by Zoe Sharp
And right at that moment, as her attention was on me, a man stepped out from behind the shelter with a gun in his hand.
I’d reacted before I had time to think, to blink, to draw breath. A visceral response that went straight from optic nerve to muscle.
I grabbed Helena’s shoulder with my left hand, yanking her backwards as my right went for the SIG behind my right hip.
As I cleared the rig, I piled my weight sideways, twisting so Helena was flung behind me, swung off her feet, while I put myself between her and the threat. Aiming low centre mass as an extension of my arm, I had taken up half the poundage on the trigger when my brain finally caught up with what was happening.
I froze, breathing hard—not simply from the running—and waited a beat longer before uncoiling my finger from the trigger and laying it alongside the guard.
Behind me, Helena picked herself up, slapping sand from her clothing.
“Goddammit, Schade,” she barked. She glared at the man, who calmly put away his weapon with apparently no concern for how close he’d come to being gut-shot. “What kind of an idiot game was that to play?”
Schade, meanwhile, had not taken his eyes from mine. He stood entirely relaxed. It was hard to read what was going on behind those wire-framed spectacles.
“Big on idiot, clearly,” he admitted. “Just wanted to check the girl knew how to dance.”
“And?” Helena demanded, moving up beside me, her eyes scanning from my face to his. I kept my gaze on Schade a moment longer, then broke away, lifting the side of my T-shirt and tucking the SIG back into its holster. I tried to keep my face neutral, to suck the air deep into my lungs without gasping for it, to will my hands not to tremble from the nitrous shot of adrenaline punching through my system.
When Schade spoke again, his voice was low with a kind of wonder. “And, damn me if she can’t do a mean tango…”
13
I tapped the back of my knuckles lightly on the open office door and stuck my head through the gap. Mrs Heedles’ eyes never shifted from the screen of her computer, fingers dancing over the keyboard with the finesse of a concert pianist.
“Yes, dear, how can I help?” She must have great peripheral vision.
“Mr Kincaid didn’t mention anything about me taking time off.”
She did glance up then, a twist of amusement to her features.
“You putting in for vacation time already, huh? Well, after that stunt Mr Schade pulled yesterday, I can’t say I blame you.”
I shrugged. There was plenty I could have said about that, but thought it best to go with diplomatic for now. “He just wanted to be sure I was up to the job.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, too ladylike for it to have been an actual snort. “What do you need?”
“Frank and Lorna Stephenson have invited me over for supper—as a thank you for house-sitting for them.”
“The Stephensons are good people, from what I gather.” She reached for the mouse and clicked something open on her computer desktop—presumably a day-planner. “Well now, I don’t see him having a problem with you taking a few hours to yourself, dear. And if he does, tell him to go to hell and back, the long way,” she said. “When?”
“Tomorrow evening. There’s nothing in Mrs K’s schedule—I already checked.”
She nodded. “Then have at it. You need me to have someone drive you over there? You’re aware, naturally, that getting caught DUI would mean instant dismissal.”
“Not if you’ve a spare vehicle about the place that I could use?” I said. “I don’t plan on drinking.”
That did provoke a snort, no doubt about it, but whether at the request or the statement of intent, it was hard to tell. She reached into a desk drawer and brought out what looked like a garage door remote, tossing it over to me. I caught it one-handed, held it up with a raised eyebrow.
Mrs Heedles grinned in response and there was a certain amount of relish to it. “If the keys are in the ignition, then it’s fair game,” she said. “Enjoy.”
I didn’t appreciate the true meaning of her words until I found my way to the garages in an annexe at the rear of the property. I’d studied the floorplan for the place, so I had a rough idea of direction. As soon as I opened the personnel door at the side, the lights blinked on automatically. They revealed a huge space with gleaming white walls and glossy black tiles on the floor.
And, parked in a neat line, at least a dozen cars that were collectively worth at least seven figures, and possibly eight.
“Holy cow, Batman,” I murmured. I thumbed the button on the remote to open the large doors at the front, just to be sure I hadn’t wandered into the wrong garage by mistake. They parted in the centre almost at once, sliding back noiselessly in sections like an aircraft hangar.
I closed them again and walked along the row, the soles of my boots squeaking on the tiles. It was like a Who’s Who of the automotive world—a Bugatti Veyron, McLaren Senna, and an Aston Martin Lagonda sat alongside a new model Bentley Continental GT. The paintwork was showroom fresh. Even the tyres looked unworn.
“Kid in a candy store, huh?” said a voice from the doorway.
I looked back. Eric Kincaid stepped into the garage. He wore jeans and a tailored Oxford shirt with the collar open and the cuffs folded back to reveal an ultra-thin Jaeger-LeCoultre wristwatch. On his feet were loafers that didn’t make a sound on the tiles.
“So, you’re a bit of a petrolhead?”
“Not really,” he admitted, hands in pockets as he surveyed the gleaming display of collective horsepower. “More of an investor, I guess.”
“Ah. Then I suppose that me taking any of this lot up a bumpy track, through a forest, at night, might not be on the cards.”
He shrugged. “You want to try it, be my guest,” he said, with the indifference to potentially expensive damage that only the truly rich can afford to overlook.
“I’d be happier in one of the Range Rovers you were using the other day, to be honest,” I admitted. “If you don’t need them both yourself.”
“I’ll have Schade leave one out front for you. Take it whenever you need to.”
“Thank you.” I ran my hand casually along the paintwork of the Aston Martin Lagonda. It was a four-door Taraf model, sporting the discreet Q badging that showed bespoke customisation on top of the standard spec, and no doubt also sporting a price tag to match.
“So, if you’re not into cars for what they are, rather than their return on investment, what does float your boat?” I asked, suddenly curious. “And I assume you have a boat stashed away somewhere as well?”
“Nassau,” he said with a smile. “And a Gulfstream 650, before you ask. It’s a nice little family plane.”
“Of course it is,” I agreed.
Another shrug. “At the end of the day, they’re simply tools to make more efficient use of my time. Why travel to someone else’s schedule when you can do it at your own convenience?”
We stared over the cars in silence for a moment before I tried another prompt. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why do you do this? Why do you work so hard, generate so much wealth, if not to then enjoy the fruits of your labours?”
“Who says I don’t enjoy them?” He lifted an eyebrow. The guarded edge was back, the shutters down behind his eyes.
“OK, wrong choice of words,” I said. “I’ve been around a lot of very rich people over the last few years. In this job, it’s par for the course. And some of them are driven by having come from nothing and never quite being able to forget it. They need possessions—endless expensive stuff—as a constant reminder to themselves as much as to others, of how far they’ve come.” I paused but he wasn’t giving me anything to work with, one way or another. I took a breath and plunged on. “But for you, I get the impression materialism is not what motivates you.”
He nodded then, and all hint of humour had gone from that stone-cold gaze. “Life is one big game and it’s one I’m in to win. There is no second place, as far as I
’m concerned,” he said. “But you’re right—I don’t do it for the money. That’s simply how we keep score.”
14
Supper at the Stephensons’ farmhouse the following evening was a relaxed and enjoyable affair—for the most part, anyway.
I heard all about their European travels, from the olive groves of Tuscany to the monasteries and ancient castles of Spain, and the vineyards of France. When they recounted, laughing, a story of late connecting flights, and escorted dashes through various airports, I couldn’t help but recall Eric Kincaid’s comment on the advantages of private jet ownership. Someone I’d once guarded had said much the same thing. That one of the first things that changed when he started making serious money was the style in which he was able to travel. You begin to look forward to the journey almost as much as the destination, he said. Or at the very least you no longer view the prospect of flying with the same kind of weary forbearance.
We ate at the big table in the kitchen. The tabby cat with the white bib was still in her box by the stove with her kittens. The last of the evening light shifted gently around the room, like it was touching on mementos. Afterwards, Lorna took me through to the sitting room while Frank—at his own insistence—pottered through the tidying up and clearing away.
He joined us perhaps ten minutes later. He was bearing a tray loaded with real tea they’d picked up from Fortnum & Mason during their brief stopover in London, in a china teapot. Lorna poured cups for each of us while Frank went through the ritual of drawing the heavy curtains to block out the star-sprinkled sky above the trees.
“Well,” Lorna said with a distinct glimmer in her eye as she handed across my cup. “I think that should satisfy any Peeping Toms out there in the woods, don’t you?”
“It should,” I agreed.
As if on cue, footsteps sounded on the creaky wooden stairs, descending. A moment later, Conrad Epps stepped into the sitting room. He shook hands with Frank, who called him “sir” although he was clearly the senior—in years at least. I realised I hadn’t given any thought to the relationship between them when I’d agreed to come out to the farm in the first place.
Lorna rose, taking her teacup and handing another to her husband. “We’ll go catch up on some TV in the study,” she said placidly, as if hosting covert meetings was an everyday occurrence for her. “Let us know when you’re all done talking.”
Then we were alone, with only the ticking of a long-case clock for company. Epps took the leather recliner opposite the sofa and fixed me with an interrogator’s stare.
“So, what was so urgent you had to drag me all the way out here to hide out until dark?” he asked, with less heat than I might have expected, under the circumstances. His very calmness stirred a sense of irritation I couldn’t quite squash. “Have you made any progress on the status of the chemical weapons deal?”
I ignored the question, asked one of my own instead, barely keeping my voice level. “What exactly were you hoping to achieve with that ambush on Helena Kincaid?”
Epps sat back, his feet flat on the floor and his hands on the armrests of the chair, but something in him relaxed a little, as if whatever he’d been expecting me to say, that wasn’t it.
“Your insertion into the Kincaid household,” he said. “Which was a successful part of the operation…unless you’re about to tell me otherwise. Why?”
“Did you know about this summit he was a part of?” I kept my eyes on his face, tried to spot any minute signs that he was lying. He was as difficult to read as a shark. You knew he was going to bite your leg off at some point, it was simply a matter of when.
His only reply to that was a raised eyebrow. I hissed out a breath. “The agreement about not going after any family members who classify as non-combatants,” I went on. “Kincaid was a party to it, and by orchestrating that attempt on his wife, you may well have just fired the first shots in a bloody war.”
Epps’s continued silence was ominous in itself.
“You think the attack on Mrs Kincaid was at my instigation?” he asked finally, his voice silky with threat. “You have a very poor understanding of my operating methods, Ms Fox, if you believe I would be prepared to sacrifice men in order to achieve such an objective.”
“It could have been another of those consequences-based training methods—wasn’t that how you put it?”
He glared without speaking. I stared right back.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” I said. “I believe you’d sacrifice men in a heartbeat if you felt you could justify it. And I’m fully aware that includes me.”
“I am not in the habit of wasting assets until they have proven themselves…unreliable.”
“So they weren’t your men?”
His mouth twitched. It took me a moment to recognise the gesture as what passed for a smile. “Your tenacity is to be admired, but now it’s your understanding of your own capabilities which is poor,” he said. “I would not have pitted anyone I valued against you. I’ve seen you in action before, Charlie. Hell, at one point I thought I’d have to pull the damned trigger on you myself to force you to stand down.”
An instant flashback opened up in front of me like snow dropping away into a crevasse, leaving a gaping chasm I almost tumbled right into.
I felt again the heat of the California sun beating down on me, heard the harsh reports of pistol shots, saw the blood spraying outward from the head wound that had almost killed Sean Meyer, and had certainly destroyed whatever relationship we might have been able to build together. And the sheer rage that had filled me then roared through my veins like fire. My hands gave a quick, convulsive clench I couldn’t control, then the vision faded and a hollow calm returned.
I took a swallow of my tea, placed my cup down carefully, and looked up aware that Epps had missed nothing of the memory I’d just relived.
“So, if not yours, who were they?” I asked. “And how did you know what they were planning?”
“Let me simply say that Kincaid’s communications network is not as secure as he’d like to believe. And because we have him under surveillance, we knew when someone else attempted to infiltrate his security, also.”
“Attempted? Or succeeded?”
“Attempted,” Epps confirmed, just this side of smug. “I have better expertise at my disposal.”
“Who was it?”
“That is what we have been trying to ascertain. A new player. No other intel is yet…available.” For that I read ‘no intel I’m willing to share’. “We know only that when they failed to crack the encryption on Kincaid himself, they turned their attention to a softer target.”
“Helena.”
He inclined his head slightly. “All we did was intercept the information they accessed, which suggested interest in the particular time and location we passed on to you. The rest you know.”
My instincts about Helena, about her reluctance to accept 24/7 security and the reasons for her insistence on maintaining a level of privacy, prompted me to put out a feeler. “You were willing to possibly sacrifice a civilian to get me in there?”
Something shifted behind Epps’s expression. Only a fraction, but enough for me to suspect there was more to Helena Kincaid than being the non-combatant wife of an arms dealer.
“I had every confidence in your ability to improvise, Charlie.”
I gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Oh well, that’s all right then, or my parents would be hitting you up for the cost of a wreath about now.”
“You know I’m good for it,” he said, with such seriousness he probably was being utterly serious. It was a more feasible explanation than Epps actually being in possession of a sense of humour, however bleak.
He rose, abruptly indicating that, as far as he was concerned, my audience was at an end.
“What’s her story?” I asked as he started to turn away. “Why is Helena so set against being protected? What happened to her in the past?”
Epps paused. If I didn’t know him better, I’d almost
call it a hesitation. “I think it best if you wait until Mrs Kincaid is ready to share that with you herself…”
15
Helena Kincaid was clearly not in a sharing mood. At least, not as far as I was concerned. On the plus side, if she wasn’t exactly happy about having me to babysit her, after the first couple of days she stopped being actively unhelpful about it.
She seemed to accept the fact that I was going to run with her first thing in the mornings, and exercise a horse alongside her before lunch, as well as accompany her to see financial brokers, to her hair, nails, spa, and beauty appointments, on shopping trips, or to a surfeit of charity lunches. Everywhere up to and including the ladies’ loo, although I drew the line at sharing a cubicle.
It was while we were attending one of the charity lunches that I saw the first slight thaw in the sub-zero temperature of our relationship. One of the fearsome Old Money ladies, who sat alongside my principal on yet another committee, inclined her head fractionally in my direction before telling Helena how fortunate she was to have a Personal Assistant close at hand to keep her diary organised for her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Helena freeze, not with insult but, I guessed, with a kind of embarrassed fear that I might correct the woman, and the inevitable questions that would follow about the veneer of her apparent respectability.
Normally, I wouldn’t have allowed the mistake to stand. Nothing to do with thinking I was too good to be anybody’s PA. Nothing to do with staying in a covert role, either, although there have been many times when preserving that element of surprise has been vital. As Mo Heedles pointed out, I probably didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a bodyguard.
But in most cases, it’s as well for everyone present to be able to identify the close-protection officer right from the outset. Saves them getting in your way later if you suddenly find yourself in the position of having to earn your keep.