Second Shot (22 page)

“Mr. Vaughan,” I said, pleasantly. “Would you mind informing your minions that the next one who touches me will be feeding through a tube for the foreseeable future?”

It was gratifying that the hand lifted sharply, without any need for the scowl that Vaughan leveled in their direction.

“Thank you,” Vaughan said, his voice dismissive and chillingly polite. “You can wait outside.”

He waited until they’d gone before he spoke again, sliding his thumb up the exoskeleton of another shrimp and twisting its head from its body.

“Would you like some?” he said. He gestured to the paper plates. “Don’t be fooled by the modest decor. This place does the best seafood for miles.”

I sighed, looked away a moment as if to catch my breath, or my temper, but in reality just so I didn’t have to watch him eat. Then I looked back. “You never quite got the hang of dating, did you, Felix?”

For a moment he frowned before a sly smile overtook it. “You’re a cool one. I’ll give you that,” he said, shaking his head. He wiped his hands again, picking up a bundle of extra paper napkins. I leaned forwards, folding my arms onto the Formica surface and carefully palming a table knife in my right hand as I did so, just in case.

“Don’t be foolish, Miss Fox,” Vaughan said without looking at me directly. “I’ve been a fighting man since before you were born. I’d kill you before you got that blunt blade anywhere near me.”

I sat back again, leaving the knife on the tabletop and he nodded as he reached for another shrimp.

“That’s better. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now, believe me. I hear you had a lucky escape last night.”

How did you hear? Because you were involved, or because Lucas told you?

His patronizing tone goaded me into bravado. “Luck didn’t come into it.”

He grunted. “You say you were a soldier?” he said. I gave the faintest nod. “Well then, you should know that luck always comes into it, one way or another.”

“Would you like to get to the point?”

“Of course,” he said. “The point’s simple. I’ve tried to get it across to you as painlessly as possible, but it hasn’t sunk in, so now I’m going to tell it to you straight. Go home. Take the girl and the kid and go home.”

I sat and looked at him.
As painlessly as possible.
Had he had a hand in last night’s failed kidnapping attempt, or did he have some other motive?

“Why?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not your problem,” he said. “Your problem is that I want you to go. That’s the start and finish of your problem. You do the right thing and your problem ends.”

“My problem is my client,” I said. “If she wants to stay, she stays, but,” I added, raising a hand when he would have cut in, “fortunately— for all of us —she’s already decided she’s leaving.”

“When?”

I paused, but reason told me that it wouldn’t gain me anything not to tell Vaughan the truth. And it could even save a lot of hassle, so I said, “We’ll be heading down to Boston first thing tomorrow.”

“That’s very wise,” he said, nodding, giving me a tight smile. He ripped open a couple of packets of moist towelettes and wiped his hands more thoroughly, fastidious about his nails. The scent of lemon cut across the fishy smell of the table, sharp and acidic. “So, your task is nearly over.”

I shook my head. “I’ll stay with Simone as long as she needs me,” I said. “As long as there’s a threat.”

“And then?”

I shrugged. “Move on to the next job.”

He reached for his glass, took a drink and stared at me. “I could use someone with your particular skills,” he said. “I think I could work something out that would make it very worth your while for you to consider relocating.”

“I’m flattered,” I said blandly. “But it would have to be a very cold day in hell.”

“Well, that’s the beauty of New England—the weather’s always just about to change,” he said. “You don’t like it, you wait five minutes.”

“The answer’s no.”

It was his turn to shrug. “A shame,” he said.

I pushed back my chair and stood. He let me take one step away from him before he spoke again.

“So tell me—has she found out the truth about him?”

“The truth?” I turned back, a flash image of that old ID photo of Lucas in front of me. “You mean he’s not her father?”

Vaughan laughed, little more than a chuckle under his breath. “That would be much too easy, wouldn’t it?”

For a moment I just stared, so tempted to ask but afraid he was just teasing to get me to beg. “And how would you know anything about that?”

“I make a point of finding out all about the people I do business with,” he said. He sat back and smiled again, more smugly this time. “So, she doesn’t know.”

“The jury’s still out,” I said shortly, losing patience. “We leave tomorrow. By the time we come back, she’ll know one way or the other.”

V
aughan’s boys dropped me off at the bottom of the steep driveway leading up to the White Mountain, tossing my mobile phone out into the snow after me. They did not return the Beretta, more’s the pity.

I waited until they’d turned round, avoiding the spray of slush from their wheels, and their dirty rear lights were bumping away before I stooped to retrieve the phone, drying it on my shirttail. They’d switched the phone off and I turned it back on again as I trudged back towards the hotel entrance. It rang almost immediately with a voicemail message.

“Charlie? It’s Jakes. Where are you?” said a man’s voice, anxiety threading clearly through it. “Erm, look, Miss Kerse wants to go to her father’s place. She got a call, about ten minutes ago, and she says she wants to go over there right away. I kinda told her we ought to wait for you to get back first, but she’s getting kinda angry and she won’t wait any longer. So, I’m gonna go over there with her and, when you get this, that’s where we are, OK?” There was a pause, as though he expected me to speak, or offer some kind of advice or approval. “Call me when you get this, OK?” Then the bleep of the call being ended.

I tried to get the phone to show me what time the message had been recorded but fumbled with the technology As I redialed, I was cursing under my breath.

The driveway curved round behind the hotel, but the shortest route was up a steep, snow-covered bank to the front entrance. I took it without hesitation, plunging into soft powder.

The cold scoured my throat as I struggled up the incline past the huge veranda that housed the heated outdoor swimming pool, listening to Jakes’s phone ringing out without reply Inside the lobby the blast of warmth from the central heating and the blazing log fire hit me like a wall. I staggered, coughing. The woman on the reception desk stared at me like I’d just beamed down from the
Star ship Enterprise.

“Miss Fox! Are you OK? Did you have trouble with your car?”

I stared at her, uncomprehending, then realized that my jeans were wet past the knees and I was shaking.

“I need a phone,” I managed. She flicked her eyes at the mobile I clearly had clutched in my hand but thrust the desk phone at me, the way you shove a toy into a dog’s mouth to try to stop it jumping up at your clothing. I punched in the number of Simone’s room and waited, impatient and in vain, for it to be answered.

When I knew for sure that it wasn’t going to be, I swore under my breath again—or not so under my breath, if the sudden paling of the woman on the other side of the desk was anything to go by.

“Listen, I need some transport.”

“Well, I can call you a cab—”

“I don’t have time to wait for a cab,” I said, aware of the panic scrabbling at the inside of my chest, causing my heart to pound. I was sweating with the heat and the fear.

So tell me,
Vaughan had said with that patronizing smile of his,
has she found out the truth about him?

Oh God. Simone … Ella…

“Don’t you have a rental car out there on the lot?” the woman asked.

“That guy … it wasn’t them,” I said.

“Well, wait a minute now.” She frowned, dug around under the desk and came back up with a set of car keys. “There you go. The boy came and dropped it off not more than a half hour ago. Said if you could swing by the office first thing tomorrow, they’d deal with the paperwork and such then.”

A half hour ago….
We must have almost passed each other on the driveway. I grabbed the keys with hardly a word of thanks and sprinted for the door again. She called something after me, but I didn’t hear it.

The cold bit me as soon as I was out of the door, like it had always been waiting just below the surface, like I’d never really been warm. I didn’t care.

As I jogged through the parking area, I fumbled for the button onthe key fob, stopping short as the hazard lights flashed on a white Buick SUV to my right.

I jumped in, fumbling with the unfamiliar controls, and cranked the engine. I knew I headed down the driveway faster than it was wise to do, but the way the Buick slipped and slithered despite its four-wheel drive only served to make me angry, like it was trying to slow me down.

I don’t remember getting between the hotel and the main road. The only reason the junction registered was because the traffic light was on red, but I suppose I would have hesitated there anyway.
Miss Kerse wants to go to herfather’s place,
Jakes had said. Did that mean the surplus store, or the house? Left for Intervale, or right for the center of North Conway? I stabbed my thumb on the button to redial and listened to the empty ringing until the lights dropped onto green overhead and the driver behind me blew his horn.

Her father’s place.

The house. I turned right, not knowing why I’d made that decision, or if it was the right choice. I gunned the Buick down the main street, not seeing the prettiness of the lights wrapped round the trees outside the Eastern Slope Inn, until I reached the turnoff on the left for Mechanic Street, towards Mount Cranmore. The family houses I’d noticed the first time Lucas had taken us to his home looked very different in the dark, all lit up along the eaves like storefronts. The lights were deceiving and I almost missed the turn for Snowmobile, jamming the brakes on at the last moment.

I drove past the Fitness Center and plunged into darkness on the other side of the lights. Maybe it was the illuminated ski runs farther up the mountain that made things look so shadowy at ground level, but people apparently didn’t go for excessive outside lighting here. Maybe they liked to be able to see the stars, which were scattered starkly across the inky blue-black sky above the trees.

I stopped the Buick just short of the driveway and shut off the engine. I was close enough to be able to see that Jakes’s nondescript Ford Taurus was parked in front of the steps leading up to the front door. The two lamps on either side of the doorway were lit, but otherwise the place was in darkness. I wished wholeheartedly that Vaughan’s men had given me back the Beretta.

I slid out onto the road, staying low behind the front end of the Buick while I waited for my eyes to adjust and tried to take stock. There was nothing for it—I was going to have to get closer.

I left the cover of the Buick and ran across, doubled over, to duck behind the Ford. There was no response from the house. I waited a moment longer, took a couple of deep breaths, then pelted for the door.

The door itself was closed but not locked. I eased it open and stepped through into the hallway There was a little light bleeding through from the two lamps outside on the deck, but it was dark enough so that I didn’t see the body until I almost fell over it.

I stumbled back, biting off a gasp. A man, lying on his back at the foot of the stairs with his right leg twisted awkwardly underneath him. It was too dark to see his face clearly. I forced myself to kneel alongside him, feel for an arm and work along to the wrist so I could check for a pulse. Nothing. I ran my hands up over his torso, looking for obvious injury As my hands reached his left hip, I found the holster and identified the familiar blunt shape of a Glock semiautomatic.

Jakes.

I swallowed, pulling the gun free. Whatever had happened here, he hadn’t seen it coming. Not enough to have got his gun out, at any rate. I ran my hands up to his head, gently, waiting for the fatal wound, but there didn’t seem to be one. There was no blood. He didn’t even smell dead. So what the hell had happened? Unfairly, maybe even unjustly, I cursed Jakes for allowing himself to die without even drawing his gun.

I pulled out my mobile phone and dialed 911.1 gave them the address and the fact that there was a man dead and a child in danger but I didn’t stay on the line to give further details.

I picked up the gun and got to my feet without a sound. I knew Jakes wouldn’t have carried it without one in the chamber, but I eased the slide back a fraction anyway, enough to see the indented nose of the hollow-point round through the eject port. There was no conventional safety. It was ready to go. Point and shoot.

Over to my left, from the kitchen, I heard a faint noise, muffled almost to the point of silence. I turned slowly, as if that would help me get a better directional fix, but there was no repeat. I moved across towards the kitchen, holding the Glock out in front of me, doublehanded. It wasn’t quite so dark there, thanks to the windows that lined that side of the house. I could see the lights from the ski run a little way off through the trees.

I came round the corner of the first kitchen cabinet fast, leading with the gun, and found myself taking aim at a small figure huddled down in front of the oven.

Ella’s eyes were huge in the half-light and awash with tears. She had her knees bent up and clutched to her chest, as if by making herself smaller she might succeed in disappearing altogether.

“Ella,” I whispered, lowering the muzzle of the Glock so it was pointing away from her. “It’s OK, sweetheart. It’s me —Charlie.” The words seemed to have no effect. I tried: “Where’s your mummy?” but that didn’t seem to work, either.

I eased closer and crouched next to her, putting a hand out to stroke her head. She flinched at my touch. She was trembling all over and, when I inhaled, I realized that she’d had a bit of an accident as well. Shame she was too old to still be in nappies. Still, I suppose I couldn’t blame her, poor kid. God alone knew what she’d seen here.