by Sharp, Zoe
Sean dived out and took another two shots at the disappearing vehicle. I hoped he was also getting the licence plate while he was at it, otherwise it was just self-indulgence on his part.
Behind me, Blake Dyer sat up and shook his head as if to clear his ringing ears. He let out a low whistle.
“Wow, Charlie, life around you is never dull.”
“I could say the same about you,” I said. I tucked the SIG away again, not wanting to have it on show when the police arrived to a “shots fired” call. I flipped open Dyer’s jacket and started to run my hands around his torso.
“Hey, you can quit that,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“When someone tried to assassinate President Reagan back in the ’eighties, initially he had no idea he’d been shot,” I said. “Shock can do funny things to you.”
“I remember,” Dyer said, and when I glanced at him he added dryly, “I was there.”
“Everyone OK?” Sean asked, dropping back between the SUVs.
“We’re fine,” Dyer repeated. “I was just—”
A slither on the upper level of the parking structure had Sean taking a firm grip on the Glock again.
“Sean, the police will be here any minute—” I began.
He didn’t listen.
I stayed with Dyer as Sean crossed to the far rail and peered through it cautiously.
“Show yourself!” he shouted. “Let me see your hands. LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS.”
“OK, OK, man, don’t shoot! For the love of Jesus, man, don’t shoot.”
I rose in time to see a figure move slowly into view, a little shaky, one hand clutching a bloodied rag to his head. He brought the other hand up as he began to turn.
Alongside me, Dyer gave a shocked exclamation and hurried forwards. I stuck with him, but it took me a moment longer to realise the reason for it.
The injured man was the baseball player—the star guest for this whole performance. Gabe Baptiste.
Eleven
The police took their time with us, thorough but respectful. Clearly the mention of Ysabeau van Zant’s name had a ripple effect further up the chain of command. Within thirty minutes, two uniforms had become a bevy of detectives and forensics people.
They’d started combing the area, rapidly finding the dropped gun from the man I’d shot. Now they were painstakingly marking and photographing all the ejected brass. It all meant that Blake Dyer wouldn’t get to his bed any time soon.
A couple of paramedics finished patching up Gabe Baptiste. The blood turned out to be little more than a scuff to the side of his head. Scalp wounds always bleed worse than they are.
But I could still remember seeing the blood spray outwards from the gunshot injury to Sean’s temple. Seeing the way his head had snapped round in response to the hit. The way his body instantly dropped.
Now, watching him give a lucid and reasoned statement to the cops, he rubbed at the site of the scar almost absently. Unless you knew what you were looking for you’d hardly notice it was there.
Our principal had been given a blanket and a cup of something sweet to combat the shock. He sat on the steps of the ambulance next to Baptiste, looking tired. Baptiste, no longer needing treatment, was signing autographs for a couple of the younger cops.
“Meat and drink to a guy like that, ain’t it?” said the older plainclothes man alongside me.
There was something dismissive in his voice that caught my attention. “Not a baseball fan, detective?”
“Oh, I like the sport well enough,” the detective said. He was a black guy in his late fifties, heavy with the passing of time, in a shirt that was not on its first day of wear and a suit not on its first decade. “Just don’t agree with some guys being allowed a free pass, that’s all.”
“A free pass?”
His eyes flicked over me, considering, and for a moment I thought he regretted having said anything at all. Then he sighed, “I remember Gabe Baptiste when he was just a mouthy kid from the wrong side of town,” he said. “Got himself into some trouble back then. Would have thought it’d count against him when one of these fancy teams wanted to sign him up.” He shrugged. “Funny how they kinda forgot all about that when they wanted to.”
“What kind of trouble?” I asked, but one of the other cops approached him then, and he seemed glad of the opportunity to end that line of questioning. He snapped his notebook shut. “Thank you, ma’am. We need any more, we know where to find you.”
Sean’s cop had left him alone, too. Looked like they were winding up. I crossed to join him. “What’s the story from Baptiste?”
Sean shrugged. “Reckons we interrupted a robbery gone wrong.”
I glanced over at the ball player, noted the ornate Rolex still on his wrist, the gold chain around his neck that was heavy-gauge enough to anchor a battleship. “Pretty shonky robbers if four of them didn’t even manage to get the bling off him before we came along,” I said.
Sean just smiled. He was still buzzed, I saw, skin clammy and pale, hands just a little shaky. I opened my mouth to ask if he was OK but he headed me off.
“If the cops are all done, we need to get the boss man upstairs, Charlie. Get him squared away for the night, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I watched him stride away from me.
I hope you don’t expect me to square away what happened here tonight as easy, Sean, because this isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.
Twelve
We got Blake Dyer upstairs, gave him a brandy and let him talk himself down out of the worst of it. By the time he finally called it a night the sky was starting to lighten over the Gulf of Mexico.
I walked the few paces up the hallway to my own room and took the paddle-rig holster out of the small of my back, keyed in the code for the in-room safe and topped off the magazine from one of the boxes of ammo I’d stored there.
I’d recently changed up from my usual 9mm SIG to the .40 cal P229. Sean carried a Glock 27 in the same calibre. It made sense for us both to use common ammunition.
He’d certainly used enough of it tonight.
And suddenly I couldn’t wait for morning. I couldn’t leave things there.
Reluctant to go anywhere without it when I was still officially on the clock, I shoved the SIG back under my jacket, grabbed my room keys and crossed the corridor.
I knocked on the door to Sean’s room, but when there was no movement behind the Judas glass I let myself in anyway. We both had three keys—to each other’s and Dyer’s room, just in case of emergency.
I reckoned this counted.
“Sean?”
After a moment he emerged from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. His jacket and tie were gone and his shirt hung loose and open. I swallowed at the sliver of bare chest on show.
“Something you need, Charlie?”
Oh yes. Hell, yes . . .
I needed a sign that the man I’d fallen for was still living inside the body in front of me. That there was still a reason to prolong this awkward, constant, painful contact. I was a slave to hope. It kept me alongside him when sense and pride dictated retreat long ago.
It took me a moment to realise that for once his words were said without undertone. He just sounded weary with the post-contact fatigue that hits like a truck when the adrenaline is gone.
“What happened back there?” I tried to match my tone to his, matter of fact. I almost succeeded.
“Does it matter?” He threw the towel over the back of a chair. “We got the job done. No sweat.”
“No, Sean, I got the job done. The job we’re being paid to do. I got the principal to safety, kept his head down, kept him covered, while you went in there all guns blazing.”
Sean’s jaw clenched. “Didn’t stop you getting a shot off, though, did it?”
“One shot,” I said. “At a clear target presenting a viable threat. What did you think you were doing?”
“Keeping them away from the principal,” he said, but there was something def
ensive in his voice now. “I knew you had his back—mine too, eh?”
I sighed. “That’s not the point, Sean. You reacted with maximum speed and aggression—in other words, like a squaddie, not a bodyguard. What were you thinking?”
“There wasn’t time to think, Charlie. You know that. You just have to go with your instinct.”
“There bloody well should be time to think,” I said. “That parking garage was the worst place for a stand-off. No decent cover, no decent exits, and concrete everywhere just waiting to cause ricochets.”
Sean started to turn away. “You’re exaggerating the risks, Charlie—”
I lunged forwards, spun him to face me. As I did so, I let my grip slide into his shirt, peeling it back from his body. Just below the point of his left shoulder was the puckered scar of an old bullet wound. I could still remember what it had looked like fresh and raw, bright and raging.
“Remember that, Sean? No, I don’t expect you do, but trust me when I tell you it came from a wild shot that ricocheted off a bare concrete wall.”
He looked down at the scar as if noticing it for the first time, a deep frown creasing his face. I could see the turmoil in him, see him battling and failing to recall.
“What . . . happened?” he asked quietly.
I let go and stepped back. It wasn’t up to me to fill in the blanks more than I had done. Petty, but it felt like cheating. Besides, I didn’t think he’d appreciate hearing about my part in it. Even so . . .
“I got you out,” I said, blunt, heading for the door. “And my father, for his sins, rolled out to patch you up.” I waited a beat. “Despite the fact the police were after you at the time.” I should have known that last bit didn’t come as the biggest surprise to him. He touched a hand to the scar as if that might bring it all back.
“Your father? But . . . your old man can’t stand me.”
So, he remembered some things, at least. I paused.
“Times change, Sean.”
Yeah, and not always for the better.
Thirteen
I was too wired to sleep. Instead, I changed into a T-shirt, jeans and a hoodie. I clipped the SIG out of sight on my belt, slid my phone and room key into a pocket, and jogged down the deserted stairwell. Then I crossed the lobby and slipped out through the glass doors into the quiet dawn of another day.
It was already warm rather than overpowering—about the level of an English summer day. Or the summers we used to get when I was a kid, but don’t seem to any more.
Outside, the front of the hotel was quiet. The valet parking station was unoccupied except for a single sleepy attendant, trying to hide a cigarette cupped in the palm of his hand. I smiled to let him know I wasn’t going to tell tales. He grinned back, sheepish.
The weight of the phone in my pocket was a temptation. After a moment I dragged it out, stared at the display for a long time, then gave in and dialled.
Parker answered on the second ring like he’d been waiting for my call.
“Hi, Charlie,” he said. “I hear you had a little excitement down there last night. When were you planning to let me know you were safe?”
There was a note of censure in his voice, and it wasn’t quite as casual as I knew he would have liked.
“You’re well informed,” I said mildly. “You mean you wanted to know that our client was safe.”
He never did like us using names on an open line if we could help it.
“Ah . . . of course.”
“Well, the local cops kept us talking for three hours and then our client kept us talking for another two. We’ve only just put him to bed.”
“The news agencies have already picked up on the player’s involvement,” he said. “They’re calling it a robbery gone wrong. What’s your take?”
“Could have been, but if so they didn’t manage to rob him very successfully—he wasn’t missing anything but a patch of skin and a few mil of blood.”
“They cut him?”
“More like a cuff to the head from what I saw,” I said.
“But you’re OK?” he insisted.
“We’re both fine—well, no. Not exactly.”
“Tell me.”
I took a breath. “You know before we left New York I told you I didn’t think Sean was ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, he’s not ready,” I said flatly. “Now I can tell you that for a fact.”
I heard him sigh. “What happened?”
I sat on a concrete planter, kicking my heels against the stucco while I explained, watching a weird shiny black insect about the size of a mouse climbing up the trunk of a potted tree. I gave him my report, clear and concise, not offering any opinions one way or another.
“He really has reverted back to military mode,” Parker said at once when I was done.
“That’s my take on it, yes.”
“Well, you’re going to have to snap him out of it—and do it fast, before he lands the pair of you in deep trouble.”
“Would you like me to find a workable solution to the Middle East situation while I’m at it?” I demanded, allowing a hint of snark. “How about the energy crisis? Climate change?”
“When you put it like that, I guess you may as well,” Parker said gravely, “although I’m not convinced climate change isn’t just the Arctic oscillation in play.”
I knew he was trying to lighten the situation, but this time it didn’t seem to help. “And our client is not being straight with us either,” I said. “He’s got some history with a local politico called Ysabeau van Zant. Bad history at a guess, but he clammed up tighter than a fish’s armpit when we pressed him on it. That’s another thing—Sean seems to have had a diplomacy bypass at the same time as—”
I was suddenly aware of a feeling of being watched. I let the phone drop into my lap and hopped down from the edge of the planter, twisting as soon as my feet hit the ground.
Across by the entrance to the hotel, exchanging a cigarette for a light from the valet, was my old nemesis, Vic Morton.
The sight of him, so unexpected, brought a repeat of the raw urge to reach for my weapon, point and shoot. For a second I daren’t move for fear I’d follow through on it.
He was still wearing the suit I’d seen him in at the van Zant mansion. I assumed he’d only just delivered Jimmy O’Day safely back to the hotel after an all-nighter. Never my favourite detail. Still, he looked lively enough on it.
Morton wasn’t a big guy but he had always been quick on his feet. Quick to grease himself out of danger if there was blame to be apportioned, too, I seemed to remember.
It pleased me to note, in a purely bitchy kind of way, that he looked older than he should have done considering the time that had passed. I hoped the weight of carrying round a guilty conscience was responsible for the premature ageing. Certainly, his once high forehead was now a definite full-blown receding hairline.
What guilty conscience?
I pushed aside the hint of bile that had risen at the back of my throat and checked the distance between us, reassuring myself he was too far away to possibly overhear. But I took one look at that knowing smirk and the suspicion he’d somehow been listening to my entire conversation wouldn’t be shaken. I slowly brought the phone back up to my ear.
“Charlie! Are you OK?”
“Fine,” I murmured. “Look, I’ve got to go, but I think you need to check out the connection to the politician for me—soon as you can, if you wouldn’t mind? The big shindig on the paddle steamer is tomorrow night and I’ve no desire to have things turn into a remake of that old disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.”
Parker laughed. “The Miss Francis is an ex-floating casino and party boat,” he said. “I doubt if she will even untie from the dock. But I’ll get Bill right on it.”
“One last thing,” I said, casually shifting my grip on the phone so my mouth was obscured by my hand. “There’s a guy subbing on Jimmy O’Day’s security detail—name of Vic Morton. Get Bill to
do a run on him as well while he’s at it. If there’s dirt, I want to know it.”
As I spoke, I was watching Morton shoot the breeze with the valet. And the more I watched him, the more convinced I became that he’d been eavesdropping.
“Vic Morton . . . why do I know that name?” Parker asked slowly. “Wait a moment, wasn’t he—?”
“Just get Bill to dig up something—anything—that will get that sneaky bastard packed back to the UK in the hold of the first cargo plane heading east, will you?” I said, my voice rough. “I’ve had quite enough nasty surprises for one trip.”