Bad Turn

by Zoe Sharp

  Besides, I was hoping Helena still had my SIG and I could reclaim it when I reached them.

  It was around five hundred klicks from Switzerland roughly southwest to my destination near Rodez in the département of Aveyron. After the first couple of hours, I reckoned that if Parker hadn’t reported me by now there was a chance he wasn’t going to. Either that or he was a far heavier sleeper than I realised. Still, every police cruiser I spotted on the autoroute made me nervous.

  It occurred to me that the Merc was bound to have some kind of GPS tracker fitted. And it would no doubt suit Parker’s purposes better to keep tabs on me privately, rather than involve the authorities at this stage. Even after last night, it was hard to know which way he’d go.

  I confess I had absolutely no clue what to say to him the next time we met.

  The long journey gave me the opportunity to reflect on the night before at some length. I found I was still without regrets. It had been a long time in the build-up and there’s only so much foreplay you can stand. Besides, it had been good. Better than good, if I was honest. Parker always had been highly attuned to those around him. It was interesting to discover that sensitivity was not limited to his professional life.

  Question was, where did we go from here?

  Was there even anywhere to go?

  The only thing I knew about the French part of the Kincaids’ trip was the name of the place we’d been heading to and the man who owned it. I’d been planning to bone up on the rest during the flight from Italy. So much for that idea…

  The Frenchman’s name was Gilbert de Bourdillon. His home was a chateau in or near a village, both of which bore his last name. The de Bourdillons, I gathered, were an old family. In fact, they probably had their feet under the table well before a bunch of Norman toffs decided to hop across the Channel on the equivalent of a stag weekend and teach that English upstart, Harold, a lesson.

  I’d entered the address into the Merc’s satnav and followed where it sent me. But I was not wholly prepared for my first sight of the place when I arrived.

  Chateau de Bourdillon was not simply a country house, as I’d expected, but a full-blown castle. A stout tower at each corner, crenellated walls, arrow slits, moat, drawbridge. The whole nine yards.

  I braked to a halt, leaning on the steering wheel and taking it in.

  “Now, that’s what you call a nice little place in the country,” I murmured under my breath.

  The closest I could get, initially, was the end of the driveway. From there, a dead straight avenue of sculpted trees led towards the chateau itself, guarded by a pair of iron-studded gates about fifteen feet high. The gates were made of weathered dark wood—either old themselves or artfully constructed to look that way.

  Their design was part practical, part decorative, with enough gaps between curving slats for me to take in the view of the castle itself beyond. On either side were enormous gateposts, topped by bears sitting up on their hindquarters and holding shields. The bears looked as though they were probably actual size.

  Despite this history, the gates clearly had some kind of remotely operated electronic lock. Hidden in the creeper to one side was a camera. I climbed out of the car and leaned nonchalantly against the driver’s door, staring up at it, until I heard a loud click and the gates began to swing very slowly open.

  I slid back behind the wheel, suppressing a groan at the stiffness in my body. Surely it wasn’t that long since I last had sex? Then I remembered that, in addition to two days of travelling, I’d also been in a fairly dramatic car crash less than twenty-four hours earlier, and put most of it down to that.

  There were no obvious places to park in front of the castle, so I abandoned the Merc to one side of the moat. By the time I’d switched off the engine, a figure had emerged from the interior and was standing below the daggered tips of the iron portcullis, waiting for me.

  Of all the people I’d been hoping to make up the reception committee, he had not been top of the list. In fact, the very sight of him gave me the feeling that perhaps my welcome was not about to be as warm and fluffy as I’d hoped.

  Schade.

  47

  I climbed out of the car, careful to keep my movements slow and predictable. It was like walking out of the western saloon and finding the lone gunslinger in the black hat standing waiting for me in the middle of Main Street. All it needed was tumbleweed and the jingle of spurs. I even imagined I could hear hoof beats.

  Then I realised that I could—hear hoof beats, that is.

  I turned, saw two riders on white horses approaching. I recognised Helena as one, not least because she yelled my name and urged her mount forwards from a sedate trot to a flattened gallop.

  Well, at least someone’s pleased to see me.

  I stepped away from the car to meet her, which served the purpose of taking me further away from Schade at the same time. There was something about the way he just stood there that sent the hairs rising at the back of my neck.

  Helena pulled up at the last moment, her face flushed with excitement. I didn’t kid myself that it was entirely caused by sight of my prodigal return.

  Close up, her horse was surprisingly small—almost pony sized—but with a well put together, muscular build. I knew I should probably recognise the breed, but for the moment it escaped me.

  “Charlie! My God, I thought I’d never see you again.” Helena jumped off the horse and grabbed me into a big hug. I was too startled to do much more than submit, although I did reach out and catch hold of a rein when the animal showed signs of taking off.

  Helena stepped back. She was smiling. Then she punched me in the arm.

  “Ow, what was that for?”

  “Jeez, we thought you were dead. Couldn’t you at least have called me?”

  I never knew you cared.

  I was saved from having to respond out loud by the arrival of the second rider, at a more dignified pace. He was a slim man with a rather large nose. He was wearing a tweed jacket and sat on his horse like he’d been in the saddle since before he could walk.

  Helena turned to face him. “Gilbert,” she said, pronouncing it ‘Zhil-bere’ in an exaggeratedly French style. “This is Charlie Fox. She saved my life—quite literally—in Italy.”

  The man dismounted and took off his tweed cap, revealing a curled wisp of hair on the otherwise bald crown of his head. He held out his hand.

  “It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you,” he said, with an accent that owed very little to France but a good deal to Eton and Oxford. “Gilbert de Bourdillon. Your fame precedes you, Charlie. I can’t wait to hear all about it—over breakfast, perhaps. Have you eaten?”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said faintly. “And yes, I would love some breakfast.”

  “Excellent. I’ll just drop this pair back at the stables and be with you in a jiffy.”

  Helena started to protest, but he held up a warning finger. “No, no, wouldn’t hear of it. By the sounds of it, you and your Charlie have some catching up to do. And all I have to do is deliver them. The stable girls will take it from there.”

  “They’re beautiful animals, sir,” I said, remembering my manners and, as inspiration struck, “Not Camargue horses, are they, by any chance?”

  “Oh, well spotted. Yes, indeed. One of the oldest breeds in Europe. I can see you know your horseflesh, Charlie. I shall look forward to chatting with you further.”

  He set off on foot, leading the horses, heading to one side of the chateau where I could see a cluster of buildings. They looked slightly less fortified than the main property.

  Helena linked her arm through mine and turned me towards the chateau.

  “Are you OK?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Everyone got out of the Sikorsky before they blew it?”

  “Yes, thanks to you. I don’t know what I would have done if—”

  “Don’t,” I said quickly. “It is what you pay me for, after all.”

  “I think that counts as above and beyond, Charli
e.”

  I shrugged, then dug in my pocket and handed over the rose-gold Rolex she’d loaned to me. She took it with a nod, clutching it in both hands as if she thought she’d never see that again, either.

  I hesitated about asking for my TAG Heuer. It was a good make, if nowhere near as expensive a piece of jewellery as the one Helena owned, but for me there was a lot of sentimental value in that watch. As it turned out, I didn’t need to ask. She pulled back her sleeve and undid the clasp on the strap, dropping the watch into my hand.

  I closed my fingers around it—a gift from Sean, just after we first arrived in New York. I couldn’t bring myself to put it aside, no matter how painful the memories attached to it now. I was momentarily thankful I hadn’t been wearing it last night.

  As I clipped the watch into place, I nodded towards the Merc. “I have your jacket in the car, too, but it, um, may need dry cleaning.”

  “Keep it,” Helena said. “It looked good on you.”

  “What about my SIG?” I asked. “Do you still have it?”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “I had to leave it in Italy.”

  I grabbed the backpack from the boot. Helena fell into step alongside me and, unexpectedly, linked her arm through mine.

  I glanced across at her, my stride faltering.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?” I asked.

  “Of course. Why?”

  “Oh, I’m not complaining, believe me. But let’s just say you’re not usually quite so…happy to have me around.”

  Helena was quiet for a moment. “You put your ass on the line to save mine. Don’t think I don’t know what a hell of a thing it was you did,” she murmured. “I reckoned I owed you a little protection in return.”

  Before I could query that statement, she let go of my arm and walked on towards the drawbridge. When I followed, I realised that the main entry to the chateau was now deserted. Whatever Schade had been waiting for—whatever it was he wanted with me—he seemed to have changed his mind and disappeared.

  Or perhaps he realised he’d missed his chance.

  48

  The breakfast our host had promised was served in a formal dining room on the first floor. The decoration went in for a lot of gilt detailing, huge faded wall-hung tapestries, and cherubs painted on the ceiling. There were fireplaces on both sides of the room, but they seemed to be blocked off with marble slabs. Food was being kept warm in polished silver chafing dishes with burners underneath, like a hotel buffet.

  Helena helped herself to coffee and sat with me, even though she claimed to have eaten already, before she and our host went out riding.

  Shortly after I’d begun to eat, the door opened and the man himself walked in, still in his riding clothes. De Bourdillon was accompanied by Kincaid and Mrs Heedles.

  “Charlie!” Kincaid said, looking almost as happy to see me as his wife had done. He shook my hand vigorously. “I’m glad you’re all in one piece.”

  “So am I. How’s”—I broke off, realising slightly late that de Bourdillon might not be privy to the Kincaids’ itinerary so far, finished with—“everyone else?”

  “We all made it out unscathed,” Kincaid said. The twitch of his lips told me he knew exactly what I’d done. “Mrs Heedles stabilised Bernardo and his people took him and Tomas to the hospital—over near Arezzo.”

  “Will they be all right?”

  “So they reckon. It’s a private hospital. The kinda place where money buys you a very good doctor and no questions asked.”

  “Well…that’s good.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m OK, as you can see.”

  “Yes, dear, so we can see,” Mo Heedles said, pouring herself tea from a bone china pot. “What we can’t quite work out, though, is how.”

  Her face held only polite enquiry but the comment hung in the air between us, gathering weight.

  I swallowed a mouthful of bacon, giving myself time to consider under the guise of good manners. “How what?”

  Kincaid cleared his throat. “The last time you were seen, a group of Syrian mercenaries were loading you, bound and gagged, into a speedboat in Italy. You left behind your pocketbook, your driver’s licence, and your passport.” He spread his arms. “And yet here you are.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Kincaid put his elbows on the table and linked his fingers. “We have time.”

  I gestured to my plate. “Don’t I at least get to eat before you throw me into the dungeons?” One of the things I learned in the army was never to pass up the opportunity to refuel. I glanced at de Bourdillon, who was sitting taking this all in with bright, inquisitive eyes. “I assume this place does have dungeons, sir?”

  “Oh, naturally,” he said. “Although considering that’s where I lay down wine, I don’t think being put down there would be too much of a hardship for you.”

  “Possibly not,” I agreed. “The collective term for wines is a ‘pleasure’ I believe.”

  He laughed, a guffaw. I grinned back at him. Kincaid and Mrs Heedles, however, were not so easily distracted.

  “Where d’you pick up the Benz?” Kincaid asked.

  “Ah, I, um borrowed it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “From who?”

  “From my former employer.”

  “Armstrong?” His second eyebrow rose to join the first. “What’s he doing in France?”

  “He was in Italy, actually.”

  “OK, this I gotta hear.”

  I sighed and launched into my story, sticking as close to the truth as possible. I recounted the facts of my encounter with Khalid Hamzeh and Darius Orosco without offering my opinion on what any of it might mean. Either they could work that one out for themselves, or it wasn’t something they wanted to hear at all. Either way, it was not my place to say it.

  When it came to Parker, I left out any mention of Conrad Epps’s involvement. And, of course, what took place between that nightcap in Geneva and my early morning flit. Kissing and telling was never my style.

  “And he just happened to have brought along your spare passport?” Kincaid said, frowning. “Sounds like an intervention.”

  “After the way he behaved when I quit, it sounded more like a guilty conscience to me.”

  “For driving you to the dark side, you mean?” He eyed me. “You’re not tempted to go back?”

  Was I tempted? It was hard to reconcile the Parker who’d stripped away my every personal and professional lifeline when he threw me out of the apartment, with the same Parker who’d stripped me out of that bathrobe and then done things with his hands, and his mouth, and his body, that made my heart stutter just to think about it.

  “Oh, I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?” I said keeping my voice even. “I let him take me to what looked to be a very expensive hotel in Geneva and buy me dinner, then I not only ran out on him, but also stole his car. Not exactly in contention for employee of the month, am I?”

  “I would say that depends on who you’re really working for,” Kincaid said, “doesn’t it?”

  49

  And so it begins.

  I schooled my face into careful blankness. “Forgive me, but I thought I was working for Helena.”

  “Yeah,” Kincaid said dryly. “So did we.”

  “So, what changed?”

  Almost on cue, the door opened and Schade came in. His gaze swept the corners of the room, like it always did, before settling on me. Behind him, came Darius Orosco. There was trouble in the bullish set of his shoulders.

  “You shoulda been more suspicious of her right from the start,” he said to Kincaid. “Right place, right time to stop that ambush back in New Jersey, hey? How d’you know she didn’t arrange the whole damn thing in the first place?”

  “If you think I’d be prepared to see people die—not to mention killing them personally—just to ingratiate myself, then you way overestimate my ruthlessness.”

  “One coincidence we mighta bought
, but then your supposedly ex-boss swooping in outta the blue to rescue you yesterday? That was one coincidence too many, lady.”

  “But we are supposed to buy the coincidence of you being in the right place at the right time to swoop in and rescue your daughter—or someone you believed was your daughter—within hours of her being snatched?” I shot back.

  “I’ve been in this business since before you were a twitch in your daddy’s pants,” Orosco said with a sneer. “I keep my ear damn close to the ground and I got the guts and the instinct to act fast when I hear something I don’t like the sound of.”

  His eyes skimmed over Kincaid as he spoke, extending the insult to him by implication, also. I waited for Kincaid to react, to ask when, exactly, Orosco had heard about the proposed assault on Ugoccione’s island. To ask why he’d taken action himself instead of—rather than as well as—warning anyone else of the dangers.

  Kincaid said nothing.

  Orosco nodded, as if he’d had a private bet with himself on that and was disappointed rather than surprised to have won.

  “I got Mrs Heedles to dig deeper into this Armstrong guy,” Orosco continued. Again, there was disdain in his voice. Clearly, he felt this was something Kincaid should have thought of himself. If he was man enough for the job…

  Mrs Heedles threw out a look that hinted at apology before she said, “It would seem that Mr Armstrong is Homeland’s go-to guy for operations that need an additional layer of deniability.” She fiddled with the teacup in front of her, aligning the spoon on the saucer. “There was some business with a cult in California.” Her eyes flicked to mine. “You may recall the one.”

  “Fourth Day,” I murmured. “Yes, I remember.”

  How could I forget? When I untangled the chain of events that led to the Fourth Day cult, it had started with a mess my parents had got themselves into, and subsequently dragged in me, Sean, and Parker, too. We’d ended up beholden to Conrad Epps. Which, in its turn, had led me inextricably to this point, via tragedy, heartbreak, and several points of no return. Personal as well as professional.