by Zoe Sharp
The way she’d cherished Bobby. The way he’d cherished her.
She left the locker room and collected a fresh tray from the kitchen. The chefs were under pressure, the activity frantic, but when she walked in on those long dancer’s legs there was a moment of silence that was almost reverent.
“You changed your clothes,” one of the chefs said, mesmerised.
She smiled at him, saw the fog lift a little as the disappointment of her face cut through the haze of lust created by her body.
“I spilled,” she said, collecting a fresh tray. She felt every eye on her as she walked out, smiled when she heard the collective sigh as the door swung closed behind her.
It was a short-lived smile.
Back in the ballroom, it was all she could do not to go marching straight up to Venable, but she knew she had to play it cool. The four bodyguards were too experienced not to spot her sudden surge of guilt and anger. They’d pick her out of the crowd the way a shark cuts out a weakling seal pup. And she couldn’t afford that. Not yet.
Instead, she forced herself to think bland thoughts as she circled the room towards him. Saw out of the corner of her eye Thad casually moving up on the other side. The relief flooded her, sending her limbs almost lax with it. For a second, she’d been afraid he wouldn’t go through with it. That he’d realise what her real idea was, and back out at the last moment.
For the moment, though, Thad must think it was all going to plan. She stepped up to the Dyers, offered them something from her tray. The secretary still hadn’t left his side, she saw. The girl must be desperate.
Layla took another step, sideways towards Venable, ducking around the cordon of bodyguards. Offered him something from her tray. And this time, as he leaned forwards, so did she, pressing her arms together to accentuate what nature had so generously given her.
She watched Venable’s eyes go glassy, saw the way the eyes of the nearest two bodyguards bulged the same way. There was another just behind her, she knew, and she bent a little further from the waist, knowing she was giving him a prime view of her ass and the back of her newly-exposed thighs. She could almost feel that hot little gaze slavering up the backs of her knees.
Come on, Thad . . .
He came pushing through the crowd nearest to Venable, moving too fast. If he’d been slower, he might have made it. As it was, he was the only guy for twenty feet in any direction who didn’t have his eyes full of Layla’s divine body. Venable’s eyes snapped round at the last moment, jerky, panicking as he realised the rapidly approaching threat. He flailed, sending Layla’s tray crashing to the ground, showering canapés.
The bodyguards were slower off the mark. Thad already had the gun out before two of them grabbed him. Not so much grabbed as piled in on top of him, driving him off his legs and down, using fists and feet to keep him there.
Thad was no easy meat, though. He kept in shape and had come up from the streets, where unfair fights were part of the game. Even on the floor, he lashed out, aiming for knees and shins, hitting more than he was missing. A third bodyguard joined in to keep him down, a leather sap appearing like magic in his hand.
There was that familiar crack of skulls. Just like Bobby . . .
Layla winced, but she couldn’t let that distract her now. Her mind strangely cool and calm, Layla stepped in, ignored. The fourth bodyguard had stayed at his post, but Layla was shielded from his view by his own principal, and everyone’s attention was on the fight. Carefully, she reached under her skirt and yanked the Makarov free, unaware of the brief burn as the tape ripped from her thigh.
The safety was already off, the hammer back. The army surplus guy down in Miramar had thrown in a little instruction as well. Gave him more of a chance to stand up real close behind her as he demonstrated how to hold the unfamiliar gun, how to aim and fire.
She brought the nine up the way he’d shown her, both hands clasped round the pistol grip, starting to take up the pressure on the trigger, she bent her knees and crouched a little, so the recoil wouldn’t send the barrel rising, just in case she had to take a second shot. But, this close, she knew she wouldn’t need one, even if she got the chance.
One thing Layla hadn’t been prepared for was the noise. The report was monstrously loud in the high-ceilinged ballroom. And though she thought she’d been prepared, she staggered back and to the side. And the pain. The pain was a gigantic fist around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
She looked up, vision starting to shimmer, and saw Venable was still standing, shocked but apparently unharmed. How had she missed? The bodyguard had come out of his lethargy to throw himself on top of his employer, but there was still an open window. There was still time . . .
Layla tried to lift the gun but her arms were leaden. Something hit her, hard, in the centre of her voluptuous chest, but she didn’t see what it was, or who threw it. She frowned, took a step back and her legs folded, and suddenly she was staring up at the chandeliers on the ceiling and she had to hold on to the polished wooden dance floor beneath her hands to stay there. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges, like burning paper, the sound blurring down.
The last thing she saw was the slim woman she’d taken for a secretary, leaning over her with a wisp of smoke rising from the muzzle of the 9mm she was holding.
Then the bright lights, and the glitter, all faded to black.
***
The woman Layla had mistaken for a secretary placed two fingers against the pulse point in the waitress’s throat and felt nothing. She knew better than to touch the body more than she had to now, even to close the dead woman’s eyes.
Cindy, the name tag read, under the trickle of the blood. She doubted that would match the woman’s driver’s licence.
She rose, sliding the SIG semiautomatic back into the concealed-carry rig on her belt. Two of Venable’s meaty goons wrestled the woman’s accomplice, bellowing, out of the room. She turned to her employer.
“I don’t think you were the target, Mr Dyer, but I couldn’t take the chance,” she said calmly. She jerked her head towards the bodyguards. “If this lot had been halfway capable, I wouldn’t have had to get involved. As it was . . .”
Dyer nodded. He still had his arms wrapped round his wife, who was sobbing, and his eyes were sad and tired.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
The woman shrugged. “It’s my job,” she said.
“Who the hell are you?” It was Venable himself who spoke, elbowing his way out from the protective shield that his remaining bodyguards had belatedly thrown around him.
“This is Charlie Fox,” Dyer answered for her, the faintest smile in his voice. “She’s my personal protection. A little more subtle than your own choice. She’s good, isn’t she?”
Venable stared at him blankly, then at the dead woman, lying crumpled on the polished planks. At the unfired gun that had fallen from her hand.
“You saved my life,” he murmured, his face pale.
Charlie stared back at him. “Yes,” she said, sounding almost regretful. “Whether it was worth saving is quite another point. What had you done to her that she was prepared to kill you for it?”
Venable seemed not to hear. He couldn’t take his eyes off Layla’s body. Something about her was familiar, but he just couldn’t remember her face.
“I don’t know – nothing,” he said, cleared his throat of its hoarseness and tried again. “She’s a nobody. Just a waitress.” He took another look, just to be sure. “Just a woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dyer said, and his eyes were on Charlie Fox. “From where I’m standing she’s a hell of a woman, wouldn’t you say?”
Off Duty
This was the fourth short story I wrote featuring Charlie Fox. In this, she and her former boss and now partner, Sean, have moved to New York City and are working for Parker Armstrong’s prestigious close-protection agency. But Charlie is on enforced leave – a bodyguard without a body to guard – and feels somewh
at adrift.
This story was written specially for the US paperback edition of book six in the series, SECOND SHOT. During the events of that book, Charlie was injured protecting her principal, Simone Kerse, and at the end of it Charlie is still rehabilitating from the double-gunshot wounds that almost killed her.
As part of her recuperation, she takes off on her new Buell Firebolt motorcycle, and heads for an out-of-season health spa in the Catskill Mountains. There she encounters guests and staff who turn out to be more – or sometimes less – than first meets the eye. Charlie handles them all with her usual downbeat inimitable style.
Incidentally, the damage sustained by the Buell during this story was referenced in the next book in the series – THIRD STRIKE. Only a small mention, but enough for fans to spot!
Instead of appearing as a bonus story at the end of SECOND SHOT, Off Duty was selected for inclusion in CRIMINAL TENDENCIES – GREAT CRIME STORIES FROM GREAT CRIME WRITERS, part of the proceeds of which went to breast cancer charities. The story also appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and was chosen for THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8, edited by Maxim Jakubowski.
The guy who’d just tried to kill me didn’t look like much. From the fleeting glimpse I’d caught of him behind the wheel of his brand new soft-top Cadillac, he was short, with less hair than he’d like on his head and more than anyone could possibly want on his chest and forearms.
That was as much as I could tell before I was throwing myself sideways. The front wheel of the Buell skittered on the loose gravel shoulder of the road, sending a vicious shimmy up through the headstock into my arms. I nearly dropped the damn bike there and then, and that was what pissed me off the most.
The Buell was less than a month old at that point, a Firebolt still with the shiny feel to it, and I’d been hoping it would take longer to acquire its first battle scar. The first cut is always the one you remember.
Although I was wearing full leathers, officially I was still signed off sick from the Kerse job and undergoing the tortures of regular physiotherapy. Adding motorcycle accident injuries, however minor, was not going to look good to anyone, least of all me.
But the bike didn’t tuck under and spit me into the weeds, as I half-expected. Instead it righted itself, almost stately, and allowed me to slither to a messy stop maybe seventy meters further on. I put my feet down and tipped up my visor, aware of my heart punching behind my ribs, the adrenaline shake in my hands, the burst of anger that follows on closely after having had the shit scared out of you.
I turned, to find the guy in the Cadillac had completed his half-arsed manoeuvre, pulling out of a side road and turning left across my path. He’d slowed, though, twisting round to stare back at me with his neck extended like a meerkat. Even at this distance I could see the petulant scowl. Hell, perhaps I’d made him drop the cell phone he’d been yabbering into instead of paying attention to his driving . . .
Just for a second our eyes met, and I considered making an issue out of it. The guy must have sensed that. He plunked back down in his seat and rammed the car into drive, gunning it away with enough gusto to chirrup the tires on the bone dry surface.
I rolled my shoulders, thought that was the last I’d ever see of him.
I was wrong.
***
Spending a few days away in the Catskill Mountains was a spur-of-the-moment decision, taken in a mood of self-pity.
Sean was in LA, heading up a high-profile protection detail for some East Coast actress who’d hit it big and was getting windy about her latest stalker. He’d just come back from the Middle East, tired, but focused, buzzing, loving every minute of it and doing his best not to rub it in.
After he’d left for California, the apartment seemed too quiet without him. Feeling the sudden urge to escape New York, and my enforced sabbatical, I’d looked at the maps and headed for the hills, ending up at a small resort and health spa, just north of the prettily-named Sundown in Ulster county. The last time I’d been in Ulster the local accent had been Northern Irish, and it had not ended well.
The hotel was set back in thick trees, the accommodation provided in a series of chalets overlooking a small lake. My physio had recommended the range of massage services they offered, and I’d booked a whole raft of treatments. By the time I brought the bike to a halt, nose-in outside my designated chalet, I was about ready for my daily pummelling.
It was with no more than mild annoyance, therefore, that I recognized the soft-top Cadillac two spaces down. For a moment my hand stilled, then I shrugged, hit the engine kill-switch, and went stiffly inside to change out of my leathers.
***
Fifteen minutes later, fresh from the shower, I was sitting alone in the waiting area of the spa, listening to the self-consciously soothing music. The resort was quiet, not yet in season. Another reason why I’d chosen it.
“Tanya will be with you directly,” the woman on the desk told me, gracious in white, depositing a jug of iced water by my elbow before melting away again.
The only other person in the waiting area was a big blond guy who worked maintenance. He was making too much out of replacing a faulty door catch, but unless you have the practice it’s hard to loiter unobtrusively. From habit, I watched his hands, his eyes, wondered idly what he was about.
The sound of raised voices from one of the treatment rooms produced a sudden, jarring note. From my current position I could see along the line of doors, watched one burst open and the masseuse, Tanya, come storming out. Her face was scarlet with anger and embarrassment. She whirled.
“You slimy little bastard!”
I wasn’t overly surprised to see Cadillac man hurry out after her, shrugging into his robe. I’d been right about the extent of that body hair.
“Aw, come on, honey!” he protested. “I thought it was all, y’know, part of the service.”
The blond maintenance man dropped his tools and lunged for the corridor, meaty hands outstretched. The woman behind the reception desk jumped to her feet, rapped out, “Dwayne!” in a thunderous voice that made him falter in conditioned response.
I swung my legs off my lounger but didn’t rise. The woman on the desk looked like she could handle it, and she did, sending Dwayne skulking off, placating Tanya, giving Cadillac man an excruciatingly polite dressing down that flayed the skin off him nevertheless. He left a tip that must have doubled the cost of the massage he’d so nearly had.
“Ms Fox?” Tanya said a few moments later, flustered but trying for calm. “I’m real sorry about that. Would you follow me, please?”
“Are you OK, or do you need a minute?” I asked, wary of letting someone dig in with ill-tempered fingers, however skilled.
“I’m good, thanks.” She led me into the dimly lit treatment room, flashed a quick smile over her shoulder as she laid out fresh hot towels.
“Matey-boy tried it on, did he?”
She shook her head, rueful, slicked her hands with warmed oil. “Some guys hear the word masseuse but by the time it’s gotten down to their brain, it’s turned into hooker,” she said, her back to me while I slipped out of my robe and levered myself, face-down, flat onto the table. Easier than it had been, not as easy as it used to be.
“So, what’s Dwayne’s story?” I asked, feeling the first long glide of her palms up either side of my spine, the slight reactive tremor when I mentioned his name.
“He and I stepped out for awhile,” she said, casual yet prim. “It wasn’t working, so we broke it off.”
I thought of his pretended busyness, his lingering gaze, his rage.
No, I thought. You broke it off.
***
Later that evening, unwilling to suit up again to ride into the nearest town, I ate in the hotel restaurant at a table laid for one. Other diners were scarce. Cadillac man was alone on the far side of the dining room, just visible round the edges of the silent grand piano. I could almost see the miasma of his aftershave.
He called the waitress “
honey”, too, stared blatantly down her cleavage when she brought his food. Anticipating the summer crowds, the management packed the tables in close, so she had to lean across to refill his coffee cup. I heard her surprised, hurt squeak as he took advantage, and waited to see if she’d ‘accidentally’ tip the contents of the pot into his lap, just to dampen his ardour. To my disappointment, she did not.
He chuckled as she scurried away, caught me watching and mistook my glance for admiration. He raised his cup in my direction with a meaningful little wiggle of his eyebrows. I stared him out for a moment, then looked away.
Just another oxygen thief.
***
As soon as I’d finished eating I took my own coffee through to the bar. The flatscreen TV above the mirrored back wall was tuned to one of the sports channels, showing highlights of the latest AMA Superbikes Championship. The only other occupant was the blond maintenance man, Dwayne, sitting hunched at the far end, pouring himself into his beer.