by Sharp, Zoe
Parker smiled more fully then. It transformed his rather sombre face, took half a decade off his age. “C’mon, Charlie, Tony’s been waiting to get his own back ever since you shot him in the balls last year.”
I felt a sheepish grin of my own rise up. “Hey, that was just his bad luck. I was aiming for low-centre-body mass, just like he advocates—the most static part of a moving target. He should just be thankful we weren’t using live rounds.”
“As should you,” he said. “How’re the ribs?”
“Black and blue, thanks.”
“Yeah, those sims sting like a bastard, don’t they?”
The Simunitions training rounds used on the SUF course were designed to give participants a nasty and painful reminder of the consequences faced in the field. Heavy or protective clothing was disallowed by the instructors, so there was nothing to lessen the impact. As with the real thing, nobody wanted to take a hit.
The sims had the advantage that they could be fired from a replacement barrel in the shooter’s own weapon. They were the most realistic training round I’d encountered short of live ammunition.
Getting shot in the chest had been an experience that left me bruised and aching, but it had only been a day or so ago. In a week the visible marks would have faded like they never were. Only the implanted reflex would remain.
I drained my coffee, rose stiffly and reached for Parker’s empty cup too. He’d come straight from the office and was wearing his usual formal dark suit. It was well-cut without being flashy. I could have used the same words to describe Parker himself—everything about him capable of blending into the background. Unless you looked closely at his eyes. Then you realised he’d seen and done more than you ever wanted to know about.
Sean had eyes like those.
I took the cups into the apartment’s kitchen area, dumped them in the sink. When I came back, I found my boss standing by the tall windows looking out across the Upper East Side. His hands were in his pockets, but I knew from the angle of his shoulders that he wasn’t anywhere near as relaxed as the pose suggested.
Parker wasn’t only my employer and, I suppose, my landlord—over the course of Sean’s incapacity he’d become a friend. He could have become much more than that, if we’d let it happen.
He turned around. “So, how are things between the two of you?”
I shoved my own hands into the back pockets of my jeans, wished I hadn’t when I saw Parker divine the defensiveness of the gesture. “OK-ish,” I said. “Intellectually, Sean accepts I’m not the girl he remembers from the army—the one he thinks betrayed him. He accepts that we moved on, found each other again, came over here together and are sharing this place, working for you.”
“But?”
“Intellectually, he accepts it, but emotionally?” I shrugged, shook my head. “That’s another thing altogether.”
Parker stepped in suddenly, reached out and took my upper arms. His grasp was light, but sufficient to stop me getting my hands free without a struggle. I didn’t try.
“Look, Charlie, if things have gotten too . . . difficult here, you can always move out. I know the two of you are not sleeping together—”
I did wrench free then. “Sean told you that?”
“He didn’t have to,” he said gently. “This is a two-bedroom apartment, and you’ve moved your gear into the second bedroom.”
For a second I thought about telling Parker that Sean had become a violently restless sleeper, racked by desperate nightmares as if back in the coma’s grip. Besides, he’d shown no inclination for intimacy—not with me anyway.
How can I share a bed with someone who not only doesn’t love me, but doesn’t really even like me any more?
I shrugged. “He snores.”
Parker placed his hands back on my shoulders, not calling me on the lie. “Hey, Charlie, I know it’s tough,” he said softly. “But if the both of you need some space, some time, I have room at my place. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”
My throat tightened. “Parker—”
Off to my left, the apartment front door slammed. I jerked back automatically, but was aware of the shocked guilt plastered across my face when Sean appeared in the living room doorway.
He was dressed in his running gear and dripping with sweat. No longer as wasted as when he’d woken, Sean had worked hard to rebuild his muscle bulk. But his right leg was dragging a little as it did when he pushed himself to the point of exhaustion. He’d done a lot of that.
The gunshot wound to his left temple had disrupted his brain’s control over his right side. Remastering simple coordination was just one of the battles still raging.
Sean saw the pair of us, standing together like that and his eyes flicked over us with unreadable intensity. I thought I caught just a flicker of contempt.
“Hi, Sean,” Parker said with remarkable composure. “Charlie and I were just discussing your Stress Under Fire course. Sounds like you aced it. Tony says it’s the first time he’s ever been taken down by someone using a New York reload.”
A New York reload was simply to pull a second loaded gun when the first was out of action. Simple, but effective.
“It wasn’t against the letter of the rules,” Sean said shortly. “The spirit, maybe, but it got the job done and that’s what counts, right?”
“Right,” Parker echoed, wary of his tone. He nodded towards Sean’s clothing. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” Sean said, straightening as if in the presence of a senior officer. “Just done a quick five miles. No problem.”
I frowned, but Sean nailed me with a single, deadly glance which Parker deliberately ignored.
“That’s great, Sean. You’re looking good.”
He started for the door, stopped after only a few strides, as if changing his mind about something.
“Ah, Charlie, I need for you to come in early tomorrow. We’ve been tasked with security for a client who’s attending a big fundraiser down in New Orleans next week. Some of the areas worst hit by Hurricane Katrina are still derelict and it seems the glitterati finally decided to do something about it. They’ve organised some big charity gala, plenty of feel-good largesse and displays of ostentatious wealth—including high-profile security. Nothing too taxing.”
“So why the need to contract out?” I asked. “Don’t they have their own people?”
“Not necessarily,” Parker said. “And you were specially requested—an old client. He reckons you saved his ass once before, and he wants you assigned this time around.”
In the periphery of my vision I was aware of Sean shifting impatiently.
“OK,” I said quickly, curiosity curbed. I checked my watch automatically. “I’ll start putting together the usual security inventory first thing. Be a nice chance to see if that new comms gear is all it’s cracked up to be.”
“How many on the team?” It was Sean who asked the question, but my eyes flew to Parker’s.
“That’s up to Charlie,” he said, impassive.
He’s not ready!
If not now, then when?
Sean watched the silent exchange with narrowed eyes, his body tense. For a long extended moment, nobody spoke.
I swallowed. “Can we . . . talk about this when I’ve had a chance to look over the logistics?” I said then, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. “See how many people we actually need?”
Parker considered for a moment, then turned to Sean. “You feel ready to come back?”
I failed to hide my dismay at Parker’s question. A mistake on my part.
Sean turned on me. “What?” he demanded roughly. “With respect, Charlie, wind your bloody neck in.” Those dark eyes fenced with mine, filled with an impotent fury and something else, too—fear.
I held my tongue. I’d been injured in the past and faced the sheer frustration of needing to get back on the job—long before anyone else believed I was fit to do so.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” he said. “Especial
ly for a job that’s ‘nothing too taxing’, eh?” He might have got me with that argument, had he not added, “Besides, if she’s up to it, then so am I.”
I swear I saw Parker flinch. I know I did.
“Whatever personal issues you have with Charlie, keep them outside the office,” he said, pleasant but icy at the same time. “Charlie’s a first-class close-protection operative, as she’s proved on more occasions than I care to number.”
Sean’s nod was fractional at best, and aimed solely at Parker.
“Looks like I’ll see the both of you in the office tomorrow morning,” Parker said. He smiled. “Good to have you back, Sean.”
Sean didn’t say anything after he’d gone, just headed for the shower.
I was left standing by the window, looking down onto the afternoon traffic, with a sense of foreboding deep in my chest that had nothing to do with being shot, even by a bullet filled only with paint.
Parker had taken Sean on as a partner. As far as many people were concerned, I’d just hitched along for the ride. Armstrong-Meyer held the enviable position of being regarded as one of the best close-protection agencies in the States—if not worldwide. Sean was a vital, visible, part of that. Parker would, I recognised, always take his side. He had no choice.
But I did.
And if things didn’t improve between Sean and me—maybe not back to the way things were, but at least to the point of easy civility—then one of us was going to have to quit.
Didn’t take a genius to work out who.
Three
A week later, I stood leaning against the front end of a GMC Yukon on the tarmac at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans, watching a Citation X executive jet taxi in from the main runway.
The temperature was in the low seventies and not too humid, which was apparently about average for this part of Louisiana in late September. If it hadn’t been for the squadrons of little flying thingies surfing the air currents coming in off Lake Pontchartrain, it would have been no hardship to wait out there in the sunshine.
I’d chosen a gunmetal grey trouser suit cut so I could move without restriction, but smart enough to look inconspicuous among the kind of people who travelled by private plane. I’d had the jacket tailored, with a row of tiny weights sewn into the hem so it draped well over the gun behind my right hip. The collar of the white shirt I wore under the suit was crisp enough to conceal scars both old and new at my neck.
Sean Meyer stood—somewhat pointedly, I thought—on the other side of the SUV. He refused to lean, but had the relaxed slouch any former soldier would recognise. He was wearing a dark suit that fitted him a touch more loosely than it once had, with a narrow black tie and Aviator sunglasses. What I could see of his expression was stony, despite his minor victory.
I’d tried in vain to talk Parker out of sending Sean on this job. My arguments were sound. Sean wasn’t fully fit, wasn’t fully ready—mentally prepared—for the role of executive-protection officer. It was a miracle that his brain had reforged many of the shattered connections while he was unconscious, but he still had a long way to go.
There were holes in his memory that didn’t only concern our relationship. He thought like the Special Forces sergeant he’d once been, not the bodyguard he’d since become.
“Then it will be your job to retrain him,” Parker said when I’d tackled him about it the day after he’d come to the apartment.
I let my eyebrows rise. “With a live client in play?”
“You’ve done the security inventory yourself on this one, Charlie. You know it’s a minimum-risk assignment. We’ve had no threat intel, nothing to suggest this is anything other than a weekend of good-natured excess in the name of a worthy cause.”
But I knew him well enough to recognise when he was being cagey. “And?”
He sighed, the corner of his mouth twitching. “There will be a lot of VIPs there. And that means industry people alongside them—our industry. It will be good for Sean, and the company, to have him seen to be back on his feet.”
I frowned. But he’s not—not completely.
I didn’t have to say it. Parker simply held up his hand and moved back behind his desk. The way he took his seat spelled an end to the discussion.
“He can stay in the background, handle logistics—no heavy lifting, OK?”
“And if by any chance there is some heavy lifting to be done?”
“You’ll cope.” Parker’s eyes flicked over my face and he sighed. “One way or another, you two are going to have to learn to get along,” he said. “Give it your best shot.”
Give it your best shot.
I’d thought about those words a lot over the past few days, ever since Sean and I had flown down to New Orleans and begun double-checking the advance arrangements for the After Katrina Foundation event.
I’d tried very hard to keep things matter-of-fact between us as we ran over the routes we’d need to take from airport to hotel, and hotel to various functions. We noted traffic bottlenecks and areas where we’d be most vulnerable to hijack. We knew which police departments had jurisdiction and their average response time to call-out. We knew locations of the nearest ambulance station and fire department, the best trauma centre, the nearest emergency dentist and late-night pharmacy.
We’d spent an entire day going over the hotel in detail, paying particular attention to where the bad guys could get in as well as where we could hustle our principal out of there if the need arose. Just because we weren’t expecting trouble didn’t mean we had to be lax about it.
We also introduced ourselves to the in-house security guys both there and at the main venues. They were mostly ex-cop or ex-military, big guys with quiet voices and watchful eyes.
They all naturally assumed that Sean was in charge and he let them do so, which pissed me off royally even if he did constantly refer to my opinion. I recognised he was still readjusting, and by the end of it reluctantly had to admit that at least he was treating me as an equal rather than a subordinate.
I supposed it was uneasy progress, of a sort.
I’d discovered when Sean came out of his coma the bullet that had so nearly killed him had stripped his memory of the past four years. He didn’t remember us getting together after our disastrous time in the army. He didn’t remember finding out that I wasn’t to blame for ruining both our careers, that I’d nearly died for him.
He certainly didn’t know that I’d killed for him.
Or that I’d brought him to the brink of fatherhood. I hadn’t exactly been overjoyed to discover my unexpected pregnancy, but miscarrying the baby before I’d found a way to break the news to Sean had been a numbing blow. He’d found out, of course. It had never been my intention to keep it from him indefinitely, but the circumstances had been less than ideal. We might have struggled to overcome that, even without our current state of . . . alienation.
I didn’t even know if he recalled anything about the child we’d lost. He’d never mentioned it, and I—coward that I was—had clung gratefully to that omission. It might have emphasised the ties between us, but at the same time it might have driven him further away. After all, he had woken with a false picture of me as a calculating schemer, something this would not help to address.
I lived in a world of constant risk assessment. This was not a risk I wanted to take.
On the Lakefront tarmac, the Citation powered down and the door cracked open. I straightened away from the car, but Sean snapped almost to attention as a slim well-preserved man with silver hair and an expensive tan came bounding down the steps.
Blake Dyer had been born into money and married into it deeper still. His only ambition, apart from living the good life, had been to keep the family fortune intact enough to pass on to his own offspring. This, I gathered, he’d already achieved some years previously through a network of offshore bank accounts and trust funds, so that he now considered himself in well-earned retirement.
He was the sort of guy I would have loved to hate, or
at least quietly despise, but it was hard not to like Blake Dyer. He had charm and wit, and he was unfailingly courteous to other people’s staff.
Now, he made a point of speaking briefly to the plane’s crew who were decanting his luggage from the hold to the rear of the Yukon. Then he came forwards to greet us with all the energy of a man who plays tennis or golf four days a week.
“Charlie!” he said, pumping my proffered hand with both his own, then impulsively pulling me close enough to air-kiss either cheek. “It’s good to see you again, young lady, and looking as cool, calm and collected as ever.”
“And you, sir. Thank you for requesting me for this.”
