Third Strike: A Charlie Fox Mystery

by Zoe Sharp

  He rolled his eyes. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  My mother came out of the bathroom in time to catch us grinning at each other. She was too polite to glare at us with outright suspicion, but it was lurking fairly close to the surface nevertheless.

  I woke early and disorientated. Over the last few months I’d successfully managed to work my body clock round onto U.S. time. A day back in England seemed to have skewed all that careful programming.

  My mother went for thick curtains, lined like there was likely to be another blackout, but I could see the first strains of dawn leaching in around the edges and the birds were already in full song. There was a wren somewhere close by—I’d recognize that strident little voice anywhere. But no traffic, no sirens. Weird.

  Stretching with care, feeling the twang of sleep-shortened muscles, I turned my head to see Sean’s alongside mine and felt the familiar giant leap of emotion that simply being with him always provoked.

  He lay quiet and still. The nightmares that had so often plagued him seemed to have diminished in both quantity and quality since we’d moved to New York, but maybe that was just my rosy-tinted perception.

  For a few moments I took advantage of the lightening gloom to indulge myself and simply watch him. He lay on his back with his head turned slightly towards me, lips parted, those severe features relaxed and almost boyish. Viewed with a dispassionate eye, I acknowledged the cold beauty in the lines of his face and wondered what it was about him that inspired me to such devotion.

  Back when we’d first met, when we’d both been in the army, an immediate, incendiary attraction had flared between us. I’d fought against it with a desperation born of the knowledge that any involvement with him could leave me badly burned. I’d known then that Sean was way out of my league.

  In some ways, he still was.

  I resisted the urge to smooth a stray lock of hair back from his forehead, aware that even the lightest touch would wake him when he deserved to sleep a little longer. Neither of us had got much rest during the night, that was for sure.

  Shortly after one in the morning, feeling more nervous than on any covert operation, I’d crept soft-footed along the darkened corridor, stepping over the floorboards whose ageold creaks and groans had formed the sound track of my early life. I didn’t knock, just gripped the old brass handle firmly to stop it rattling, opened the door a crack and slipped into his room, with my heart already hitting the rev limiter in my chest and my temperature rising as the blood flushed my skin.

  The bedside lamp had still been on. In its subdued glow, I could see Sean lying on his side with the covers pulled up only to his waist and his naked back towards me. I’d stood for a moment and watched the regular rise and fall of his rib cage, uncertain whether to approach him. Creeping up in the middle of the night on a man with Sean’s reflexes and bitterwon experience was not likely to be good for anyone’s health.

  Just for a moment the doubts resurfaced and I was tempted to retreat. Then Sean had lifted his head slightly and said quietly over his shoulder, “The longer you stand there, the colder your feet are getting.”

  You don’t know how close you are with that one, Sean … .

  I crossed the room in half a dozen strides, lifted the heavy satin eiderdown and slipped in alongside him. And, shortly after that, any doubts I might have had about the exercise were comprehensively blown away.

  And now, as I tried to slide out stealthily from under the rumpled covers less than six hours later, his eyes blinked open. I took their hazy focus as an enormous compliment. It meant that Sean felt safe enough with me to let his guard down completely. At least some of the time.

  “Hi,” I said, hearing the catch in my voice.

  He smiled, utterly transforming his face, stealing away the brutality that lurked beneath the surface.

  “Hi yourself,” he murmured. He blinked again and his eyes sharpened as he correctly interpreted my intentions. “Leaving so soon?”

  “I have to,” I said. I propped myself on one elbow and gave in to temptation, touching my fingers to that rogue lock of hair. He caught my hand and turned his head to press a lazy kiss into my palm. The nerves fizzed as far up as my elbow.

  “Stay,” he said, his voice muffled against my skin.

  I stiffened, tried to pull back and found he wouldn’t release me, relaxed my arm rather than fight him.

  “I can’t, Sean,” I said, my voice twisted into a groan by regret and desire in equal measure as his tongue gave way to his teeth, nipping at the crease of my lifeline. “I want to—you know that—but my mother’s highly likely to bring you an earlymorning cup of tea at any moment, just to check up on us.”

  He did let go then, and part of me wished he hadn’t.

  “And what’s she going to do if she finds you here?” he said, and I didn’t like the cool delivery. “Scream? Faint? Throw things?”

  “All three, probably,” I said, careful to keep it light. “Come on—she’s my mother. I wouldn’t feel comfortable being caught by her in bed with—”

  “Me?”

  “With anyone,” I said, firmer now. “It wouldn’t matter if you really were something in the City with a string of polo ponies. I still wouldn’t feel right about it.”

  “Sure about that, are you?”

  “Yes!” I hissed. “She knows we’re living together in New York and she accepts that—inasmuch as she actually accepts anything she doesn’t like or approve of. In reality, that means she sticks her head in the sand and pretends it doesn’t exist. I may not be a child any longer, but this is my parents’ house. When I’m here, I have to abide by their rules and—”

  His hand snaked across my hip, cutting off my voice in one laser-guided caress that blanked my mind and filmed my eyes. I arched back onto the pillows, gasping. Sean always did fight dirty.

  “We’re both consenting adults, Charlie. I think we proved that last night, don’t you?” He leaned in close enough to whisper tauntingly against my throat. “So, what was that—lip service? I never would have taken you for a hypocrite.”

  With a monstrous effort of will, I jerked out from beneath that clever mouth and those devastating fingers and tipped myself over the edge of the bed. My mother didn’t believe in heating the bedrooms and it was cool enough outside the covers to make me shiver instantly.

  Sean watched in brooding silence as I quickly snatched up my discarded robe and shoved my arms into the sleeves. I darted for the door, hugging the fabric around my body as if for comfort. When I looked back, his expression did nothing to warm me. I felt my chin come up.

  “You should know as well as I do, Sean,” I said, “that half the point of breaking the rules is not getting caught doing it.”

  “That depends on whether you think more of the people making the rules than you do of the rules themselves,” he shot back darkly. He sighed, let his voice gentle. “After all they’ve said and done, that pair, are you still so desperate to win their approval?”

  “They’re my parents.” I swallowed. “It’s a natural reaction, don’t you think?”

  “It’s a pointless quest.” He shook his head, a quick jerk of frustration. “They’re never going to respect or understand you.” Not like I do. Coaxing now. “Give up on it, Charlie—on them.”

  I tried to ignore the lure of his words. I opened the door, checked that the corridor was quiet and empty outside, turned back and gave him one last, helpless shrug.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Because Madeleine had arranged our tickets back to New York, the three of us sat up towards the sharp end of a British Airways Boeing 767. She’d managed to pull some strings to get us a good last-minute deal in Club. Besides the obvious comfort and convenience factors, it made sense from a defensive point of view.

  The check-in line for BA Club World was short and enabled us to fast-track through Security, minimizing our exposure time in public areas. We didn’t know if Blon
die and Don were working independently in the UK, or if they had assistance from someone who might be keeping a watching brief. As it was, we cut things fine enough so that by the time we’d been through the usual rigmarole of metal detectors and patdown searches, we went more or less straight to the departure gate.

  My mother was subdued on the flight. She had adopted a mournfully tragic air at being dragged away from her home under these circumstances and she kept it up throughout the journey, graciously weary in allowing the cabin crew to dance attendance on her.

  We got into JFK around lunchtime. Sean rang Parker as soon as the plane pulled up to the jet bridge. The call was short and to the point.

  “He wants us in the office right away,” Sean said. “He’s sending McGregor to pick us up.”

  I nodded but didn’t get the chance to do much more than that. The aircraft door finally clunked open at that point and the press of people began pushing towards freedom.

  Sean had been cool with me since I’d left his bed that morning, carefully placing himself across the aisle to leave me alongside my mother, where the layout in Club meant our seats faced each other. I’d tried to persuade myself he was just being professional, that the alternative was to sit with her himself or leave her somewhat out on a limb. But the fact I knew there was more to it than that created a low-level anxiety I couldn’t seem to dispel.

  By the time we walked out through the main doors of the terminal into the weakening autumn sunshine, there was a huge dark blue Lincoln Navigator idling by the curb, with limo-black tint on the rear windows. If Parker’s employees shared one common denominator, it was their efficiency.

  Behind the wheel was a young black Canadian called Joseph McGregor. He’d joined Parker’s outfit fresh from two tours in Iraq. I’d worked with him before and he was an excellent driver—he reckoned New York at its worst was a walk in the park compared to the streets of Basra under fire.

  He stayed behind the wheel and kept the engine running while we loaded our bags. Even my mother’s voluminous hard-shell suitcase looked a little lost in the SUV’s cavernous rear load space.

  She allowed us to hustle her into the plush leather upholstery of the backseat without seeming to notice the speed of our departure. I climbed in alongside her, leaving Sean up front, and McGregor gunned the V-8 and sped away.

  “So, what’s the panic, Joe?” Sean asked.

  “Better ask the boss,” McGregor said, uncharacteristically evasive.

  Sean merely shrugged.

  McGregor took the Queens-Midtown Tunnel under the East River and into Manhattan. Once we emerged, my mother spent the journey with her neck cranked to take in the towering buildings. I could identify with that, at least. Much as I tried not to let it show, I was still frequently overawed by the sheer scale of New York City, and Manhattan was tightly packed yet sprawling at the same time. As we approached midtown, the affluence of the area seemed more apparent.

  “Where are we going?” my mother asked at last, starting to look flustered. She waved a hand towards her outfit—a stuffy tweed skirt and pale pink twin-set with the cardigan draped around her shoulders. “I mean, I don’t know if I’m suitably dressed.”

  “Just the office.” Sean’s face gave away nothing of his opinion about such a trivial worry. “You’ll be fine.”

  My mother was still fretful. “Perhaps I ought to have changed,” she said.

  She looked carelessly smart in a well-bred, English kind of way. I debated on telling her that in New York, black was the new black, but decided against it. Informing my mother she was in danger of making a fashion faux pas would be enough to send her into a tailspin, and I reckoned we were going to have more than enough on our plate coping with her today.

  “You’ll be fine,” I repeated, aiming for reassurance rather than exasperation. I’m not sure I quite pulled it off, but she let the subject go.

  Instead she said, in a rather small voice, “When do you think I might be able to … see Richard?”

  If it was me, I thought savagely, and it was Sean who was in trouble, I would never have stopped asking that question from the moment we got off the plane. It would have been my first—my only—concern. Why wasn’t it yours?

  “That depends,” I said curtly, “on whether he’s out on bail.”

  She looked hurt. Sean half-turned in his seat and I saw McGregor’s head tilt slightly to the rearview mirror, so that I was regarded by three reproachful pairs of eyes instead of one.

  Despite the traffic, the journey didn’t take long. Parker’s offices were in a newly renovated building with an imposing entrance onto the street and a uniformed doorman. McGregor treated my mother with deference, calling her “ma’am” as he led her across the lobby. If he’d been wearing a cap, he would have tipped it.

  I turned my head away so I could avoid the speculation that formed in her eyes as she now regarded me. As if maybe her daughter wasn’t associating with quite the thugs and peasants she’d always feared.

  We took one of the express elevators, which whisked us up to the agency offices, and stepped out into the discreet opulence of the reception area. I saw my mother register the newly installed Armstrong Meyer nameplate behind the desk and resented the quickening of her interest.

  Bill Rendelson toned down his habitual hostility in front of outsiders. He led us straight through to Parker’s office without his usual snide comments, pulling the door closed behind us. Inside, sitting drinking coffee, we found Parker Armstrong—and my father.

  Both men rose when we entered. My father was still in the same suit he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him, but the shirt was clearly freshly laundered and he looked clean-shaven, showered, even rested, damn him. Only the discolored patch across his cheekbone gave away that he’d been through any kind of rough treatment. And that, I knew, was due to me.

  I was suddenly very much aware of having just got off a seven-and-a-half-hour flight after very little sleep for the last three nights.

  He went straight to my mother and, just for a second, I thought I might actually be about to witness genuine emotion between them. Then, when they were just a couple of paces apart, he seemed abruptly to remember the circumstances that had brought them here, and faltered, settling for a brief kiss on the cheek that was herculean in its restraint.

  “Oh Richard,” my mother said, her voice wobbling as her face dissolved, as if she’d only just been holding it all together until now. “I’ve been so very frightened.”

  “I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said, sounding somehow rusty. “It’s all over now.”

  A gross exaggeration, in my view, but I didn’t like to point that out.

  “They came into the house, Richard,” my mother went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. She dug in her handbag for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Into our home, and threatened me.” Tears broke her voice. “They said such a—awful things would happen.”

  “I know.” With a sigh, he finally folded her uncomfortably into his arms and they stood there for a while in that stiff embrace.

  Then, over my mother’s bent head, his gaze shifted past me to Sean. “Thank you … for going to my wife’s aid,” he said in a quietly frozen tone, like he could hardly bring himself to express gratitude to Sean. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to express it at all to me.

  Sean nodded. “You can repay us with a little honesty,” he said coolly.

  My father tensed, as though his first response was denial, closely followed by the realization that he had very little choice. Gently, he put my mother away from him, guided her to a chair and handed her off into it with the kind of practiced delicacy I imagined him using on a critical patient’s dazed and grief-stricken next of kin. When he spoke, it was over his shoulder and with quiet dignity.

  “I’d like a moment alone with my wife first, if you don’t mind.”

  We’d all of us been through the military machine at one time or another, enough to respond instinctively to the innate command in his voice. My
father ran his operating theaters with an iron hand tougher than any general’s and he was used to being obeyed utterly.

  “Of course,” Parker said. “Just let Bill know when you’re ready.”

  We filed out. As I closed the door behind me I saw my father take the chair next to my mother’s, close but not touching, and begin to speak in a low voice. Whatever he had to say, I considered, it had better be good.

  Parker led us into the same conference room where we’d had our last confrontation, and took the same seat at the head of the table. I hoped we weren’t in for a rematch.

  “Damn, he’s good,” he said with a rueful smile, blowing out a breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever been elbowed out of my own office before.”

  “How long has he been here?” I asked. “I mean—I’m surprised they let him out of jail.”

  “Well, they didn’t so much let him out as our legal team wrestled him loose,” Parker said. “The amount they charged for it, I was right about our lawyer putting his kids through college. I just didn’t realize he’d be able to fly them there in his own Lear 55.”

  “Quit stalling,” Sean said, parting his jacket and taking a chair. “You were being very cryptic on the phone. What’s happened?”

  “We’re taking serious heat,” Parker said bluntly. He ran a frustrated hand through his prematurely grayed hair. “Somebody’s been digging and they’ve been digging hard and deep. The Simone Kerse thing, for starters.”

  “But that was nothing to do with you,” I said, then caught the look on his face and instantly regretted my unguarded choice of words. One of Parker’s men had been killed on that job and I knew that wasn’t something he took lightly, by any means.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “What I meant was, Simone wasn’t your responsibility—she was ours. Mine, to be exact. And I was the one who lost her.”

  “You didn’t lose her, Charlie,” Sean said. “Under the circumstances—”

  “Nobody listens to circumstances,” I cut in, selfrecrimination making my voice harsher than it should have been. “The hard facts are that I was the one tasked to protect her and she died on my watch. After that, nobody cares about the how and the why.”