Third Strike

by Zoe Sharp

  I slipped through the gap and made for the nearest staircase, taking it at a run and jumping the last few steps onto each half landing as I went, heedless of the residual bruises from my taxi encounter. After the first couple of flights my left leg started complaining bitterly at this treatment, but I ignored it.

  I reached the ER and spotted my mother sitting in the waiting area, pretending to leaf through a magazine. She looked tense and awkward, but so did everyone else there. They all looked up when I hurried into view.

  “Ma’am, would you come with me, please?” I said in my best generic East Coast drawl.

  I didn’t have to feign the urgency in my voice, nor she the way her face paled at my words, but nobody watching saw anything amiss. Some even threw her sympathetic glances as she jumped to her feet and followed me out.

  “What it is?” she said as soon as we were out of earshot. “Where’s Richard?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “We got what we came for, but they know we’re here.”

  I was aware of a tension in my chest that had nothing to do with running down a flight of stairs. We’d pushed our luck coming here to begin with, and were pushing it even further with every minute we stayed. If anything, the disguises made it worse, like being caught out of uniform behind enemy lines. As if it made the difference between being treated as a legit prisoner of war, or being shot outright as a spy.

  Not that I was expecting hospital security to gun us down if they got hold of us, but when we turned what should have been almost the final corner to our escape route, I found it was a close run thing.

  The two security guards we’d slipped past earlier had cornered Sean and my father by a bank of elevators. They looked up sharply when I appeared.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demanded, East Coast again.

  There was a pause, then one of the guards said, “Nothing that need concern you, ma’am.”

  My brain clicked over. Clearly, they’d been looking for my father alone. Sean, I surmised, had been caught up in this purely by association. Any threat I might present was quickly weighed and dismissed.

  “Of course it does,” I said, pushing a note of weary belligerence into my voice. I advanced, careful in my positioning, forcing the guard who’d spoken to turn away from Sean slightly to keep me in full view, just in case we couldn’t talk our way out of this. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sean shift his balance. Almost imperceptible, but enough.

  I stabbed a finger towards my father. “This man’s a doctor—a damned good one. I need his expertise for a consult. Right now.”

  “We got orders to hold him,” the guard said, but I saw the crease in his brow as the indecision and the worry crept in. He glanced at his partner for support, received only a halfhearted, puzzled shrug in return.

  I sighed and deliberately lowered my voice. “Look, whatever the problem is, can’t it wait? I got a kid about to go into the OR whose legs are in a million pieces. You want to explain to his mother why he’s gonna spend the rest of his life in a goddamn wheelchair?”

  I waved an arm vaguely behind me and felt rather than saw my mother step in closer. The guard who’d been doing all the talking let his eyes flick over her. Then he frowned again, his expression hardening.

  My eyes met Sean’s. He’s not going to buy it.

  I know. Be ready.

  The guard opened his mouth, got as far as, “Look, Doc, I got my—”

  “Oh, Doctor!” my mother cried suddenly. “Is this the surgeon? Is this the one who can save my poor Darcy’s legs?”

  Darcy? Where the hell did that come from?

  I turned. My mother had come to a faltering stop, a picture of anxiety, twisting her hands together in front of her breast like a tragic Shakespearean actress. All she needed was a handkerchief to dab at her eyes, but I thought that might have been overplaying the role a little, even for her.

  “Ah, Mrs. Bennet,” I said, as the Pride and Prejudice reference finally sank in. Besides, wasn’t Mrs. Bennet supposed to be a scatterbrain? “There may be some kind of problem, I’m afraid. These gentlemen,” I said ominously, indicating the security guards as I moved to comfort her, “want to detain Mr. Foxcroft and—”

  “Oh, but you can’t!” my mother cried, her voice rising, jagged. Her eyes swiveled wildly from one to the other. They couldn’t hold her gaze, shuffling awkwardly. They fetched and held and ejected people. They didn’t get into conversation with them. Not for minimum wage across a twelve-hour shift. And clearly not enough to be thrown by my mother’s obvious English accent, either.

  “Look, lady—” the guard tried again.

  “Tell them, Dr. Wickham!” my mother said, wheeling to face Sean, her face imploring. My God, were those actual tears? “Tell them he’s my only hope!”

  And with that she gave a kind of a wail and collapsed into the arms of the guard who’d been doing the talking.

  “Aw, lady, for Chrissake …” He tried to paw her away, like she was contagious, keeping his head back and his chin tucked in. Finally, he managed to get a grip on my mother’s upper arms and hoisted her away. “Go on, get him out of here,” he said to me in desperation. “But if anyone asks, you ain’t seen us and we ain’t seen you! Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed gravely. “Don’t worry, you won’t see us.”

  The four of us disappeared along the corridor as fast as we could manage, round a corner and out through the first exit we came to that didn’t claim to be alarmed.

  “My God, Elizabeth,” my father muttered, and his voice might have been shaky and breathless purely because we were all but running across the car park towards the Navigator, but that wouldn’t account for the note of wonder I heard there, too. “My God …”

  Sean hit the remote and the locks popped. We piled in and he had the engine cranked and the vehicle already rolling before the last door was slammed shut behind us.

  My mother fastened her seat belt and smoothed her skirt, frowning a little at a crease in the material. Then she looked up and smiled and, just for a moment, there was a distinct twinkle in her eye—a frisson of pleasure, excitement, even pure thrill.

  “That was nicely played—well done,” Sean said, but his praise was guarded. “You took quite a risk, though. If they’d tagged even one genuine member of staff, we’d all have been sunk.”

  I glanced at him, surprised by the downbeat tone. “Come on, Sean,” I said. “It was inspired and, anyway, it worked! Isn’t that what counts?” I smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. “Anyway, what alternatives did we have?”

  He didn’t answer right away, concentrating on his driving. He was making a series of random turns, fast enough to put distance between us and the hospital, unobtrusive enough not to get us pulled over.

  I frowned. Sean was cautious, yes, but he’d never been mean when it came to giving due credit, and he admired inventiveness. At that moment he glanced sideways and the brooding darkness of his gaze almost made me flinch.

  What the hell …

  My father leaned forwards in his seat. “What’s the matter, Sean?” he said in a clipped, almost taunting tone. “Did Elizabeth’s actions disappoint you in some way?”

  “Disappoint me?” Sean echoed, his expression blanking as his voice grew lethally soft. “Of course not. Just how would they do that?”

  I fired my father a warning look but his eyes were locked onto the narrow slot of the rearview mirror, which was all he could see of Sean’s set face, and he didn’t catch the gesture. Or, if he did, he chose to ignore it.

  “You were about to start a fight,” my father said on a note of disdain. “It seems to be your first instinctive response to any difficult situation. Then Charlotte and Elizabeth managed to talk our way out—rather successfully, I thought. Does that fact wound your ego in some way?”

  I was torn between pleasure at the unexpected praise, and anger at his attack on Sean.

  “It never hurts to plan for the worst,” was all Sean said. “And I think you’ll f
ind that Charlie was just as prepared to take direct action.”

  “Hm,” my father said. He let his eyes slide over me, and there was something vaguely dissatisfied in that brief appraisal. “How much of that is due to your influence, I wonder.”

  “Some,” Sean said. “But have you considered how much of it is down to you?”

  “Oh, cut it out—both of you,” I snapped. “Stop talking about me like I’m not damn well here. Or at least have the decency to wait until I really am not here before you dissect my character.”

  “I think you’ll find what we’re doing is vivisection,” Sean said, showing his teeth in a tight little smile totally devoid of humor. “For it to be dissection, I believe you’d have to be dead.”

  “Well then,” I said coldly, thinking back to February, to a few long seconds in a frozen forest in the snow when my heart had briefly given up the fight. “In that case you missed your chance, both of you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Despite Sean’s evasive driving techniques—or perhaps because of them—there were no signs of anyone following us after we left the hospital. Eventually, we headed back towards the Back Bay area, stopping at a little Japanese noodle bar, little more than a storefront café, for an early meal.

  My father and Sean kept up their quietly confrontational stance throughout, leaving me and my mother to play peacemaker. My mother was, understandably, still invigorated by her performance at the hospital. I had to keep trying to muffle her enthusiastic recall.

  It was fortunate that we were the only customers in at that hour, and the blank-faced girl who took our order didn’t seem able to process more than the basics in English. Still, I didn’t like the idea of anyone being close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation.

  Stopping my mother chattering on about every thought process she’d gone through, however, proved easier said than done. In the end I had to distract her with talk of distant family holidays and old school friends I’d long since lost touch with, but who, for some strange reason, still seemed to be in regular contact with my mother.

  And even that turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword as far as topics went. Every single damn one of them, it seemed, had married well and produced hordes of startlingly precocious and beautiful children for their grandparents to dote on.

  Eventually, her excitement dimmed enough even for her to recognize the static silence that clung between Sean and my father. The pauses grew longer, then joined up into one long pause, unpunctuated by speech altogether. By that time I was thankful for the respite.

  When we’d finished our last pot of green tea, my mother pushed her chair back and announced she needed the ladies’ room. When I rose to join her, she gave me a blank look, then nodded gravely as she realized why.

  The waitress didn’t understand that question, either, but she caught the general gist and jerked her head towards a doorway near the rear of the restaurant. The little girls’ room turned out to have two cubicles with a tiny sink wedged to the side of them. There was barely room to turn on the tap and, when you’d managed that, you struggled to get both hands in the bowl at once.

  To my surprise, perhaps, my mother didn’t seem perturbed by her surroundings. Neither did she seem desperate to use the facilities, but instead fussed around washing her hands and tidying her hair in the mirror on the wall next to the sink. I got the distinct impression she was stalling.

  Eventually, she glanced up and met my eyes in the reflection.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t keep sniping at each other, Charlotte,” she said, attempting to soften the slightly pained note with a hesitant smile. “Nothing good will come of provoking him.”

  “Me?” I said, feeling an annoyed twitch run sharply across my shoulders. “I’m not provoking anyone.”

  Her sigh brought me back. “You’re provoking each other.”

  “I see. And are you planning on also having this conversation with him about not winding me up?”

  She frowned. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said in a slightly affronted tone, bending to peer at the little strip of paper towel that was sticking out of the bottom of the dispenser on the wall. “I just think you should be careful not to push him too far, that’s all.” She tugged ineffectually at the towel, but it wouldn’t budge.

  It was my turn to sigh. I took a step forwards and pumped the handle on the side of the dispenser, twice. It rolled out two sheets, which I tore off and dumped in her hands.

  Can lie us out of trouble, but can’t dry her hands unaided. Full of surprises, my mother.

  “I’m not the one who’s doing the pushing,” I said then, aware that I was scowling. “But if he shoves me, he can only expect me to shove back.”

  “Two pigheaded people …” She shook her head. “He only does it because he cares. I didn’t realize just how much, but he does,” she said, with an almost wistful look on her face as she dropped the scrunched-up towels into the waste bin and took a last look at her appearance. “Strange.”

  “I know he’s a cold-blooded bastard, but why is that so strange?” I said, cut to the bone. “Isn’t a man supposed to care about his daughter?”

  She turned with an oddly puzzled look on her face, which cleared as she made the connection. “Oh my goodness,” she said, her voice chiding. “You think I mean Richard.”

  My own face went totally blank. “Don’t you?”

  “Oh no,” she said. She gave a breathless little laugh as she reached for the door. “I was talking about Sean … .”

  When we got back to the table, I could tell from the stony expressions on both men’s faces that they hadn’t been chatting about the cricket scores while we’d been gone. As soon as he saw me, Sean got to his feet and, though his movements were as smooth and coordinated as they always were, there was a darkness simmering beneath the surface.

  I thought of my mother’s warning, and something bright and cold slithered down my spine in response.

  “The bill’s taken care of,” Sean said, scanning my face and clearly not liking what he saw there. “Let’s go.”

  We didn’t talk at all on the way back to the hotel, when we left the Navigator in the adjacent parking garage and walked to the elevators, nor from the elevators to our two adjoining rooms, but the silence was deafening. I found myself almost wishing for trouble. Something—anything—to give me a reason to lash out, relieve the tension that was mushrooming inside my skull and prickling my fingertips.

  We said an abrupt good night and saw my parents locked down for the night. And when Sean very quietly shut our own door behind us and flicked on the bedside light, the room suddenly seemed very small and very close. We must have accidentally altered the setting on the air con before we went out, too. There was no other explanation for why it seemed hot enough in there to have the sweat break out across my palms and send it crawling along my hairline.

  “We should talk about the plan for tomorrow,” I said, desperately scrabbling for casual as I shrugged out of my jacket and slipped it onto a hanger. “For a start, what do we say to Collingwood about—”

  Sean’s hands on my shoulders made me jerk in reflexive surprise, going for an instant block before I could countermand the action. He evaded without thinking, spun me round so my back hit the door frame to the bathroom, hard enough to jolt. He’d stripped off his own jacket, I noted dumbly, draped it carelessly across the bed. His face was so tightly controlled he was white with the pressure of it.

  “Your father suddenly seemed to remember something of his obligations over dinner,” he said, and his voice was deceptively light. “While you and your mother were out of the way, he took the opportunity to give me the full parental speech.”

  “The parental speech?” My heart rate picked up. Not in pace, just in ferocity, so I could feel each vibrating beat like a punch behind my rib cage. “I didn’t think we were gone that long.”

  “He was concise—you might almost say pithy—and I got the gist.”

  “So … what did he s
ay?”

  Sean feathered his grip, letting his hands fall away from my shoulders as though he couldn’t trust himself to leave them there any longer. Bereft of his touch, I shivered.

  “He told me not to hurt you any more than he seems to think I have done already,” he said with the careful blankness I’d once heard him use to give an operational briefing on the aftermath of a massacre, disconnecting himself. “He knows I’m pushing you to finally sever ties with the nest and, perhaps, you’re not ready to take that step.”

  “I see,” I said, matching my tone to his, detached and impersonal. “If that’s the case, why push me to take it?”

  “Apparently, it’s mainly because I’m a selfish bastard—I’m paraphrasing here, you understand,” he said.

  He took a pace backwards and leaned his shoulder on the wall opposite, folding his arms so his fingers were tucked under his, armpits. He tilted his head back, staring past me at a point of nowhere as if he had to put effort into remembering words I knew would be acid-etched into his brain.

  “He told me you’d already been through more than most people ever have to face in a lifetime. That you’d been broken in every way that mattered—mentally, physically, emotionally. And, in his opinion, the blame for most of it can be laid squarely at my door.”

  “That’s rich,” I said, rough with a dangerous cocktail of emotions, “coming from him.”

  Sean shrugged. “But, the trouble is, he’s probably right,” he said, and the casual acceptance in his own voice sent a greasy fear sliding through my gut. “So, first thing tomorrow I’ll call Parker and get him to send up Joe McGregor to take over from me. He’ll help you keep them safe until this bloody mess can be sorted out.”

  I’d always thought that phrase about your heart sinking was purely metaphorical, but I felt the sudden lurching contraction in my chest. I wanted to say a hundred things, but when I opened my mouth all I actually managed was, “What about you?”