experience, and it’s not something you want to get used to. The bodies inside graunched and folded in places they were not supposed to fold when fully intact.

  “I’ll drop them off at the morgue after we’ve got this other guy to hospital,” Riley said. But he glanced back frowning at the lumps of masonry that were being cleared away from the man’s position. “Or maybe I’ll only have to make the one stop, you reckon?”

  But against all the odds, they brought the buried man out alive. He was bleeding from a vicious head-wound, crazed, dehydrated, barely conscious and with the bones of his left forearm visible for the world to see, but he appeared to have escaped the worst of what might have been.

  Dr Bertrand pumped him full of painkillers via a rapidly inserted cannula into the back of his right hand, stabilised his left arm, put a neck collar on him and set up a bag of fluids. She moved with brisk efficiency and inside a couple of minutes he was on a stretcher being carried towards the Bell.

  “Charlie, go with ’im and get ’is identity,” Dr Bertrand ordered. “Oh, and see if the woman found nearby was known to ’im, also.”

  Maybe it was the lack of “please” or “thank you” that made me dig my heels in enough to argue. “My place is here, with Hope,” I said. “I promised I wouldn’t go anywhere without her.”

  The doctor had been already turning away and she stopped as if amazed to be questioned. It was Joe Marcus who stepped in.

  “Hope’s done enough for the day. She’ll be heading back with us so there’s nothing for you here,” he said quietly, a host of meanings concealed beneath his measured tone. “But that guy will have family waiting for him. Going with him—maybe finding out his story—will put someone else’s mind at rest.”

  Not much I could say to that, really, which was how I came to be sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a hospital corridor at midnight, waiting.

  He was in surgery for a fractured skull, I was told. They would let me know as soon as he was in recovery.

  By chance I saw one of the same nurses who’d taken charge of the boy from the roadside the day before. I stopped her briefly as she hurried past and asked about him.

  “I’m so sorry. He … didn’t make it,” she said. “We did everything we could but in the end we lost him.” She frowned at me, weariness in her face, her voice and her body. “I called Dr Bertrand last night. Didn’t she pass on the news?”

  “No.” I shook my head. The nurse seemed disturbed enough for me to add a harmless fiction: “I’m sure she meant to—when she had a moment.”

  The nurse nodded and dashed away.

  I settled back in my chair. It seemed only yesterday that I had waited, on and off, for nearly four months in chairs like these. Waited for Sean Meyer to come back to me.

  And he almost had.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Even though the Sean Meyer I got back was not the same man who left me behind in that split second between the finger pulling the trigger and the bullet leaving the gun, I still thought there might be a chance for us.

  Right up until Mexico City.

  Not that Sean went to Mexico City, and perhaps that omission was at the heart of the matter. His first time out in the field since his recovery had not ended well and he was vacillating about his whole future in the close-protection industry.

  Parker refused to accept his resignation and instead persuaded him to take care of glad-handing clients at the office in New York while Parker himself went back to the sharp end of the game as needed.

  For this reason, when a high profile assignment came up south of the border Sean stayed to co-ordinate things at home and I flew out there as part of a team that included Parker.

  The Mexico City job had been hazardous but successful—one of those rare occasions when everything just goes right. It hadn’t been without incident but, even when we came under fire, the plans, backup plans and contingencies we’d put in place all unfurled like a dream and the clients were left seriously singing our praises.

  In the army they drummed into us that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. I suppose there has to be an exception that proves every rule.

  We landed at La Guardia on the return journey and Parker drove us into the city. He was still on a post-combat high. I’d never seen my normally calm and contained boss so buzzed up but his enthusiasm was infectious.

  It hadn’t abated by the time he pulled up at the kerb outside my apartment building. Living cl
osest to the office I was the last of the team to be dropped off, so it was just the two of us.

  We sat there for a while in one of the company Navigators with the engine running quietly, still going over the details, trying to work out how something good could be made even better. Eventually—with reluctance, I admit—I climbed out to retrieve my bag from the back. When I slammed the Navigator’s rear door and turned, I found Parker waiting for me on the kerb.

  “Thanks again, Charlie,” he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

  “What for?”

  “For being a superstar,” he said. “Money can’t buy the kind of great publicity we’ll score from this job.”

  He was grinning like a kid. On impulse, I stepped forward and gave him a hug.

  Mistake.

  Before I knew it he’d lifted and swung me round off my feet.

  “Parker! You idiot, put me down.”

  He did so, still grinning, but I saw the moment his expression shifted, saw those cool grey eyes flick down to my mouth and felt his arms tighten around me.

  “Parker—” I said again. A warning this time, but it was already too late.

  His head dipped. His kiss was a taste, a delicate nip that became a headlong plunge. His hands came up to frame my face, thumbs smoothing the line of my jaw, the hollow under my cheekbone, fingers at the base of my skull.

  At that moment it would have been so easy to let myself fall into him, weightless. All the pent-up frustration, the feeling of utter rejection, the longing, suddenly came flooding out of me as I began to tumble. Just for a second I kissed him back almost on a reflex. Then reality jolted in.

  I brought my hands up to grasp his wrists but he had already broken the kiss. He wrapped his hands protectively around mine and touched our foreheads together, still holding me close.