Third Strike: A Charlie Fox Mystery

by Zoe Sharp

  “All men are savages under the skin, Mr. Collingwood,” my father said, icy in his control now. “Your agent, and her associate, terrorized my wife in her own home. They threatened to beat and rape her—on, I have no doubt, your orders. Did they also stand over Miranda Lee while she slipped into unconsciousness? That tends to take the shine off one’s sense of decency and fair play.”

  Sean caught sight of the restraints hanging from the ceiling and, just for a second, a stillness came over him that I recognized as rage.

  He rammed his elbow into Collingwood’s kidneys, hard enough to blind him, and swung him away from the wall. By the time the older man had got his breath back, Sean had cuffed his hands over his head and had stepped back, leaving him to sway there. Collingwood’s back was towards me and, cowardly, I was glad I couldn’t see his face.

  Sean reached into his own trouser pocket and pulled out a folding lock knife with a wicked four-inch blade, snapped it open and presented it, handle first, to my father.

  My father’s face showed nothing other than concentration as he moved round so he could meet Collingwood’s eyes, holding the knife up so it was in plain sight as he examined the blade.

  “Not quite the edge I’m accustomed to, but I’m sure it will suffice,” he said. He looked up. “As you so rightly pointed out, Mr. Collingwood, we don’t have three days. I want my wife, and you’re going to tell me where she is. If you don’t, I will insert the blade of this knife between various of your vertebrae, severing your spinal cord at that point. The longer you refuse to talk, the higher I will go. I have been a surgeon for more than thirty years and, however hard you’ve tried to ruin my reputation, the fact remains that I am highly skilled in these matters.”

  My eyes snapped to Sean’s and I saw the shock there, but the respect, too. It sickened me. I took a step forwards, stumbled and would have fallen if Sean hadn’t grabbed me, propped me back upright against the nearest wall.

  My God. We can’t let him do this.

  I can.

  I slumped, pressing an arm across my belly like I was shielding it from witnessing any of this. I imagined a minute fetus sucking cells out of my brain, building itself out of my DNA, somehow absorbing the imprint of everything I’d seen and done. I shut my eyes.

  “Here,” Sean said. “You look like you could use these.”

  I opened my eyes again, to see he was holding my bottle of Vicodin in his outstretched palm. You were not supposed to take it with alcohol, I remembered sharply, or if you were operating heavy machinery, or had liver disease. Or if you were pregnant.

  And if Vondie wasn’t lying …

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine.”

  My father had circled behind Collingwood, who tried to twist with him but the restraints brought him up short. He was starting to sweat.

  My father stopped directly behind him and laid his gloved fingers very carefully on the man’s lower spine, right around his belt line. I saw the quiver of reaction, quickly stilled.

  “Injuries to the lumbar or sacral region of the spinal canal usually result in decreased control of the legs, hips and anus,” my father said, matter-of-fact, as though he was delivering a lecture to a group of his medical students. “There is also the likelihood of bowel, bladder and sexual dysfunction.”

  Collingwood let out a shaky laugh. “You can’t do this, Doc,” he said, and I wondered if it was us or himself he was trying to convince. “Meyer there, or your little girl, now, they’ve got the look. I’ve seen enough killers in my time to know. But you? You’re a doctor—sworn to uphold life, not to destroy it.”

  “Quite so,” my father agreed easily. “Just as I imagine that you, Mr. Collingwood, have sworn to serve and protect your country. It’s the interpretation of that oath that makes the difference, wouldn’t you say? If,” he added, without waiting for a reply, “by sacrificing your health, your mobility, I retrieve my wife, unhurt, then the end will have justified the means.”

  They were the same words Collingwood himself had used to Terry, back in the lobby. He couldn’t possibly have known that, of course. Just fate running one of those odd parallels.

  My father walked his fingers slowly a little farther up Collingwood’s back. The government man was thin enough that the ridges of his vertebrae stood out like the plates of a prehistoric stegosaurus, just as easily defined.

  “Damage to the thoracic spine results in paraplegia,” my father went on. “You’re likely to retain control of your hands but not your abdominal muscles, so you will not only be confined to a wheelchair and catheterized, but you will have to be strapped in like a rag doll.”

  “Pretty pictures you’re painting, Doc,” Collingwood said. He was sweating badly now, and even he heard the desperate edge, the false bravado, in his tone. But he had guts, I’ll give him that. “I can’t say I approve, but you have, ah, a certain style.”

  “How’s this for a ‘pretty picture,’ Mr. Collingwood?” my father snapped, his face tight and white across his bones. “Spending your days tied to a wheelchair, shitting into a bag, pissing into a tube, and never having another hard-on for the rest of your life.”

  My mouth dropped open, I know it did. My father was cold and clinical and there were times when I would have sworn he had ice in his veins, but I’d never heard him stoop to crudeness. Never heard him really swear, or lose his temper, or make an off-color remark. That shocked me more than the violence of what he was proposing.

  It must have taken Collingwood aback, too. He was silent as my father’s fingers walked higher still, to somewhere up above his shoulder blades. “Cervical injuries are the most debilitating,” my father went on, toneless again now, his outburst forgotten. “They normally result in what is known as full or partial tetraplegia—complete paralysis. C-7—here—is the last point at which you can still expect to live any kind of independent existence. You may have some control over your arms, but your hands and fingers will be compromised.”

  “The Afghanis beat the soles of my feet, flayed the skin off my back, broke both my arms, my hands, and my left leg in three places,” Collingwood said, like he was clinging on to the conviction that whatever was about to happen now would not—could not—be worse. “They left me to die in the mountains.”

  “Yes,” my father said distantly, “but you didn’t die. And you must have known that, should you survive, there was every chance of recovery.” He moved slower now, counting off each rise. “C-6 means you’ll entirely lose the use of your hands. C-5 and C-4—you might perhaps be able to move your shoulders and biceps, getting weaker, naturally. At C-3 you lose diaphragm function. You’ll need a ventilator to breathe.”

  His fingers were almost at the back of Collingwood’s neck now, delicate, light.

  “I don’t think you need to know about anything higher—the atlas and axis. You’d be dead. And I have no intention of letting you take the easy way out.” He leaned closer, so he could almost whisper in Collingwood’s ear. “Not like your people gave poor Jeremy Lee the easy way out. But that was after his spine had collapsed over a period of months, causing chronic pain as well as a gradual paralysis. Do you consider it ironic, Mr. Collingwood, that the same fate is going to befall you?”

  He stepped back, seemed to shake himself, glanced at Sean’s expressionless face but carefully avoided mine. “The incision itself will be excruciating—albeit briefly,” he said. “You might want to hold his legs.”

  “Wait a minute—” Collingwood sounded breathless, but that could just have been from the way he was hanging. He twisted again, struggling now. Sean anchored his legs while I stood as a helpless bystander, unable to stop the sudden runaway plunge of thoughts inside my head.

  Hey, Mummy, what did you and Daddy and Grandpa do in the war?

  “You don’t have a minute,” my father said. He steadied the tip of the knife against the skin covering Collingwood’s spine. “You have participated in the deaths of two people of whom I was extremely fond. You have ruined my ca
reer, ordered the torture of my daughter, and now you are holding my wife. Say good-bye to your legs, Mr. Collingwood.”

  His hand slid forwards and the blade penetrated, sending a vivid viscous spill of scarlet across the pallid skin.

  Collingwood shrieked. His body voided, but still the overwhelming stench in that room was sweat and blood and fear. Sean let go and staggered back as if, right up to that point, he’d believed my father was bluffing. A part of me had believed it, too.

  Collingwood’s knees buckled, so he was hanging entirely from his arms. I saw his spine flex, saw the ripple of vertebrae as he collapsed, then realized that he was still moving his feet. Still capable of doing so.

  My own legs refused to keep me upright and I slid, very slowly, to the base of the wall.

  “The next cut,” my father said, unconcerned, mopping away some of the ooze with Collingwood’s own tattered shirt, “will be for real.”

  “She’s in the lab!” Collingwood almost screamed it. “In the research lab. Second level. They haven’t touched her. They’re waiting for my orders. They haven’t touched her! Please! You have to believe me.”

  My father paused, stepped back. His expression was carefully blank, but I saw the throb of veins pulsing at his temple and could only feel some minor relief that this was having an effect on him after all.

  But not enough to make him stop.

  “Why?” It was Sean who spoke, recovered enough for his tone to be as dispassionate as my father’s. “Why should we believe that a man who held out for three days against Afghani tribesmen would give us the truth so easily?”

  “I am!” Collingwood yelped. “I am. I swear to God. Jesus. Why would I lie?”

  “Because you know what would happen if she’s already dead?” Sean said, arms folded, head tilted slightly. “Why did you arrange a trap for us here, Collingwood? Not to arrest us, certainly. You tried misinformation, blackmail, threats, but they didn’t work, did they?”

  He moved round in front of the government man, ducked so he could be sure of eye contact. “Richard loves his wife—enough to ruin himself for her. You counted on that. But you didn’t count on the fact that Charlie loves her parents too much to allow them to go down without a fight.” He straightened, looked down at the bowed head without emotion. “If you’d done your homework, you would have known you had to take out Charlie—and me—right at the start, instead of leaving us until last. And you’re foolishly still hoping you can come out of this on top, aren’t you? So, is Elizabeth alive or not?”

  Collingwood lifted his head, pulled his lips back as much in a snarl as a smile. He’d bitten his tongue and the blood stained his teeth.

  “I don’t know. Could be,” he said, panting. “We were waiting to see what we could get out of the girl before we killed the old lady. Hell, we were going to kill the whole fucking bunch of you, anyway. Medical research lab is always working with bodies. What’s a few more?”

  My father had moved in again, to lean over his shoulder. I couldn’t see exactly where he had his hands, but from the set of his shoulders, I could guess.

  “Don’t,” I said, finding my voice. It came up rusty. “Please don’t. We have what we need. We have the information. He’s finished. It’s over. You cross the line and there’s no coming back. Please, don’t do this to him—to yourself.”

  My father twisted, flicking his eyes back to meet mine. Same color, same shape. Same blood between us, binding us together. What else had I sucked out from his genes? What would I, in my turn, pass on?

  “Do you hear that, Mr. Collingwood?” he said softly. “My own daughter thinks I’ve become a monster. Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that, whatever I am, you helped create me.”

  His arm, his hand, slid forwards. Collingwood threw his head back and his body jerked, horror and utter disbelief in his eyes in the split second before they rolled back in his head and he fainted.

  My father carefully withdrew the knife and wiped the blade clean. He neatly folded it up and handed it back to Sean with an absent nod, like he’d just borrowed a handkerchief or a pen. He peeled off the gloves and dropped them on the floor. They were bloodied to the wrists.

  “You may as well let him down,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “He won’t be going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 34

  In the corridor outside, Terry O’Loughlin was sitting next to the groggy security guard. She had both hands pressed over her ears and her eyes tight shut and she jumped when I staggered over and touched her shoulder.

  “Is it … over?” she said, pale as winter. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes, it’s over,” I said. “And no, he isn’t.”

  But maybe he’ll wish he was.

  My father paused and looked down at her. “Whereabouts on the second level is the research lab?” he said, and the clipped note was back with a vengeance.

  She gathered those lethal legs underneath her and pushed to her feet. “I’ll show you,” she said, doggedly undaunted.

  “Just tell us, Terry, and we’ll find it,” Sean said, his voice quiet. He jerked his head. “What started in there isn’t over.”

  Her jaw hardened, just a little. “And I helped start it,” she said. “So I won’t shy away from seeing it end.”

  Sean stared at her a moment longer, then nodded like she’d passed some kind of test. His eyes flicked to me. “And are you up to this, Charlie?” A challenge there, too.

  No.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, knowing he’d sense the lie but have no choice other than to run with it. And even as I spoke, Vondie’s words came back to me, cruel and bitter as a blade.

  Keeping those kind of secrets will kill any relationship stone dead. You know that.

  Sean moved in close, crowding me. “You’re suffering, Charlie,” he said tightly. “Do you think I can’t see it? If the damned Vicodin will help you get through this, just take it and don’t be so bloody stubborn.”

  “I—.” I stepped back, still trembling but gaining steadily. “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  He handed me the Glock he’d taken from Collingwood, watched me close my fist around it. I didn’t expect that a man of Collingwood’s experience would carry a weapon unready, but I brushed my index finger over the loaded chamber indicator anyway, just to be sure, dropped the magazine out to verify a full load, slapped it home again, and returned his stare, defiant. “Let’s just get this done.”

  “All right.” He stepped back, his face shut down. “Okay, Terry, lead the way.”

  She took us up a utility stairwell to the next floor, through a maze of corridors that all looked the same and went on for miles, past labs and huge soulless open-plan office spaces. The place had the sterile smell of air conditioning over new carpet and old sweat, laced with the thin pine scent of industrial cleaning fluid.

  We moved as quietly as we could, Sean ahead, Terry directing him, my father behind her, seeming almost unaware of his immediate surroundings, me covering our rear, my limbs returning to me with every stride.

  Working weekends was obviously not company policy at Storax. We encountered nobody, saw nothing except the empty cubes of office drones, containing cluttered desks and dead computer monitors. Did these people have any idea what the company that employed them had been working on? If the check arrived each month, did they care?

  Terry halted. “The lab’s up ahead,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Through the next set of doors. On your left.”

  “Good,” Sean said. “What’s the layout?”

  Terry shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to go in there before. Maybe if I had …” She broke off, frowning.

  “You’ve done more than enough, Terry,” Sean said. He smiled. It was the kind of smile that, when he directed it at me, had a tendency to make me go a little stupid. It seemed to have much the same effect on Terry. “You’d best stay here. I doubt they’ll let you close enough to punt their bollocks into their throats
, in any case.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He means you probably won’t get a chance to kick them in the balls,” I supplied as I came past her.

  “No, I guess not,” she said, looking faintly embarrassed. “But I’ll stay close. I reckon, when this is over, you might just need a good lawyer. And I have a feeling I’ll be making a career move.”

  I glanced at my father. “You should stay here, too,” I said abruptly. “We can’t protect you when we go in there. Trying may get us all killed.”

  “I don’t expect you to protect me, Charlotte. I expect you to do your job,” my father said, coldly imperious.

  I stared at him blankly for a moment before I saw the underlying thread of panic.

  If you don’t save her now, how can I live with my part in this?

  Was this acceptance at last? If so, why did it feel like it had all come too little, too late? And why did I feel he’d turned into someone whose approval was the last thing I wanted.

  He nodded to Sean, a stiff jerk of the head. Sean nodded back. Then we were moving forwards, the pair of us, strides matching. I’d seen Sean kill and it hadn’t affected the way I felt about him. But seeing my father primed to do the same had sickened me to the soul. Ironic that it was probably a mirror image of how he felt about me.

  I shut it out, shoved it down deep, and did the only thing I knew how to do well—prepared to kill two strangers without even knowing their names.

  We went through the doors into the research lab totally in sync. Low left, and high right, angled so we were covering each other’s back.

  As soon as we were through the door, we saw them. Buzz-cut and the limping pickup driver. I had the Glock up and sighted instantly, but the picture presented meant I did not fire. Neither of us did.

  The lab was mostly white, lined with cupboards and workbenches, with half a dozen clearly delineated workstations. No clutter. Just mundane, like a particularly large kitchen that happens to have no appliances. It smelled of something sharp and acidic that I couldn’t place.