by Zoe Sharp
“OK, Sean,” I said, short. “Spit it out. Don’t give me this silent treatment.”
He deliberately kept moving so there were half a dozen paces between us before he stopped and turned. For a few moments he just stood there, staring at me, hands loose by his sides, his face that of a stranger.
A sullen, sneaky wind whipped into the open concrete building, causing his long overcoat to flap lazily round his legs like that of a western gunslinger. It was only three in the afternoon but already the sky was darkening and the sodium lights strung across the concrete ceiling lit us both with an unearthly orange glow. The whole place smelt of diesel and burnt clutches.
Just when I thought he wasn’t going to speak at all, when an unnamed fear had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart tight shut with it, he said:
“You hesitated.”
It was said flat, without inflection, but I heard the accusation as an underlying harmonic, even so.
“I took him down,” I said, defensive. “And kept him there. What more do you want?”
“It was messy. He nearly got away from you, and he wasn’t even a professional.”
I felt my exasperation rise, partly at the harsh criticism and partly annoyance that I knew he was right. “Don’t you think you’re being overly critical? OK, so you feel I made a mistake. But I contained it – nobody else noticed. And come on, Sean – he was the kid’s father, for heaven’s sake!”
Sean cocked his head from one side to the other, slowly, like he was shifting the weight of his thoughts. “So?” he said coolly. “What difference does that make?”
What I’d heard of his own father, I recalled belatedly, sketched the man as a drunken bully, both to his wife and to his children. When Sean spoke, rarely, of his father’s premature death in a largely self-induced car accident, it was with a kind of quiet resentment. It had taken me quite a while to realise that was probably because Sean had harboured a secret ambition to kill the man himself.
I sighed. “In this case, it makes all the difference. Simone had just got through telling me how she still loves the guy. If she could be sure he was after her for herself and not just her money, she’d probably take him back in a heartbeat.”
“That’s only a small part of the story, seen from her perspective.” Sean threw me a sceptical glance. “Quite apart from the fact that you gleaned all this from what – a two-minute conversation in the ladies’ room?” he said mildly. “Did she have time to show you a photograph while she was about it?”
I knew where this was going but it was like playing chess with a grand master. Defeat was coming, but I didn’t begin to have the skill to fend off the inevitable.
“No,” I said, and felt my pawns scatter as my knights fell and my queen faltered.
He nodded briefly and went in for the kill. “So how did you know that the guy who came into the restaurant was Matt?” he said. Check. “He could have been any psycho stalker you care to name. Just because you’ve only been told about one threat doesn’t mean there won’t be others. You should know that, Charlie. You of all people.”
His voice was gentle and he hadn’t moved, but that very stillness seethed.
“Ella called him Daddy,” I said between my teeth, in a last-ditch castling to regroup. “He was carrying a pink rabbit.”
“You didn’t know that until after he’d made his move – and you’d made yours,” Sean countered. He took a step towards me, then another. It took conscious effort not to retreat. “You had him under control and you let yourself be distracted. The fact that he was Ella’s father shouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. Children are murdered by their fathers and women are murdered by their spouses every day.”
Checkmate.
Exasperation curled into anger like smoke into fire.
“So I made a judgement call,” I bit out.
“Really? Is that what you think it was?” He paused. “It was an emotional call, certainly.”
I felt my chin come up, almost bobbing to the surface. There may as well have been a red flag attached to it for the signals it sent to him. I snapped, “Of course, and that’s a failing.”
“In this job, yes,” he said, closing his eyes in a slow blink, like he was gathering strength. “Carry on making decisions like that in the field, and I can’t use you.”
My mouth dried. I swallowed in reflex and tried not to make it obvious that’s what it was. But I saw him note my body’s automatic reaction with cold hard eyes, and something flickered in his face. Disappointment?
“I can do the job,” I said, keeping my voice even only with willpower. “Haven’t I proved that to you already?”
He paused again, just fractionally, then inclined his head in slight acquiescence. Just when I thought he’d given ground, he said, in a voice I wasn’t sure I recognised, “Prove it to me again.”
My eyebrows arched in surprise. “What? Now?”
He nodded, more fully this time. “Here and now.”
I glanced around me, took in the dirty, oil-blotched concrete floor, the rows of parked cars. Both of us had shifted our stance, I realised. Sean into offence, me into defence. My elbows were bent and my hands had come up slightly, but I didn’t remember raising them.
We both tensed as a salt-splashed BMW blipped up the ramp from the lower parking floor, then slowed as it drew level. The driver was a middle-aged woman with aggressively coiffured hair who stared at the pair of us as she crawled past. Not because she had hostile intent or was concerned for my safety, but more likely because she thought there might be a chance we were about to vacate a valuable parking space.
When she was just past us, she braked, the rear lights flaring, and I saw her head angle towards the interior mirror. She must have realised, from our lack of movement, that we were having a stand-off of some kind, that the situation was far from normal. But, would she intervene on my behalf?
After only a moment, the car’s brake lights snapped off again and the car began to edge forwards, then quickened. No, she wouldn’t.
My eyes went back to Sean. His body was giving off threat cues in waves, like heat. I could see them rippling outwards from his centre.
“Sean, come on—”
“What?” he threw at me. “Do you want me to make things easy for you, is that it?”
And that’s when I saw the knife in his left hand . . .
THIRD STRIKE
Charlie Fox book seven
by Zoë Sharp
'I was running when I saw my father kill himself. Not that he jumped off a tall building or stepped in front of a truck but – professionally, personally – what I watched him do was suicide.'
The last person that ex-Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, ever expected to self-destruct was her own father, an eminent consultant surgeon. But when Charlie unexpectedly sees him admitting to gross professional misconduct on a New York news program, she can't just stand by and watch his downfall.
That's not easy when Richard Foxcroft, always cold towards his daughter, rejects her help at every turn. The good doctor has never made any secret of his disapproval of Charlie's choice of career – or her relationship with her boss, Sean Meyer. And now, just as Charlie and Sean are settling in to their new life in the States, Foxcroft seems determined to go down in a blazing lack of glory, taking his daughter and everyone she cares about down with him.
But those behind Foxcroft's fall from grace have not bargained on Charlie's own ruthless streak. A deadly professional who's always struggled to keep her killer instinct under control, this time she has very personal reasons for wanting to neutralise the threat to her reluctant principal.
And when the threads of the conspiracy reach deep into a global corporation with almost unlimited resources, the battle is going to be bitter and bloody . . .
‘Get set for a rollercoaster ride with Sharp's third [US-set] Charlie Fox thriller (following First Drop and Second Shot). The British bodyguard, now living in New York City, has recovere
d from the life-threatening injuries she sustained in Second Shot and finds herself watching her father on television admitting that he was negligent in the death of another physician and that he has a drinking problem. Charlie, estranged from her parents, wants to know what is happening to her much-acclaimed surgeon father. She and boss (and lover) Sean Meyer must save her family from a mysterious threat that remains undisclosed until the horrifying denouement. Sharp, a Barry award finalist for her previous two Fox books, captures readers on the first page and doesn't let go. Highly recommended for all collections.' Library Journal starred review
‘Razor sharp and surprisingly vulnerable, professional bodyguard Charlie is an intriguing character in Sharp's breathtakingly fast-paced thriller. Each word is honed to have the impact of one of Charlie's karate chops, and they catch the reader in the solar plexus. Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox never expected to have to protect her own disapproving parents from a deadly threat, but when she watches her father, eminent UK surgeon Richard Foxcroft, commit professional suicide in front of the New York press, she knows something is terribly wrong back home. And where, she wonders, is her steadfast mother? Though he never approved of her choice of profession, or of her relationship with her boss, Sean Meyer, Charlie races in to rescue her father from a deadly and powerful enemy – whether he likes it or not. Compelling – a page-turner.’ Pat Cooper, Romantic Times four-star review
FOURTH DAY
Charlie Fox book eight
by Zoë Sharp
‘Randal Bane smiled, a little sadly, and asked in that utterly calm and reasonable voice, “Can you suggest one salient reason why I shouldn’t follow my first instincts and rid myself of you at the earliest opportunity?”’
The cult calling itself Fourth Day appears well-funded and highly jealous of its privacy. Five years ago Thomas Witney went in to try and get the evidence that the cult’s charismatic leader, Randall Bane, was responsible for the death of Witney’s son, Liam. Witney never came out.
Now, ex-Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, and her partner, Sean Meyer, have been tasked to get Witney out, willing or not. But planning and executing a clean, surgical snatch is only the beginning.
Five years is a long time to be on the inside and the man who comes out has changed beyond all recognition. Can Witney be trusted when he says he now believes Bane is innocent of the crime and, if he is, who was behind the boy’s demise? And what happened to Witney’s safety net – the people who were supposed to extract him, by force if necessary, after less than a year?
With the dead man’s ex-wife demanding answers, Charlie agrees to go undercover into Fourth Day’s California stronghold. A fast covert op. No real danger for someone with her mindset and training. But Charlie has her own secrets, even from Sean, and she’s not prepared for the lure of Randall Bane, or how easily he will pinpoint her weaknesses . . .
Nominated for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel.
‘Charlie Fox (née Charlotte Foxcroft) has worked hard to overcome horrific odds and train herself mentally and physically to be a valued member of the elite Armstrong-Meyer private security firm. But when the job calls for extracting a man from the alleged cult, Fourth Day, and the operation goes south, Charlie infiltrates the organization, whose charismatic leader, Randall Bane, views her discontent as aggravated by loss of control during a recent pregnancy and miscarriage, which she still hasn’t revealed to her lover, Sean Meyer.
‘While Charlie sees Bane as a healer, former cult leader Chris Sagar accuses Fourth Day of fostering terrorism. At odds with her employer and at a critical juncture with Meyer, Charlie gets help from LAPD Detective “Ritz” Gardner, and the two women try to avert a Waco-like tragedy.
In the eighth installment in the series (not all have yet been published in the US), Charlie invites comparison with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher in both skills and moral sense, and her psychological complexity adds depth to her character and the series.
‘The shocker of an ending will make readers especially anxious for Sharp’s next adventure. Must reading for fans of action-packed, hard-edged thrillers.’ Michele Leber, Booklist starred review
FIFTH VICTIM
Charlie Fox book nine
by Zoë Sharp
(out in e-format Spring 2012)
‘How could you let them take you? Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you fight? Don’t you think I have enough damn blood on my hands?’
With the life of her lover, Sean, still hanging in the balance, former Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, throws herself into her only means of escape – her work.
On Long Island, the playground of New York’s wealthy and privileged, she is tasked with protecting the wayward daughter of rich businesswoman, Caroline Willner. It seems that an alarming number of the girl’s circle of friends have been through kidnap ordeals, and Charlie quickly discovers that the girl, Dina, is fascinated by the clique formed by the earlier victims. Is that why she seems to be going out of her way to invite capture?
Sticking close to her client at parties aboard luxury yachts, glittering events at the local country club, and out horse-riding along the exclusive sands is all part of the job for Charlie, but she comes to worry that Dina’s thrill-seeking tendencies will put both of them in real danger.
And just as her worst fears are realised, Charlie receives devastating personal news. The man who put Sean in his coma is on the loose.
She is faced with the choice between her loyalties to her client and avenging Sean, but the two goals are soon inextricably linked. The decisions Charlie makes now, and the path she chooses to follow, will have far-reaching consequences.
‘Sharp’s heroine Charlie Fox has to be one of the best characters in the crime action thriller genre which is enjoying a massive high these days. Hard as nails, confident as can be and living proof that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
'However – and it is a big however – she does not use deadly force unless necessary, unlike many of her contemporaries who kill frequently. She firmly believes in justice and would sooner bring someone in than kill them. Her moral code is very strong and at times it keeps her from becoming as bad as any of the monsters she faces. Yet when push comes to shove, she never flinches from the task at hand regardless of the risk to herself.
‘The plot is very cleverly constructed and you are kept guessing until the end as to just who is really behind the kidnappings. The prose is as sumptuous as ever and yet it was not the most impressive part of the novel. For me the best part of Fifth Victim is the grammatical excellence displayed in Sharp’s sentences.
‘I read one hell of a lot of these types of novels featuring fights, gunfights, explosions, car chases and more close shaves than a razor salesman. Very, very few of them get so many details right about the mundane details which set the scene, create the atmosphere, manage the pace or deal with the mechanics of the characters' actions and thought processes. Zoë Sharp and Charlie Fox tick more boxes than most with her first person viewpoint and oftentimes caustic wit.
‘Why an author as talented as Zoë Sharp is not much more publicly known and lauded is a mystery to me. My own first introduction to her work was when I met her by chance at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival last year. (I had seen her on a panel the previous year and made a mental note to buy one of her books. I was then welcomed into Crimesquad Towers and never got around to buying that book.) As we talked I mentioned that I was with Crimesquad.com and she asked me why her books had never been reviewed. Unable to answer I had to quickly change the subject. Upon my return home I arranged for a copy of Fourth Day which I reviewed and raved about. Which brings me to Fifth Victim, an absolutely brilliant novel which will have this review hound forever chasing the Fox!’ Graham Smith, Crimesquad five-star review
FOX FIVE
a Charlie Fox short story collection
eBook exclusive
by Zoë Sharp
(stories also available individually)
FOX FIVE is a collection of stories by the highly acclaimed crime thriller writer, Zoë Sharp. All feature her ex-Special Forces soldier turned self-defence expert and bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox.
‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic – and coolest – heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’ Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune
In A Bridge Too Far, we meet Charlie before she’s become a professional in the world of close protection. When she agrees to hang out with the local Dangerous Sports Club, she has no idea it will soon live up to its name.
Postcards From Another Country has Charlie guarding the ultra-rich Dempsey family against attempted assassination – no matter where the danger lies.