by Zoe Sharp
I no longer had to use a crutch, but I still favoured my right leg a little, especially if I was tired. Intensive physiotherapy and spending just about every morning in the gym meant I was approaching something like my former level of fitness, but it was – as the physio at CMMC had predicted – a long road back.
‘What do you think?’ Sean asked as I moved over to one of the tall windows. If you stood on a chair and squinted sideways, you could just about see Central Park from the spacious living room. That fact alone should have added at least another thousand dollars a month onto the rent.
‘It’s fabulous,’ I said. ‘But are you sure about this?’
He shrugged. He had on the same dark suit he’d worn when we’d met Harrington the banker and Simone, that day in London. It was June and the temperature outside was in the nineties, but Sean still managed to look crisp and unflustered. He put his hands on my upper arms and turned me to face him.
‘Are you sure about it?’ he asked softly. ‘This partnership offer from Parker Armstrong is too good to turn down, but I will turn it down without a second thought if you can’t face the thought of coming with me. Of living over here. I couldn’t do it without you, Charlie. I wouldn’t want to.’
I didn’t answer immediately, but pulled away from him and turned back to the window. I still hadn’t gained enough distance from the Lucas job to find true perspective. As far as the law was concerned, I was in the clear. Parker Armstrong’s formidable legal team had seen to that.
After all, they’d argued, I was still barely recovered from my wounds. The doctor with the perfect smile had expressed his disbelief that I’d been capable of walking through a building and shooting two men dead at that stage of my recovery. It must have been an act of extreme determination, he said, for someone who had suffered such injuries to do what I had done. But there was something sad in his eyes as he said it, something disappointed. As though he hadn’t expended so much of his energy and skill carefully repairing me, only for me to go out and kill people by way of a thank you.
Sean and I had flown back into a rainy Heathrow and I’d tried to pick up the pieces of my former life. I worked hard on my rehabilitation, as though if people couldn’t see the physical after-effects, they wouldn’t see the freak I’d become. The stuff of children’s nightmares, who sent a little girl I would cheerfully have died to protect into a fit of pure hysterics at the sight of me.
I hadn’t seen Ella since that day at the surplus store when I’d killed the man who was threatening her as he’d held her in his arms. It was for the best, the child psychiatrists told me, if she never saw me again. My image was forever tainted with the kind of horrors no one of Ella’s age was ever supposed to witness. Just the mention of my name, they told me, caused her enormous distress. The very fact that it did so caused me enormous distress also, but I didn’t tell them that.
Matt had taken her home to the house he and Simone had shared in north London, where the people who claim to be experts in this kind of trauma felt Ella might achieve some kind of stability. Harrington’s bank had arranged a trust fund that, properly managed, would ensure she never wanted for anything in her life.
Apart, possibly, from a mother.
And I hope, when she’s old enough to understand, that Matt will tell her the truth about what happened to Simone. Better for Ella to have the cold hard facts than to half-remember, and to wonder. And maybe to have history repeating itself in twenty years’ time when she goes looking for her grandfather and finds him in a New Hampshire prison serving life for the murder of his wife.
After all, if Simone had been told the truth about the real Greg Lucas, would she have wanted so badly to track him down? Would six people now be dead?
‘You did what you had to,’ Sean said now, as though he could read my thoughts. ‘Reynolds would have killed her.’
‘Would he?’ I turned back to face him. ‘He knew what Ella was worth – and she wasn’t worth anything dead. Maybe—’
Sean shook his head. ‘You couldn’t let him take her,’ he said. ‘And you said as soon as he saw you – the state you were in – he went for a shot. You did what you had to,’ he repeated. ‘Let it go.’
From the hallway we heard the apartment door open and a voice call an echoing hello.
‘In here,’ Sean said, not taking his eyes away from my face.
Parker Armstrong ducked his head into the living room, smiling. A tall, slim man in his early forties, with artistically greying hair that seemed older than his face but not as old as his eyes. Sean’s new partner. My new boss.
‘Well?’ he said, advancing when he saw us. ‘What d’you think?’
Sean raised his eyebrow at me. I hesitated just for a second, then plunged into a decision and felt a weight lift as I did so. I turned to Parker and smiled.
‘It’s perfect,’ I said, and thought I saw his shoulders ease a fraction.
He grinned. ‘So’s the rent,’ he said wryly. ‘What use is it having family who own property in Manhattan, if you don’t abuse your connections, right?’
‘Right.’
Parker held his hand out to Sean. ‘I guess this means we’re in business,’ he said.
A slow smile spread across Sean’s face as he took it. ‘I guess it does.’
‘Charlie,’ Parker said, offering me the same. ‘Good to have you with us.’ His grip was firm and dry without being overly macho. One of the things I’d liked about him from the outset. ‘Losing Jakes was a bad time for everyone. He was a good guy. I hope this will be a breath of fresh air for all of us.’
‘So do I,’ I said, and meant it.
‘We’ll get the lease signed for this place when we get back to the office. You guys hungry? You want to go get something to eat?’
We rode south on Sixth towards TriBeCa and the Financial District, in one of the ubiquitous yellow Crown Victoria taxicabs that had the suspension of a water bed. I sat behind the driver, next to the window, watching the vibrant sun-drenched New York streets as they flashed past. Manhattan Island was small enough that it seemed so much more concentrated than London, more intense, and I wondered if I craved that noise and bustle as a means to drown out other voices.
I thought about Ella and wondered how long it would be before the memory of her faded. Her smile, and her healing kiss, and her screams.
And ultimately I thought about Reynolds and I replayed, as I’d done so many times since that night, the way he’d made his decision to try to kill me. Sean was right, to a point, because the moment Reynolds had taken the gun away from Ella’s head and started to turn it in my direction, there was only going to be one possible outcome. One of us was going to die.
But that didn’t take into account the fact I’d gone into that room with the image of Reynolds attacking me at the apartment burning fiercely in my mind. I hadn’t wanted his meek surrender. I’d wanted his blood.
So I’d gone in there ready to take him out, not face him down. I’d known he was a natural predator and he’d taken one look at me and he’d decided I was easy prey, as I’d suspected he might. But at the end of the day, it was purely luck that he’d reacted in such a way that justified my actions, fractionally after the event.
Matt had asked me why I’d removed the suppressor from the gun before we went into the stockroom and I’d told him it was purely to save those extra seven ounces, but that wasn’t the whole story. It was entirely plausible and nobody had questioned it since, but I knew if I’d gone in there and shot Reynolds with the suppressor still attached, I would have had a much harder time convincing anyone it was self-defence, rather than assassination.
So, still I ask myself the question: Did I kill him because I had no choice? Or because I made one?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book would not have been possible but for the patience and understanding of a number of very special people, who allowed me to pick their brains without a murmur. They are, in no particular order, fellow mystery author DP Lyle, MD for
his superb detailed medical information; other fellow mystery authors Fred Rea and James O Born for gun stuff and for US law enforcement info; gunshot wound survivor Mick Botterill for his unique insights; fellow mystery author and lawyer Randall Hicks for legal info and for attempting to keep me straight on some of my accidental Britishisms; and friend Lucette Nicol for filling in some of the bits of Boston I’d forgotten. As always, if it’s wrong, it’s probably my invention.
Other answers to probably stupid questions were given freely, and with grace, by Barbara Franchi, MaryEllen Stagliano, and Jann Briesacher, as well as a number of the enthusiastic contributors to the DorothyL website. Thank you all for your invaluable assistance.
My thanks, too, to the staff at the White Mountain Hotel, and Jonathon’s Seafood Restaurant in North Conway NH, and the Boston Harbor Hotel in Boston MA, for generously allowing me to set parts of the action in these outstanding locations.
As always, my advance readers were ferocious and vigilant. Thanks go to Judy Bobalik, Peter Doleman, Claire Duplock, Sarah Harrison and Tim Winfield for not flinching, even when I did.
I am forever indebted to my wonderful agent, Jane Gregory, and to Emma Dunford and all the team at Gregory and Company Authors’ Agents for continuing unparalleled advice and support.
Also, to the indefatigable Marcia Markland, Diana Szu, and all the staff at St Martin’s Minotaur, especially those in sales and marketing, who work so hard to make this book a reality in the US. And to Susie Dunlop and all at Allison & Busby, for picking up the baton with such energy and style in the UK.
Some extraordinarily talented and generous people deserve thanks for lending more than their share of support to this book when they didn’t have to. Above and beyond. I’m speechless other than to list their names – masters of their art Ken Bruen and Lee Child, and the incomparable Jon and Ruth Jordan at Crimespree magazine.
But, of course, the biggest thanks of all go to my husband, Andy, who helps more than he will ever know, every step of the way.
Finally, a special mention goes to Frances L Neagley, who made the generous successful bid in the charity auction in support of the Youth Literacy Program run by Centro Romero – held at the Bouchercon mystery convention in Chicago, 2005 – to have her name used as a character in this book. You are included with great pleasure.
About the Author
ZOË SHARP was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the north-west coast of England. She opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and became a freelance photojournalist in 1988. She turned to crime writing after receiving death threat letters in the course of her work, which led to the creation of her no-nonsense heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The fourth book in the series, First Drop, was nominated for the 2005 Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. Zoë lives on the edge of the Lake District, where she and her husband, a nonfiction writer, have recently self-built their own house. Zoë blogs regularly on her own website, www.zoesharp.com and also on the award-nominated www.murderati.com.
By Zoë Sharp
IN THE CHARLIE FOX SERIES
Second Shot
Third Strike
Fourth Day
Fifth Victim
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
13 Charlotte Mews
London W1T 4EJ
www.allisonandbusby.com
Copyright © 2007 by ZoË Sharp
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
First published in Great Britain in 2007.
This ebook edition first published in 2011.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
ISBN 978-0–7490–1043–0
