FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  When that particular course had ended in disarray Sean had sent me off to study with various experts on a one-on-one basis. By the beginning of March they’d reckoned I was ready for my first assignment.

  The Florida job had come up at short notice. I’d been away up in Lancashire visiting friends when Sean had phoned one morning and told me to get back down to King’s Langley fast, and to make sure I’d got my passport with me.

  “Where am I going?” I’d asked, almost flustered. “What else do I need to bring?”

  “Just pack some clothes for hot weather,” he’d replied. “We’re supplementing an existing security team and they’ll provide any equipment we need once we get out there.”

  I heard the “we” rather than the singular and couldn’t help the relief. “Who’s the principal?”

  “Nobody you’ve ever heard of, don’t worry – this is not a celebrity job,” Sean had said, and I could hear the lazy amusement in his voice. “It’s for a small software company based in Miramar in Florida. They’ve had some threats made against their staff and they’re getting jumpy, that’s all.”

  I’d frowned. It didn’t exactly sound like cause for a mad dash halfway down country, let alone across the Atlantic. “So why are they bringing us in?”

  “I came across the company’s director of security when I was teaching a hostage negotiation course in Virginia last year and we hit it off,” he’d said. “When they needed extra manpower, she came to me.”

  She, I’d thought, and tried to suppress the unexpected spike of jealousy. After all, I had been the one who was putting the brakes on the relationship Sean and I had tentatively agreed to resume. I had been the one who was being cautious to the point of timid. Hell, it had been more than two months and we hadn’t even made it to the bedroom.

  There were times when I’d wondered if he still wanted me the way he once had, with that kind of desperate, all-consuming intensity. Was he just being considerate because of what he now knew I’d gone through, or did the wounds we’d both received at the hands of the army still run deep, even after five years?

  Maybe I’d been just too proud, or too scared, to make the first move and find out. If it all went wrong this time, that would be the end of it.

  “OK,” I’d said, checking my watch. “I’ll set off as soon as I’m sorted. I should be back down there in less than three hours.”

  He’d restrained himself from reminding me that just shy of two hundred and thirty miles separated us. It may be colder, wetter, and more exposed, but riding a motorbike also means you don’t sit in traffic jams on the M6 all the way past Birmingham.

  “That’s fine,” he’d said. “I’m just about to leave now, but Madeleine’s booked you on a flight out of Heathrow first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure she puts together some background info for you to read on the plane.”

  But by the time the American Airlines 777 touched down in Miami the following afternoon I didn’t feel much more enlightened than I had done before I’d taken off. The promised dossier was scant, to say the least. Even from my limited association with Sean’s company, I knew he never took on a job without being fully aware of the facts. I wondered at his tie with this unknown female director of security, that he would drop everything for her to fly nearly five thousand miles apparently so ill-prepared.

  The security director’s name was Gerri Raybourn. The file told me that much at least, and included a badly pixellated black and white picture of a slight blonde woman wearing a power suit and a don’t-mess-with-me expression.

  The company she worked for was only vaguely described. They were a small independent software house, specialising mainly in accounting packages and data manipulation. Their turnover was modest and didn’t seem to be matching up to anyone’s projections, least of all their own.

  In truth, the company’s markets were being swallowed up as the big boys stamped conformity across the sector. Taking it at face value, they were not quite sinking yet but the decks were certainly awash.

  Ms Raybourn’s department within the company was more diminutive than her impressive title might have suggested. She just had a deputy director and two additional operatives to play with.

  The step-up in security concerned one of their key program developers, Keith Pelzner, but no specific threats or incidents were noted.

  It was a long flight and I hadn’t thought to buy a paperback at the airport, so I read and reread the file several times, trying to squeeze the last few drops of information out of every word and phrase. Despite that, nowhere did the document even begin to suggest why they should feel the need to import close protection personnel from the UK.

  It was only much later that the thought occurred to me that maybe they just didn’t like the idea of getting their own people killed.

  ***

  The flight had landed on time but it had taken a while to shuffle through Immigration and then my bag had, of course, been the last one off the carousel. When I finally made it out into the arrivals lounge I was dishevelled, tired, thirsty, and surprisingly chilly.

  Gerri Raybourn herself was waiting to meet me in a tailored mint green suit and the kind of four-inch heels I couldn’t have successfully negotiated a flight of stairs in. She was holding up a piece of white card with my name written on it in a slightly childish hand. Her impatience showed only in the way her long painted nails drummed against the edge of the card. Her face was a perfectly made-up mask.

  “Ms Raybourn?” I said, halting in front of her. There was a faint lift of one plucked eyebrow. I nodded to the card. “I’m Charlie Fox.”

  Her confusion was momentary, quickly cloaked, and she held out her hand. I engaged it with care, not only because of those talon-like nails, but also because in the flesh she was a tiny woman, her hands half the size of mine. I needn’t have worried. She had a grip that could crack walnuts.

  “Well, if you’re all set I’ll take you right on over to the house,” she said, looking dubiously at my rip-stop nylon squashy bag. I couldn’t tell from her expression if she thought I’d brought too much luggage, or not nearly enough.

  She led me outside at a surprisingly brisk pace considering those shoes. As the sliding doors opened the wet Florida heat hit me in the face like a sneezing dragon. The surface of my skin went from shiver to sweat almost instantly. Then we were climbing into Gerri’s illegally parked Mercedes and she cranked the air conditioning on full almost before she even started the engine. So that was how she stopped her make-up sliding.

  “So, Charlie,” she said as she pulled out fast into traffic. “I take it you’ve worked in the States some before?”

  “No,” I said, wondering what exactly Sean had told her about me. Less, it would seem, than he’d told me about her. “Actually, this is my first time.”

  She frowned, then said with the faintest touch of bite, “Well, I guess you’ll find we like to do things a little differently over here.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. Where did that come from? But I said nothing, just smiled and nodded as though she’d spoken without the undercurrents. Nevertheless, it made it more difficult to phrase a question that didn’t show my ignorance still further. Like what the hell was I supposed to be doing?

  In fact, it wasn’t until we’d navigated our way out of the airport complex and were onto the highway that I plucked up the courage to do so. But my tentative opening gambit of “Excuse me, but can you tell me wh—?” was cut short by the shrill ring of her mobile phone, amplified by the in-car kit it was slotted into.

  She peered down at the tiny display, then leaned across and pressed a button to receive the call on hands-free.

  “Hi, it’s Gerri,” she said, slightly singsong, speaking loudly enough to combat the muted background noise. “And how are you today?” She sounded like someone out of every American film I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot.

  “I’m good, Gerri,” a man’s deep voice rumbled. “But you’re not gonna like what I have to tell you. Are you alone
or do you wanna pick up?”

  She shifted her eyes sideways and decided in an instant that I was slightly above invisible servant level. She grabbed the big pearl clip-on on her right ear and yanked it off before snatching the phone out of its dash-mounted cradle.

  “OK,” she said, and the singsong tone had turned to steel. “Shoot.”

  There followed a fairly lengthy, mainly one-sided conversation, only punctuated by the occasional “uh-huh” on Gerri’s part. Her voice may have stayed neutral, but after the first couple of minutes her left hand started to flex around the Merc’s leather-rimmed steering wheel. High-carat stone rings glinted on most of her fingers like an ornamental knuckle-duster.

  I tried not to look like I was eavesdropping, staring out of the window at the odd mixture of low squat concrete discount warehouses and tinted glass skyscrapers that we passed. All the really plush buildings seemed to be banks. I recognised maybe one in four of the makes of car around us.

  Eventually Gerri ended the call, almost slamming the phone down. For several minutes afterwards she drove in simmering silence, then her only words were a muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

  I didn’t think now was the right time to strike up a friendly conversation. I kept my lip buttoned until we left the freeway twenty minutes later and turned east towards the coast.

  The closer to the water we got, the more expensive the housing became. This year’s fashion accessory seemed to be a very large motor yacht parked at the bottom of your lawn, and when your garden backed onto an inland waterway, all things were possible. It was only when Gerri finally turned into a quiet side road that I realised perhaps I should have paid more attention to the route.

  She was still spitting feathers when we drove up to a set of motorised gates at the end of the road, tapping her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel until they’d swung wide enough for the Merc to get through.

  The house itself, set back in the trees, was so massive that for a moment I wondered if it was split into apartments. Gerri left the Merc at a jaunty angle on the front driveway and rushed up the steps to the double front door almost before I’d time to grab my bag out of the back of the car. I had to jog to catch her up just as the door was opened by an unsmiling Hispanic maid.

  Gerri hurried past the woman without a second glance. I nodded, tried a tentative greeting and was rewarded by a fleeting smile. I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about somebody by the way they treat other people’s staff.

  A well-built black man in neatly-pressed slacks, a blue Oxford shirt and loafers with tassels on the front met Gerri in the cool tiled circular hallway. A double staircase curved around the sides of the walls and the domed glass ceiling was thirty feet above our heads.

  “What the hell is going on, Chris?” Gerri snapped at the man before he could open his mouth. “I’ve just had a phone call telling me it’s all over the goddamn press.”

  “I’m sorry, boss,” the man said, eyes widening with surprise at the sudden onslaught. “We only just got the news ourselves.” His gaze skimmed towards me a couple of times as he spoke, but Gerri didn’t bother to introduce us.

  “How’s Keith taking it?” she demanded.

  “Well, I guess you could say he’s kinda upset right now,” the man said, picking his words with care.

  Gerri sighed noisily. “OK, where is he?”

  Chris waved a hand towards a pair of glass doors behind him. “Out back in the lanai, by the pool.”

  She headed out, the whole exchange having been carried out without her actually breaking stride, so that Chris had to shift into rapid reverse to stay with her. Unsure whether I was supposed to follow or not, I stayed right behind her, lugging my bag with me. It seemed like the safest place to be.

  The back of the house was as breathtaking as the front. A paved terrace swept down to an expanse of lawn so big it should have had herds of wildebeest grazing on it. Clusters of palm trees were grouped at the edges of the grass and then you were straight out onto the waterway.

  The pool Chris had mentioned was off to the left and the lanai, I surmised, was the giant mosquito net structure over the top of it and joined onto the far wing of the house. The pool itself was fed by a waterfall at one end and lined with pale turquoise tiles. An array of slatted wooden sun loungers was arranged around the sides of it, their teak faded to a soft-sheen silver by the constant blazing sunshine. Even with the breeze coming up off the water, the heat had a mass all of its own.

  There were two men by the pool, but neither of them seemed to be enjoying the amenities. One was tall with artistically greying hair and a very good tan. He was dressed in shorts and a knitted shirt with a designer label, and deck shoes with no socks.

  The other man was younger, on the scrawny side, with a wispy moustache and beard, and little wire-rimmed spectacles with badly matched clip-on sunglasses over the top. He was wearing a cheap-looking Hawaiian shirt, swimming shorts, and plastic flip-flops. He was also carrying a small net on the end of a long pole. Until the three of us got close enough to hear the conversation they were having, I assumed he was just there to clean the pool.

  “I’m real sorry, Mr Pelzner,” the grey-haired man was saying, “we don’t know how it happened.”

  “How can you not know how it happened for Chrissake, Lonnie!” the bearded man snapped. “What in hell’s name do I pay you for?”

  There was a small doorway set into one side of the lanai. As Gerri pushed it open the hinge squeaked and both men looked up sharply. I could almost see Lonnie’s muscular shoulders relax when he recognised Gerri and realised he was about to be rescued. Then they tensed again as he caught the thunderous expression on her face.

  “Gerri!” the bearded man yelled, throwing the net aside and striding to meet us – as far as it’s possible to stride in flip-flops. “Will you tell your guys to get their butts into gear? How can they have let this happen?” He let out a frustrated exclamation of breath, shook both fists in the air and whirled away.

  “Now just calm down, Keith,” Gerri snapped. “Until we find out exactly who leaked that information to the media I’m not having my guys taking any heat.”

  “The media?” Keith Pelzner said, his tone rising to an outraged squeak as he spun back to face her. “Who gives a shit about the media? I’m talking about my son, for Chrissake. I’m talking about Trey.”

  For a moment Gerri was silent. Whatever the phone call in the car had been about, I realised, that wasn’t it.

  She glanced at Lonnie and Chris, neither of whom would meet her eyes. “OK,” she said in the falsely controlled voice of one who is hanging on to her temper by the slenderest of threads. “Now I’ve just had a call saying one of the top financial weekly magazines has run with an article blowing our supposedly top secret project wide open to the world, and laid the company open to hostile takeover bids that could see us all out of a job, which I personally feel is something we ought to ‘give a shit about’ huh?”

  She emphasised the last few words using her fingers to scratch twin quotation marks in the air, casting a ferocious look in Keith’s direction, but he was just staring at her with his mouth open. “OK,” she went on. “Would anybody like to fill me in here on what else has gone wrong today?”

  “Um, well Ms Raybourn,” Lonnie said. “Trey’s been AWOL outta school again and this time he’s been caught shoplifting down at the Galleria.”

  Even Gerri was momentarily speechless to that one. “And where is he now?” she managed eventually.

  “The cops are bringing him home,” Keith told her. “Jim and the limey have gone to smooth things over with the store but he shoulda had somebody watching him, for Chrissake. Anything could have happened!”

  “Well now we have someone to watch him,” Gerri said, gesturing towards me. My heart sank.

  Keith seemed to notice me for the first time. “Oh, hi. Keith Pelzner.” He wiped his hand on his shirt and held it out for me to shake. “And you are?”

  “Charlie Fo
x,” I said, and couldn’t resist adding, “Another limey.”

  He gave a nervous laugh but was saved from having to find a way out of that verbal hole by the appearance of another group of people at the double doors where the lanai joined the house. The same Hispanic maid who’d let us in came out first and pointed wordlessly in our direction. Two policemen strolled out next, with a junior version of Keith between them.

  The kid had his head down and was dragging his feet, but insolence rolled off him like sweat. Whatever it was he’d been caught doing, he was totally unrepentant about it. His gaze floated briefly over me, the newcomer, and carried on without interest.

  One of the cops came forwards and looked straight at Lonnie. “Mr Pelzner?” he asked. He had sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve and a belly big enough to ensure he had to use a mirror to check his fly.