FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  “So why was Whitmarsh trying to kill Trey right up to the point where he found out that the kid might be involved with the program? Then, all of a sudden, Whitmarsh has a chance to shoot the pair of us but he lets us get away because he’s afraid of damaging him.”

  “How did he find out that Trey was involved?” Brown asked.

  “Trey went to a guy he knew called Henry for help,” I said, not adding my own feelings on the subject. “But Henry contacted Whitmarsh to sell us to the highest bidder. After he’d tried to up the price by telling Whitmarsh what the boy was really worth, Henry attempted to lure us into a trap and when it didn’t quite go according to plan he got a bullet in the brain from Haines for his trouble.”

  Brown went silent, his placid face troubled. “So where’s the boy now?”

  “He’s safe,” I said, thinking of Xander and Aimee who were standing guard over him. And Walt, ready to take over if anything went wrong. Not to mention Special Agent in Charge Till, and all that he represented.

  “Oh I get it,” Gerri said with contempt. “You don’t make a phone call by a certain time and he and Keith both get it. Am I right?”

  “Something like that,” I agreed, wondering why I hadn’t thought of telling them something along those lines in the first place.

  “Well,” she said, smiling nastily at me as she blew that one out of the water, “I’m sure the cops will sweat it out of you in plenty of time to retrieve them both.”

  She finished her coffee and got to her feet, like this conversation was over. I studied her but couldn’t find the faintest sign of panic.

  Why on earth had her men killed to prevent Trey and me falling into police hands if she was so eager to see me put there now? It didn’t make sense. Unless she was just trying to get me out of here, to get me somewhere quieter and with less witnesses.

  “Don’t you think it might be an idea to check out what she says, even just a little?” Brown asked and I could have cheered at the cool note that had crept into his voice when he spoke to her.

  Gerri gave a short laugh. “Why?” The laugh died when she caught the solemn expression on his face. “Oh come on, Livingston! How long have we known each other? You surely can’t believe a word this lying little bitch tells you?”

  Brown made a ‘maybe, maybe not’ gesture with his hand. “Don’t do no harm to check it out, even so,” he said easily.

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “Let her call your feller Whitmarsh and offer to make a deal with him for the boy,” Brown said. “If he’s as crooked as she reckons, he’ll go for it.” He smiled at me and those bright, clever eyes stared out from beneath their droopy lids like he was a young man inside a geriatric costume mask. “And if he does, well I guess we’ll just take things from there.”

  ***

  Gerri didn’t like it. In fact if she’d liked it any less she would have been wailing but clearly she wasn’t in charge here. Brown pushed the heavy cream telephone he’d been using when I’d first burst into his office across the desk towards me. Then he opened one of the drawers and began pawing through the contents.

  “My late wife, God rest her, used to love those gadget catalogues,” he said while he searched. “You know the ones? A thousand answers to questions you never needed to ask? She was always buying me stuff I never had the heart to send back. Ah, here we are.”

  He pulled out a small tape recorder, similar to the one that Walt had given me. It jogged my memory and I slid my eyes sideways and spotted the strap of my bag, just poking out from underneath the broken chair.

  Brown, meanwhile, was untangling the wires that came with his recorder, which had knotted themselves together the way wire or string has a tendency to do when it’s left to its own devices and gets bored. When he’d unravelled these they separated out to reveal a set of headphones at the end of one, and a small sucker at the end of the other.

  “You kinda stick that to the receiver, then you can tape your phone conversations,” Brown said, checking the batteries were still working in the recorder. “I used it once or twice, just for fun. Can’t remember the last time.”

  He attached the sucker to the side of the handset and pressed the record buttons, then Gerri stabbed in the number of Whitmarsh’s mobile phone. Her movements were impatient, her lips compressed. Would her man betray her, I wondered, or was he too canny for that?

  She and Brown shared the headphones, putting their heads together awkwardly so they could have one earpiece each. The phone rang out four or five times before Jim Whitmarsh picked up. I don’t know what number appeared on the display at his end, but his voice was wary.

  “Yeah?”

  “Whitmarsh,” I said. “It’s Charlie Fox.”

  Gerri Raybourn and I silently locked gazes while I spoke. She sat with her body rigid, as though she was being made to listen to an obscene phone call.

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, then I heard Whitmarsh let his breath out in a long rush, close to a sigh with a soft laugh at the end of it.

  “Well now, Charlie,” he said, voice rich with satisfaction like he’d always known I wouldn’t be able to resist him for long. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Cut the crap,” I said. “Do you still want the kid?”

  “Trey?” Whether it was the abrupt tone or the offer, I felt his surprise. His interest quickened. “You bet.”

  “Dead? Or alive?”

  He laughed again. He had a slightly wheezy laugh, as though he was a heavy smoker. “If I’d wanted him dead, neither one of you would have walked away from us yesterday,” he said, coldly matter-of-fact.

  “Well, I’m offering him to you now,” I said. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to start dictating terms, lady,” Whitmarsh said but he spoke just a little too fast, his voice just a little too tense. It gave the lie to his confident words.

  “Oh really?” I said. “OK, let me phrase that slightly differently for you, Jim. What’s it worth to you to get hold of him when he’s still alive and kicking, rather than shot in the stomach and dropped into a swamp?”

  Another long pause. “News travels fast, huh?” Whitmarsh said then. He laughed again, dustier this time, with more strain showing through it. “Thought it might make you lose your nerve and wanna throw in the towel.”

  I thought of how close I’d come to doing just that, on the beach after we’d left Walt’s place this morning. The memory of my own misery and helplessness hardened something inside me. I would see this through and I would bring them down, whatever it took.

  “Well you thought wrong, didn’t you,” I said.

  “So what do you want?”

  “What do I want?” I repeated, letting my voice slip, introducing the rough note of someone pushed close to the edge. It didn’t take much faking. “I want to get out of this fucking country and go home,” I said, flat. “But I can’t do that unless I have something to bargain with. Give me Keith. You don’t need him any more.”

  “Who says we have Keith?”

  “Oh come on, Whitmarsh,” I snapped. “You took him from the house Thursday morning and you’ve had him ever since. You must have had plenty of time to copy all his files and notes. Long enough to realise the program isn’t complete. And I know Henry told you about Trey’s work on the neural net. You need the kid and you don’t need Keith. Let me have him.”

  Whitmarsh didn’t say anything immediately. Gerri started to react but I waved her to silence with a curt gesture and added, “Come on, this is a one-time-only deal. Make a decision.”

  “OK, Charlie,” he said and I could tell by his voice that I wouldn’t be able to trust him. “I guess we can do that. When and where you wanna make the exchange?”

  For a second my mind went blank, then I remembered the Ocean Center complex. Above the main hall where the show itself was taking place were rows of deserted seating, all fed by corridors and walkways.

  “Mee
t me upstairs at the Ocean Center on Atlantic Avenue,” I said. I checked my watch. “You’ve got an hour.” And with that I cut the connection, not giving him a chance to argue.

  As I put the phone down both Brown and Gerri Raybourn peeled their earpieces out and put them down on the desk top. I raised an eyebrow at the pair of them. Well?

  Gerri dipped into the lavender handbag and produced a pack of Kools. She picked one out and lit it with hands that didn’t look quite as steady as they had done before I’d made my phone call. She inhaled deeply with all the fervour of a lapsed quitter, closing her eyes briefly.

  Brown looked pained but too polite to ask her not to smoke in his office. Instead he shifted his empty coffee cup back onto the tray and put the saucer in front of her. She distractedly flicked her first buildup of ash onto his carpet anyway. Then she looked up, her eyes skating from one to the other of us in turn, hunted.

  “Jim was just leading her on, trying to recover the boy,” she said but even she didn’t sound like she entirely believed it. The references to Sean were conveniently overlooked altogether. She took another drag on the cigarette and the nicotine seemed to build her tattered confidence. I could see it swelling like a reinflating doll until her skin seemed tight with it. “Of course he doesn’t have Keith to trade. It’s ridiculous.”

  Brown cleared his throat. “Well,” he said slowly. “I guess there’s one way to find out.” He looked over the top of us to where the two heavies who’d come to his rescue were still loitering. “Tool up, Mason, and grab another couple of the boys,” he said to them. “We’ve got less than fifty-five minutes to get up to Daytona Beach.”

  Twenty-one

  I sat in the rear of a huge Chevy Suburban with blacked-out glass as it barrelled north up A1A towards Daytona Beach. Alongside me, hunched as far away as she could manage so as to avoid possible contamination from contact, was Gerri Raybourn. She sat with her knees pressed tight together and her face stiff with outrage.

  In the front passenger seat was Livingston Brown, acting like a kid on a big adventure. Mason, the security thug with the pencil moustache, was behind the wheel. Following, at a distance that made it look like they were attached by a short tow rope, was a Transit-sized Chevy van with another three heavies inside. The big black man with the Colt was driving but nobody had told me his name.

  Half the reason for Gerri’s indignation was that we were making this journey at all. She had done everything possible to talk Brown out of it, even resorting to pointing out that he was too old for such a foolish and possibly dangerous escapade. That kind of comment had done little to bring him round to her way of thinking.

  The other half of the reason was lying across my knees, squeezed with Walt’s clandestine tape recorder into the little flowered bag.

  As soon as it had become clear that Brown was starting to come down on my side of the fence, I’d asked for the return of my gun. He’d given me a long hard stare. Eventually he’d quietly signalled Mason to hand over the SIG, ignoring the other woman’s strident objections.

  The security man did so with obvious reluctance, as though he agreed with Gerri’s opinion of me. Nevertheless, he was well-trained enough not to voice such doubts. They all watched silently as I pointedly dropped the magazine out and checked he hadn’t palmed the remaining rounds while he was out fetching coffee. He hadn’t.

  So I still had a whole two bullets to play with.

  It wasn’t much, particularly when – if Whitmarsh turned up with both Chris and Lonnie – I potentially had four people to shoot at. My gaze skimmed over Gerri again. I hadn’t seen a gun on her and she’d made no moves to reach for one when I’d ram-raided the office.

  If it came to it, I decided coldly, I’d leave her for last and take my chances hand-to-hand. I probably owed her a good smack in the face.

  Besides, I now had half an army for back-up. Brown had seen our surprise when his professional-looking bunch met us at the front door to the clubhouse and he’d grinned. “I had a whole heap of trouble with people stealing machinery and materials during construction on this place,” he said over his shoulder as we rolled out. “They’re smart and they’re organised and it was costing me a small fortune. Since I took on Mason and the boys I haven’t lost a cent. It don’t do no harm to be prepared for the worst.”

  And prepared for the worst they were. Although nothing was visible I could tell each man was carrying a sidearm of some description. Two of them had a shoulder holster leaving a telltale bulge under the armpit of their lightweight zip-up jackets. The black guy with the Colt appeared with a long gym bag that clanked metallically when he placed it in the back of the van.

  We didn’t talk much on the drive up. Brown switched the radio on and tuned it to a station playing country and western music. He hummed along tunelessly to every song, his hands tapping out cheerfully bad time on his thighs.

  I shut my ears to the sound, gazed sightlessly out of the window, and thought about Sean.

  It was only then that it began to fully sink in that I faced a whole future without him. It was the prospect of this barren emptiness stretching out in front of me, of being permanently alone, that caused the most internal devastation. I felt something break inside me and begin to crumble.

  There had been men before Sean. In spite of what had happened to me in the army, there had even been the occasional one since. The time we’d actually been together had been fleeting, little more than an instant. But nobody understood or accepted what I was, what I might be, the way Sean had.

  He was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. I’d thought I’d missed my chance years ago and then, miraculously, a second had been presented to me. And now I’d missed that, too. There would not be another like him. He remained a bright hard diamond amid colourless glass and dull imitations.

  The pain of the loss was intense, a deep and endless wound I couldn’t begin to imagine time healing.

  ***

  Before I’d realised it, we were heading into Daytona. Without needing directions, Mason drove straight to the big open car park behind the Ocean Center that said Permit Holders Only next to it. An elderly guard was sitting on a camping chair under a sunshade next to the gate and he got to his feet as we drove up. Mason showed him some kind of ID. I don’t know what it was but after a moment’s consideration the guard waved both vehicles through without argument.

  Mason pulled up at the front edge of the car park and the van slotted in alongside. I slipped the strap of the bag over my head as I climbed out, so it lay diagonally across my body. All Brown’s men, I noticed, had their jackets unfastened. One of them had retrieved the gym bag with its sinister contents.

  By contrast, they were all dressed in light-coloured clothing and trainers or deck shoes. If it wasn’t for their combined muscle bulk, they could have been heading for a regatta.

  There were more security guards on the way in to the Ocean Center itself, insisting on looking into all the larger bags. Mine escaped notice, but they were curious about the gym bag. Mason flashed his ID again and they, too, let him pass unhindered.

  The noise hit us as soon as we were inside the entrance hall area, bleeding out from the main exhibition floor. The entrance way was where they were selling popcorn and giant pretzels and commemorative T-shirts and the crush was immense. For a second I was separated from Brown’s men and at that moment I felt a tug on my sleeve.

  I turned and found Aimee smiling at me. Of Xander and Trey, thankfully, there was no sign.

  “Meet me in the restroom, now,” I whispered urgently out of the corner of my mouth, and pushed past her.

  The next hand on my shoulder was Mason’s, which was a damned sight heavier and rougher than Aimee’s had been. He glared at me, suspicious and I tried to look blandly innocent. I’m not entirely sure he was convinced.

  “We need to stick together,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the background roar.

  “That might be difficult,” I said. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”<
br />
  “You’ll have to wait.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, stubborn. “Either you let me go to the ladies’ or I piss here, but it’s going to stink.”

  He never flickered at my deliberate crudeness. Instead his gaze settled on me for a moment, as though working through the permutations of what I might be trying to pull. Eventually he nodded slowly and jerked his head to one of his men. “Go with her and wait outside,” he ordered.

  I threaded my way through the press towards the nearest ladies’ without waiting to see if the man Mason had tasked was behind me or not.

  Inside there were two girls wearing minuscule bikinis and excruciating clear plastic high heels who were applying copious amounts of lipstick and mascara. One was blonde and one was dark haired but they both had identical tans. They looked up as I ambled in, gave me a fast inspection and a little smirk, and went back to their primping.