First Drop

Seventeen

Walt and Harriet’s kitchen looked exactly the same as it had the last time Trey and I had been there. More importantly, it smelled the same – of food.

The lady of the house was working furiously at the hob when Walt opened the door and ushered us inside. The smell of bacon frying on the grill hit me straight in the stomach, which immediately let out a clearly audible grumble.

“Well, somebody’s hungry,” Walt said with a smile. “Can I get you guys some coffee?”

Harriet turned then and it was relief I saw in her face. “Oh, you found them,” she said, putting down her spatula. She came forward then, all smiles, wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing over her loose pinafore dress. She pulled out chairs from the table and hastily brought out extra cutlery for us. It was only as I sat down that I noticed there were already three settings.

I looked up at Walt, tense, and saw from his face that he knew right away I’d spotted the extra place.

“My nephew, Andrew,” he said calmly, by way of explanation. “He’s staying with us for a few days.”

At that moment I heard footsteps approaching across the tiled floor of the living room. A young man in a casual jacket and tie appeared round the corner of the kitchen cabinets. He was shorter than Walt, slightly more thickset than the old man but he had a sharp upright stance that usually denotes time in the military – or the police.

Even without that suspicion, his instinctive reaction confirmed my fears. He’d been holding a mobile phone up to his ear with his left hand, making, “uh-huh,” noises. As soon as he caught sight of the pair of us he jolted to a standstill and dropped the phone. His right hand snaked for the gun on his hip.

“Now hold it right there!” Walt thundered and his nephew froze automatically. I could just see the Glock 23 service pistol halfway out of its belt holster under the pushed-back hem of his jacket. If he’d ever got to finish it, it would have been one hell of a fast draw.

I had been holding my bag on my lap under the level of the table, which had a wipe-down vinyl cloth hanging over the edges that masked my hands. As soon as I’d made the guy for what he was, I’d stuck my hand inside the bag, trying to sit still and not to let the movement translate into my shoulders. I had my fingers curled round the SIG’s pistol grip and already had it clear of the bag when Walt rapped out his command. I froze, too.

“Sit down, Andrew,” Walt ordered, quieter now but carrying no less weight because of it. “I will not have gunplay in this house. You keep that piece on your hip, boy.” He turned those ferocious eyebrows in my direction. “And you, Charlie, I’ve put a whole heap of trust in you – enough to bring you into my home like this. Don’t let me down now.”

I left the SIG lying across my lap and slowly brought my hands above the level of the table, empty. Andrew let his gun drop back into its holster with obvious reluctance and picked up his phone from where it had fallen on the kitchen tiles. The leather cover the phone had on seemed to have saved it from destruction.

“Sweet Jesus, Uncle Walt,” he said then, in a slightly strangled voice. “Do you know who this is? Do you have any idea how many people we’ve got out hunting for these two?” He never took his eyes off me while he spoke.

Walt didn’t answer, just raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, let’s call a truce while we eat, shall we?” he said mildly. “There’ll be time enough to talk about this afterwards.”

It was a bizarre meal. Trey sat alongside me and ate in complete silence, his gaze fixed on his plate. Andrew took the chair opposite me, with his aunt and uncle at each end. Every time I reached for my water glass Andrew tensed slightly.

I kept my expression bland and my knees up and together so the SIG didn’t slide off onto the kitchen tiles, which I felt might have confirmed his worst suspicions. The last thing I wanted to do was give him any reasons to go against his uncle’s wishes. As it was the fingers of his right hand gave the occasional twitch, as though they were anxious enough to be considering independent action.

Nobody did much talking while we ate, although Walt was taking it all with a blithe lack of concern. He played the perfect congenial host, periodically offering juice, fresh fruit, or a plate of pancakes round the table. We accepted with a muted politeness. I knew from our past meeting just how quickly the old man could slip back into the professional skin of his former life. It made me constantly wary, expecting the worst.

In spite of the uncomfortable atmosphere, we were certainly hungry. The food had seemed plentiful in supply but was quickly consumed. It was then that Harriet pushed back her chair and stood, leaning forwards with her hands on the table.

“Walt, why don’t you take Andrew and Charlie through to the living room. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about and you’ll be more comfortable in there,” she said, her voice easy even if her body gave her away a little. “Trey, honey, how about you give me a hand to clear the table?”

I half expected Trey to kick up a stink about being excluded from the grown-ups’ discussion but to my surprise he jumped up and started stacking dirty plates together like he couldn’t wait to be out of there.

Walt and Andrew stood also. I was the last on my feet, mainly because I still had the gun resting across my thighs. The bag had slipped to the floor and as I reached down for it I managed to stuff the SIG back inside. When I straightened up I found Andrew had loosened his jacket again, just in case, and was watching me with narrowed eyes.

He had dark eyes, a little like Sean’s. At this distance it was hard to differentiate the changeover line between iris and pupil. Sean could have that vigilant and impenetrable air about him, too. It was clear that, whatever his uncle’s feelings on the subject, Andrew trusted me about as far as he could throw a small car. I suppose I couldn’t really blame him for that.

After all, so far I hadn’t had particularly good press.

Walt led the pair of us through to the living area and gestured us into the two sofas that faced each other across a shaggy rug and a glass-topped wicker coffee table. We followed him with neither quite wanting to offer our unprotected back to the other.

As we sat there Andrew regarded me for a few moments with a stony face, then he gave a snort of bitter amusement.

“I’ve come across some fugitives from justice in my time, Fox,” he bit out, shaking his head, “but I gotta hand it to you. You have to be one of the coolest.”

“Maybe that’s because I haven’t done anything I didn’t have to,” I returned. I waited a beat, then added, “Andrew,” to the end of it.

“That’s Special Agent in Charge Till to you, missy,” he shot back.

Special Agent in Charge no less. So he was FBI too, and not just a foot soldier. Nice to keep it in the family, Walt.

The old man held his hand up for peace. “Now, now, Andrew,” he said gently. “You’ve been busting to speak your mind all through breakfast, so let’s hear the worst of it.”

“This – person,” his nephew said delicately, not taking his eyes off me for a second, “is wanted for just about everything from kidnapping to homicide, including in connection with the shooting of a police officer down in Broward County. We’ve got half the cops in the state working on locating her and the Pelzner boy. And what you’re doing now by giving her shelter, Uncle Walt, constitutes a serious felony, as you are well aware.”

“You going to bring me in, son?” Walt asked, his voice mild. Andrew flicked him a single barbed glance.

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I asked with just a smear of taunt to the question, “Or doesn’t that apply here in the Land of the Free?”

Andrew’s face darkened but he didn’t rise to it.

Walt, meanwhile, had turned his attention over towards the kitchen, where Trey was dutifully wiping plates dry and being very careful not to drop any.

“I may be a little rusty these days,” Walt murmured, “but the boy sure doesn’t look like he’s being held against his will.”

Andrew allowed his eyes to slide in that direction for a couple of seconds. When he looked back, he was frowning.

“If your theory is right,” I said, neutral. “I’ve had him for less than four days. If you’re going to play the Stockholm Syndrome card and try to say that I’ve brainwashed him, or that he’s formed an unusual attachment to his captor in such a short time, you’re going to struggle like hell to make that one stick.”

Walt’s face didn’t show his sudden amusement outright, but I thought I detected a certain twinkle. “You have to admit, she’s got a point,” he allowed.

Andrew studied his uncle’s expression and sat back with a frustrated gesture.

“Perhaps if you’d seen this lady’s record you wouldn’t be so ready to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said sharply, then started rapping out the facts. He didn’t falter and he didn’t need to refer to any notes. Nice to see I’d made such an impression since I’d arrived in the US.

“British Army background. Expert marksman – well that didn’t take much working out. Selected for Special Forces. Then it all goes wrong and she ends up with a dishonourable discharge. How am I doing so far, Fox?”

“That’s Miss Fox to you, laddie,” I drawled, mainly to hide the growing unease. I liked my privacy as much as the next person. In fact, considering what my past contained, probably more.

He brushed aside my calculated insolence and kept going. “So after that she’s scratching a living teaching unarmed combat. Gets herself involved in a drugs racket. Year before last she ends up killing a guy – with her bare hands, for Christ’s sake!”

“It was self defence,” I gritted. “I was cleared of any blame.”

“Yeah well, looks like the courts over in good old England get it wrong sometimes too, huh?” he batted straight back, keeping his gaze on Walt now, working to convince him. His body was very still as he talked, as though he was putting all his effort into his voice. “Then there’s the part she played in a major civil disturbance last fall. There was a shooting there too, wasn’t there, Fox?”

I opened my mouth but he didn’t give me the chance to speak. “We did a search with Interpol and, surprise surprise, her name pops up again. Trouble in Germany. More shootings. Either you’re one unlucky lady, Fox, or you’re a magnet for trouble.”

“I was cleared,” I said again, more quietly this time. “You want to know what really happened with half that lot? Get in touch with Lancashire Constabulary back in the UK and speak to Detective Superintendent John MacMillan. I’m sure he’ll be willing to tell you all about the people I didn’t kill. The ones whose lives I actually helped save.”

MacMillan’s name was a surprise, I saw, but whether it was because it was familiar or whether the rank impressed him, I couldn’t tell. He regarded me gravely.

“I suppose you reckon you have a believable explanation of the events of the past few days, do you?” he asked quietly. “Just like that?”

“I’ll give it a go,” I said, calmer now. “It may not be believable to you, Special Agent in Charge, but it’s the truth so it’s the best I’ve got. Tell me, how much do you know about the workings of the stock market?”

***

It took a while to tell the full story. The FBI agent made rapid notes in a pocket book and only interrupted me twice. The first time was when I went through the attack on the young cop by the two men in the Buick. As soon as I mentioned shooting the guy who’d been in the passenger seat, Andrew looked up and said, “Shot him with what?”

“A SIG Sauer nine-mil,” I said, not making any moves to show it to him. “You’ll have found four empty casings at the scene, by the driver’s door of the Mercury. They’d already put us off the road by then and the cop was already dead,” I added pointedly. “The men in the Buick were using something fairly hefty. I didn’t get a clear look, but I would guess at possibly three-fifty-sevens. Large calibre handguns have their own distinctive sound. Oakley man – the guy at the theme park – had a forty-cal, like the one you carry yourself. Whitmarsh and Chris were both using nines at the motel.”

He paused a second, looked as though he might throw in another query, then nodded and went back to his notes.

Walt brought fresh coffee but it went cold on the table in front of us. At one point I glanced over and found that Harriet and Trey were standing by the kitchen cabinets, the crockery all put away now. They were listening to every word. The boy was white-faced, as though hearing about it again made it all that bit more real. Harriet had her arm around his shoulders.

Andrew’s second interruption came when I got to the part about the shoot-out at Henry’s place. As soon as I was done he demanded the details then relayed the information to his colleagues in a short phone call. He didn’t, I noted with relief, explain to them where the information had come from.

I gathered from his reaction that nobody had connected the incident at Henry’s with my much-reported killing spree. I wondered how Oakley man had explained away his involvement. If he’d known about Xander’s call to the emergency services did that mean he’d been on duty at the time? But if so, why hadn’t he been in uniform? Was he really a cop?

Well, I suppose now was my chance to find out.

“. . . uh-huh. Get back to me as soon as you have it,” Andrew rapped out now and finished the call without saying goodbye. One of the benefits of being in charge, it seemed, was an ability to dispense with normal politeness.

“Oakley man is the only one I can’t work out in all this,” I said. “He was one of the two cops who brought Trey home from the Galleria, but that was down in Fort Lauderdale. I assume he really is a cop, but if so what’s he doing responding to emergency calls in Daytona Beach? Somebody must be able to identify him.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me how to do my job, Fox,” Andrew said. “You let me worry about the peripheral players in this scenario, huh?”

“‘Peripheral players’?” I echoed smartly. “He’s one of the major players. Either he’s working for Keith or he’s working on his own, but he’s got plenty of manpower and he’s not afraid to kill anyone who gets in the way.”

“I’ll have people working on tracing him,” he said, frowning again. “We’re gonna have to check out your story some first. So far, you’re claiming a body count of—” he checked the previous page of his notes, “—what? Six or seven dead and a couple of wounded? But we’ve only found the two kids at the motel and the cop. And now this guy Henry.” There was doubt in his voice.

“Why would I lay claim to more if it wasn’t the case?” I said tiredly. “This looks bad enough as it is. Why do I need to dress it up any further?”

He didn’t respond to that question, posing one of his own instead. “And this guy you call Oakley man, you say he stopped for long enough to pick up his dead before he took off from Henry’s house, right?”

“Right.”

“You have to admit that’s kinda convenient. Not leaving behind any bodies, that is.”

“Of course he didn’t leave them behind – he’s a cop,” I said, the tension making me snappy now. “There’ll still be blood. There’ll still be evidence. If you care to look for it. Maybe he was trying to leave you pointing at me because he knows from firsthand experience that you’ll take the route of least resistance when it comes to pinning this whole thing on somebody.”

Andrew’s face flushed a little at the jibe and Walt, realising things were about to deteriorate, spoke up for the first time since I’d begun recounting my tale.

“Why don’t you have a look see if any bodies have turned up over the last coupla days with gunshot wounds?” he suggested. “Might go a little way towards clearing this up, son,” he added gently when his nephew still hesitated.

Suppressing a grumpy sigh, Andrew got back on the phone. I leaned forwards, resting my forearms on my knees and trying to roll the rigid ache out of my neck. I had the Barbie-pink bag clenched tight on my lap like a talisman.

Walt patted me on the back of my hand and, when I looked up, he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he did so. Whatever Andrew’s qualms, the old man believed me. I was surprised how much that realisation gave me hope.

But hope of what? I was stuck in Walt and Harriet’s house with an armed and twitchy FBI agent who was fairly convinced I was lying through my teeth in everything I’d said to him. I tried to tell myself that I’d always known it was going to end sometime – we couldn’t stay on the run forever. But not like this, I admitted privately. Not like this.

They weren’t going to let us just walk out of here again, not without violence that I wasn’t prepared to use, but the thought of sitting in a prison cell while Gerri Raybourn and Whitmarsh and Oakley man were still out there, manufacturing more damning evidence against me, made my skin go cold.

Special Agent in Charge Till was getting shirty with someone at the other end of the line. “Well why in the name of hell didn’t you tell me about this last night?” he demanded. “Not relevant? You developed sixth sense now, that you can tell me what might be relevant to this case and what isn’t? Fax the report through to me right now, y’hear? No, I’m still at my uncle’s place.” His eyes flickered across me. “No, I think I’ll be here a little while longer. Something’s come up. OK.”

He punched the end call button and let his breath out fast down his nose.

“What is it?” Walt asked.

“Report came in late yesterday. They found a body down near Lake Hell ‘n’ Blazes in Brevard County. Coupla tourists hired an airboat and happened upon a little more of the wildlife than they bargained for. According to the local boys the guy had been in the water a day or so and he’d been pretty badly chewed up. You throw meat in the swamp and there’s plenty out there will take a bite out of it.”

“Pretty badly chewed up?” I murmured, not liking the mental image conjured up by his words. “So you won’t be able to tell who it is?” In my mind I’d already started running through the list of possibles.

Andrew broke through my thoughts. “He’d been gut-shot – handgun most likely. Not a good way to go. But they found ID on the body. Turns out he was a Brit too. Name of Sean Meyer.” He met my eyes level and without apparent guile. “Sound like anybody you know?”