by Zoe Sharp
“I’m glad you’re OK…physically, at least,” I said. Not my finest opening gambit, but the best I could do under the circumstances.
She paused, seeming as discomfited by the situation as I was, then she gave me a faint nod and moved to sit beside Kincaid. He reached for her hand, entwining their fingers, bringing hers up to his lips. I saw her throat work as she swallowed.
Feeling an utter intruder, I shifted my gaze out across the paddocks and the grazing horses. Anywhere but at the couple on the sofa. There was a time when that was Sean and me—so wrapped up in each other, so aware of every movement, every breath. So determined to make it work between us. So defiant of everything that tried to get in our way.
Maybe we’d tried too hard. Or not hard enough.
In the end, what difference had it made?
Kincaid was speaking. I reeled in my focus, turned to face him and caught the tail-end of what he said.
“A warning?” I repeated numbly. “What kind of a warning?”
Kincaid shrugged. He had not yet let go of his wife’s hand. “We’re still trying to work that one out.”
With her free hand, Helena poured herself a glass of iced water from the jug on the low table in front of her. She seemed thankful for a reason not to have to meet my eyes.
“They told me to tell Eric that they’d proved they could get to me—to anyone—any time they wanted,” she said. Her voice was low but level, as if the only way she could deal with this was to distance herself from it.
“For what reason?” I glanced from one to the other but their faces told me nothing. “Surely, you don’t go to all that trouble and then fail to make any kind of demands?”
Kincaid shrugged again. I was beginning to really dislike it when he did that. “It could be said that it’s good tactics,” he said. “Fire your biggest guns right off the bat, just to show your opponent how serious you are.”
“Yes, but serious about what?” I demanded. “And who are these guys?”
Before Kincaid could answer—even if he’d been going to—the doors to the suite opened abruptly and a man came in, with Mo Heedles on one side of him and Schade on the other. It was hard to tell if they were accompanying him or trying to slow him down.
At a guess, the man was older than Schade and possibly younger than Mo. He was as well-preserved as money could buy—liver-spotted hands but a tight jawline, his skin stretched shiny across his cheekbones. White teeth, black hair. He had on a very sharp Italian suit that did a great job of disguising his bulk, handmade shoes and a silk tie.
He paused in the doorway leading from the suite to the terrace and spread his arms with a greeting of, “Sweetheart!”
Helena got to her feet, letting go of Kincaid’s hand with obvious reluctance. She shuffled forwards to be enveloped in a stifling hug. He kissed her on both cheeks, then held her at arms’ length, ignoring her twitch of protest.
When still she tried to disengage, the man gripped her biceps harder while he inspected her face with ruthless diligence.
“Let me look at my little girl, hey?” he insisted softly. He had a voice like a handful of rocks thrown into a cement mixer. “You doing OK, kid?”
My eyes flicked to the others. Their expressions were guarded, but none of them made any kind of move towards Helena. I had no idea what was going on, but that didn’t mean I was prepared to let it.
I stepped closer.
The man finally let go of Helena and turned. I could almost feel the weight of his gaze landing on me.
“Ah,” he said. “You must be the bodyguard.”
And then he punched me.
22
I probably could have ducked it.
I didn’t.
He was pretty fast for a big guy, but maybe I felt it was the least I deserved. So I tensed for all I was worth and took one to the stomach. His fist landed hard enough to blast the air from my lungs and double me over.
I fought back nausea. It took me a second to compute the damage, which fortunately was minimal. Another to see if he was going to follow it up—something to the face, perhaps, to really hammer home his point. Apparently, he decided that one was plenty to express his displeasure at my inadequacies.
I straightened up slowly, careful to keep everything out of my expression. Schade’s influence was rubbing off on me.
The man was watching me as closely as he’d watched Helena. Only difference was the gun that had appeared in his left hand. He held it casually down alongside his leg. A Beretta M9. Most likely he was either ex-military or a wannabe. Either option was dangerous.
But, in some ways, though, I was strangely heartened by the sight of the Beretta. It told me he was not so convinced of my weakness that he felt confident taking me on for a rematch without weighting the odds in his favour. Whatever the punch to the gut took away from me, that realisation gave a small part of it back.
“And you must be the father,” I managed.
“Heard all about me, hey?”
“No, not much,” I countered blandly, and watched a flicker of annoyed surprise come and go in his eyes.
It was the truth, as far as it went. Nobody had said much, but fragments came back to me, fitting together to make a fairly comprehensive whole.
“You are not my mother—and you are certainly not my father,” Helena had thrown at me, back when Kincaid first landed me on her as the new bodyguard.
“We’re gonna have to let her father know… He’s bound to find out. And when he does…” Schade had warned after the abduction. “We’re all fucked,” Kincaid had responded.
And then, just last night, Schade again: “I’m not the one you have to be worried about convincing.”
I’d thought he meant Kincaid, but now I realised he’d been talking about Helena’s father. It all added up to a man used to power. The kind of power that meant he not only carried a gun—even in rural New Jersey, where gun ownership was commonplace, carrying was not—but he had no qualms about drawing it in company.
From the lack of reaction or surprise from the Kincaids or Schade, I gathered this wasn’t unusual behaviour. Anyone who dished out violence quite so readily, and backed it up with weaponry, was far too used to doing as he wished without fear of comebacks. Legal or otherwise. I could only hope that dick-waving was about as far as it went.
“You,” he said pointedly, “failed to protect my little girl.”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow, gestured with the gun as if he’d forgotten it was in his grip. “That’s it? You got no excuses for me?”
I avoided even glancing over at Schade. He was the Kincaids’ head of security. Last night, he practically ordered me to go after the man posing as a waiter, while he got the couple to the supposed safety of their vehicles. Still, nothing said I had to do as I was told…
“There are no excuses,” I said evenly. “Mrs Kincaid was my responsibility. She was taken on my watch.”
“Yeah, she was. So, what would you do about that, right now, if you were in my position?” he demanded, his gaze narrowed onto my face. “You think you deserve a second chance?”
“Everybody should know what failure feels like every once in a while,” I said, aware of stepping out onto ice that was already cracking under my feet. “Or how else will they know how much they hate it? How else will they know they can’t live with it happening again?”
Oh, good thinking, Fox. Mention “not living”, why don’t you? Give him ideas…
For the longest time, he seemed to be giving it serious consideration whether I should live to see much of anything happening again. Then he smiled. He showed his teeth the way I could imagine a shark doing when it realises the divers’ cage is open and there’s little to stop it taking a bite.
“OK, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you your second chance, hey?” he said. “Because my little girl, she’s taken a shine to you.” The smile blinked out. “But you screw it up and you won’t have to worry about living with it, ’
cause I will bury you. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You hear that, Schade? ‘Yes, sir’ no less. I like this chick.” The smile reappeared like a magic trick, sleight of hand. There, gone, back again. He turned back to me. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Charlie,” I said. “Charlie Fox.”
He thrust out his hand—the one not still holding the Beretta. “Darius Orosco.”
I mumbled something appropriate as he let go, lost interest. His attention now on his daughter and his son-in-law.
Although, making any connection between law and the man whose hand I’d just shaken was tenuous at best. A lot of things suddenly became clearer, the first of which was why Helena was so set against being smothered by security. And the second was that next time I came face-to-face with Conrad Epps, he was going to be the one on the receiving end of a punch in the gut.
There were a few salient points he’d failed to mention when he’d set me up on this job. Not least of which was the fact that the woman I’d landed myself a mission to protect was the only daughter of the Godfather of the East Coast Mafia.
23
“My mother was a whore,” Helena said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a name, Charlie, not an occupation. H-O-A-R-E.”
“Ah, like the bank?”
“Exactly.” Helena seemed perfectly familiar with the London private banking house, one of the oldest in the world. “The name means a man with white hair, so I believe. Anyway, rich old family in everything but actual cash. She never made any secret that she married my father for a life of luxury.”
“There are worse things.”
“Maybe, but you’ve no idea what it was like for me, growing up,” she said. “Like being in prison—only worse.”
“Worse, how?” I asked.
Helena threw me a sharp look, but I’d purposely spoken without inflection. I wasn’t judging her. I was simply curious to get her take on an upbringing that was more privileged and luxurious than most people can dream about.
We were riding out. Helena was on the palomino mare, Sunrise, who seemed to be something of a favourite. I was on a twitchy, dapple grey Anglo-Arab gelding called Zoot, who shied and side-stepped at every flutter of leaves, snorting and goggle-eyed.
Eventually, Helena said, “Because…if you go to jail, you kinda know what you’ve done to deserve it.”
“Most of the time,” I agreed.
We reached a metal gate across the trail and Helena halted.
“OK, most of the time, but you also know when you’re likely to be released.” She gave a short laugh, harsh enough to make the palomino’s ears flick back and forth, gauging her mood. “Me? I got life without any possibility of parole.”
I nudged Zoot alongside the gate so I could reach down for the latch. At the clang of it disengaging, the gelding skittered sideways, nostrils flaring. I tried to ignore the histrionics—both from him and from Helena.
We rode through. Zoot decided that the gate had now become a scary monster and I had to half coax, half bully him near enough for me to close it. It all took longer than it needed to. Helena sat and watched the battle without impatience. I guessed it gave her more time to think.
When I fell in beside her again, she said, “My parents had another daughter before me. She died as an infant. No reason, no explanation. There one day and gone the next. A crib death—is that what they call it in England?”
“Cot death, but the same thing, I think,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It happens, so I’m told.” She shrugged. “To perfectly healthy babies. Thing is, when I came along, it made them totally overprotective.”
I thought of my twin brother who had not survived to term, and what I perceived to be my father’s perpetual disappointment that the wrong child lived to be born. “An understandable reaction, perhaps?”
“An over-reaction,” she shot back. “You weren’t there. You didn’t have people watching you twenty-four/seven, even while you slept. Especially while you slept.”
“No, I didn’t,” I agreed. I refused to play the game of who had it worse. Everybody’s own story is as bad as it has ever been, without compare.
“They’d go crazy over every cough or sneeze after that—and Lord preserve us from letting me take any kind of a risk.”
And yet she’d clearly been allowed—even encouraged—to ride horses. Something with inherent dangers, which saw people both seriously injured and killed. When I pointed this out, she shook her head.
“I was doing dressage by the time I was ten, but no galloping across country, no jumping over anything but the smallest fences.”
I remembered her wild ride back to the house a few days before, and Schade’s comment about her having too much courage for her own good. Did he know how much of it was deep-seated defiance, I wondered?
“Everything I did was orchestrated, right from when I was a child. Who I came into contact with, who was allowed to be my friend. My father arranged for anybody who got close to me at school to be checked out and, if they didn’t meet his standards, he either paid them off, or warned them off. His standards. I mean, can you believe that?”
“Maybe he thought that was the best way to keep you safe.”
She pulled to a halt abruptly enough for the mare to throw her head up in protest and swing her quarters sideways. “Seriously? He hit you, and you’re defending him?” Her voice rose in outrage. She shook her head, lips thinning into a line caused as much by upset as anger. “You’re just like the rest. My father tells you to jump and the only thing you want to know is how high and when can you come down. He’s controlling you just like he controls everybody else.”
I didn’t think she’d listen to explanations of my own sense of guilt, even if I felt inclined to share, so I said, “You can’t hold your parents responsible forever for what happened as a child.”
“You think it stopped when I got to be a teen? An adult?” she asked bitterly. She let out a long breath and looked up, blinking, at the clear sky above us. “I lost my virginity when I was fifteen to the boy who came to clean the pools. When my father found out, he had him beaten so badly he could barely walk.”
I could have pointed out that, if she was fifteen, the pool-boy had committed statutory rape. I didn’t think it would help my cause.
“I worked so hard in school. And when I was offered a place at a really good college I thought that might be my chance to finally be free of them. Then I found out the only reason I’d gotten that offer was because my father financed a new library wing.”
I said nothing. She glanced at me, then continued, “If I’d worked hard in school, I busted my ass in college. I graduated top of my class.”
There was no mistaking her pride. “What subject did you study?”
“Accountancy. I know, boring, right? But I was good with numbers and I just wanted so badly to be normal. My father talked about setting me up in business. I turned him down flat, sent out my résumé, and was offered a junior position at a great firm in Chicago. I met a guy there, who was being tipped for partner. He didn’t seem to care who my father was. I began to think that, finally, they seemed to be leaving me alone. I should have known better.”
“I’m guessing the firm didn’t suddenly acquire a new library wing?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Close enough. New investor, new clients, snazzy new building. Still, I didn’t spot it. Dumb, huh?”
“What gave it away?”
“He did—the guy, I mean. Shall we move things up a little?” And without waiting for my response she pushed the mare forwards into a canter, then a full-blown gallop across the next field. Zoot immediately started jumping up and down at the prospect of being left behind. Muttering curses under my breath, I slackened my hold on the gelding’s head and let him thunder in pursuit.
His breeding made him fast and competitive. We caught up with Helena’s palomino before she reached the far gate.
; “You were telling me about this guy you were dating,” I reminded her once we’d settled back to a walk. Or in Zoot’s case, a sideways jog, up on his toes.
“Yeah, things were going badly. He kept telling me he loved me, but seemed to resent spending time with me. And when I tried to call the whole thing off? Let’s just say he didn’t take it well, and then the real story came out.”
“Which was?”
“How my father hand-picked him as son-in-law material, promised him the earth if he’d ‘make an honest woman of me’—yeah, his exact words, apparently—and how he’d kill me if I took that away from him now.”
“What a charmer,” I said. “So, what did you do?”
“What else could I do?” she said, and for once the question didn’t sound entirely rhetorical. “I called my father. Told him he’d created this mess, he could damn well clean it up.”
“And what happened to the guy?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice hollow. “He disappeared a few days later. I never saw him again.”
24
The knock on the door of my suite came later the same afternoon. When I checked the Judas glass before opening up, I saw Mo Heedles standing in the corridor outside. She looked as neat and competent as ever. Ah well, at least I’d showered and changed after riding out with Helena, so I no longer smelled strongly of horse.
I took a moment to compose myself. When I swung the door open I was able to offer a neutral smile.
“Before you ask, Mrs K is back safe and sound in the master suite. Was there something you needed?”
I still wasn’t sure entirely where I stood with Eric Kincaid’s strangely talented PA. It was difficult to get a read on her. Now, she tilted her head to look at me over the top of her glasses. They were on a decorative chain that looped round the back of her neck. I resisted the urge to shuffle my feet.
“I came to check you were OK,” she said. “That was quite a hit you took this morning, dear.”