Second Shot (32 page)

I pivoted onto my side and lashed out at Reynolds again with my foot, catching him on the cheek, just under his eye. He half-fell onto the coffee table, which was made of glass. It should have been safety glass but he hit it hard. It splintered under his weight and he pitched through, tangling himself in the wrought-iron frame.

Matt stared at the gun in alarm. “How?”

“Give it to me!”

Reynolds was fighting out of the wreckage of the table, eyes burning intently into Matt. Matt saw the shark approaching with its mouth open and its teeth exposed, and threw the Beretta in my direction, like that was going to stop him getting his legs bitten off.

The gun landed on the sofa, almost hitting me in the stomach. I snatched it up and flicked the safety off just as Reynolds rolled clear of the debris. I aimed for the center of his body mass and pulled the trigger without a second’s hesitation.

And missed.

The bullet smacked into the body of the chair to his left. My right arm was still so weak that I could barely keep the gun up, never mind hold it steady under fire. The kick of it up through my arm and across my shoulders seemed immense. I jammed my left hand against my right and fired again.

Closer, but no hit.

Reynolds threw himself across the room and dived on Matt, who’d been crouched down with his fingers in his ears from the moment I’d fired the first shot.

He squealed as Reynolds yanked him upright and dragged him backwards towards the door. All the way, Reynolds kept Matt pinioned in front of him as a shield. I could just see Reynolds’s head to one side of Matt’s, one very blue eye watching my every move. As he reached the edge of the living room, I knew Reynolds was smiling through the faint drift of gunsmoke that hung between us.

“Not going to take the shot, Charlie?” he said, jeering. “Looks like that’s getting to be one of your specialties, huh?”

I managed to get the Beretta to point a fraction higher, but the effort made my right arm shake so badly I couldn’t sustain any sort of aim. I lowered the gun until the pistol grip was resting on the sofa.

“Lost another gun, Reynolds?” I said, tiredly. “Looks like that’s getting to be one of yours.”

For a moment I thought he was going to come back and have a go, but he thrust Matt away from him and ran for the door instead. To be honest, if Reynolds had decided on a counterattack, I’m not sure I could have done much about it.

Matt tottered back across the living room and collapsed into one of the armchairs. He dabbed a hand at the back of his head and looked blankly at the blood he found on his fingers.

“Are you OK?” he said. “I mean, did he … ?”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t-thanks to you.”

“Thank God for that,” Matt said. “I thought, when I saw—”

“You didn’t see anything, Matt,” I said, fighting to keep my eyes open, fighting to hold back the nausea and the sorrow. The pain was coming in waves on an incoming tide, each one crashing a little farther up the beach. “Reynolds broke in. He beat the pair of us up. We got rid of him. Other than that there was nothing to see. Nothing you need to tell the others about, OK?”

He frowned. “Yes, but-”

“No buts. And if you tell Sean about this I’ll kill you myself,” I said, fierce, then added, with as much dignity as I could muster, “now do me a favor and find me a bucket or something, would you? I think I’m going to throw up.”

I
still hadn’t found the strength to move from the sofa by the time Sean and Neagley returned, two hours later. Matt had brought me the plastic liner from the pedal bin in the kitchen in place of a bucket and covered me with a blanket. He’d also found a dustpan and brush from somewhere and had gathered up most of the glass from the coffee table when I heard the key in the front door lock.

I’d been half-dozing, but I snapped awake and brought the Beretta up from under cover, slow and clumsy. I’d got my left hand clamped hard round my right, but if the way the front sights were circling wildly was anything to go by, I don’t think I could have hit an elephant at half a dozen paces. Hell, for that matter, I don’t think I could have hit an elephant if I’d been sitting on its back.

Sean did a fast assessment of the damage and was by my side almost instantly He took the Beretta out of my hands, very gently and carefully. My palms had left clammy marks on either side of the grip.

“What happened?” Neagley demanded, looking at Matt. When I glanced across I saw that she had the short little Smith & Wesson out of her bag and in her hands, pointed low, and that she was moving through the living room quiet and careful, like a cop.

“Reynolds,” I said, possessor of a fat tongue. “He came to deliver a message.”

‘And stayed to smash the place up,” Sean murmured. “Well, there goes my security deposit.”

Neagley shot him a fast disapproving glance, missing the wry twist of his lips. Sean didn’t take his eyes off my face.

“Well, that was mainly me,” I admitted, not aware until now how much it had been costing me to hold it together while we waited for them to come back. “Can’t shoot for shit at the moment.”

“You should be in bed,” Sean said. “And I think I should call your father.”

“No.”

Sean silenced me with a single hard stare. “It’s either that or we go back to the hospital in Lewiston,” he said. “Your choice.”

I shut my eyes. “Don’t bully me,” I said weakly. “I’ve had a bad day.”

“Get used to it,” Sean threw back at me. “Can you get up?”

I tried a couple of times, but both legs trembled too violently to be much use, and there was no way I could have leaned on a crutch, in any case.

With a sigh, Sean leaned down and scooped me up off the sofa. He was gentle, but it hurt nevertheless and I didn’t hide that fact well. He carried me through to the bedroom and laid me very carefully on the bed, then pulled the covers over me and sat alongside.

“So, are you going to tell me exactly what happened?”

“Reynolds played rough,” I said. “Maybe I should have broken his neck while I had the chance.”

Sean’s hand feathered in my hair. “No, you shouldn’t,” he said.

I eyed him, a man who’d killed without compunction for lesser reasons than dire necessity. “That’s rich,” I said, “coming from you.”

‘Ah, well, I see the right way and I approve it, but I do the opposite.”

“Who said that?”

“Me, just now,” he said. “Actually, I believe it was Ovid.”

“God save us from philosopher squaddies,” I said, aware that I was starting to slur again. “It’s still rich, coming from you.”

“Well, how about, don’t do as I do, do as I say?” he murmured. “I want you to be with me, Charlie. But I don’t want you to try and feme….”

M
y father arrived later that evening and stalked straight into the bedroom, ordering Sean outside when he would have stayed with me. They had a brief stare-out competition, which my father won. He examined me without a word other than curt instructions for me to move or bend or breathe deeply, most of which hurt to perform.

When he was done he rose and said crisply, “Well, Charlotte, you’ve certainly managed to knock yourself about and have almost undoubtedly delayed your recovery, but by some miracle you don’t appear to have done anything permanent. Next time you might not be so lucky.”

“Thank you,” I said.

For a moment he was silent as he folded his stethoscope neatly into his bag, his movements very deliberate and precise, as always. “This cannot continue,” he said, without looking at me directly. “You can barely stand. I fail to see what purpose is served by your continued presence here, other than to lay yourself open to further attack, or as a burden to your colleagues.”

Neither can I. “
I’m staying,” I said.

He closed the bag, snapping it shut with a briskness that could almost have been mistaken for temper in someone more human. “Well, I regret that I am not,” he said.

There was a slight tap on the door and Neagley stuck her head round without waiting for an invitation. “Can I offer you coffee, Dr. Fox?” she asked.

My father stiffened. “Thank you, but no,” he said with icy politeness. “And my name is Foxcroft—Mr., not Dr.”

He ignored her puzzled frown. At the doorway, he turned to fire one last salvo. “I shall be taking a flight out of Boston tomorrow, and if you had any sense you would do the same,” he said. “I cannot keep doing this, Charlotte. I’ve done my best to help you, but if you won’t heed my advice .. . well, there has to come a time when one calls a halt, don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” I said, and he paused, surprised. “But I’d call it making a stand.”

Something tightened in the side of his jaw He strode out past Nea-gley and I heard Sean intercept him in the hallway to get him to check Matt’s head wound.

There was a long pause and something that sounded suspiciously like a sigh. Then my father’s voice said, brusque, “Show me.”

Neagley came farther into the room and shut the door behind her.

“He really
is
a doctor, right?” she said.

I raised a smile. “He’s a consultant orthopedic surgeon—they look down on mere doctors from a very exalted height.”

“Ah,” she said, understanding. “I thought for a moment he meant he was an ex-doctor—like he might have had his license revoked or something.”

My smile fleshed out. “Oh, how I
wish
you’d asked him that. …”

She smiled with me for a moment before her face sobered. “So, does he think you’re OK?”

“Oh, just peachy,” I said.
Of course, he s probably disowned me, but what else is new?

“What really happened this afternoon?” she said. “Matt was being kind of vague.”

“I’m not surprised. He got quite a belt round the head.”

Neagley came forwards and sat on the foot of the bed, regarding me with that serious cop’s face.

“When I gave you the rundown on Oliver Reynolds the other day at the hospital, I didn’t go into a lot of detail,” she said. “I told you he was good at putting the frighteners on women, but I didn’t tell you how.”

She flicked her eyes in my direction, but I was concentrating on straightening out the bedclothes, smoothing the rumpled sheet.

“He threatens to rape them,” she said flatly. “And if they have young daughters, so much the better.”

“He threatened the kids?” I said sharply, remembering Reynolds’s mention of Ella.

Neagley grimaced. “Only that he’d make them watch.”

I looked her straight in the eye. “Good job we were able to get the better of him before that thought crossed his mind, then,” I said levelly “Have you said anything about this to Sean?”

“No,I-”

“Well, don’t,” I said. “Please.” And when she still looked dubious, I added, “Believe me, you don’t want to be responsible for what he’ll do if he finds out.”

Surprise crossed her face first, followed by a grim understanding. She nodded, got to her feet. “You know where I am when you want to talk,” she said gravely

“Yes —and thank you,” I said, but I knew I’d never take her up on the offer.

If the look she gave me as she went out was anything to go by, she knew it, too.

Y
ou’re very quiet,” Sean said. “Penny for your thoughts?” “We’re in the U.S.,” I said. “Shouldn’t that be a cent?” “No, it still works with a penny, I think,” he said. “And you’re hedging.”

It was four days after my father’s final visit and we were sitting in the Explorer in the car park at the Shaw’s supermarket in North Conway. Inside the store itself, Lucas and Rosalind had taken Ella with them to do their weekly grocery shop.

It was the first time I’d laid eyes on her since the night I was shot, and I was shocked by how clearly I remembered every little nuance of behavior or movement. I could almost tell what she was thinking, feeling— even saying—just from watching her at that distance. As she trotted away from us towards the entrance, a tiny figure between the two adults, I was aware of having something vital stripped from me.

I would have liked to tail them into the store, but I had to admit it wasn’t practical. I still wasn’t moving anything like freely enough for covert surveillance. I would be needing a crutch to walk for a while, although my right arm was improving every day. Sean had brought me coffee in a polystyrene cup when we’d stopped for fuel, and I was able to hold it in my right hand while I drank, even if I’d had to get him to remove the plastic lid for me first.

And, besides anything else, there was always the fact that Ella would instantly recognize me—at least, I hoped she would. I’d now been away from her almost as long as I’d been with her. Children forget easily, I knew, but still I hoped that I hadn’t disappeared entirely from her consciousness. She certainly hadn’t disappeared from mine.

So, Sean and I sat in the car and waited for the three of them to come out. There was only one entrance and one exit, at opposite ends of the building, but Sean had positioned us so we could keep an eye on both of them. I knew from my own experience with Ella that she had opinions of her own about shopping that were likely to slow the proceedings down. We were prepared for a long wait.

At the moment, we still weren’t quite sure what we were waiting for, but people tend to fall into a routine in their daily lives and it didn’t do any harm to learn it. It beat sitting around in the apartment all day, that’s for sure.

Now, I shrugged. “I was thinking about work,” I said, half-truthfully answering his original question. “How long can you afford to be away from London?”

Sean gave me a shrug of his own, sipping his coffee. ‘As long as Harrington continues to pay me to be here instead,” he said. His eyes were on the flow of people and cars coming and going, constantly checking. “By the sounds of it, Madeleine’s coping without me with embarrassing ease.”

“But is that because she’s being her usual wildly efficient self, or because we’re just not picking up the business at the moment?” I persisted.

He pulled a face. “Well, we’re not quite down to pawning the family silver yet,” he said. He sighed and turned to face me. “We’re surviving, Charlie. Madeleine’s been chasing electronic security work and it’s starting to pay off, to the point where I feel I’m almost superfluous. But business has dropped off since we lost Simone—and Jakes —I won’t lie to you about that.”