by Sharp, Zoe
Across the room, Baptiste emerged from the knot of admirers who’d engulfed him, smiling, shaking hands. There was no sign of the outright fear he’d shown back in the hotel lobby when he’d come face-to-face with Sean Meyer. He was back in control, confident and cocky, a sporting superstar heading for legend status.
Maybe that confidence was the reason Baptiste was allowing his hands to wander more than they should over the tall cool blonde on his arm. I was surprised to recognise her as the young woman O’Day had introduced earlier—Autumn. She was currently managing a much more convincing impression of boredom than I had, a tolerant smile on her face at all the fuss. And yet, underneath it, I sensed something more than the surface illusion.
After our earlier meeting I’d checked over the guest list again. It merely said “O’Day, T—plus one” which hadn’t been overly helpful.
Now, I passed a dispassionate eye over the expensive silvered gown that fitted her like a second skin and speculated over several possible roles she might have been asked to play in the proceedings. It crossed my mind that she might be some kind of “professional” O’Day had brought along to keep the talent happy. I daresay she would not have been flattered by any of my other guesses, either.
Out of habit, I made a quick pass over the rest of the crowd, watching eyes and hands for anyone whose attention seemed oddly focused or who was using the new arrival as a distraction. It’s a routine I’ve been through a thousand times before, in all kinds of situations, with all kinds of principals.
On this type of low-level assignment, with a client against whom there have been no specific threats, it very rarely—if ever—came up positive.
This time was different.
Seven
The man who tripped my internal alarm system was dressed in a lounge suit rather than the tux of an invited guest, but was clearly not a member of the security contingent either. He was too lightly built to be a heavy, too hesitant to be someone who relied on speed rather than weight for the kill.
But he was almost incoherently angry and that made him just as dangerous.
I could see it in the tension of his upper body, the white-knuckle fists. He shouldered his way around the piano heading towards my principal—and if there wasn’t actually steam coming out of his ears it was a close-run thing.
“Sean,” I said quietly. I stepped around Dyer, closed on my target, checking his angle of intent. Definitely heading straight for us.
One more step, sunshine, and you’ve crossed the line . . .
The man kept coming.
I moved in, one long stride, and thrust my empty right hand between his arm and body as he took a mirror-image stride towards me. From there it was easy to his use own momentum to swing his arm back and round, locking it up hard behind him.
He turned into me automatically with a yelp of hurt surprise. I stuck out my foot and tangled it between his ankles. He went crashing to his knees. I followed him down, keeping the armlock in place, and reinforced it with a knee in the small of his back once he was there. I didn’t even slop any liquid out of the champagne flute I still held in my left hand.
I looked up, aware of a sudden buzzing silence. Blake Dyer was frozen, white-faced, but I guessed that this was an unpleasant reminder of the last time I’d worked for him. I’d taken out a potential threat at another high society gathering. Hell, at least I didn’t shoot this one.
Tom O’Day was staring down at me with a look of total bemusement on his face. His bodyguard, Hobson, might have just been told an off-colour joke in mixed company. He’d allowed a tiny smile to crack his stony face. Hard to tell if he was suppressing something bigger or simply didn’t find it funny.
Sean, I was gratified to see, had at least got himself in close to our principal, even if he was showing no emotion at all. I hoped people would read that reaction as calm rather than inertia.
And then, into that shocked hush, came the sound of a semiautomatic hammer going back. I slid my eyes sideways without moving my head, saw the muzzle and front sight of what was probably a Beretta, just visible in my peripheral vision.
“Let him up,” said a man’s voice. A British accent, north London, gruff with anger.
I released the lock and rose in one movement, moving back quickly. It’s been my experience that men who’ve been taken down by a woman often try to get their retaliation in really promptly. In which case it’s always wise to be out of range.
In this case the young man groaned a few times, flopping around until he managed to get his loose arm back under control. Conversation started up again, a little too loudly in the way it does when people are more excited than shocked by what they’ve just seen.
To my surprise, it was Tom O’Day who came forwards and scooped a hand under the young man’s elbow. It was only as he came to his feet and the two of them stood next to each other that I realised the startling family resemblance.
Oh . . . shit.
“I think you should apologise,” O’Day said.
“Of course,” I said at once, contrite. “I didn’t—”
“Not you—him,” O’Day interrupted, eyes twinkling. “Jimmy?”
“Dad!” The young man’s voice emerged as a squawk. He had his father’s facial structure without his confidence, height or breadth. “She’s the one who attacked me!”
“You came charging over here with a face like thunder, boy. In a room full of bodyguards, you’re lucky she didn’t break your arm.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know that’s what she was?” Jimmy O’Day threw me a sullen look. There was a long pause, during which time he tried for defiance and his father beat him down with age and experience. I got the feeling their clashes usually ended the same way .
Eventually, Jimmy muttered, “Sorry.” His gaze shifted across to where the star guest had barely paused during the interruption to his grand entrance. The only change was that the blonde, Autumn, had disentangled herself and was heading over, concern on her lovely face. Baptiste was self-absorbed enough to have hardly noticed her departure.
“Jimmy, what happened?” she asked. “Did you fall?”
Tom O’Day harrumphed. “Boy’s a damned fool,” he said.
His son made an effort not to appear sulky in front of her. So, he still had male pride. “No, I was pushed.”
“Lucky she didn’t break his arm,” Tom O’Day repeated, ducking his chin in my direction. Whatever dignity Jimmy had regained, O’Day had just taken it away from him again.
Jimmy’s eyes flashed, then slid to the man who’d shoved a Beretta in my face. “No, she’s lucky Vic didn’t shoot her.”
It was only then I glanced at the man who was clearly Jimmy O’Day’s bodyguard. The man with the north London accent who’d been too slow on the uptake to prevent his principal putting himself in harm’s way. Up ’til then, I’d dismissed him for that reason alone. Now I finally gave him my attention.
And as soon as I looked at him full on, I realised he wasn’t a stranger to me.
But I wished to hell that he was.
Eight
The last time I saw Vic Morton I’d wanted to kill the bastard. If I’d had the means, the opportunity, and the faintest chance of getting away with it, he would be an integral part of a concrete motorway bridge support by now.
Even years later I still felt my fingers contract in a reflexive grip, desperate for the feel of his windpipe beneath them.
There was a buzzing in my ears, a flash of adrenaline-fuelled rage coursing through my system. The SIG was suddenly an almost irresistible weight at my back. If the Beretta hadn’t been still in his hand, held loosely at his side, maybe I would have considered it.
As it was, I saw him eyeing me with some apprehension and realised that he hadn’t kept his gun out by accident. He knew me all right, and was wary—maybe even scared—of my reaction.
So you bloody well should be.
At least he had the sense to hand off cover for Jimmy O’Day to another of the O’Days
’ team. They shifted their young principal just out of my reach. He was still protesting about the treatment he’d received at my hands.
“The kid’s hot-headed, what can I say?” Morton said with a smile. “Sometimes it’s easier to let him make a few easy mistakes and save him from the really stupid ones rather than nursemaid him all the time.”
“He was heading straight for us,” I said. “I could have hurt him. Where the hell were you?”
Morton gave a shrug. “Oh, I didn’t think you were going to do him any serious harm.”
It was Sean who stepped forwards, brows down like a big dog coming in for the kill. Unutterably heartened, I put out a hand, almost said his name. I didn’t get the chance.
“I know you, don’t I?” Sean said, and for the first time since we’d landed in New Orleans, there was some animation in his face, his voice. “I recognise you.”
Morton braced. “That’s right,” he said, clipped. “Been a long time, Sergeant.”
“Vic . . . Vic”—he clicked his fingers—“Morton, yeah?”
For a moment, Morton didn’t answer, but I could hear his brain turning over, even from a metre or more away. He must have heard all about Sean’s head injury—everyone in the industry had by now. The rumours I’d come across ran the whole gamut from having him walking round with the bullet still lodged inside his skull to being a drooling vegetable on life support in some private asylum. Another reason why Parker had been so keen to have him back out in the field. Especially on such a visible assignment.
“That’s right,” Morton said again now. “We trained together, you might say.”
“Right,” Sean said. “Right. Good to see you again, Vic.” I knew that the warmth in his voice was not for the man, but the memory—for the fact that he remembered him at all. But even so it was a bitter blow that Sean should show such apparent pleasure to be faced with one of the men directly responsible for my ruin.
One of the men who had raped me.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.
I didn’t think I’d ever forget them. I’d tried my damnedest but now fate had conspired against me.
“You weren’t on the original staff list for this job,” I said, aware of the brusque note in my voice, the taste of acid in my mouth. “What happened?”
Morton, buoyed by the lack of aggression in Sean’s welcome, looked almost jubilant. “Last-minute replacement,” he said. “I’m normally assigned to another member of the O’Day family, but one of Jimmy’s regular team fell ill—must have been something he ate. So they called me in.”
He made it sound like they’d sent a private jet. Instead, I suspected he’d been the only one standing around with his hands in his pockets when the extra duty came up.
“Relax, Charlie,” Sean said, a little too sharp for my taste. His eyes went to the baseball star, Gabe Baptiste. Now the initial adulation had died away, Baptiste was moodily swigging champagne with the look of a man waiting for his first chance to leave. “It’s not like it’s the first substitution, is it?”
“Gotta expect the unexpected in this job, Charlie,” Morton said with a quick insincere grin that didn’t go anywhere near his eyes. “First thing you learn, eh, Sean?”
Any number of vicious retorts hovered on my tongue. I swallowed them back down. He was treating me like a first-time rookie but I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him see he’d got to me. To anyone who mattered, the fact I’d just taken down his woefully under-protected principal one-handed should speak for itself.
Wasn’t much consolation for not twisting his head off his shoulders, though.
“You’re looking good, Sean,” Morton said now, injecting a matey note into his voice. “I heard about . . . what happened. Musta been tough. Still, here you are, eh? Good as new.” His eyes swapped between the pair of us, caught on the tension we couldn’t hide. “And still with a soft spot for the lumpy jumpers, I see.”
As a sideways swipe at the fairer sex, being referred to as a “lumpy jumper” was not the worst I’d had by any means. But having it said by a man I’d happily watch die, to another I’d killed for, was as much as I could bear.
I turned away, stepped in closer to Blake Dyer, who was still standing next to Tom O’Day and his son. From the look of it, whatever had been eating at O’Day junior was still very much on his mind now.
“Apologies for the interruption, sir,” I said.
Dyer waved a dismissive hand. “Always a pleasure to see you in action, Charlie.”
I turned to Jimmy O’Day. “I’m sorry if I overreacted, sir,” I said. One thing I’d learned early on in the army was that it never does any harm to call everyone “sir” until told otherwise. “You were looking somewhat dangerous.”
From the look on his face, nobody had told Jimmy O’Day he looked anything close to dangerous for a long time—if ever. He actually forgot to scowl for several seconds before his face closed up again. “Yeah, well, damn near broke my arm,” he muttered.
“Kid was all bent out of shape because Autumn came in with young Gabe,” Tom O’Day said, making it sound like a bad case of playground scuffle.
“You’re practically pimping her out, Dad—” Jimmy protested, and although he spoke through his teeth, it was still loud enough to turn a ripple of nearby heads.
Tom O’Day looked around before responding. His manner was calm, apparently relaxed, but when he’d finished none of those who’d been staring before were still staring afterwards. Some people can do that with just a look.
“I asked her to escort our star guest while he’s in town, keep him happy—nothing else. I have absolute respect for that lady, Jimmy, and by God you better show her the same courtesy, or you’ll be on the next flight out of here—hold baggage—d’you hear me?”
For a moment Jimmy dug his heels in. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid when he had on a determined face. It gave him a little much-needed fire and colour. But he caved before his father’s stern disapproval, of course he did.
From what I’d read of Jimmy O’Day, he still lived at home—albeit in a spacious apartment within the family ranch—and held an Executive Vice President post in some obscure department of his father’s company. It sounded like a sinecure.
Hard to be brave when one false move could find you homeless, jobless, and disinherited.
“Oh, I hear you, Dad,” he muttered. “Don’t worry, I hear you.” And with a disgruntled twitch of his shoulders, like a cat with ruffled fur, he stalked away. Morton shot me a forefinger salute and sauntered after him.
“I’m sorry you felt you needed to make a move on the boy,” Tom O’Day said. “Jimmy tends to shoot from the lip. Not a bad trait, I guess . . . if only he knew when to use it.”
“Oh come now, Tom, he was just being a little over-protective,” said the blonde, Autumn. Her voice was more breathy than a short walk across the room should have warranted, even in the pair of perilous heels she was wearing. I couldn’t have gone more than a couple of metres in them without a tightrope balance pole and a safety net.
“I guess you’re right,” O’Day said, beaming at her. In that voice she could have just told him the moon was made of cheese and would likely have received the same reply. Some women just have that effect on men.
Now, she turned to bestow a beautiful smile on Blake Dyer and I watched him glow in its reflection.
“Tom’s told me so much about you,” she said.
“None of it good, I’m sure,” Dyer said modestly.
She laughed, breathy again, like a lover’s gasp and put her hand on his arm. “On the contrary.”
Dyer smiled at her with more warmth than he’d shown when Ysabeau van Zant had tried the same move earlier.
“Well, in that case, I feel it’s my duty to share some scandal about my old friend,” Dyer said. His eyes flicked across the rest of us, amused. “Would you care to dance?”
He and Autumn took to the floor as the string quartet launched into something that required coordinated dignity to m
aster. I moved in closer to Sean, who was watching the pair of them intently—well, maybe he was watching her just a little more than him.
I glanced around as I did so. Jimmy was across the other side of the room. He was trying to engage in casual conversation with an elderly, smartly dressed couple—all of whom were trying to pretend his earlier scuffle with me had not happened. It wasn’t working out well for them.
Vic Morton was by his shoulder, but his eyes were on Sean and on me.
“Sean,” I murmured, urgent, “that guy Morton—he’s trouble—”
Sean turned abruptly. “Oh?”
