by Zoe Sharp
Sean shrugged. ‘Well, it didn’t,’ he said. ‘And from what Young and Bartholemew told us at the hospital, they’ve had it verified by their own lab, so there’s no doubt.’
‘But all the stuff about his behaviour in the army,’ I said, still frowning, ‘and what Simone’s mother told you, Matt, doesn’t seem to fit the guy.’
‘People change I suppose,’ Matt said dubiously. ‘But he was an SAS thug, wasn’t he? No changing a warped personality like that.’ He missed the slight eyebrow quirk that Sean fired in my direction. ‘But he’s been out a long time, and maybe Rosalind had a settling influence on him, though she seemed a bit of a dragon to me.’
‘She can’t have been that good an influence on him – not if he was behind my partner’s car crash,’ Neagley said, wiping her hands on one of the paper napkins and taking a swig of Tab. She’d laid in a private supply in the fridge.
I shrugged, carefully. ‘It just doesn’t fit somehow. I wish I knew what Vaughan was hinting at that night. And why he was so anxious to get us out of the way.’
‘Well, I’ve put out some queries about him with my contacts,’ Neagley said. ‘We know he’s ex-military, which gave me a good place to start looking. Soon as they get back to me, we might have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.’
I sat back against the sofa. What were the Lucases mixed up in with him that made them so scared of him? Why had he been so against Simone staying in North Conway in the first place, and so keen on me taking her away? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that he’d had me picked up on the very night Simone had gone rushing to confront her father. So did that mean Vaughan was involved in some way in the shooting? I couldn’t see how.
Jakes had been a good man, but I wished I’d been the one who’d gone with her. If I had…Yeah, right, said the sarcastic voice in my head, because you managed things so well after you did finally get there.
I mentally shook myself out of that downward spiral. The police were convinced it was an open-and-shut case as far as the ‘who’ was concerned. What was driving me mad was trying to work out the ‘why’.
‘Have you got any further with tracking down this guy Oliver Reynolds?’ I asked.
Neagley shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Maybe you scared him off when you grabbed him. Or maybe he injured himself getting away. He did have to jump through a window, after all.’ She glanced at her watch, then at Sean. ‘We ought to get going,’ she said.
Sean nodded and rose, gathering the empty pizza box and folding it in half. ‘Neagley and I are going to go and do some digging around,’ he said.
Matt jumped to his feet. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he said, eager.
Sean’s eyes drifted over me. ‘You two just stay put here,’ he said, like I’d been contemplating going out jogging. When Matt opened his mouth to object, Sean added, ‘Why don’t you make some calls – see if you can find yourself a decent legal man. Won’t Harrington help out?’
Matt looked crestfallen. ‘I asked. He said he couldn’t be seen to be taking sides and if it came out—’ he began.
Sean took a business card out of his pocket and handed it over. ‘Call Parker Armstrong,’ he said. ‘He was Jakes’ boss. He and I know each other – we’ve worked together in the past. He’s a good guy and he’s offered to help us get to the bottom of this.’
Matt stood there for a moment, fingering the card in his hands. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he ventured at last. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for—’
‘There’s no need,’ Sean cut in, lifting his jacket from the back of a chair and shrugging his way into it while Neagley grabbed her own coat and picked the car keys out of her pocket. They’d almost reached the door before he stopped and glanced back. ‘Besides, we’re not doing it for you.’
After Sean and Neagley had gone out, Matt got straight on the phone to Armstrong in New York, who in turn put him on to a firm of lawyers specialising in child custody cases who worked out of Manchester, New Hampshire.
There wasn’t much I could do to help other than sit and listen to one side of the conversation. Besides, I soon realised that without the others to act as a buffer Matt was still uneasy around me. Eventually, I clambered to my feet, picked up my crutch, and mouthed, I’ll be in my room, to him. He clamped his hand over the phone mouthpiece and nodded distractedly at me.
I hobbled back into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. I’d only been out of bed for a couple of hours but it was looking decidedly welcoming. I switched the TV on low, picked a news channel, and lay down on top of the covers to watch. I think I’d nodded off before the end of the first item.
I woke up with a start that sent my breath out on a hiss. The news anchor still seemed to be rattling on about the same story, but the clock in the corner of the screen showed I’d been out of it for about three-quarters of an hour.
My mouth felt terrible after the coffee and pizza, but the glass of water Sean had put out for me earlier was empty and I was damned if I was going to shout to Matt and ask him to bring me another. I struggled up off the bed and limped slowly across the room, realising that I was finding it a little easier to use the crutch now, if nothing else.
Out in the living area, I looked around but didn’t immediately see Matt or call out to him. Hell, he was probably jet-lagged to all hell and back and sleeping himself. It was only when I was almost in the kitchen area that I glanced across and spotted him sprawled on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table. Not where anyone would have chosen to take a nap.
‘Matt?’ I said, alarmed. I hurried – as much as I could hurry – across and eased myself down onto the floor alongside him, ungainly. ‘Matt! Are you OK?’
He had a trickle of blood running down behind his left ear from a small wound at the back of his head. I pressed two fingers into the hollow beneath his ear and felt what seemed to be a strong pulse. I hadn’t heard anything, but I remembered the silenced Berettas that the men had used when they’d broken into the Lucases’ house. When I parted Matt’s bloodied hair and realised there was no bullet hole hiding underneath it, the relief was great.
But not that great. Assuming Matt hadn’t fainted and hit his head on the coffee table on the way down, that still meant…
I caught a soft noise from behind me and started to twist instinctively. The pain brought me up short before I’d turned halfway.
‘Not so good at looking after people, are you, Charlie?’ said a voice, soft and familiar. I turned just my head, although I hardly needed to in order to recognise him. The guy I’d dubbed Aquarium man was standing behind the sofa with his arms folded. He was smiling.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, ‘how much I’ve been looking forward to meeting you again.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The fear hit hard, fast, deep.
‘Mr Reynolds,’ I said flatly. ‘The pleasure is all yours, I assure you.’ As snappy comebacks went, I didn’t think it was too bad. Not exactly James Bond, but the best I could manage under the circumstances.
‘Oh-ho,’ he murmured at my use of his name. ‘We have been doing our homework, haven’t we?’ He came round the sofa, moving easily, in no hurry. I considered rising but knew I couldn’t do it in time, never mind in style.
Reynolds stopped, too close to me. I had to tilt my head back to look at him. He was dressed in jeans and tan boots and a high-tech designer fleece jacket over a T-shirt. ‘I’ve been doing my homework, too. You’ve got quite a reputation, Charlie.’ He smiled. ‘From what I saw of you in action the other night, you might even have lived up to it – once.’
He was on my left, which I tried to tell myself was good. My left arm had maintained more or less its full strength. His groin was well within striking distance. I was just going to have to be smooth in the delivery – otherwise the resultant shock of the blow was going to do me as much damage as it would him…
And, just as I was contemplating making the first move, Reynolds lifted his foot and, a
lmost casual, nudged my left leg with his boot.
At least, to him it must have seemed no more than a nudge. To me he’d just inserted a molten bayonet into my thigh and twisted it. Blindly, I grabbed my leg with both hands, gripping hard as though pressure alone would cut off the nerve impulses that were currently screaming a rampant distress call along my neural pathways. I bit back a cry, knowing that was what he wanted above all, and sat there, panting until the worst of the crisis was over.
Reynolds had moved back a little way, more than an arm’s length, and squatted down on his haunches so he could better study my reaction.
‘Through-and-throughs are a doozy, aren’t they?’ he said, conversational.
‘Remind me to make sure you can speak from personal experience some time soon,’ I said, keeping my teeth clenched.
‘Well, you see, Charlie, for that you’d need a gun, which I happen to know you don’t have,’ Reynolds said, still cheerful. ‘And, unfortunately for you, I do.’
He reached under his jacket and pulled out a semi-automatic from a shoulder rig. Another Beretta M9, minus the suppressor this time. A replacement for the one I’d taken away from him at the Lucases’ house – and which Vaughan’s men had then taken away from me. Or the same gun?
He was carrying the Beretta cocked and locked, first round out of the magazine and in the chamber, hammer back, safety on. Now, he thumbed the safety off and smiled at me.
The action crinkled the skin around his eyes, which were very cold and very blue. A handsome face. One that lent itself easily to charm. Simone had certainly been taken in by it, had not seen past the attractive collection of features to what lay beneath.
‘So tell me, were you planning on snatching Simone before we left Boston?’ I asked. Anything to distract him.
‘That would have been the easiest solution,’ Reynolds agreed. ‘I would have gotten her at the Aquarium if you’d been thirty seconds slower.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘You think she would have walked out of there with you and left her daughter behind willingly?’
‘Willing or not, she would have walked out of there with me,’ he said, supremely confident. ‘Make no mistake about that.’
‘And that would have achieved what, exactly?’ I said.
He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no, Charlie,’ he said, wagging a disapproving finger. ‘This is not one of those corny old movies where I tell you my whole evil plan and then let you escape moments from death. Let’s face facts – if I wanted you dead, lady, you’d be dead already.’
I glanced at Matt, still lying still as a corpse on the floor next to me. I took reassurance from the fact that I’d verified his pulse myself, and that the wound to his head was still bleeding. Just a trickle, but at least that meant his heart was still pumping blood round his system.
‘So why are you here?’
‘To pass on a message,’ he said. ‘A warning, if you like.’
‘Which is?’
‘Go home,’ Reynolds said. ‘Simple enough, isn’t it? You and the rest of your crew just pack up and go home. No harm, no foul.’
The same message Vaughan had tried to deliver, right before Simone was killed. But I’d told him we were going. Wasn’t that enough?
‘Or…what?’
He laughed. ‘Quite apart from the obvious threat, here and now, you mean?’ he said. ‘Well, just remember that Ella’s a sweet kid. How old is she now – four? You leave, today, and maybe she’ll get to be five.’
The fear was a sudden starburst rising from my belly, bunched up tight under my ribs, a bright, leaking coldness that froze my heart to the inside of my chest. A cold flame ignited at the base of my right lung
‘That’s it?’ I said.
He considered for a moment. ‘Yup, that’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s the message, from my boss to yours, in full.’
‘So you’re nothing more than the messenger boy, is that it?’
He smiled again, almost a grin this time. ‘Well, it was left to my own judgement how best to deliver the message – how to give it maximum impact, you might say.’
He stretched out the Beretta and touched the barrel of the gun to my left leg. It was barely a brush against the fabric of my sweatpants, but I couldn’t control a flinch that had nothing to do with the physical contact.
Almost lazily, like a caress, Reynolds used the gun to trace the indentation where the bullet had exited at the front of my thigh. I compelled myself to sit motionless, to show no response.
‘I wonder what will happen,’ he said softly, ‘if I put another round through your leg in just the same place as the last. Will it hurt more or less than the first time?’
‘Your message wouldn’t get delivered,’ I said with a calm that came from somewhere else, somewhere outside of me.
‘No?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘No,’ I said, firm but matteroffact. ‘Last time, I was lucky. A millimetre or two either way and you’ll hit an artery and I’ll bleed out before the others get back.’ The tightness in my chest was making it difficult to get a whole sentence out in one breath. ‘And if that happens, Sean Meyer will find you and kill you, if he has to go to the ends of the earth to do it.’ The utter conviction in my voice didn’t have to be forced.
Reynolds sat back a moment, as if considering. ‘Your death would be an inconvenience we could do without,’ he allowed. ‘But I still have to persuade you and your boss – and anyone else who’s hanging around – that letting this drop would be in all your best interests. And if I can’t shoot you—’ he shrugged, regretful, slid the safety back on and put the Beretta back into its holster, ‘I guess I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.’
I tried to brace myself, brought my arms up to cover as much of my torso as I could, but it didn’t do much good. He hit me a low relatively lightweight punch, almost experimental, somewhere around my kidney on the left side. An incendiary burst of pain exploded inwards and upwards, the shock wave buffeting through my body, robbing me of sight and breath and sanity. I screamed.
And then I fainted.
A moment later, or so it seemed, I opened my eyes and found I was sprawled face down on the sofa with a pulsating white-hot burn going on in my back that lanced straight through to my chest and pinned me there.
For a moment I thought that maybe it was all over, that Reynolds had delivered his message and gone. I should have known I wasn’t that lucky.
‘You’re obviously not a party girl, Charlie,’ he said, shattering that fragile hope. ‘Here was I hoping we’d be up all night dancing, and you pass out on me at the first sign of a little trouble.’
I lifted my head – very, very carefully – and turned it so I could see across the room. Reynolds was sitting in one of the chairs on the other side of the coffee table.
‘I was shot, Reynolds. What did you expect?’ I said, my voice thick. I had the hollow bitter taste of bile in the back of my throat and I had to swallow it before I could speak. ‘I thought your orders weren’t to kill me.’
A mistake to use the word ‘orders’, I realised, but not until I’d already used it and it was too late to pull it back. Something even colder flashed through his eyes.
‘Kill you, no,’ he said, getting to his feet with that deadly smile back in place. ‘Nobody said anything about what else I could do to you, though.’ And he reached for the fly of his jeans.
I panicked instantly, flapping like a landed fish. I tried to push myself up off the sofa, but my right arm wouldn’t support my bodyweight and folded under me, so I nearly rolled over the edge and fell. Reynolds grabbed hold of my shoulders and hoisted me back onto the sofa, shoving my face down hard into the cushion so now I was suffocating as well. The spike of pain was such that I barely felt him tug at the waistband of my sweatpants.
In desperation, I reached my left hand back, clawed at him. My fingers brushed against something leather and he jerked back out of reach so fast that at first I thought I might somehow have hurt him, and
then I realised that by chance I’d touched the holstered Beretta.
His weight shifted. Then came the sound of something heavy dropping onto glass. He’d put the gun down over on the coffee table, only a metre or so away. It might as well have been in Düsseldorf.
While he was leaning over I bucked under him, but it was a feeble attempt with no muscle behind it and he regained his balance easily.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ he muttered, his voice tight and breathless, and he deliberately shoved one fist into the back of my right shoulder blade and leant his weight onto it.
The pain was instant, inescapable. Deep inside, I swear I heard my own flesh tearing. I managed half a cry that shrank into a gasp and then I went utterly still. I think my mind detached from my body at that point and began to float. There was no other explanation for the fact that I could see his face clearly, the feral focus in his eyes, the dark primeval glitter. Except for the fact, of course, that it wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look.
You can survive this. You have survived it before…
Reynolds gave a satisfied grunt at my sudden capitulation. I felt him shift his weight again, positioning himself. I shut my eyes.
I felt the impact, second-hand, and the jerk as his body absorbed the blow and then collapsed sideways, dropping hard onto the floor alongside the sofa.
‘Get off her, you bastard, or I will blow your fucking head off!’
I’d forgotten Matt, lying on the floor with a bleeding lump on the back of his head. So had Reynolds, clearly. He remembered him now, mainly because Matt had staggered upright, unnoticed until he snatched up the Beretta from the coffee table and smacked Reynolds round the back of his skull with the butt.
As he fell, the pressure lifted off the wound in my back as suddenly as it had landed. On the whole, I’d say it didn’t immediately make things any better. I wanted to shout at Matt that he’d got a gun, not a bloody club, and to pull the trigger and keep pulling it, but I found Reynolds had stolen my voice along with half my self-respect.
