Fourth Day

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘And are you still in regular contact with him?’

  I nodded.

  ‘But you don’t want him to know that you’re expecting his baby.’ Another statement, disappointment in her tone now, maybe even a little anger on behalf of all those expectant mothers who’d sat in this very same chair and didn’t have a choice in the matter. Because they didn’t know. Because they were scared. Because they’d been betrayed or abandoned or rejected out of hand.

  That shook me out of my stupor a little. ‘You can tell that from my test results?’ I said sedately. ‘Wow, you people are good.’

  She capped her pen, tossed it onto the desk and sat back, the action causing her plastic chair to bounce slightly, like an old-fashioned rocker. ‘Look, you’re wearing a good watch and expensive shoes. I’m guessing you don’t need to come here unless you wanted to keep this quiet.’

  I was wearing the Tag Heuer Sean had given me when we’d first moved into the Upper East Side apartment, and soft brown leather ankle-length boots under my jeans, bought in a sale at Saks. Everyone told me I’d got a bargain, but they’d still cost what seemed to be an indecent amount of money, even when I’d mentally converted it back into sterling. So, I could see her point.

  I let out a slow breath. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t want him to know.’

  ‘Why not? I mean, is he married?’

  Sean and I had discussed the subject of marriage only once, on a two-day drive to Texas, under threat and on the run. ‘I don’t think I’m good husband material,’ he’d said. ‘And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father.’ The ironic thing was, at the precise moment of that conversation, it was too late. I’d already conceived.

  ‘Only to his job,’ I said, closing that mental door. ‘We both are, come to that.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said with the faintest trace of a sneer. ‘And you feel having a baby will disrupt your career?’

  ‘I work in close protection,’ I said flatly. ‘I’m a bodyguard. My job is to put myself between the client and the threat, regardless of personal danger.’

  How can I do that, without hesitation, if I’ve a child to consider? This won’t just disrupt my career – it will finish it.

  ‘Ah,’ she said again, more soberly now. ‘I see.’ There was another long pause and we sat listening to the bustle of phones and pagers and babies crying outside her office, and the buzz of traffic coming up from the street. ‘You’re from England, aren’t you?’ she said then. ‘Is your status here in the United States dependent on your work?’

  I nodded. ‘I would most likely have to go home.’

  ‘And the father, I take it, might not want to follow?’

  I thought of the newly installed ARMSTRONG-MEYER lettering in brushed stainless steel on the maple panelling behind Bill Rendelson’s desk. Ever since Sean had been manoeuvred out of the army and set up on his own, he’d been working towards this point. A partnership in a highly regarded New York agency with a prestigious international reputation. I’d already nearly ruined things by getting him, and Parker, embroiled in a huge scandal involving my parents the previous autumn. This might just be the final straw.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t guarantee that he would.’

  ‘Then you have a big decision to make about your future, and that of your baby,’ she said, suddenly looking very tired. She pulled open the top drawer of her desk and picked out a couple of leaflets, put them into my hands. I glanced at the top one. It offered advice on terminating unwanted pregnancy. The second was a list of clinics who would perform such a procedure.

  Mouth suddenly tasting of ashes, I lurched to my feet, spilling the leaflets on the desktop. The open drawer, I noticed, was full of them.

  The young doctor eyed me with concern. ‘Take them – think it through,’ she urged. ‘You need to consider all your options, however unpalatable you may find them at the moment.’ She hesitated. ‘Surely, as a bodyguard, you have to do that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, finding my voice and not recognising it when I did, ‘but murdering the principal is never an option.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We went in to Fourth Day two nights after our initial recce. Sean at the rear, Joe McGregor and Parker Armstrong to the centre, and me on point.

  Parker was old-fashioned in some ways, but there was no gallantry at play. Sean and I had done the bulk of the recon work and knew the ground. Parker simply picked me to lead because I was physically smallest, minimising our chances of detection.

  We’d carefully chosen dark disruptive-pattern-material camouflage to suit the terrain going in, and aid our exfil. Particularly if we were in a hurry, or under fire. The last thing we seriously expected was that Fourth Day would use deadly force to protect the compound, but we planned for it anyway.

  Each of us wore body armour under our fatigues and McGregor had an M16 to give us comparable range and rate of fire to the weapons we’d seen the guards carrying. Its use was strictly a last resort, Parker had warned, and not something he wanted to explain to the local cops.

  As well as our usual semi-automatics, we all carried TASER stun guns as a non-lethal alternative. Parker had several ampoules filled with various pharmaceutical concoctions, including enough horse tranquilliser to knock out half the runners in the Grand National if he had to.

  We hiked in just as the sun dipped below the far horizon, using the last of the light and a hand-held GPS. Sean and I had already programmed in waypoints during our daylight recces. We knew the planned route was clear of undue hazards or easy opportunities for ambush.

  The moon came and went behind fast-moving high cloud. Our shadows followed suit, rippling like liquid over the uneven ground. The local weather service had predicted an almost clear night, so we carried our night vision equipment rather than using it.

  We moved as quickly as silence would allow. Less than twenty minutes after leaving our drop-off point, the four of us were overlooking the darkened compound. We confirmed our insertion to Bill Rendelson, monitoring comms traffic from a van pulled in behind a small roadside bar a mile away. Parker glanced across at Sean. ‘You’re sure about Witney’s location?’

  ‘Ground floor, third window along, to the left of the main doorway,’ Sean said immediately, taking no offence. No harm ever came from double-checking.

  Parker nodded to McGregor. ‘Eyes and ears, Joe,’ he said, and the three of us ducked out of cover and ran, bent low, across the open ground towards the building, leaving McGregor to watch our backs.

  We reached the door through which I’d seen Randall Bane emerge only a few days before. I tried the handle to check it was locked, jerked my head to Sean. He moved up, a lock pick set already in his hands. Within moments, the tumblers had yielded and the door swung open to reveal a spartan lobby.

  Sean and I had already checked that Fourth Day did not use a CCTV monitoring system, which would have been my first request, had I been in charge of their security. I reminded myself that Nu had failed Selection twice.

  We were still careful as we slipped quickly over the threshold into the main accommodation building. We stayed wide once we were through, to make targeting more difficult.

  There was enough light from the windows to see the contours of the room. The sparse furniture was functional but not shabby, and modern air conditioning was unobtrusively keeping the internal temperature down to a comfortable cool level.

  Despite the lack of a personal touch, the interior of the building bore out our earlier observations of a revitalised organisation. Even the lino gleamed to a high-buff shine like a barracks floor.

  Parker would have stepped past me towards the left-hand corridor if I hadn’t put out a restraining arm. For a moment I thought he might insist, but he surrendered point at once, indicating with a slight bow that I should go on ahead. I moved past him into the corridor, putting my feet down with utmost care, counting the doorways which corresponded to windows on the outside of the building. Fourth Day mi
ght have enjoyed an injection of funds over the last few years, but that didn’t mean the inmates got bigger cells.

  We flattened against the wall outside the door to the room we knew to be Witney’s, and I sent up a quiet prayer that he wasn’t fooling around with anyone that we didn’t know about and hadn’t suspected. Or at least that he didn’t regularly spend the night away from his own bed. With Parker’s potted history of the cult in mind, nothing would have surprised me.

  The door was solid, secured with a simple lock that was child’s play for someone with Sean’s nimble fingers. Then we were pushing the door open. Parker and I went through the gap first, leaving Sean to pull the door almost closed behind us and keep a watch over the corridor through the crack.

  The window had no curtains, which was how we’d been able to pin it down to being the correct room in the first place. Now, illuminated by the ghostly moonlight, I caught an instant snapshot of the layout of the narrow space Thomas Witney had called home for the last five years. A small desk, a straight-backed chair with a pile of clothing folded neatly on the seat, a single bed, and a side table containing only a book and a glass of water.

  Witney lay sprawled beneath a thin sheet, apparently relaxed and unaware. Carefully, quietly, Parker reached for one of the ampoules he carried and broke the seal.

  But some people are alert to even the smallest sound while their body rests. As we closed on him, some animal instinct jolted him into wakefulness. Witney reared up from the covers, body in spasm as though responding to a nightmare, and saw us. Instantly, I heard him suck in a breath to shout.

  I took one fast onward stride and launched, landing with one knee in the vee of his ribcage to punch the wind out of him, hands going for his mouth, his throat. Parker grabbed his arm, jabbed the needle of the ampoule into bare flesh and squirted the contents into the former schoolteacher’s heightened system, where his accelerated heart rate began to distribute it like an express courier service. I wrestled Witney’s head into a chokehold, subdued him long enough for the drug to take effect.

  Ten milligrams of a premed relaxant like midazolam, even whacked into muscle rather than direct into a vein, was more than enough to induce the sedated compliance of an average adult male in a little over a minute, but not enough to knock him out. We had a half-hour hike back out to our collection point. Far better not to do that with a deadweight unconscious body to carry if we could avoid it.

  I waited for Witney’s struggles to slow and weaken before I let go and rolled sideways off the bed. Parker helped the now unresisting man to sit up, while I grabbed his things from the chair. The lightweight shirt and trousers had the soft feel of constant laundering. I checked the pockets and dumped it all in his lap. Parker squatted in front of him.

  ‘Thomas,’ he said gently. ‘We need for you to get dressed now and come with us. Can you do that?’

  Thomas Witney raised his head only with great effort, seeming suddenly very tired, like an old man, but he managed a laborious nod. Parker nodded back with grim satisfaction.

  We helped him dress, recognising his clumsiness as lack of coordination rather than deliberate delay. When his boots were laced, we moved him towards the doorway. Sean opened it a crack and peered through, then gave us an abrupt wait signal.

  We froze. My eyes were locked onto Sean for the first sign that we’d been compromised. The seconds stretched as they ticked by, with Witney swaying slightly between us.

  Finally, Sean closed the door, latching it in absolute silence, and turned back to us.

  ‘Remember the girl with the kid?’ he said to me.

  How could I forget?

  He nodded as if I’d answered out loud. ‘She’s just walked down the corridor to another room at the end. Last door on the left. Is that her room,’ he demanded, eyes raking over Witney, ‘or somebody else’s?’

  Witney’s head turned vaguely in the direction of his voice. ‘Bathroom,’ he mumbled.

  I exchanged a quick glance with Parker. Witney was slow on his feet. Too slow to risk dancing him down the hallway in the time it took the average person to go to the loo in the middle of the night.

  ‘We wait until she comes back,’ Parker said.

  ‘We should get her out as well,’ Sean said, his gaze on Parker now, intent.

  Parker let out a long, fast breath. ‘Don’t go off the reservation on me now, Sean,’ he warned in a fierce whisper. ‘We do not have time for this.’

  ‘You didn’t see her. How Bane was with her.’ Sean’s eyes flicked to me, as if for backup. ‘The opportunity’s there. We should make time.’

  ‘Look, Sean—’

  ‘She won’t go.’ Both of them stopped dead at my quiet interruption, turned their focus onto me.

  ‘Why not?’

  I returned Sean’s fierce gaze without flinching. ‘Did she have the kid with her?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then she won’t go – not without her child,’ I said. ‘Trust me on this, Sean.’

  ‘You’re talking about Maria.’ Witney’s voice was slightly dreamy, as it might be for a man who’d just been shocked from sleep, but otherwise he sounded calm and coherent. He nodded with slow gravity. ‘She needs to stay here – with her family.’

  Sean gave a short grimace of frustration. ‘Parker—’

  ‘No…and that’s an order.’

  I’d never heard Parker pull rank before. Maybe he’d never had to. Still, I thought Sean would stand his ground, but with a last hooded stare, he nodded shortly, turned away.

  A few moments later we heard shuffling footsteps pass along the hallway, a door open and close. We gave the girl, Maria, enough time to regain her bed, then slipped out, shepherding Witney along between us.

  Sean relocked both the door to Witney’s room and the main entrance as well, once we were outside, to confuse pursuit.

  Just when we could have done with some cloud, the moon now glowed strongly. The most dangerous time was crossing the open area of the compound, when we were caught full in the glare of the reflected light. It bounced back up off the pale sandy ground with the brightness of winter snow.

  Parker and I forced Witney into a stumbling jog, one on either side of him. I had one hand on the pressure points at the back of his neck to keep his head down and give me advance warning if he tensed to resist. There was nothing.

  Then, about halfway across the open courtyard, McGregor’s voice came into my earpiece in an urgent whisper. ‘Security patrol!’

  We reacted instantly, dragging Witney down into the shade of the only cover available – the ancient juniper tree with its wooden bench. We flattened ourselves into the shadow thrown by the trunk in the strong moonlight, and froze, keeping Witney beneath us both for his protection and our own.

  We heard the scuffing of two sets of booted feet, ambling across the dirt, listening intently for a change in cadence to indicate surprise or discovery. I shut my eyes briefly, willing my heart to slow so my body gave no betraying quiver. I’d learnt a long time ago that the most outrageous levels of exposure in the field can be countered by simple immobility.

  The footsteps of the two guards arced nearer, then began to fade. We didn’t move until McGregor’s voice came again. ‘Clear!’

  By the time we’d scrambled up and reached McGregor’s position, I was flush with sweat that had little to do with exertion. McGregor took the rear to cover our retreat, Sean now on point. We closed in to a diamond formation around Witney, moving with the kind of practised ease you can only achieve when working with people you’d trust with your life.

  But there would be repercussions for Sean’s little mutiny over Maria, I knew. Although Parker might appear easy-going on the surface, that didn’t mean he took insubordination lightly.

  And there was a part of me that was fiercely glad Sean had made his stand for the girl. It heartened me in a way I couldn’t quite define.

  Maybe I will be able to tell him, after all.

  Over our comms link, Sean put B
ill Rendelson on alert. By the time we reached our retrieval point, there was a van with blacked-out windows waiting to collect us, along with two identical decoys. We piled Witney into the back of one and all three vehicles took off in different directions. We were pretty sure we’d escaped detection so far, but there were no guarantees it would stay that way.

  Our driver was another of Parker’s operatives, Erik Landers – ex-military, as most of them were. He drove to make progress without attracting undue attention, and we sat in silence in the rear, swaying to the lurches of the soft suspension over the undulating road surface.

  The back of the van had bench seats fitted along both sides, facing inwards. I was to one side with McGregor. Witney sat opposite, with Parker and Sean close on either side of him.

  I glanced at my watch, calculating. That dose of midazolam would give us around four hours of docile obedience before it wore off. And when it did, Witney would have no memory of his abduction, or of any of us, which was a useful byproduct in this line of work.

  The ex-schoolteacher had hunched in on himself, but was otherwise showing no physical ill effects from the drug. He seemed tired and distracted rather than doped up, but everyone reacts differently to chemicals in their system.

  At least, that was what I told myself, when the headlights of a passing car pierced the front screen and swathed across us, revealing that while he sat quiet and apparently accepting of the events that had overtaken him, Thomas Witney’s face was wet with helpless silent tears.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, putting the breakfast tray down onto the low table in the centre of the guest suite. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Annoyed and bewildered, I guess,’ Thomas Witney said dryly from the far side of the spacious room.

  I glanced across and found him sitting on the floor with his knees up in front of him and his back to the wall. He was facing the long window that led out onto the balcony. The balcony doors stood open, the breeze causing the muslin curtains to belly inwards like seaweed in a soft current. He was out of direct line of sight of the opening, but could still see out across the canyon. He spoke without immediately taking his eyes away from the view.