by Sharp, Zoe
Fourteen
The surprises weren’t over yet.
As I ended the call and walked back towards the hotel entrance, Morton gave the valet a sideways flick of his eyes that was an obvious signal for the guy to make himself scarce.
The valet threw me a slightly panicked look, as if he’d been happy enough to take whatever gratuity Morton had palmed him to leave the two of us alone together, but now it came down to it he was having second thoughts. Didn’t stop him leaving, though.
I braced unconsciously, tried hard to keep the stress out of my frame as I approached. Knees soft, shoulders open, hands ready. In my left I still carried my cellphone, carefully gripped so I could weight a punch with it if I needed to. Or use the hard plastic corners on any one of the strategic strike points. The list of exposed areas scrolled through my head as I moved.
Better than shooting him, however much satisfaction that might bring.
Because I knew I didn’t trust myself not to simply keep firing long after the target went down. If I had a second magazine on me I would probably empty that into him as well.
About half a dozen strides away, I stopped. There was no point in letting him get too close. Better for him to telegraph his first move—if he was planning on making one—to give me time to consider.
To consider just how much damage I might possibly get away with doing him.
I let my awareness expand outwards but he’d picked his time and place well. Apart from the single security camera, which we both knew provided only rotating views with four other fixed-position cameras relayed to the monitor behind the reception desk, we had the space to ourselves.
He took a drag on his cigarette, deep enough to hollow his cheeks, then regarded me with narrowed eyes through a long exhale of smoke. I assumed it was supposed to make him look dangerous. All it did was give him a slight squint.
I almost laughed. I’d once been terrorised by this man, woken in abject sweats in the night from the memory of what he and the others had done to me.
Of what I had allowed them to do.
I felt the pressure begin to build inside my head, my body, until I vibrated with the force required to keep it contained.
The urge to kill—the need to kill—was a chant in my head, a buzz in my ears, an acrid taste in the back of my mouth like smoke from a chemical fire. And now I knew just how small a step I needed to take to satisfy that urge.
A stark image flashed into my head. A figure lying on a darkened walkway, blood oozing from the single bullet wound that had killed him, the gun still warm in my hand. And most of all, the fierce gladness in my heart.
I shook my head a fraction and the vision folded, blinked out. But while it was there it had been sharp and vivid. The realisation of what I had allowed myself to become scared me far more than I’d been prepared for. Far more than I liked to admit.
I had to clear my throat before I could speak, found I could do so only with effort.
“There something on your mind, Morton?”
He noted my reaction and misinterpreted it badly enough for a tiny smirk to form at the corner of his lips.
“Never thought I’d come up against you again, Foxcroft. Or should I call you Miss Fox now, eh? Heard you changed your name. Trying to escape your past sins, were you?” He paused. “Didn’t think you had the balls for this kind of work, though.”
I took my time about replying, let my eyes do a slow survey with my face blank as if what I saw had no meaning. As if I was staring at nothing. Through nothing.
“Sometimes not having balls has its advantages,” I said coolly. “At least I don’t have to think with them all the time.”
He kept the hit out of his face but couldn’t prevent the reflexive twitch of his fingers around the cigarette. As if realising the betrayal he dropped the half-finished butt on the concrete and ground it out. He stepped forwards, aiming to get in my face with a sneer.
“Did you think you’d be any safer here, Fox? Did you think anybody was going to stand up for you when they never did before?”
Instead of backing off I stepped up too, got in his face toe-to-toe. He didn’t have much on me in height anyway.
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you, Morton?” I murmured. “And that’s a pity—for you. Because I have changed—a lot.” It felt like the mother of all understatements.
My eyes dropped to his mouth, lingered, then I lunged forwards a fraction, as if either to kiss him or bite out his tongue. He jerked away automatically, annoyance ticking at his jaw.
“You really think I give a flying fuck if anyone’s prepared to stand up for me?” I said, keeping my voice entirely conversational. I dialled down both the volume and the temperature. “Well, you might like to keep in mind that this time you haven’t got three other cowards backing you up, and I don’t need anyone backing me up. Not any more. You try to mess with me, sunshine, and this time I will fucking bury you.”
I stepped back, arranged my face into a smile that did little to reassure him. “Have a nice day.”
Fifteen
Blake Dyer was up bright and early for his room-service breakfast, despite the disturbed night. Bearing in mind my own lack of sleep I’d been quietly hoping he’d opt for a lie-in that would allow the rest of us to do the same.
“Today it all begins, huh?” he said, shaking out the starched linen napkin and laying it across his knees. He lifted the domed lid covering his breakfast, scooped up a forkful of crispy bacon and scrambled eggs with a sigh of pleasure. From the evident enthusiasm I guessed his wife kept a watchful eye on his cholesterol intake at home and he was determined to make the most of being unsupervised.
“It does indeed, sir.”
I sat opposite at the small table. I was cradling a coffee I’d poured from one of the insulated jugs that had arrived a few minutes earlier. It was delivered by a waiter called Jerold whose background check revealed he still lived at home with his mother and had a liking for tropical fighting fish.
Sean helped himself to his own cup. He’d made an effort to overcome last night’s awkwardness on the journey back with Dyer. I reckoned he was largely succeeding.
And if he’d been quieter than usual I didn’t find anything too odd about that. After all, I’d dealt him a couple of hefty blows which he’d apparently absorbed without obvious mental trauma.
So far, so good.
Dyer chewed and swallowed. “I understand Tom’s organised a little sightseeing for us this morning,” he said. “I guess he plans to show us the ongoing effects of Katrina first-hand before he hits us for the big bucks tomorrow night.”
“It’s what I’d do,” I agreed.
Dyer grinned at me as he fed in a mouthful of toasted bagel slathered with full-fat cream cheese.
Oh yeah, he was definitely off the nutritional leash.
“Mr O’Day’s people have sent through a revised schedule for the helicopter tour,” Sean said. “There’ve been one or two drop-outs after last night’s bash.”
News to me. I sent Sean a brief questioning glance, which he pointedly ignored.
“Well, I guess not everyone wants a bumpy flight over an environmental war zone with a hell of a hangover,” Dyer said. “And there’ll be a few of those this morning.” He sounded gleeful not to be among their number. “I hear young Jimmy O’Day didn’t make it in before dawn.”
I glanced at him sharply but didn’t detect more to his words than their face value.
“You’ve known the O’Days a long time?” Sean asked. He moved over to the window and leaned his shoulder against the wall alongside it, where he could survey the street without presenting an easy target. Some habits were too deeply ingrained ever to change.
“He and my father met in Korea,” Dyer said. “Tom was a young cryptographer in the navy back then—one of the best. Fluent in Russian, Korean, Chinese.” He paused reflectively. “In fact, I do believe it was my father who introduced Tom to his wife. They moved in the same circles.” He gave a small ch
uckle. “Made Dad persona non grata for a while there, I can tell you.”
“Oh?”
Dyer gave me an assessing glance. “Back in those days Tom didn’t have two cents to his name, but Marie’s people were big into mining. Lost most of it in the late ’seventies. Seemed like their star was falling as Tom’s was rising. I’m proud to know him.” He paused. “Jimmy was a late gift, you might say—I think they’d given up hope of having children. My wife and I are godparents.”
I felt a damning flush steal up into my face. So I hadn’t just knocked his host’s son on his arse at the party last night, but my principal’s godson as well. Nice going, Fox.
“Sir, I—”
He chuckled, mopping his mouth on the napkin. “Forget it, Charlie. I was there, remember? Hell, young Jimmy had a face like thunder. Never seen him look so riled.” He leaned across and gave my arm a reassuring pat. “If I hadn’t known the boy I probably would have taken a swing at him myself.”
Relief invested my answering smile with a touch more warmth than it might otherwise have had.
Sean made a tiny noise in the back of his throat that could have been a growl. He levered away from the wall and strode across the suite.
“I’ll check the ETA on the helo,” he said brusquely as he went. “Charlie will escort you down when you’re ready to go, sir.”
There it was again. Just the faintest emphasis on the word “escort” giving it a whole host of different meanings. None of them especially flattering.
I glanced at Blake Dyer. He merely raised an eyebrow and made the slightest duck of his head in Sean’s direction. Go after him.
I pushed back my chair, murmured, “Excuse me a moment, would you?” and hurried out after Sean without waiting for a reply.
“Sean!” By dint of jogging along the corridor, I caught up with him near the door to the stairwell. He was still conscious enough of his reduced fitness levels to automatically go for stairs rather than take the easy option.
“What do you want, Charlie?”
Another double-edged question.
“I want to know what’s making you behave like—”
“—a bear with a sore head?” he shot back, face bone white.
I took a breath. “I was going to say ‘like an amateur thug’, if you must know, but I expect there are similarities,” I said, my voice mild. “I know you have a problem with me, Sean, but if we’re going to do this job you’re going to have to put it aside—for the next couple of days, at least, or—”
“Or what?” he demanded. “Or you’ll phone New York and ask Parker to recall me, is that it?”
What the . . .?
He squared up to me and his eyes went flat, his voice deadly soft. “When were you planning to tell me you’d already made that call, eh?”
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say that wasn’t a lie, at least in part.
He knows.
And I could take a pretty good guess how he’d found out.
That bastard Morton. I knew he’d been too far away to overhear naturally, but maybe not if he’d been using some kind of electronic amplifier. Morton always had liked his gadgets.
“It was a judgement call,” I said with as much calm as I could manage.
He scoffed. “It was an emotional call, certainly.”
I flinched, hit by a sudden flashback to the last time I’d tried that argument on him. An argument to explain away why I hadn’t acted with more aggression against a perceived threat.
His response had been the same.
Exactly the same.
Jesus . . .
The argument hadn’t worked for me back then, either. In fact, Sean had actually pulled a knife to goad me into what he’d considered was a proper reflex reaction to danger. Of my own volition, my eyes flicked to his hands.
They were empty.
I let my breath out nice and slow, tried to roll some of the tension out of my shoulders before they cracked. “Sean, you went over the top last night—way over the top. You’re not a soldier any more, and if you need extra time—extra training time—to get yourself back into the right mindset for this job, then you need to take it. It’s Parker’s name above the door of the agency as much if not more than yours, so he had a right to know. You have to realise that it only takes one mistake in this business to get a reputation you just can’t shake.”
“Oh, and you’d know all about getting a reputation for yourself, wouldn’t you?”
My core temperature dropped so suddenly I had to suppress a shiver. Even then, I couldn’t resist the urge to wrap my arms around my upper body. An utterly stupid defensive gesture. I brought my chin up to counter it.
“Get it out, Sean,” I said, my voice hollow now. “Say what you have to.”
“The way you’ve been behaving with Dyer since we got here—half the time I’m not sure if you’re trying to be or a bloody hooker.”
It was the “trying” that stung hardest.
“So, what was I last night, Sean, while you were playing Rambo? I got the client down into cover and put my body in front of his. What—you think I somehow got off on it?”
He took a deep breath in, let it out through his nose like a bull faced with a platoon of Household Cavalry in full ceremonial scarlet dress.
“Dyer’s a flirt—always has been,” I said. “Last time I worked for him he was exactly the same even when his wife was there. It’s just a—a mannerism. There’s nothing meant about it. He’s like a dog chasing cars. If he caught one he wouldn’t know what to do with it—it would scare him half to death.”
I stepped in, tried a smile, reached for his arm as if actual physical contact might help convince him. Instead, he jerked away.
“So it’s just flirting, is it? That what you’ve been doing with Parker, too, eh?” His eyes flicked over me again and there was nothing flattering in the look. “Is that how you got your job with the agency?”
I felt my face close up. “I’m not going to dignify that one with an answer,” I said, turning. “We’ll talk again when you’ve calmed down enough to see reason.”
But he only let me get half a stride away.
“Tell me the truth, Charlie—I wasn’t the only one you were fucking back in the army, was I?”
It came out fast and vicious, but under his anger I thought I detected shades of pain.
As if what we’d shared really had meant something to him.
As if facing the idea he’d been just another notch on my bedpost—that he’d risked everything he’d made of himself for somebody so unworthy—hurt him more than he could bear.
That, more than the slur, almost undid me. I turned back.
“I bet I know who filled your ear with that delightful little titbit of information. Wouldn’t have been Vic Morton who couldn’t wait to drip that bit of poison would it, by any chance?”
I could hear the brittle quality in my voice now, my accent smoothing out to reveal my parents’ upper-middle-class origins. I’d done so much to blunt down and hide my background from Sean in the beginning, fearing he might despise me for it. If only it had been that simple.
He didn’t answer, but I looked him in the eye and didn’t need him to.
So, it seemed we were neither of us prepared to lie to the other.
Well that was progress of a sort.
“As a matter of fact you weren’t the only one, Sean,” I said, cold and clear. “Did Vic happen to mention he was also a lucky recipient of my oh-so-indiscriminate sexual favours?”
He didn’t answer that one either.
Nearby, the lift pinged as it reached our floor and the doors opened. Despite everything, we both altered our stance, turned a fraction to meet the new arrivals. I ID’d them instantly as two guys from another team. They nodded to us, acknowledging rather than friendly, but didn’t stop to check in.
It was a worrying omission, as if they were making a point of not getting too close, just in case. Or maybe they simply picked up on the atmosphere
between us.
Not so much intense as frozen solid.
We watched in silence as they retreated along the corridor. Even so, I moved in closer again and lowered my voice.
“I don’t suppose Vic Morton also happened to mention that—to get me to lie still enough for long enough to allow him to fuck me—he had to beat the shit out of me first and then had three of his mates holding me down waiting their turn?”
