FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  Whitmarsh’s face sagged in disbelief. Before he had time for response, Mason and the black guy moved out from a doorway to my right and I found out what had been in that gym bag. Both had Mossberg pump-action shotguns pulled up hard into their shoulders like they were doing house clearance, the barrels arcing to cover all the players.

  My heart trampolined into my throat as I watched Lonnie’s grip tighten on the stock of his own shotgun but he hadn’t lived to turn grey in the security field by making rash decisions under fire. After only a fleeting hesitation he delicately removed the Remington from Sean’s neck and let it droop.

  A spasm of anger passed across Whitmarsh’s features, as though recognising his best hope for negotiation had just slipped away from him. Then he, too, let his gun hand fall to his side.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Charlie,” he said, his voice bitter. “I didn’t think you had the balls for an ambush.”

  “She didn’t,” Brown said. He’d followed his men out of the office doorway and was careful now to stand behind them as he spoke. “But I sure did.”

  Almost to my surprise he had a gun out, too. A little stubby Colt 38 Special revolver that sat firm and steady in his liver-spotted fist. There was more steel to Livingston Brown III than I’d ever suspected.

  Lonnie and Chris had sized up the situation enough to step away from Sean, keeping their movements careful and their guns lowered. Sean swayed slightly when they disengaged, the only betrayal of weakness. Then he was steady again. His hands were secured behind his back but I saw him straighten and hunch his constricted shoulders, as though in preparation for release.

  Something, I wasn’t sure what, stirred in his eyes. Something base and deadly. I could feel it vibrating in the air between us. When he got loose, there was going to be trouble and he could almost taste that freedom.

  Whitmarsh just stood and gaped at Brown, gaped all the more as Gerri Raybourn emerged alongside him. His eyes grew wide and not a little wild. “What the—?”

  “What, Jim?” Gerri demanded, stalking forwards. “You’ve got a whole heap of explaining to do, feller and, oh boy,” she added with low venom, “it better be good. Just what the fuck did you think you were doing here?”

  “A little private enterprise, by the looks of it,” Brown put in coolly.

  Whitmarsh froze, then made a conscious effort to relax, gave a wheezy laugh.

  “Just trying to put together the whole package, I guess,” he said. His composure seemed to have resurfaced entirely now but it could just have been last gasp bravado making him sound so cocksure.

  Gerri, on the other hand, was shrinking before my eyes. Lines of strain had appeared around her mouth. Her skin had taken on a translucent quality so the matt powder of her subtle make-up now looked false over the top of it.

  “You owe your loyalty to the company that employs you,” she said, but her voice was hollow.

  “Why?” Whitmarsh laughed again. “Over this last year you’ve weaselled out of paying us overtime, cut our dental and medical, treated us like crap on the sidewalk. Told us the company was going through a rough patch and how we had to suck it in. But you sure didn’t have to give up your Mercedes-Benz, now did you? And you expect loyalty for that? Wake up, Gerri! Opportunities like this one don’t come along every day.”

  “So those kids at the motel?” she said quietly. “That really was you?”

  Whitmarsh grinned and gave an elaborate nod, almost like he was bowing.

  I glanced at her. “Who did you honestly think it was, Gerri?”

  She turned her head to stare back at me. “But you’d taken the boy hostage,” she said, blankly. Her eyes shifted to skate briefly over Sean and Keith. “We – I – thought you’d taken both of them. I was trying to negotiate with you, going by the book. But Jim insisted he wanted to be the one who went and brought you in. Said he felt responsible that the Pelzners had been taken on his watch . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and I thought back to the phone conversation we’d had. Amazing how things altered when you put a different slant on them. The questions she’d asked, the responses she’d made.

  It was like adjusting a door that’s always been awkward to close and suddenly finding it fits seamlessly. It’s not until you look back that you realise how wrong it was before.

  “I thought you were trying to set me up,” I said.

  She heard the doubt in my voice and latched onto it, shaking her head almost violently. “No, no, I wasn’t,” she said. “You gotta believe me, Charlie. I had no idea what Jim was up to—”

  “Well, isn’t this nice?” said a new voice at the back of us. “Have I arrived just in time for the group hug?”

  I knew the voice before I started to turn but the actual sight of the man behind it still caused my system to spike nastily.

  Haines.

  A fast little slide show of images projected from the back of my mind. Haines when all I’d known him by was the make of his Oakley sunglasses; in his police uniform delivering Trey back to the house; at the park going for the gun under his shirt; standing in front of Henry’s place calmly explaining how he was going to kill both Trey and me.

  What the hell was he doing here? And why weren’t Brown’s men shooting at him?

  Haines came forwards, those trademark shades perched on top of his head. I couldn’t see his gun but it wouldn’t be far away. My eyes flicked just once to the little flowered bag down by the wall but I knew at once he would have drawn on me before I’d ever reached it.

  He stopped a few strides away with a smile curling his handsome mouth, as though he recognised my dilemma and could read the utter frustration and confusion going on in my head.

  Then he turned to Brown.

  “Sorry I’m late, boss,” he said easily. “I came soon as I got your call.”

  Dully, in the background, there came another roar from the crowd in the hall below as the girls who’d made it into the last four came out for their final parade. “There’s five hundred bucks to the winner,” screamed the commentator, as though to incite competitors and audience alike to an ever more excessive performance.

  “Livingston, what the fuck is going on here?” Gerri demanded, raising her voice over the top of it. She stuck her hand into her bag and pulled out a mobile phone. “I’m calling the cops. Right now!”

  Brown turned to her, his face still wearing its usual amiable, slightly-bemused-by-life expression. “Gerri,” he said with a sigh, “you’re a foul-mouthed pain in the ass and you’re starting to bore me.”

  And – just as the bikini winner was announced and the crowd went into deafening overdrive – he shot her.

  It was a shockingly careless gesture. Brown didn’t even bother to straighten his arm, just swung round slightly and fired from the hip. Gerri was standing less than a couple of metres away from him so he hardly had to aim.

  The little Colt bucked and flared in his hand just once and a small scarlet circle appeared on the front of Gerri’s suit jacket, just below the curve of her left breast. The bright wet red of it showed up in stark contrast to the delicate lavender shade of the fabric.

  She looked down at the dribble of blood that oozed out of the hole with something akin to hurt disbelief on her face.

  “But—” she said.

  It was as far as she got before her ruined heart simply stopped beating and she died on her feet. The mobile phone fell to the floor, shattered, then her body dropped and folded, lifeless as a long silk dress sliding off its hanger. She landed in a tumbled pile, arms and legs an inelegant sprawl.

  Keith was staring transfixed at the body, murmuring, “For Chrissake. Oh for Chrissake,” over and over like a mantra.

  I hadn’t realised I’d started moving until Brown swung that deadly little gun in my direction.

  “She’s gone,” he said, almost kindly. “Don’t waste yourself.”

  I stopped. Gerri’s chest was still. There was very little blood and her eyes were closed as if in sleep. She was w
ay beyond anything I could do for her except make sure I didn’t add my own corpse to lie beside her.

  “So it was you,” I said quietly. “Right from the start it was you.”

  “Oh yes,” Brown said. “And you’ve led us a merry chase, what with one thing and another. But it’s over now. Soon as we get the boy, we’re outta here.”

  “You won’t get him.”

  The certainty in Sean’s voice had us all swinging round, startled. Brown recovered faster than the others.

  “And what makes you so sure of that?”

  “Because I know Charlie and there’s no way she would cave just because your man Whitmarsh here was threatening to kill me,” Sean said and gave me another perfect smile, one that heartened me far more than it should have done, given the circumstances. It was only then I knew I’d made the right decision.

  “No,” he went on, shaking his head, “she gave Trey a run signal. I don’t know what it was but she’s certain to have had one and he’ll be long gone by now. You were waiting until she’d called him in but you played your hand too early.”

  Brown twisted back to me, saw from my face that Sean had got it nailed. Just for a moment his placid facade split and the underlying rage showed through like spite. Then the fissures sealed and it was gone again.

  “Well, I guess you’ll be needing my services for a little while longer, then?” Haines put in, amusement trailing through his voice as though he was enjoying the whole show.

  “I guess so,” Brown agreed tightly. “I guess it’s damage limitation time.” His eyes drifted slowly across the group in front of him. “You can start by helping Mason and the boys dispose of this garbage here.”

  Jim Whitmarsh can’t have been in any doubt at this point what Brown had planned for him. Not after he’d just seen the old guy kill Gerri Raybourn with such casual disregard. Lonnie and Chris had seen it too, and it was Chris whose nerve failed to hold steady.

  He sprang into a crouch and brought his gun up, by the looks of it the same .38 he’d used to help his boss murder the young couple at the motel that first night Trey and I had been on the run. He began to take a bead on Brown himself.

  Both Mason and the big black guy with the other Mossberg let fly at the same moment. At that range they couldn’t fail to hit their target.

  Chris flailed backwards, blood spouting from his face and upper body like an industrial sprinkler. His flayed body landed at the base of the nearest wall hard enough to bounce, exposed flesh gleaming. He lay there, convulsing, and made unnerving gurgling sounds from his gaping throat.

  Not dead yet, but not going to make it, either.

  The noise of the two shotguns discharging inside that confined, reflective corridor was monumental. It sent me staggering, but instinct had me diving for Sean, trying to get him out of the danger zone. Keith had cowered down of his own accord. I didn’t particularly care what happened to him anyway.

  “Hold your fire, goddamn it!” Brown bawled. He glared at Mason, fighting for control. “You trying to have half the cops in the state on our backs with that racket? Goddamn it, I didn’t mean do it here.”

  Haines’s Smith & Wesson had appeared in his hand the moment Chris had made his play and he held it now to cover Sean and me.

  “If you don’t mind me making a suggestion,” he said to Brown with exaggerated politeness, “we need to get the hell out of here right now.” His eyes flicked contemptuously to Mason and the other man. “Security in this place will have dialled nine-one-one soon as they heard those damn cannons go off.”

  Brown considered for a moment, expressionless, then inclined his head. “OK. Mason, bring the vehicles round to this exit. And let’s round up some of those guns, shall we? Before we have any more trouble.”

  Delegating in turn, Mason jerked his head to the two men behind Whitmarsh and Lonnie. They moved forwards quickly, collecting the Beretta and the Remington, retrieving Chris’s nine-mil from his unresisting hand with obvious distaste. As Lonnie handed his shotgun over I caught a twinge of regret. Maybe he was wishing he’d pulled the trigger when he’d had the chance, after all.

  Mason reclaimed the gym bag from inside the office doorway and the pair of them stashed their armoury inside, taking it with them as they went out through the glass doors a little way back along the corridor.

  There was a moment’s silence after they’d gone. Whitmarsh’s tongue wiped nervously over his lower lip.

  “So, what are you gonna do with us?” he asked.

  “Well, if there’s one thing I can’t stomach, Jim,” Brown said reflectively, “it’s people I can’t trust.”

  “We were just trying to get them both for you,” Whitmarsh said, hurried now.

  “Didn’t happen to kinda mention that change of plan to me, now did you?” Haines put in.

  “There wasn’t time. I—”

  “Plenty of time to get Lonnie and his shotgun into position under Henry’s place, though, wasn’t there?” I asked, using a mild tone to disguise the wedge I was trying to hammer in between them. Divide and conquer.

  Haines’s eyebrows went up then came straight down again as the import of that sank in. “So it was you wasted Chico?” he murmured, glancing at Lonnie. “And there was I thinking the chick had picked up some more armament. I shoulda known it couldn’t be her.”

  He turned to Brown, waving a careless hand towards Whitmarsh and Lonnie. “You want I should get rid of these two when I do the others?”

  It was like he was offering to empty a waste paper basket.

  Brown shook his head, though frowning like he’d given it serious thought. “We still need to get a hold of the boy and I have plans for Mr Whitmarsh,” he said grimly. “After he’s handed over everything useful he got from Keith, he can be the one who gets to dump these three. Take all of them back to the resort and out into the swampland at the back of the place. Wait ‘til sundown and in a coupla days there won’t be much evidence left.”

  “Livingston, for Chrissake, please!” Keith looked as if he were about to burst into tears. “You’re my friend. Don’t do this to me!” Not us, I noted. Me.

  Brown regarded him stonily. “You ain’t delivered the goods,” he said. “You’ve kinda disappointed me, Keith.”

  At the far end of the corridor I heard the quiet clank of the push-bar being operated to open another of the doors from the seating area.

  I tensed automatically, hearing the guns of Brown’s men come up. If it was another security guard, or some stupid lost kids, there was going to be more bloodshed.

  A single figure stepped through the opening and froze as he took in the scene of carnage in front of him, his hand still on the latch.

  My first reaction was horror but anger wasn’t far behind.

  “Trey, you dumb little bastard!” I yelled at him, furious. “Get out of here!”

  I broke into a run towards him, like I could scare him off. Before I’d taken more than two strides Haines had swung round and caught me a stinger across the base of my skull with the butt of the Smith & Wesson.

  The blow was hard enough to put me on the ground. I went sprawling onto my hands and knees, jarring both wrists in the fall. I stayed down, fighting against the pitted blackness that was enveloping my vision, waiting until the floor was steady enough for me to attempt to rise.

  At the same moment Sean had ducked his head and charged the one of Brown’s men who was nearest to him, regardless of the weapon. He’d swept the man off his feet before the other reacted. By the time I looked round Sean was on the ground too, braced against the blows that had put him down and were continuing to keep him there. Well that explained why Brown had contracted in Haines and Whitmarsh to do his dirty work for him. His own guys had come close to being beaten by a man who, quite literally, had both hands tied behind his back.

  Haines ignored that scuffle. He leaned over and put the barrel of his gun next to my left eye. The blued steel was cold against my skin.

  “Give yourself up or watch her d
ie,” he called to Trey.

  The kid hesitated, then he edged further into the corridor, skinny shoulders rounded in defeat. He didn’t even move when Haines left me and went forwards to grab him by the arm, dragging him back to where Brown was waiting.

  When the boy tugged against the punishing grip, Haines shook him like a rag, almost throwing him down rather than releasing him. Trey glowered and rubbed his arm where Haines’s fingers had left reddened marks.

  My head had cleared enough for me to look up at him.

  “You stupid little brat,” I said bitterly. “Don’t you ever listen?”