by Sharp, Zoe
I took a breath. “Back in the army, he . . .”
My voice trailed away, the words sticking in my throat. How could I begin to go into any of it here? Besides, Morton’s story that I’d led them on was backed by the official verdicts. My word against his—my word against the four of them—had not been good enough.
What could I say now that wasn’t going to make things worse?
I caught a glimpse of Sean’s expression, hard and tight, and realised that just by saying anything at all, I probably already had made things worse. Still, I had to try.
“He might tell you—”
“Tell me what?” Sean demanded, his voice low. “What is it you think he might tell me about you, Charlie, that you don’t want me to know?”
Nine
Our principal did not have the stomach for making a late night of it, which was a good thing. To be honest, neither did I.
It was barely after midnight when Blake Dyer indicated we should bring the car round to the front entrance. I was the one sent out to retrieve the Yukon, while Sean stayed with Dyer in the ornate mausoleum of a front hallway. The more I thought about it, the more that enormous vase of flowers on the marble table resembled something you’d see on a grave.
Maybe it was just the way I was feeling.
As I pulled the Yukon up at the front steps, I could see the two of them standing in the lit hallway. I gritted my teeth about the security breach such a move represented, then saw they were not alone.
I recognised the slouched figure of Jimmy O’Day standing close by Blake Dyer’s elbow. The older man was talking to him intently, using his hands for emphasis. Whatever he was saying didn’t look like something Jimmy particularly wanted to hear. Not if the way he was staring at the floor was anything to go by.
Jimmy had managed not to disgrace himself again during the remainder of the evening. He’d chatted with apparent calm while Gabe Baptiste danced a slow one with Autumn. Or rather, Autumn danced and Baptiste held her close and shuffled awkwardly. For a man with such physical dexterity on the playing field, away from it he was not adept at the social niceties. It didn’t surprise me that he made his excuses and left before we did.
Autumn had danced with Jimmy, too, and with his father. For all the expression of enjoyment she showed for either of them, she might as well have been playing chess against a computer.
I allowed the Yukon to creep forwards a little further, covering the brake. Sean came into view. At least he was watching for my arrival. I saw his head come up and he caught Dyer’s attention to move him out. But just before he left, Sean turned to shake hands with another man who’d been standing outside my immediate field of view. Deliberately?
Vic Morton.
The thought of what Morton might have been saying to Sean during that brief exchange made my stomach bunch up tight under my ribcage as if expecting a sudden blow.
The urge to punch something—hard, and keep punching—was difficult to resist.
Sean had a memory of our time in the military and it was a true one—but only as far as it went. A lot had happened since then, for both of us. For one thing, Sean discovered about the rape that was the reason for my ignominious ejection from the British Army.
I’d never told him the names of the men responsible. Talking about it was still hard even now. Part of me wanted him find out some other way, knowing what action he would have taken. But now I had proof positive that he’d never uncovered their identities.
Because Morton was still alive, living here in the States and working in the same field I myself had gone into after the army.
Of course, there was no real surprise about that. There are only so many employment options open to ex-Special Forces soldiers returning to civilian life. If you don’t go down the dark path and become a gun for hire, the legit avenues are limited. You tend to join the circus that is the private military contractors’ circuit—mercenaries, more plainly put—or you go into security of another type.
You become a bodyguard.
That was the path Sean had chosen and, some time after leaving the army myself, I reluctantly joined him.
Reluctance was only my initial response. Sean had asked me to go to a close-protection training school in Germany to find out what had happened to one of his former trainees there. For various reasons, I didn’t even finish the course.
I suppose you could say there was a pattern forming with that one.
But the more I learned the intricacies of the job, the more I’d realised it was right for me. It wasn’t just a good career move for someone of my mindset and skillset.
It was the only career move.
The only one that would allow me to live with myself, at any rate.
And coming to the States with Sean, accepting this job with Parker Armstrong’s elite outfit, seemed like the reward for a lifetime of being a round peg trying to hammer myself into a square hole and wondering why there were gaps and voids around the edges of my existence.
And I was not going to let a fucking bastard like Vic Morton take that away from me.
Not again.
I tapped the heel of my hand against the horn press, just a short toot. Sean’s head came up quickly in a gesture that could have been part impatience, part warning. Either way, I did not sound the horn again.
After a few moments they both emerged, Sean moving alongside Blake Dyer, opening and closing the rear door for him, then coming round to climb into the front passenger seat.
I took my foot off the brake and we moved forwards, down the long straight drive lined with magnolia trees and out past the gate guards onto the roadway.
Sean twisted in his seat. “So, you want to tell us what that was all about?”
I glanced across at him quickly, a surprised retort on my lips. Then I realised he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, his focus was on the man in the rear seat.
“OK, I’m not going to play around, Sean, and ask dumb questions like, ‘What was what all about?’” Blake Dyer said, which was an evasive technique in itself.
He seemed to realise that without being told, because he gave a heavy sigh I heard even over the hum of the engine, the tyres on the road surface, and the air-conditioning system.
“Let’s just say Ysabeau van Zant and I go back a long ways, and both of us probably wish that wasn’t so.”
“If you had history with Mrs van Zant—something that might affect your relationship with her now—we should have been told,” Sean said, sounding far more like his old self.
I saw Dyer’s eyes flick to mine in the rear-view mirror. “Yeah, I guess you should,” he agreed. Another evasion.
“And?” Sean demanded.
This time he didn’t sound like his old self. The Sean who had built up a successful close-protection agency of his own would not have been so blunt, so combative. This was the training sergeant I’d known in the army, who brooked no arguments and accepted no excuses.
Only trouble was, Blake Dyer was a rich client not a failing recruit.
I took another glance in the mirror, saw Dyer’s face tighten just a fraction and knew Sean had lost his cooperation with that single brusque word.
“That is a private matter between me and Mrs van Zant,” Dyer said. “And has no bearing on current events.”
“That’s not your call to make.”
“Oh, on the contrary,” Dyer said, and his voice had turned uncharacteristically steely, “as the man paying the bills here, I believe you’ll find that it is.”
The silence for the remainder of the drive back to New Orleans was not a comfortable one. I held my tongue. They were both in the wrong, but pointing that out right now would just end up with me being snapped at by the pair of them. Not quite the end to the evening I had in mind.
Sod’s law, then, that of course things were not destined to go smoothly at the hotel. When we turned into the entrance we discovered there had been a minor fender bender in the line for valet parking.
Two men in evening d
ress were having what appeared to be a redneck slanging match over a dented wheel arch on a Bentley Continental and a broken headlight on a Porsche Panamera. It did not look like something that was going to be over any time soon with a philosophical shrug and an exchange of insurance details.
I kept my eyes on the mirrors, just in case this was little more than an expensive diversionary tactic.
“Just take us right around into the garage, Charlie,” Dyer said when we’d sat for maybe a couple of minutes watching the drama unfold. “These idiots are going to be here all night.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Sean said immediately. If you were going by the book, it wasn’t. But sometimes you have to recognise when you can stick to the letter of the rules and when you can’t. And I would have said this was one of the latter occasions.
“Frankly,” Dyer said, sounding weary. “I don’t much care. I’m tired and I’d like to call it a night without waiting for one of these clowns to call triple-A.”
Alongside me, I saw Sean’s jaw tense to the point where I feared for the enamel on his teeth. “Yes, sir,” he said, and jerked his head.
“Walk Mr Dyer in from here,” I suggested. “I’ll park the car and meet you up in the suite.”
“Soon as I get upstairs I’m hitting the sack,” Dyer said bluntly. “Besides, it’s late and although I’m only too aware of how capable you are, Charlie—and you proved it again this evening—my mother would turn in her grave if I left a young lady to walk through a darkened parking garage alone at this time of night.”
“Trust me, sir, you don’t have to worry about me. I can—”
“For God’s sake, don’t you start arguing with me as well,” Blake Dyer said and although there was a smile hovering around his mouth I heard the warning snap in his tone.
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. Sometimes it’s just easier to give in gracefully. “Well, for the sake of your mother’s continued eternal rest . . . thank you,” I said.
I glanced at Sean but he just gave a shrug of assent as if not trusting himself to speak.
I manoeuvred through the jam of other cars waiting in line and swung the Yukon round into the parking garage structure, which stood next to the hotel but detached from it. The garage was well-lit and reasonably secure, but the most convenient spaces were all reserved for the valet service, on the grounds that a quick turnaround means a bigger gratuity.
The hotel was packed with guests for the fundraiser, and for this reason we had to go up five levels to find a space. Even then, there was nothing close to the stairwells or elevators.
As we climbed out of the Yukon’s air-conditioned interior, the muggy heat of the night closed around us like a wet fist. From this height, the sounds of the city bounced up across concrete, glass and steel, amplified with a slightly artificial sheen. Shouts, horns, sirens, and the drone of traffic. I didn’t like the fact the interior of the garage was lit and open on all sides to other buildings. While we couldn’t see out past the glare, anyone could see in. I didn’t like it at all.
But the trouble didn’t come from outside.
Ten
Sean was on point again, walking a couple of paces ahead of Blake Dyer. I was back and to the right of him. My evening bag was across my shoulder. I flicked it open and made sure my cellphone was within easy reach. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was premonition.
We heard the trouble before we saw it. Raised voices that echoed off the bare concrete walls, too close and too loud to be coming from the street below.
I stopped, put a hand on Blake Dyer’s arm. Sean took another two paces before he, too, realised we were walking into a situation.
Too slow.
The voices were between us and the nearest exit on this level. Harsh, raised, an argument just about to boil over into a fight.
“Back up,” I whispered in Dyer’s ear. “Now.”
He nodded, catching on right away without making a fuss about wanting to take the shortest route to his bed. But as he turned the leather sole of his dress shoe caught on a piece of grit, grinding loudly in the reflective space.
The shout of alarm came immediately. The words were too heavily accented to decipher the words but I gleaned their intent. The floors of the parking garage sloped so they gradually spiralled upwards at one side, down at the other. I had only a partial view up onto the next level, but it was clear they had spotted Sean out in front.
The sound of a semiautomatic slide being racked back to chamber the first round was instantly recognisable. Two more followed in quick succession. I didn’t need to hear it more than once.
I grabbed the back of Dyer’s neck, bending him into a crouch as we swung round, putting my body between him and the potential threat.
As I forced him back the way we’d come, I heard one of the men below us shout, “Sortie!” It took me a moment to realise it was French.
Exit.
It could have been an instruction for them to get the hell out of there, but I didn’t think we were so lucky. Whoever was in charge had just ordered one of his foot soldiers to cover the stairwell, preventing us getting out of the parking structure that way. No doubt, if he had any sense, he’d call and hold the elevator, too. And if they got to the lower floor before us, we were cut off.
Shit.
Our only logical recourse was to hole up and call in local law enforcement. We already knew how long it would take them to get here—soon enough for us to stay out of trouble in the meantime.
The SIG was already out in my hand and I levelled it, one-handed, keeping a tight grip on my principal with the other. Sean had reached for his Glock and was backing after us, covering our withdrawal.
The first shot was an echoing crack. It went wide, gouging a strake out of the concrete ceiling way to our left. I increased my pace.
Sean stopped.
What the . . .?
Before I could speak, he’d gone into a stance and fired a three-round burst towards the source of the gunfire. The shouting grew in intensity and volume. We took more incoming fire. I was used to the unprotected sound of gunfire, but in that environment it was percussive enough to make me wince. The shots twanged and hissed from every surface. They were still going wide, but the concrete everywhere made the dangers of ricochet very real and very nasty.
I stuffed Blake Dyer down between the front wheels of two parked SUVs, grabbed for my phone and stabbed at the 9-1-1 keys. I gave the female operator the bare details fast—what, where, who—and ended the call, knowing they would have it recorded anyway.
No doubt the recording would also pick up the signature of another couple of gunshots aimed in our direction while I was on the line.
Sean came skidding into cover and loosed two more rounds before ducking down. I caught a glimpse of his face—set but strangely alive, eyes glittering.
He remembers this, I realised. And suddenly wished that he did not.
I shoved Dyer down onto his side with his back hard against the concrete wall and flattened myself in front of him, covering as much of his body as I could. From down there I had a clear line of sight beneath the vehicle’s underbody.
Past the tyres, I saw a man’s legs approaching. He’d been using all the noise as cover to get closer to us. I could tell by the way he put the balls of his feet down first, the slightly sideways shuffle, that he was armed and intent.
I rolled onto my stomach and shot him very carefully, just once, through the right calf, which I knew would hamper his getaway even in a car with automatic transmission.
The man gave a yell of pain and fury. He let go of his gun. It landed with a clatter on the concrete and because of the incline spun away downhill before coming to rest somewhere under the far line of parked cars.
And at the same time I heard the first distant sirens approaching on the street below.
The effect was electric. Our attackers fell back. I counted four, including the man I’d shot. An old ’eighties saloon car—when the American car industr
y was going through its big-and-ugly-with-it period—appeared up the ramp from the floor below and slewed to a stop. As it moved, I caught the flare off metal-flake paint that gleamed and shimmered under the lights. The car was on huge chrome wheels that must have been nearly two feet in diameter, lifting the body an exaggerated amount off the ground.
Not ideal for outrunning a police cruiser, I wouldn’t have thought.
The man with the newly acquired limp dragged himself across and bundled inside. The car took off with a chirrup of smoking rubber, leaving two black streaks until the tyres gripped.
Ah, maybe with that much power available it wasn’t such a bad choice after all.
