FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  “So what are you saying, Walt?” I asked bitterly. “If I don’t turn myself in, she gets away scot free?”

  “No,” he said, voice careful. “But it would sure help if you could provide some evidence.”

  I went still. “What kind of evidence?”

  “Well, you’re maybe the only person she’s likely to make any kind of a confession to,” he said. “Just supposing you were to get to talk to her, and just supposing you was to be wearing a wire of some description.”

  “So, your nephew’s looking for someone else to do his dirty work for him,” I said.

  That earned me a raised eyebrow and a calm stare that made me regret my hasty jibe. It was only stubbornness that kept my face defiant.

  “Andrew’s a fine agent and he’s a fine young man. Fair-minded and thorough,” Walt said. “But he has to work within the law, not outside it. If we – you – can bring him something solid, he won’t ignore it, that I can safely promise you.”

  I tilted my head and gave him a cynical smile. “You reckon you can talk your nephew – not to mention the FBI – into planting a wire on me and sending me all the way down to Fort Lauderdale to try and prise a confession out of Gerri?” I asked.

  “Gerri’s not in Fort Lauderdale,” Walt said. “She has a time-share apartment a little ways down the coast from here and ever since there were reports of you and Trey being in this area, she’s been staying there.”

  “And the wire?”

  “Well, I don’t have the access to that kinda equipment that I used to,” he admitted, “but I got one of those little voice-activated memo recorders that works pretty good.” He nodded towards my bag. “It would fit in there OK and she’s not likely to search you.”

  I glanced back across the street. Trey was on his feet now, looking poised to flee. I gave him a small wave to try and reassure him. He sank back into his chair again but didn’t appear any less tense, even so.

  I thought of Sean, dead and mutilated in a Florida swamp. Of all the ways I’d feared our relationship might end, that hadn’t been on the list.

  I turned back to Walt, who was standing with his hat brim tilted so the sun was out of his eyes.

  “OK,” I said. “Where do I find this time-share.”

  Walt studied me for a moment, his face grave. “If you’re sure you really want to do this, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll take you there myself.”

  Nineteen

  Walt drove me south in an eight-year-old Lincoln Town Car with cracked cream leather trim. We didn’t speak much once we were on the road and I was happy enough with that. The mood I was in, I wasn’t looking for polite conversation.

  Walt drove down through Daytona Beach and crossed back over the Intracoastal on the same William V Chappell Jr bridge we’d used when Trey and I had gone to meet Henry. There’d been a lot of water under it since then, both physically and metaphorically.

  In daylight the buildings looked faded and even a little shabby, the colours washed out without the reinforcement of their night-time neon. It matched my mood – down-at-heel, subdued.

  I’d entrusted Trey to Xander and Aimee’s care, much against his will. He’d thrown a controlled tantrum at the prospect of being left behind but I didn’t have the time or the temper myself to stand that kind of bratty behaviour from him. After a few futile attempts at whiny persuasion, he seemed to realise as much and gave up trying. He settled for quiet and sulky instead, barely able to bring himself to say goodbye or good luck to me. Well sod you, then.

  “Look after him,” I’d said to Xander and he’d nodded, face serious.

  “Don’t sweat it,” he’d said. “He’ll be fine.”

  Aimee had grinned at me. “Go kick some ass, girl.”

  I’d promised them I’d call Trey on his mobile as soon as I was done. Then I watched them walk away from the little diner together. They stopped by the kerb a little way further down the street and were about to cross when Trey suddenly glanced back at me, frowning.

  He knows, I thought. He’s worked it out. I turned my back on it and jogged through the slow-moving traffic to rejoin Walt, who was waiting for me on the other side of the road.

  Whatever doubts I may have had about trusting Trey’s safety to anyone else, I dismissed them. The only alternative to Xander and Aimee was leaving him with Walt, which could be the same as handing the kid over to the authorities. I had a sneaking suspicion that the old couple could only hold out against their nephew and the all-consuming government body he represented for so long. Better not to put temptation in Special Agent Till’s way by having the boy dangled under his nose. Much better that he simply didn’t know where either of us were.

  The only other alternative to that was to take Trey with me. That idea was out of the question from the start. If I could get Gerri Raybourn to admit the part she’d played in Sean’s death I was planning on doing more than tape-recording her and the kid had already seen too much death in my company. Not quite the kind of thing Keith had been hoping for when he’d made some throwaway comment last week about the fact I was British being good for broadening Trey’s horizons.

  Now, as I sat in the faded luxury of Walt’s car listening to something in the rear suspension creaking every time we hit a lump in the road, I found myself wondering coldly where Trey’s father fitted in to all this? How much of the responsibility did he share for Sean’s death?

  The answer to that one didn’t so much hit me as rise slowly and uncomfortably into my mind, like sitting in the bath while it fills from a slow-running cold tap. Livingston Brown had told me that he’d seen Keith leaving the house in Fort Lauderdale apparently of his own volition. But he also said the man had seemed nervous and in a hurry.

  Supposing that wasn’t because Keith had been running away. Supposing Brown had misinterpreted the reason for Keith’s unease and instead it was because his every move was being watched by people who’d told him they had already kidnapped his son.

  As the thought formed, I was half-tempted to let it go but it stuck to my fingers like static cling and I couldn’t shake it loose. Little things kept popping into my mind. Like the fact that Whitmarsh had known instantly from Henry’s e-mails that the one they were missing was Trey, not Keith.

  So Keith hadn’t done a runner. He’d been taken.

  And Gerri Raybourn was the one pulling all the strings.

  My resolve hardened along with my certainty. I turned away from the window and glanced across at Walt in the driving seat.

  “How much do you know about Ms Raybourn?” I asked.

  “Oh this and that,” Walt said, voice easy and casual as ever. “She’s well-respected in her field. Did ten years with the Bureau, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ah,” I said dryly, “so that’s why Special Agent Till doesn’t want to move against her without overwhelming evidence – she’s part of the old boy network.”

  “Former agents are treated just the same as everyone else,” Walt said firmly but without showing irritation. “I checked her records and she left more’n three years ago. Went through a messy divorce and her ex got custody of the kids. He got laid off from his job so she’s having to pay him off and put her eldest through college. I guess she found she could make a little more money on the outside than she could working for the government.”

  “So she’s short on cash,” I murmured, “and long on motive.”

  I remembered our drive from the airport when she’d got the call that told her news of the program had leaked out to the press. Her display of anger then had certainly seemed genuine but I suppose if she was planning on stealing the program along with its inventor, the fewer people who knew about it the better. She’d had me fooled into thinking I could trust her the night I’d called her for help from the motel. And look how that had ended.

  Walt glanced wryly at me. “Motive for what?”

  “For wanting the program for herself,” I said. “I think she engineered the trouble at the company recently so she could call in S
ean and me as back-up. That way, when she took Keith and Trey—”

  “Which she’s claiming you’re responsible for,” Walt cut in.

  I ducked my head in agreement. “True, she is, but bear with me on this. As I said, that way she already has us in place as fall-guys. She has her boys grab Sean along with Keith and hopes to get Trey and me at the park on the same day. That way she’s got the option of either claiming Keith’s done a runner, or that we’ve taken him.”

  Good as his word, Walt didn’t immediately dismiss my suggestion. Instead he nodded slowly, frowning. Ahead of us the lights changed and he braked smoothly to a halt.

  “But her man fumbles the ball,” he said then.

  “Yeah, he did,” I agreed. “So, next best thing, she puts it out that I’ve got Trey. But, the last thing she can afford to have happen is for the cops to get hold of us. That might blow the whole thing. So when they nearly do, she has her boys step in and kill the cop. By then she’s past caring about getting hold of Trey alive. He was only to secure Keith’s good behaviour anyway. She just wants us dead.”

  The lights changed and Walt set the car moving forwards again. His measured driving style reminded me of police drivers in the UK. He negotiated a parked truck in the right-hand lane before he spoke again.

  “So it’s not until that guy you mentioned – Henry – offers you to them on a plate that she realises that without Trey the program kinda won’t work.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Because after that Whitmarsh was desperate to take us alive, but the message obviously hadn’t got through to Haines. I have no idea why not. It could simply have been a cock-up in communications. But Whitmarsh was even prepared to shoot Haines’s men to protect us. And to let me go when I threatened Trey myself.”

  Walt looked surprised. “You didn’t mention that part.”

  “You try living with that kid twenty-four hours a day and you’d want to shoot him, too,” I said, only half joking.

  Walt frowned again, but whether it was deep thought, or whether he disapproved of my flippancy in the circumstances, it was difficult to tell.

  “So you reckon Gerri Raybourn’s holding Keith somewhere, hoping she can still get the pair of them.”

  I nodded. “That’s how it seems to me. One’s not worth much without the other.”

  He let his breath out tiredly, almost a sigh. “Makes it kinda all the more important she’s stopped, Charlie,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. And inside my head another voice added, Oh I’ll stop her all right, Walt. Don’t you worry about that . . .

  ***

  Less than an hour after we’d left Daytona Beach and headed down the coast, Walt slowed the Lincoln to a halt on the dusty shoulder of the highway and nodded towards the other side of the road. The other traffic continued past us at speed, close enough to rock our car each time they did so.

  “That’s the place,” he said.

  All I saw was a neatly rendered low white wall bordering suspiciously man-made looking grounds of part grass and part tropical forest. It looked sculpted for effect rather than natural. The grass was artificially green and bright, and the wall itself seemed to go on for miles in both directions. I tried to remember when it had first started but I hadn’t been paying enough attention.

  A little way from where we’d stopped was an impressive wrought-iron gateway, next to which was a lavish sign. It showed an artist’s impression of a range of Mediterranean-style villas, all white stucco and terracotta tiles, surrounding a lake in the centre. Around the edges of the sign were depictions of Prozac-happy couples playing golf, or water skiing, or sharing an intimate after-dinner drink at sunset.

  The sign announced a new and exclusive opportunity in vacation resort ownership. It sounded like the copywriters were trying desperately to squirm out of using the word time-share, with all the sharp-practice baggage that entailed.

  “So what are you suggesting – that I go over the wall?”

  “You can do if you really want to,” Walt said, cocking me a wry glance, “but this place is only two-thirds built and half sold. It’d sure be easier for you to just walk up to the front gate and tell ‘em you’re interested in buying.”

  I spread my hands to indicate my current garb. “And you really think, me dressed like this, they’re going to fall for that?” I demanded.

  “Well, OK,” he allowed. “Maybe you should tell ‘em as how your folks are interested and you’re meeting them here. You seem a resourceful kinda girl, Charlie.”

  I considered. “OK,” I said.

  But as I reached for the door handle, Walt stopped me.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  When I didn’t respond he leaned across and opened the glove compartment. Inside was a small memo recorder, the kind that takes micro cassettes for business meetings. He lifted it out, checked the tape inside was at its beginning, and handed it over, showing me the voice activation button.

  “Just press that and leave it,” he said. “It’ll start up automatically when someone starts speaking. That way you don’t have to worry none about running out of tape.”

  “OK,” I said again. “Just one thing, though, Walt. How much of a confession do you need me to get out of Gerri when I get in there?”

  “I reckon you’ll know that when you hear it. Just get us something we can use as a lever and we’ll do the rest.”

  We, I noted. Us. I wondered if Walt would ever consider himself completely retired from the job.

  “I see,” I said. I unzipped the bag and crammed the recorder inside. It was a tight fit with the SIG as well but I just managed to get both articles in there and close the bag up again. When I was done I found Walt watching me gravely.

  “Don’t do anything in haste you might regret at leisure, Charlie,” he said softly, but he didn’t mention the gun.

  I reached for the door handle to get out, then paused. “She’s behind the men who murdered Sean.”

  Walt glanced at me, then let out a long sigh. “Aw hell, Charlie, I know that,” he said. “I guess I’m just hoping MacMillan was kinda right about you.”

  “Right about what?” I said. I remembered our earlier conversation. “About my instinct?”

  “No,” Walt said now. “He told me you’d killed, but that he didn’t believe you were a killer.” He turned his head and gave me a long level stare. “I don’t believe that either and I’m kinda praying to the good Lord we’re both right, or I just made myself an accessory to the crime.”

  I got out of the car without answering that one, just shut the door behind me.

  “Don’t wait for me,” I said through the open window. “I’ll make my own way back.”

  I walked quickly to the gateway without looking back, not giving Walt the chance to realise that both he and MacMillan were about to be proved wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  The iron gates were intended more for decoration than security and looked as though they’d never been shut. I was still aware of a shiver of apprehension as I passed between them. A short distance beyond, there was a guardhouse in the middle of the drive. Next to that was a barrier to block off the road but it was in the up position and it stayed there as I walked towards it.

  It was close to midday and the sun was at the highest point of its arc so that I cast a very short shadow on the block paving under my feet. My shirt had stuck to my back and I could feel the back of my neck burning. The little flowered bag containing the tape recorder and the SIG with its almost-empty magazine bumped against my hip as I walked.

  As I approached I saw a head appear in the window of the guardhouse, then the figure moved to the doorway and came out to watch me. For a moment I tensed but as I drew nearer I saw the uniformed guard could only have been a year or two younger than Walt.

  “Afternoon, young lady,” he said cheerfully. “What can I do for you today?”

  I manufactured a gormless teenage expression. “I’m s’posed to be, like meeting my mom. She’s go
t a place here, y’know?” I said, looking about me vaguely, as though expecting her to materialise out of the shrubbery.

  The old guard didn’t look either fazed or suspicious of my story.

  “No problem,” he said, picking up his clipboard. “What’s her name?”

  “Gerri Raybourn,” I said, trying not to hold my breath after I’d said it. “She and my dad are, like, divorced and I’m s’posed to be staying with her ‘til I go back to college next week. It’s a real drag.”

  Too much information, my mind yelled in my inner ear. Shut up!

  “No problem,” the guard said again. He found the name and made a note against it. “You know where to find her villa?”