by Zoe Sharp
Simone frowned. ‘Is it any surprise that, having found him again, I want to spend a little time and get to know him?’ she said, smiling hesitantly in Lucas’s direction. Lucas returned the smile, little more than a twitch of his lips.
‘Of course not,’ Vaughan said. He rose, started to button his jacket and then stilled, adding weight to his words even though they were delivered in a chillingly pleasant tone. ‘But you’ve come at a busy time for your father, my dear. Perhaps it might be best if you didn’t plan to stay long.’
OK, that’s enough.
I got to my feet, much the same way Vaughan had done. Slowly, deliberately. Vaughan had the best part of a foot on me and he utilised all of it now, craning his neck, making a big thing out of just how far he had to look down to meet my eyes.
‘With respect, Mr Vaughan,’ I said, always a nice phrase to use when you intend to speak without any, ‘the decision on just how long Simone remains a guest here is down to Mr and Mrs Lucas, not you. And her own choice, of course.’ I kept my voice light and my face carefully blank. ‘I would hate to think she feels under any kind of pressure to leave before she’s ready.’
Vaughan blinked, just once, and a muscle twitched in his cheek. The silence stretched one second into another. ‘Yes,’ he murmured at last, inclining his head. ‘Yes, I guess you would.’ He nodded to Simone, more of a bow. ‘Ladies,’ he said, coldly polite. His eyes slid across to mine. ‘I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other.’ He turned to the couple stationed tensely at the other end of the table and his face tightened almost imperceptibly. ‘Don’t trouble yourselves,’ he said. ‘I can see myself out.’
Nevertheless, despite his words both Rosalind and Lucas followed Vaughan to the door, as if to make sure he really was leaving. While they were out of earshot Simone leant across to me, her face fearful.
‘Who was that guy?’ she asked. ‘He gave me the creeps.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, grim. ‘He did the same to me.’
Simone raised her eyebrows. ‘You think?’ she said quietly. ‘I’d say it was the other way around.’
I glanced at her in surprise, but before I could question her last remark the couple returned. Lucas suddenly looked his age. He sank into his chair with a brief smile to Simone that was supposed to be reassuring but didn’t quite make it far enough. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, running a restless hand through his short beard. ‘I guess Felix’s manner can be a little abrasive if you aren’t used to the way of him.’
‘“Abrasive” is putting it mildly,’ I agreed, not inclined to let either of them off the hook too easily. It was the way they’d stood by and let Simone and her daughter be intimidated that I took issue with, more than anything Vaughan himself had done.
‘He didn’t seem to faze you, though, Charlie,’ Rosalind said, and I realised she’d been giving me a coolly appraising stare from the other end of the table.
‘Maybe I just don’t like being bullied,’ I said, matching my tone to hers.
‘Well, Felix certainly didn’t manage that with you,’ Lucas said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him back down quite like that before. You must have a knack with people, huh?’
‘Oh, Greg, for heaven’s sake!’ Rosalind bit out. ‘Can’t you tell that Charlie isn’t simply Ella’s nanny?’
Lucas stared between the two of us, taking in Simone’s shocked and ever so slightly guilty expression on the way. ‘She isn’t?’
‘Of course not,’ Rosalind snapped. Her eyes swung to me and there was a strange mixture of anger and something else that could even have been desperation there. ‘Isn’t it obvious? She’s Simone’s bodyguard.’
Lucas’s gaze rounded on me. ‘A bodyguard?’ he repeated blankly. He made a noise that might have been intended as a laugh, strangled at birth when his wife showed no signs of matching his amusement. ‘I mean, she’s just…are you sure?’
‘Oh yes, quite sure,’ Rosalind said, more quietly now, her voice almost silky. ‘Let me guess – are you an ex-cop? Or army?’ She must have seen something in my face. ‘Army then,’ she said, with a certain satisfaction at her own accuracy. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not an easy job for a woman to get into. You must be pretty good, to have picked up that kinda work.’
‘Yes,’ I said, returning her stare with icy calm. ‘I am.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’m beginning to have some serious doubts about Greg Lucas,’ I said.
It was the morning after Vaughan’s visit and I was sitting in my room, on the bed, watching the icicles hanging from the guttering outside the window, melting gently like they were weeping. Simone and Ella were downstairs and, much as I didn’t like to leave them unaccompanied with Rosalind and Lucas, I felt I needed to bring Sean up to speed.
‘Why?’ Sean’s question was put in that calm, neutral voice of his.
I gave it a moment’s further consideration. ‘He just doesn’t give off the right vibes,’ I said at last, knowing he wouldn’t dismiss my answer out of hand. ‘The training he had, the amount of time he spent in the Regiment…’ I let my voice trail off, shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me do it. ‘I don’t know. He just doesn’t move right, doesn’t have the right instincts. I know he’s been out for a long time, but I don’t think you ever really lose that.’
‘You could be right,’ Sean said. ‘And I don’t think the Lucas we’ve been finding out about would stand there and let this guy Vaughan walk all over him, like you said.’
‘No,’ I agreed. I twisted away from the window, back towards the room’s interior, which was almost gloomy by comparison. Hannibal the psycho teddy bear watched me with a glassy stare from the chair across the other side of the room. I switched my gaze back to the window again.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘From the information that Neagley gave me, and what you’ve found out since, Felix Vaughan fits the role of Simone’s missing father much better than Lucas does.’
‘Now there’s a thought.’
‘I know, but Vaughan’s certainly got that nasty streak in him, and I should imagine there’s quite a temper lurking beneath the surface. And although he didn’t say anything, he made me for what I was, almost as soon as we met.’
‘Whereas Lucas didn’t.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I’m not that good an actress. He should have cottoned on. Maybe not in Boston, but when he nearly left me behind on the way up here I thought I gave myself away big time then.’
‘He could just have been playing with you,’ Sean said. ‘Apparently he was noted for playing mind games with trainees, and they pulled him out of any involvement with Selection after he blindfolded and handcuffed two guys and pushed them out of a helicopter during a Resistance-to-Interrogation exercise.’
‘He did what?’
‘Yeah, well, they’d stopped us doing that by the time you were on the course,’ Sean said with a hint of a smile in his voice. ‘And in Lucas’s case they were only about six feet off the ground, but one of them landed badly and broke his collarbone. Even back then, when there was less of a stink about training methods than there is these days, there was hell to pay.’
‘So,’ I said, my voice tinged with sourness, ‘should the opportunity arise to get into a helicopter with him, remind me not to sit next to the door.’
‘The other things that came up were that he was very good at hand-to-hand, and an excellent shot with a pistol.’
‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to do to find out for definite if he is who he says he is, then – pick a fight with him?’
Sean laughed softly. ‘I know who I’d put my money on,’ he said.
* * *
When I walked down the staircase I heard the quiet murmur of voices behind the door to the study. Simone and Lucas. I thought briefly about knocking but couldn’t think of a good excuse to do so other than nosiness. For a moment I was tempted to use that one anyway, but I didn’t.
So far, Lucas and his wife had
been somewhat nonplussed by the news of my real role in Simone’s life. Simone had explained my presence by telling them about her problems with an ex-boyfriend – being careful not to name Matt, or admit he was Ella’s father. She also left out all mention of the fact that most of her problems had started the moment she became a millionairess.
Even I have to admit the way she put it, it sounded reasonably convincing. She’d been stalked, she’d said, and Ella had been scared by the whole thing. The promising reports from the private eye, O’Halloran, had convinced Simone to fly out to Boston and I’d come along to make sure the boyfriend didn’t follow her over here and cause more trouble.
Yes, there were holes in the story if you looked closely enough, but fortunately neither of them seemed inclined to do that. Interestingly, they had asked if she had any hopes for a reconciliation with her ex. When she said a categorical no – even going so far as to hint he was into drugs – they’d lost a lot of the stiffness in their attitude, become friendly again. I thought I’d even caught a hint of relief in them, but I could have been wrong about that.
Now, I followed the sound of chattering voices to the open-plan kitchen, where Rosalind and Ella were baking cookies. At least, Rosalind was baking the cookies and Ella just seemed to be making a mess over as wide an area as possible. At Rosalind’s invitation, I helped myself to coffee from the pot and stayed well back, strictly in an observational role.
Ella was in her element. Rosalind had given her a flattened piece of cookie dough and a plastic cutter in the shape of a star and she was busily stamping out as many ragged shapes from the dough as she could manage. Her little face wore a frown of utter concentration and a liberal coating of flour. Flour was also down the front of most of her dress, in her hair, and spread across an ever increasing area of the kitchen tiles.
To my surprise, Rosalind didn’t seem at all disturbed by this sudden intrusion of chaos into her well-ordered domain. In fact, she was supervising the operation so skilfully that I’m sure even Ella didn’t realise the level of her intervention. Not enough to frustrate the child, but sufficient that the end results were likely to be edible, at least.
Rosalind arranged Ella’s misshapen cookies on a baking tray alongside the perfect examples she’d already cut, and whisked them into the oven.
‘Now then, Ella,’ she said, ‘if we can get this all cleared up by the time those cookies are done, we might be able to have some while they’re still hot. What do you say?’
Ella nodded enthusiastically.
‘OK, well, I think a big girl like you can wash her hands all by herself, can’t she?’
Ella quickly clambered down off the chair she’d been using to bring her up to tabletop height and skipped off towards the downstairs cloakroom near the front door, eager to prove how grown up she was without quite realising how well she’d been conned.
‘You’re very good with her,’ I said as Rosalind began wiping down the work surfaces.
She gave me a sad little smile. ‘Yes, well, I always wanted a family.’
‘But you and Greg never had children,’ I said, remembering her comment to Vaughan the day before. We made the decision not to have any children. Not exactly a free choice, by the sound of it.
She paused a moment and flicked her eyes over me and there was a touch of defiance in them, as though I was deliberately goading her. I kept my face neutral, friendly. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘We married late and, well—’ she shrugged, ‘it was never to be.’
‘Have you two been married long?’
She paused again, as if looking for the catch in every question. ‘Coming up on fifteen years,’ she said, almost reluctantly, as though I was probably going to use the information against her in some way. ‘I hired Greg to work for me,’ she added, grudgingly.
That surprised me. ‘At the military surplus store?’
‘That’s right,’ she said, pride lifting her chin. She wiped a pile of spilt flour into her cupped hand and dropped it into the sink. ‘My daddy built the store up from nothing, right after he got home from Korea.’
For want of a better reaction I raised my eyebrows and nodded, looking suitably impressed.
Rosalind’s shoulders came down a fraction. ‘Daddy was a quartermaster sergeant.’
‘He and Greg must have got on well,’ I said. It was a throwaway comment but she tensed.
‘Why do you say that?’
Damn, the woman was touchy. I shrugged. ‘Well, Greg was a sergeant, too, wasn’t he?’ I said carefully. ‘I understood Simone’s father was in the SAS.’
‘Daddy died before I met Greg,’ Rosalind said, and some fleeting emotion passed across her face, too fast for me to fully identify it. ‘And anyways, Greg doesn’t like to talk too much about those days.’
I nodded again. ‘The genuine ones never do,’ I said. ‘For every one real SAS trooper there must be a dozen who claim they’ve been in the Regiment.’
She gave me a smile that seemed almost grateful, that she didn’t have to explain it, that I understood.
‘And now Greg’s taken over the store,’ I said.
The smile blinked out. ‘We both run it,’ she said stiffly.
‘Of course,’ I said, with what I hoped was an ingratiating smile of my own. ‘I look forward to seeing it.’ That earned me another quick frown. Whatever I said seemed to make Rosalind uneasy.
‘So where does the charming Mr Vaughan fit in to all this?’ I asked. Hell, if I was going to make her uncomfortable, I might as well go the whole hog. Besides, the pair of them had neatly sidestepped any previous questions about the man.
She came upright and practically glared at me. ‘Greg felt we needed some additional investment to expand and Felix was generous enough to provide it,’ she said, terse. ‘I know he can seem a little abrupt, but military men can be straight talkers if you’re not accustomed to them.’
I thought of Vaughan’s deliberate rudeness, and the Lucases’ own discomfort with it, but wisely kept my opinion to myself.
Ella reappeared at that moment. Her hands were wet and largely free of flour, but where she’d splashed the front of her dress it now looked like she was wearing a pastry vest. Rosalind took charge of her, wiping her down and dusting her off as she quickly returned the kitchen to its former pristine state. If I hadn’t known better I would have said the woman was glad of the excuse not to have to answer any more of my questions.
Ella seemed to have really taken to the bony woman, and I wasn’t quite sure whether to be insulted or relieved by the little girl’s sudden shift in allegiance. Maybe Ella found Rosalind’s rather reserved manner refreshing after all the anxiously smiling faces that adults usually present when faced with a small child.
Now, Ella had turned coy and giggly. When I glanced in their direction, she was whispering to Rosalind, hiding her lips behind her hand. Rosalind’s eyes were on me, coolly appraising. Suddenly irritated, I turned my back on the pair of them.
It was then I heard Ella’s voice pipe up, ‘And Charlie hurt her neck, but I kissed it all better for her.’
I gritted my teeth for a moment, then forced my face to relax and turned back. ‘That’s right, Ella,’ I said brightly. ‘All better now.’
‘Really?’ Rosalind said and I could see her eyes flicking busily over the high collar of my sweater, but I was damned if I was about to give her a demonstration.
Fortunately, I was saved by the bell – or rather, the timer for the cookies, which bleeped to announce they were ready to come out of the oven. Just as Rosalind retrieved a perfectly browned set of odd-shaped cookies and left them on a wire rack to cool, Lucas and Simone strolled in.
They’d disappeared into Lucas’s den when Rosalind had first suggested baking as a way of keeping Ella occupied without her usual array of toys. It was only now, when they surfaced again, that I realised how long they’d been in there together.
‘Ah, perfect timing,’ Lucas said, smiling as he moved to put an arm round his wife’s shoulders
and give her a squeeze.
Rosalind glanced sharply at him and stepped away from his embrace. For a moment he looked offended, but he shrugged it off with the air of someone trying just a little too hard to promote his innocence. Simone looked flushed, almost excited. What the hell had they been up to?
‘So, what have you been up to?’ I said, keeping my tone mild.
She frowned at me in much the same way Rosalind had been doing all morning.
‘Oh, you know, just catching up on old times,’ she said, making too much of an effort to be casual about it.
Behind Rosalind’s back, Lucas flashed Simone a quick smile, conspiratorial. Simone saw that I’d caught the gesture and that I was about to dig deeper. She glared at me. I raised my eyebrows but said nothing.
Ella filled the awkward gap by insisting they admire her cookies.
‘Wow, those look just wonderful,’ Simone said. ‘You have been busy, sweetie. Did you make all these yourself?’
Ella paused, torn between taking the credit and sharing the glory. ‘Well, Grandma helped,’ she admitted at last, her face grave. ‘A little bit,’ she added, just in case we got the wrong idea of her own contribution.
Grandma.
I heard an intake of breath, but I couldn’t swear whose. All eyes were suddenly fixed on Rosalind. Her face had frozen and – just for a moment – I thought she might actually break and cry. Then the corner of her mouth trembled, fluttered, and gradually curved upwards into a shaky smile.
She reached out, almost tentatively, and stroked a hand over Ella’s silky curls. Ella dimpled into a heartbreaking smile and I felt some small relaxation of the muscles across the top of my shoulders, that I hadn’t realised had been tense until then.
If you have to protect a child, I thought, it always helps to have the people closest on your side…
* * *
I must admit, I thought I’d got away without having to explain any further about what had happened to my neck. I should have known that Rosalind’s distraction was only temporary.
