by Sharp, Zoe
For a moment I thought I saw a flicker of annoyance, of conflict, pass across Morton’s face. Admitting he’d missed something and done a slipshod job did not sit well with him.
“Hey, when she’s at home I don’t follow her round the house like a bloody lap dog,” he said.
“And how the hell would I arrange something like a hijack?” Autumn burst out. “I work in PR, for God’s sake.”
Morton shrugged. “Maybe you recruited poor old Hobson. Fluttered those pretty baby blues at him, got him to find you some manpower willing to do the job. Just your bad luck he used local muscle and Castille decided to screw the pooch.”
“So who killed Hobson then?” I asked. I fought to keep my voice reasonable. “He’d been with Tom O’Day for ten years. You really think he’d betray his principal so easily?”
“Who knows? Maybe he was just in the way, or had an attack of conscience and had to be got rid of? Even a woman could have done it—if they’d blindsided him.”
“You are so full of shit, Morton, I’m amazed your teeth aren’t floating.”
The grin widened. “Who was it said that insults are the last resort of someone who knows they’re fighting an argument they can’t win?”
“How is Charlie mixed up in it?” Sean asked suddenly. I barely recognised his voice. The emotionless tone of it sent my stomach plummeting.
“Sean, I’m not,” I said quickly. “I swear to you, I’m not.”
“She was going to let Castille kill you,” Morton said softly. “You were there, mate. You saw it. She wasn’t going to back down. If I hadn’t stepped in and saved your bacon, she would have gone through you to get to him. What kind of cold-blooded bitch does that?”
“It’s how she was trained,” Sean said. He frowned, as if his own words surprised him. “Charlie always was . . . determined.”
“Determined to save her own skin, more like,” Morton scoffed. “I thought you and she were supposed to have a thing going. Well, back there you could have fooled me.”
Sean’s head lifted a fraction. It was the first sign of a mistake on Morton’s part, a misjudgement. The tension was closing up my throat. I had to swallow before I could speak.
“If I’d put down my weapon, you know as well as I do that Castille would have killed the pair of us before we’d drawn another breath,” I said carefully. I kept my eyes on Sean, willing him to believe me, to believe in me. “Not giving up is how you trained me. How you’ve always trained me.”
“Is that why you’re still fighting now—even after the battle’s lost?” Morton asked. “Face it, sweetheart, you sold out. Maybe you reckoned that getting rid of Meyer would clear the way for you and your boss to get it together, eh?”
My head snapped towards him. Part of me knew it was just a follow-on from his previous jibe, out in the corridor, but my reaction was betraying, even so. I saw it register in Sean’s face, his eyes. He’d walked into the apartment back in New York that day and seen me with Parker and he’d known then on some subconscious level that our relationship had changed.
Parker and I had grown closer over the months of Sean’s coma. Apart from a fleeting kiss things had gone no further. And yet I’d always feared that if—when—Sean woke he would sense the change in us. It had both relieved and saddened me beyond measure when he did not.
Until now.
Morton watched the minute effects of his throwaway line on Sean and played his next card with casual skill.
“What will you do with Armstrong when you’re done with him—roll him up and throw him away?” He paused, deliberate. “Or take a blade to him?”
The calculating way he spoke had me drawing in a sharp, audible breath.
There was no way Vic Morton could know how close I’d come to having my throat cut—unless Sean had told him. It happened long after my army career had come to its wretched end, and well before my close-protection career began. So why had he mentioned a blade with that particular emphasis, that particular tone?
I remembered Sullivan, sitting tied to his chair with his throat opened up wide. The man from New Jersey, drowning in his own blood.
And I remembered . . .
No. . .
“Maybe we should search her,” Morton said.
“You just try it, sunshine,” I warned, my voice low.
He threw Sean a brief smile, as though I’d just confirmed his suspicions.
Morton nodded to Autumn. “The blonde can do it—empty out her pockets. See what she’s hiding.”
“Sean—”
“Do it,” Sean told Autumn, cutting off my protest.
She approached me warily. I didn’t shift my gaze from Sean’s, even as I felt the pull of my jacket, her hand dipping into the outside pockets. She retrieved my hotel key cards, the comms earpiece and the slim wireless transmitter that went with it, earning a narrow-eyed look from Morton.
She put the items on the table and stepped back. “That’s it.”
“The jacket has an inside pocket,” Sean said.
Oh shit . . .
Autumn pulled back my lapel and reached inside. Her fingers stilled as they bumped against steel, her eyes flying to mine.
Then she withdrew her hand, turned and laid the folded lock-knife on the table with the rest.
Morton moved forwards, picked up the knife and flicked the blade open. It had been wiped but there were clearly still traces of blood on it. He showed the evidence to Sean, eyebrows raised.
The silence that followed was thick and deafening.
“You know damned well that I just took that away from you in the stairwell, before we came in here,” I said. I moved my right hand slightly, a twitch rather than anything that could be misinterpreted, just enough to draw attention to the Glock. “The same time I took away your gun.”
Morton put the knife back on the table and shook his head, his expression almost one of pity. “Not my gun—when I’m armed I carry a Beretta.” He pursed his lips, added quietly, “Thad always carried a Glock, though.”
And there it was. I heard the last piece of his double-cross slip into place and lock there with a noise like a coffin lid being nailed down.
I murmured, “You bastard,” and brought the gun up fast and smooth. I sighted automatically on the centre of Morton’s face, where the round would enter through his upper lip and take out his brain stem on the way through. It was better than he deserved.
All the time, I expected the monstrous report of the revolver in Sean’s hands, the impact of the bullet ploughing into me.
He’d always been good. If I was lucky I’d know nothing about it.
Seventy-five
The shot never came.
I risked a quick look. Sean was still on target, the muzzle of the revolver pointing straight and level at my head. I could see his finger inside the guard, the whiteness around his knuckle as he held the pressure on the trigger. He was a hairsbreadth from firing.
But he did not fire.
It was more of a second chance than I thought I’d get.
So don’t waste it then.
“Morton got most of it just about spot on—with one very big difference,” I said. “He was talking about himself, not me. Isn’t that the secret of the believable lie, Vic? Stick as close to the truth as you can?”
Morton stood apparently relaxed inside the confines of my sights. He looked supremely confident. To me, it only confirmed his guilt. An innocent man should have been more worried about having a loaded gun pointed at him by someone he claimed was guilty of multiple murder.
Instead, he knew I hadn’t done it. Maybe didn’t even think I was capable of it.
Should have pushed him over that bloody stairwell when I had the chance.
I kept my eyes on Morton, but when I spoke it was directly to Sean.
“Back on the boat, when we found the guy from New Jersey—you remember what he said?” I asked. “He said, ‘I never expected him to double-cross us.’ Remember?”
“Castille,” Se
an said.
I gave a fractional shake of my head, not willing to lose my aim. “I don’t think so. As soon as Castille came aboard New Jersey must have expected him to do the dirty on them. It wasn’t part of the plan. And once it all started to go bad, he never would have let Castille get close enough.”
“Castille was fast with a blade,” Sean said grimly, “as Blake Dyer found out to his cost.”
I felt his accusation like a punch in the chest. “Blake Dyer was a civilian,” I said. “New Jersey was a pro. With Castille he would have been on his guard. But even he didn’t expect a double-cross from his own inside man.”
Morton smiled. “Nice try, aren’t you forgetting one thing? When they dragged Jimmy out of there I was the one tried to stop them and took a hammering for it. Why would they do that to their own inside man?”
“To make it look good,” I said. “And for someone who’s had such a hammering, you seem to me to be moving pretty freely.”
Sean said nothing. I couldn’t tell from a quick sideways glance if he was convinced or not.
I was suddenly overcome with weariness, sapped by his ambivalence into a reckless bravado.
“Morton is the one with previous ties to Castille,” I said. “And I’ll bet when Parker starts digging he’ll find connections between Morton and the New Jersey guy, too.”
I let the Glock come up off target, uncurled my finger from the trigger and leaned forwards to set the gun down very precisely in the centre of the table, spinning it so the pistol grip was away from me. I was looking straight at Sean while I did it.
I heard Autumn let out a low groan at my surrender. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“I did not do this, Sean,” I said simply. “And if you don’t know that—can’t bring yourself to trust me enough to believe that—then you may as well shoot me now in cold blood. I’m not going to provide you with the excuse to do it any other way.”
Just for a second he tensed. I saw the intention spread from his shoulders, down his arms towards his hands. I almost shut my eyes, forced myself to keep them open. If this was the end I wanted to see it coming.
And then, right at the last moment, Sean hesitated.
Morton had been watching his every move with a triumph he barely managed to conceal. Now the frustration that passed across his face was fast but deep.
“Just shoot her, for fuck’s sake! Finish it, soldier!”
But if he’d been expecting Sean’s military background to make him follow orders without question, he was disappointed. Somewhere within Sean’s fractured memory that automatic obedience had been long since broken. And instead a certain independent stubbornness had taken its place, as I’d found out for myself.
Slowly, Sean lowered the revolver, turned his head and pinned Morton with a cool dark gaze.
“Finish what, Vic?”
“This! All of it.” He waved a hand towards the gun and the knife on the table. “Come on, mate. I thought you had more bottle than this. She ruined your army career.”
“No, I don’t think she did.” Sean’s eyes flicked back to mine and for the first time I saw something recognisable within their depths. “If anything, Charlie . . . saved me from it.”
I’d managed to keep it together right up until that point. Those words were nearly my undoing.
Morton turned away from him, letting out a long breath of disgust. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, there’s nothing else I can say except—”
Abruptly, in mid-sentence, he whirled for the table, reaching for the Glock. He snatched up the gun, swung it towards Sean in a smooth arc as his finger looped around the trigger.
I froze, unable to move or shout. There was nothing I could do. I saw it all happen in slow-motion and my imagination immediately turned it into a terrible replay of the shooting that had so nearly ended Sean’s life back in California. A random, snapped-off shot, taken in haste and desperation. The endless possible repercussions streaked away into the distance like missile trails.
Two shots cracked out, so close together they might have been one. The noise of them was devastating in the interior of the room. Autumn screamed and flinched back, hands covering her assaulted eardrums.
Morton fell, twisting. At the same instant, Sean dropped back and disappeared from view behind the table.
No!
I leapt for Morton, kicking the Glock out of his grasp as he tried to raise it again. My foot connected hard with his wrist. I heard the bones snap and was fiercely glad. His other hand was clamped to his chest. The blood was already beginning to leach out past his fingers.
I looked for Sean, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
He was on the ground, feet braced, leaning back, with the revolver still gripped in his hands. It was pointing unwaveringly at Morton. Sean looked dazed, as if he couldn’t quite work out what had just happened.
But whole.
I took in the unfocused eyes, the sudden tremble in his hands, and approached with caution. “Are you OK?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then he sat up, gave me a brief shaky nod without meeting my eyes. “He missed,” he said. “What about—?”
“Don’t worry—you didn’t miss.”
Morton had subsided slowly backwards, rolling a little as he attempted to escape the pain. If his gasps were anything to go by it wasn’t working well for him. He was cradling his broken wrist with his good hand and pressing both arms tight against the wound to stem the bleeding. I noted with a certain dark satisfaction that didn’t seem to be working brilliantly for him either.
I bent over him, pushed his hands aside. It had been a close-range shot, but both targets had been moving fast. Sean had aimed for centre body mass, textbook style. The round had entered Morton’s chest high on the left-hand side and must have missed his heart by fractions.
The similarities with the stab wound Morton had inflected on the man from New Jersey were not lost on me. Without medical intervention the lung would soon collapse. He was already gasping for breath and would continue to struggle, slowly and painfully, until he physically couldn’t take in enough air and he suffocated. It would not, I realised cheerfully, be a pleasant experience.
I’d almost found out that for myself, first hand.
“He might live, he might not,” I said, my voice dispassionate. “Depends on whether he gets treatment.”
Autumn was rubbing her hands along her upper arms as if she was cold. “We should leave him,” she said abruptly. “Louisiana still has the death penalty anyway. Why make the state pay the cost of a trial?”
“If he ever gets to trial,” I said, thinking of the man who had so nearly killed Sean. He’d squirmed away from justice by making promises to Homeland Security he’d never intended to keep. “And if he doesn’t lie his way out of it.”
Again.
“If he survives, he will come to trial,” Autumn said. “You think Tom O’Day would let him get away with this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s going to be an awful lot of dirty washing on public view. As his head of PR, is that what you’d advise?”
“Probably not,” she said. “But as his friend? Yes I would.”
“You’ve no proof,” Morton managed, starting to struggle to draw breath. “No witnesses . . . You got nothing.”
“Do you honestly think modern forensics won’t find any links between you and the victims?” I said. “And everyone in the crowd was videoing the wreck of the Miss Francis on their cellphones. Do you think you managed to get Autumn off the boat and back here completely unseen?”
Morton’s eyes closed briefly, as if he were praying, and he mumbled, “No proof.”
“If he cut them, his DNA will be on the knife,” Sean said.
Morton’s eyes opened again. Every breath was making him shudder with the effort, achieving less effect. “’Course . . . just picked the fucker up.”
I shook my head. “Cutting people is a messy business,” I said. “You made
a mess of Sullivan, didn’t you?” I murmured, thinking of the hesitation marks on the man’s neck. I’d assumed they were the result of someone who was not a pro. Instead, they were the work of someone without the courage of his convictions.
“There’s always transfer,” I said. “Just picking up the knife in here wouldn’t account for any other blood evidence they find—and you can bet they’ll fly in the best forensics experts in the business for this one.” I paused, kept my voice level, trying not to let the satisfaction, the vindication, show. “Face it, sunshine—you’re fucked.”
