FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  “Maybe that’s because I haven’t done anything I didn’t have to,” I returned. I waited a beat, then added, “Andrew,” to the end of it.

  “That’s Special Agent in Charge Till to you, missy,” he shot back.

  Special Agent in Charge no less. So he was FBI too, and not just a foot soldier. Nice to keep it in the family, Walt.

  The old man held his hand up for peace. “Now, now, Andrew,” he said gently. “You’ve been busting to speak your mind all through breakfast, so let’s hear the worst of it.”

  “This – person,” his nephew said delicately, not taking his eyes off me for a second, “is wanted for just about everything from kidnapping to homicide, including in connection with the shooting of a police officer down in Broward County. We’ve got half the cops in the state working on locating her and the Pelzner boy. And what you’re doing now by giving her shelter, Uncle Walt, constitutes a serious felony, as you are well aware.”

  “You going to bring me in, son?” Walt asked, his voice mild. Andrew flicked him a single barbed glance.

  “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I asked with just a smear of taunt to the question, “Or doesn’t that apply here in the Land of the Free?”

  Andrew’s face darkened but he didn’t rise to it.

  Walt, meanwhile, had turned his attention over towards the kitchen, where Trey was dutifully wiping plates dry and being very careful not to drop any.

  “I may be a little rusty these days,” Walt murmured, “but the boy sure doesn’t look like he’s being held against his will.”

  Andrew allowed his eyes to slide in that direction for a couple of seconds. When he looked back, he was frowning.

  “If your theory is right,” I said, neutral. “I’ve had him for less than four days. If you’re going to play the Stockholm Syndrome card and try to say that I’ve brainwashed him, or that he’s formed an unusual attachment to his captor in such a short time, you’re going to struggle like hell to make that one stick.”

  Walt’s face didn’t show his sudden amusement outright, but I thought I detected a certain twinkle. “You have to admit, she’s got a point,” he allowed.

  Andrew studied his uncle’s expression and sat back with a frustrated gesture.

  “Perhaps if you’d seen this lady’s record you wouldn’t be so ready to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said sharply, then started rapping out the facts. He didn’t falter and he didn’t need to refer to any notes. Nice to see I’d made such an impression since I’d arrived in the US.

  “British Army background. Expert marksman – well that didn’t take much working out. Selected for Special Forces. Then it all goes wrong and she ends up with a dishonourable discharge. How am I doing so far, Fox?”

  “That’s Miss Fox to you, laddie,” I drawled, mainly to hide the growing unease. I liked my privacy as much as the next person. In fact, considering what my past contained, probably more.

  He brushed aside my calculated insolence and kept going. “So after that she’s scratching a living teaching unarmed combat. Gets herself involved in a drugs racket. Year before last she ends up killing a guy – with her bare hands, for Christ’s sake!”

  “It was self defence,” I gritted. “I was cleared of any blame.”

  “Yeah well, looks like the courts over in good old England get it wrong sometimes too, huh?” he batted straight back, keeping his gaze on Walt now, working to convince him. His body was very still as he talked, as though he was putting all his effort into his voice. “Then there’s the part she played in a major civil disturbance last fall. There was a shooting there too, wasn’t there, Fox?”

  I opened my mouth but he didn’t give me the chance to speak. “We did a search with Interpol and, surprise surprise, her name pops up again. Trouble in Germany. More shootings. Either you’re one unlucky lady, Fox, or you’re a magnet for trouble.”

  “I was cleared,” I said again, more quietly this time. “You want to know what really happened with half that lot? Get in touch with Lancashire Constabulary back in the UK and speak to Detective Superintendent John MacMillan. I’m sure he’ll be willing to tell you all about the people I didn’t kill. The ones whose lives I actually helped save.”

  MacMillan’s name was a surprise, I saw, but whether it was because it was familiar or whether the rank impressed him, I couldn’t tell. He regarded me gravely.

  “I suppose you reckon you have a believable explanation of the events of the past few days, do you?” he asked quietly. “Just like that?”

  “I’ll give it a go,” I said, calmer now. “It may not be believable to you, Special Agent in Charge, but it’s the truth so it’s the best I’ve got. Tell me, how much do you know about the workings of the stock market?”

  ***

  It took a while to tell the full story. The FBI agent made rapid notes in a pocket book and only interrupted me twice. The first time was when I went through the attack on the young cop by the two men in the Buick. As soon as I mentioned shooting the guy who’d been in the passenger seat, Andrew looked up and said, “Shot him with what?”

  “A SIG Sauer nine-mil,” I said, not making any moves to show it to him. “You’ll have found four empty casings at the scene, by the driver’s door of the Mercury. They’d already put us off the road by then and the cop was already dead,” I added pointedly. “The men in the Buick were using something fairly hefty. I didn’t get a clear look, but I would guess at possibly three-fifty-sevens. Large calibre handguns have their own distinctive sound. Oakley man – the guy at the theme park – had a forty-cal, like the one you carry yourself. Whitmarsh and Chris were both using nines at the motel.”

  He paused a second, looked as though he might throw in another query, then nodded and went back to his notes.

  Walt brought fresh coffee but it went cold on the table in front of us. At one point I glanced over and found that Harriet and Trey were standing by the kitchen cabinets, the crockery all put away now. They were listening to every word. The boy was white-faced, as though hearing about it again made it all that bit more real. Harriet had her arm around his shoulders.

  Andrew’s second interruption came when I got to the part about the shoot-out at Henry’s place. As soon as I was done he demanded the details then relayed the information to his colleagues in a short phone call. He didn’t, I noted with relief, explain to them where the information had come from.

  I gathered from his reaction that nobody had connected the incident at Henry’s with my much-reported killing spree. I wondered how Oakley man had explained away his involvement. If he’d known about Xander’s call to the emergency services did that mean he’d been on duty at the time? But if so, why hadn’t he been in uniform? Was he really a cop?

  Well, I suppose now was my chance to find out.

  “. . . uh-huh. Get back to me as soon as you have it,” Andrew rapped out now and finished the call without saying goodbye. One of the benefits of being in charge, it seemed, was an ability to dispense with normal politeness.

  “Oakley man is the only one I can’t work out in all this,” I said. “He was one of the two cops who brought Trey home from the Galleria, but that was down in Fort Lauderdale. I assume he really is a cop, but if so what’s he doing responding to emergency calls in Daytona Beach? Somebody must be able to identify him.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me how to do my job, Fox,” Andrew said. “You let me worry about the peripheral players in this scenario, huh?”

  “‘Peripheral players’?” I echoed smartly. “He’s one of the major players. Either he’s working for Keith or he’s working on his own, but he’s got plenty of manpower and he’s not afraid to kill anyone who gets in the way.”

  “I’ll have people working on tracing him,” he said, frowning again. “We’re gonna have to check out your story some first. So far, you’re claiming a body count of—” he checked the previous page of his notes, “—what? Six or seven dead and a couple of wounded
? But we’ve only found the two kids at the motel and the cop. And now this guy Henry.” There was doubt in his voice.

  “Why would I lay claim to more if it wasn’t the case?” I said tiredly. “This looks bad enough as it is. Why do I need to dress it up any further?”

  He didn’t respond to that question, posing one of his own instead. “And this guy you call Oakley man, you say he stopped for long enough to pick up his dead before he took off from Henry’s house, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You have to admit that’s kinda convenient. Not leaving behind any bodies, that is.”

  “Of course he didn’t leave them behind – he’s a cop,” I said, the tension making me snappy now. “There’ll still be blood. There’ll still be evidence. If you care to look for it. Maybe he was trying to leave you pointing at me because he knows from firsthand experience that you’ll take the route of least resistance when it comes to pinning this whole thing on somebody.”

  Andrew’s face flushed a little at the jibe and Walt, realising things were about to deteriorate, spoke up for the first time since I’d begun recounting my tale.

  “Why don’t you have a look see if any bodies have turned up over the last coupla days with gunshot wounds?” he suggested. “Might go a little way towards clearing this up, son,” he added gently when his nephew still hesitated.

  Suppressing a grumpy sigh, Andrew got back on the phone. I leaned forwards, resting my forearms on my knees and trying to roll the rigid ache out of my neck. I had the Barbie-pink bag clenched tight on my lap like a talisman.

  Walt patted me on the back of my hand and, when I looked up, he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he did so. Whatever Andrew’s qualms, the old man believed me. I was surprised how much that realisation gave me hope.

  But hope of what? I was stuck in Walt and Harriet’s house with an armed and twitchy FBI agent who was fairly convinced I was lying through my teeth in everything I’d said to him. I tried to tell myself that I’d always known it was going to end sometime – we couldn’t stay on the run forever. But not like this, I admitted privately. Not like this.

  They weren’t going to let us just walk out of here again, not without violence that I wasn’t prepared to use, but the thought of sitting in a prison cell while Gerri Raybourn and Whitmarsh and Oakley man were still out there, manufacturing more damning evidence against me, made my skin go cold.

  Special Agent in Charge Till was getting shirty with someone at the other end of the line. “Well why in the name of hell didn’t you tell me about this last night?” he demanded. “Not relevant? You developed sixth sense now, that you can tell me what might be relevant to this case and what isn’t? Fax the report through to me right now, y’hear? No, I’m still at my uncle’s place.” His eyes flickered across me. “No, I think I’ll be here a little while longer. Something’s come up. OK.”

  He punched the end call button and let his breath out fast down his nose.

  “What is it?” Walt asked.

  “Report came in late yesterday. They found a body down near Lake Hell ‘n’ Blazes in Brevard County. Coupla tourists hired an airboat and happened upon a little more of the wildlife than they bargained for. According to the local boys the guy had been in the water a day or so and he’d been pretty badly chewed up. You throw meat in the swamp and there’s plenty out there will take a bite out of it.”

  “Pretty badly chewed up?” I murmured, not liking the mental image conjured up by his words. “So you won’t be able to tell who it is?” In my mind I’d already started running through the list of possibles.

  Andrew broke through my thoughts. “He’d been gut-shot – handgun most likely. Not a good way to go. But they found ID on the body. Turns out he was a Brit too. Name of Sean Meyer.” He met my eyes level and without apparent guile. “Sound like anybody you know?”

  Eighteen

  All at once the world stopped. And my heart and lungs stopped with it.

  I tried to tell myself that I’d known, right from the moment I’d found the SIG in Sean’s empty room, that he was dead. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the shockwave that hit me now. Didn’t lessen the impact. A part of me fiercely didn’t want to believe it, but at the same time another part of me had always known that it was true.

  The explosion inside my head was monstrous, but made no external sound. At the edge of my vision debris started to rain down all around me, but nobody else saw it fall. Fire raged, and froze me to the bone.

  I shut my eyes, just briefly, aware of the sting of suppressed tears under my lids. I didn’t let them loose.

  Then I felt the mechanical jolt as the world started turning again. It had all taken just a split second. All the time out of reality I was allowed.

  I opened my eyes and found that the sea hadn’t boiled and the sky hadn’t turned blood red while I’d been gone. I blinked a couple of times. The FBI agent was watching me closely.

  “How sure are you that it’s Sean?” I asked, amazed at the calm, level tone of my voice.

  “Pretty sure. ‘Course we’ll need a formal ID, but there was a wallet in the guy’s back pocket with credit cards and a Brit driver’s licence. He was also wearing a real nice Swiss wristwatch – a Breitling. That should be easy enough to trace. Expensive piece and still ticking, so they tell me, which is quite something given the state the body was in. Those Swiss really know their stuff, huh?”

  “Shut up!” It was Trey who spoke, his voice harsh and on the edge of cracking. He broke away from Harriet and stumbled forwards, glaring at Andrew. “Just shut the fuck up, man! Don’t you know she was, like, in love with him? Just leave her alone!”

  “Leave it, Trey,” I said quietly, too numb even to feel embarrassment at his outburst. The boy glared between us, his mouth tight and an ugly mottled pink splashed across his cheekbones. After a moment he sighed gustily and turned away, letting his arms flop. Harriet gently put her arm across his narrow shoulders and steered him back towards the kitchen.

  Andrew Till wasn’t being deliberately cruel, I knew. He wasn’t trying to hurt or provoke me. Dealing with death on a regular basis gives you a tinge of black humour that it’s sometimes difficult to shake. You grow a thicker skin and laugh it off, or you let the weight of old bones bury you alive in ghosts and nightmares.

  I got to my feet, still clutching the flowered bag. Till rose, also. His face, which had started to show a hint of pity, sympathy even, turned wary and his eyes went professionally cool and flat again.

  “You and I both know who’s responsible, don’t we?” I said.

  “No, but I sure know who you think is responsible.”

  It wasn’t much, but at least it showed that he recognised someone else had played a part in all this. It wasn’t solely down to me. A tiny blade of hope began to form, to take an edge from dullness.

  “So what are you planning on doing about it?” I demanded.

  “We are pursuing a number of leads at this time,” he said, suddenly coming over all official-speak. “We aren’t discounting any theories. It will be thoroughly investigated, Charlie. You have my word on that.”

  It was something in his voice that tipped me off.

  “Tell me,” I said, conversational, “how long have I got before your SWAT team arrives?”

  Walt looked resigned, I saw, almost a little disappointed. Harriet just stood and gaped disbelievingly. Till almost smiled. His eyes shifted slightly to the face of the clock on the far wall of the living room. “‘Bout ten minutes,” he said easily. “Maybe a little less.”

  “In that case I’m afraid you’re going to have to shoot me to keep me here,” I said. “I’m not staying to be arrested while you let Sean’s killers walk. If you won’t find them, I will.”

  I turned my back and took a step towards the door out onto the back lawn, the one we’d come in by.

  “Hold it right there, missy!” the FBI agent’s voice rapped out. “Don’t make me do this.”

  I turned bac
k and found he’d finally completed that fast draw and brought his pistol out and up and level in a textbook double-handed Weaver stance. From where I was standing the sizeable opening in the end of the barrel looked like the deck gun of a frigate.

  “Andrew, don’t you dare!”

  Outrage deepened Harriet’s voice so that, to begin with, I thought it was Walt who’d made the protest, but it wasn’t.

  “Aunt Harriet, please, get out of the way,” Till said, the anguish clear in his voice as the old woman stepped, stubborn and determined, into his line of fire. “You know I have to take her in.”

  “I know you do, dear,” Harriet said, facing him steadily, “but just not today.”

  Trey edged round her carefully and joined me by the door.

  “Stay here,” I told him quickly, pleading, one eye still on the FBI agent’s gun. He’d lowered it now, but was still ready if he got his chance. “You’ll be safe here. Special Agent Till will protect you.” Better than I can. Better than I will for what I have to do now.