First Drop

Eighteen

All at once the world stopped. And my heart and lungs stopped with it.

I tried to tell myself that I’d known, right from the moment I’d found the SIG in Sean’s empty room, that he was dead. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the shockwave that hit me now. Didn’t lessen the impact. A part of me fiercely didn’t want to believe it, but at the same time another part of me had always known that it was true.

The explosion inside my head was monstrous, but made no external sound. At the edge of my vision debris started to rain down all around me, but nobody else saw it fall. Fire raged, and froze me to the bone.

I shut my eyes, just briefly, aware of the sting of suppressed tears under my lids. I didn’t let them loose.

Then I felt the mechanical jolt as the world started turning again. It had all taken just a split second. All the time out of reality I was allowed.

I opened my eyes and found that the sea hadn’t boiled and the sky hadn’t turned blood red while I’d been gone. I blinked a couple of times. The FBI agent was watching me closely.

“How sure are you that it’s Sean?” I asked, amazed at the calm, level tone of my voice.

“Pretty sure. ‘Course we’ll need a formal ID, but there was a wallet in the guy’s back pocket with credit cards and a Brit driver’s licence. He was also wearing a real nice Swiss wristwatch – a Breitling. That should be easy enough to trace. Expensive piece and still ticking, so they tell me, which is quite something given the state the body was in. Those Swiss really know their stuff, huh?”

“Shut up!” It was Trey who spoke, his voice harsh and on the edge of cracking. He broke away from Harriet and stumbled forwards, glaring at Andrew. “Just shut the fuck up, man! Don’t you know she was, like, in love with him? Just leave her alone!”

“Leave it, Trey,” I said quietly, too numb even to feel embarrassment at his outburst. The boy glared between us, his mouth tight and an ugly mottled pink splashed across his cheekbones. After a moment he sighed gustily and turned away, letting his arms flop. Harriet gently put her arm across his narrow shoulders and steered him back towards the kitchen.

Andrew Till wasn’t being deliberately cruel, I knew. He wasn’t trying to hurt or provoke me. Dealing with death on a regular basis gives you a tinge of black humour that it’s sometimes difficult to shake. You grow a thicker skin and laugh it off, or you let the weight of old bones bury you alive in ghosts and nightmares.

I got to my feet, still clutching the flowered bag. Till rose, also. His face, which had started to show a hint of pity, sympathy even, turned wary and his eyes went professionally cool and flat again.

“You and I both know who’s responsible, don’t we?” I said.

“No, but I sure know who you think is responsible.”

It wasn’t much, but at least it showed that he recognised someone else had played a part in all this. It wasn’t solely down to me. A tiny blade of hope began to form, to take an edge from dullness.

“So what are you planning on doing about it?” I demanded.

“We are pursuing a number of leads at this time,” he said, suddenly coming over all official-speak. “We aren’t discounting any theories. It will be thoroughly investigated, Charlie. You have my word on that.”

It was something in his voice that tipped me off.

“Tell me,” I said, conversational, “how long have I got before your SWAT team arrives?”

Walt looked resigned, I saw, almost a little disappointed. Harriet just stood and gaped disbelievingly. Till almost smiled. His eyes shifted slightly to the face of the clock on the far wall of the living room. “‘Bout ten minutes,” he said easily. “Maybe a little less.”

“In that case I’m afraid you’re going to have to shoot me to keep me here,” I said. “I’m not staying to be arrested while you let Sean’s killers walk. If you won’t find them, I will.”

I turned my back and took a step towards the door out onto the back lawn, the one we’d come in by.

“Hold it right there, missy!” the FBI agent’s voice rapped out. “Don’t make me do this.”

I turned back and found he’d finally completed that fast draw and brought his pistol out and up and level in a textbook double-handed Weaver stance. From where I was standing the sizeable opening in the end of the barrel looked like the deck gun of a frigate.

“Andrew, don’t you dare!”

Outrage deepened Harriet’s voice so that, to begin with, I thought it was Walt who’d made the protest, but it wasn’t.

“Aunt Harriet, please, get out of the way,” Till said, the anguish clear in his voice as the old woman stepped, stubborn and determined, into his line of fire. “You know I have to take her in.”

“I know you do, dear,” Harriet said, facing him steadily, “but just not today.”

Trey edged round her carefully and joined me by the door.

“Stay here,” I told him quickly, pleading, one eye still on the FBI agent’s gun. He’d lowered it now, but was still ready if he got his chance. “You’ll be safe here. Special Agent Till will protect you.” Better than I can. Better than I will for what I have to do now.

Trey cocked me a sideways glance. “No way, man,” he said. “That’s your job.”

I looked up, taking in Walt and Harriet and Andrew Till in a fast sweep. I shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry,” I said to nobody in particular and pushed open the outside door.

***

We moved up the beach at a hurried jog, trying to put some distance between ourselves and the house. I stumbled along, forcing my limbs into an uneven rhythm. Ahead of me I could see the pier near the Boardwalk and the stepped sides of the Adam’s Mark hotel opposite the Ocean Center where the car show was taking place. It seemed a long way away, partly shrouded by the morning heat haze, but it became my target. If we could reach there, the bustle and the crowds, we would have sanctuary.

I didn’t look back, didn’t want to see if yet another group of men with guns was chasing us. I didn’t know if Harriet would hold sway over her nephew, would persuade him to let us run, but somehow I doubted it. Not for long, at any rate.

Trey ran alongside me with an easy stride I hadn’t expected for such a gawky kid. I’d thought him too much of a computer nerd to have any flair for athletics. Somehow the two were mutually exclusive.

He kept cocking sideways glances in my direction as we went but I didn’t look at him. I just kept running, my eyes on the soft sand in front of my next stride. It was the only way I could see past the wailing that was going on inside my head.

The heat crushed down onto me, weighting my limbs, making me punch-drunk. Eventually, when we’d covered the best part of a mile, Trey dropped back to a jog, gasping. I vaguely registered him falling away but momentarily couldn’t work out what it meant. There was a pause, then he caught me up again, staggering now.

“Hey Charlie,” he protested, breathless and pained. “Hey c’mon Charlie, slow down.”

Still I ignored him, my only focus on putting one foot in front of the other. It didn’t immediately register that he’d grabbed hold of my arm until I swung, half off balance. I looked round, almost surprised to see him clinging on there.

For a moment I failed to recognise his face. He was a stranger to me. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear the words. Then the noises of the beach suddenly rushed in and regained their natural volume.

“Charlie, c’mon man, snap out of it!” Trey shouted. There was something in his voice that it took me a moment to place. Then it clicked – panic.

The identification of Trey’s fear acted as a catalyst. I shook myself, tried to break free of the all-consuming grief that was paralysing my mind. As I surfaced my stride faltered, as though I was diverting energy from my limbs to control my emotions.

I stumbled, going down on my knees in the hot sand. Trey dropped next to me, his skinny fingers still clamped round my upper arm. In the warm gust of breeze from the sea I realised there was a wetness on my cheeks, that the tears were circling my mouth to drip unheeded from my chin.

For a moment Trey seemed utterly lost. He let go of my arm, put a tentative hand on my shoulder instead and gave me a little shake.

“C’mon, don’t go all girlie on me, Charlie,” he said, and that scornful teenage note was back with a vengeance. Before I could respond, he hit me again, caustic. “They said you were just somebody’s girlfriend. Looks like they were right, huh?”

It was the tone rather than the words that cut through and began to bite. I looked up, dazed, expecting to see bitterness and contempt on his face. Instead all I saw was a scared kid who was doing the only thing he could think of to shock me out of my stupor.

It worked.

Slowly, my head began to clear, like feeling your ears pop as the plane makes its final approach. My hands steadied and my legs seemed to come back under my own control. I got to my feet, brushing away the sand that still clung to the sweat-soaked knees of my silk trousers. Trey stepped back, hands hanging by his sides now, watching me.

We were nearly as far down the beach as the Boardwalk but I couldn’t quite remember how we’d got there. All I could feel was my own raging thirst and the fact that any exposed areas of skin had started to burn. I needed to get out of the sun. Find a bolt-hole. Somewhere I could regroup and take stock.

Somewhere I could try and come up with a plan to get us out of this mess.

“So, like, what do we do now?” Trey asked. He was panting a little, too. Not just me who was feeling the burden of the heat, then.

I smiled at him. Not a full-blown, reassuring, this-will-all-be-OK kind of a smile but not a bad fake, given the circumstances.

“We need some cover,” I said firmly, gesturing to my reddened arms when we both knew I was really referring to the FBI. “Do your ears feel up to another tour of the show?”

I saw his shoulders come down a fraction with a relief he tried not to let show too much. He shrugged, going for nonchalant, going for cool. “Whatever,” he said airily.

I guessed that was the nearest to enthusiasm I was going to get from him.

***

Inside the Spring Break Nationals it wasn’t any quieter than it had been the last time we were there on Friday. In fact, I realised that it had probably just been warming up and now, late morning on Sunday, it was building towards its climax.

Most of the exhibitors’ booths had acquired a new attraction today, it seemed. Pretty girls wearing not much more than their underwear were signing posters of themselves for queues of adoring, if slightly hungover, teens. The girls all wore exactly the same shade of tan, like they’d been sprayed out of a bottle.

I had to link my arm through Trey’s to stop him tripping over his tongue. When he realised he’d been caught ogling he dropped his gaze to the carpeting and kept it there unwaveringly. Until the next scantily-clad lovely, at any rate.

When my eyes and ears had had enough punishment we ventured back out into the heat. I let Trey lead me in apparently aimless fashion up and down the rows of cars on display, with no real clue what I was supposed to be looking at.

To be honest, half my brain was taken up with scanning the people around us, checking not so much for uniforms this time, but for the ones with the watchful eyes and ready hands. Looking for the ones who were looking for us.

It was with a jolt, then, that my eye ran across two faces I recognised but had never expected to see here.

Aimee and Xander.

For a moment I made no moves, did nothing to alert either them or Trey. My first thoughts were suspicious ones. Xander had claimed he was grounded for years. I’d assumed the same went for Aimee. So what were they doing out at all? Were they here as bait for us? If so, who was pulling their strings?

Every nasty scenario I could think of flashed through my head, including that the two were somehow connected to Whitmarsh or Oakley man. No, it was much more likely that they’d been drafted in by the Feds to betray us.

Almost as soon as my doubts arrived I dismissed them, but still I couldn’t bring myself to make contact. Xander and Aimee and Scott had thought of Trey as their friend. They’d trusted him – trusted me, more to the point – and had paid a high price for that friendship. Too high a price? Scott was still in hospital. He might not walk again. Even if they were completely on the level I doubted that they’d really want to see either of us right now. Besides, coming hard on top of the morning I’d had already I didn’t think I could face another showdown.

Then Aimee turned and caught sight of us, and it was out of my hands.

She gave a whoop and ran across the short distance that separated us, scooping Trey up into a bear hug so fierce I thought his skinny ribs would crack.

I realised then that Xander was watching me and something about the tension in him told me he knew I’d spotted them first. Spotted them and done nothing about it. As he moved across to join us the nod of greeting he gave me was cautious, to say the least.

“So how did you get out?” I tried but couldn’t keep the touch of cynicism in my voice. “Dig a tunnel?”

Xander didn’t react to the faint jibe. “Once Mom and Dad got over being angry and being scared they kinda realised it wasn’t our fault Scott was caught up in a, like, random drive-by,” he said, with little apparent irony in his tone.

“Mine even thought we’d acted kinda brave and responsible, y’know, under the circumstances,” Aimee put in, releasing Trey so he could catch his breath.

“So here you are,” I said, cool.

“Yeah, here we are,” Xander said, matching me, his eyes a little narrowed.

Aimee flicked her eyes over the three of us. “How you doin’, girl?” she asked, studying me with her head on one side. “You hanging in there OK?”

“Just about,” I said, breaking my gaze away from Xander’s to glance at her.

“Anybody thirsty?” Trey asked suddenly, his voice a touch high. “Let’s go ‘cross the street and grab a bunch of sodas, yeah?”

For a moment none of us gave any sign of having heard him, then Xander blinked a couple of times. “Sure,” he said, raising a smile. “Good idea. Why not?”

We walked out of the show area and crossed over the road, dodging the backed-up traffic that was already snarling the main drag. As we went I noticed Trey casting anxious looks at each of us and realised that he’d just been trying to keep the peace. We were the only things so far he’d been able to rely on. He couldn’t afford us to be at one another’s throats. Not when I’d cracked up on him once this morning already.

We went to the same little diner where we’d been eating when Henry’s fateful phone call had arrived. It was only after we’d sat down at one of the round outside tables that the significance of that seemed to occur to him. He shuffled for a moment, looking awkward, but the waitress arrived to take our order and the moment passed.

I hutched my chair sideways until I was mostly in the shade of the umbrella over our table. Even so I could feel the heat radiating from my burnt arms like I was sitting next to a furnace.

“You should, like, put something on that, y’know,” Aimee said, nodding to them. “It’s real bad to let yourself burn like that.”

I’d been doing a lot of things lately that were real bad for me.

“I know,” I said. She shut up.

The drinks arrived, full to the brim with ice, and I settled for leaning my arms against the sides of the tall red plastic glass instead. It wasn’t scientific, but it was certainly soothing.

To begin with the kids were stiff and uncomfortable with each other but gradually they began to loosen up a little and to chat. I didn’t join in, just let the conversation flow over and around me. I kept my gaze sweeping over the surrounding area, looking for trouble.

It took about ten minutes before I found it.

One moment my eye had skimmed across the far pavement outside the front of the Ocean Center and it was empty of any threat. On the return pass, however, there was a man standing there.

He stood easily, relaxed, with his thumbs hooked into his pockets, waiting. Waiting for me to spot him and make my move.

I came to my feet automatically, clutching my bag.

“Wait here,” I said to Trey, clipped, without shifting my eyes from my target. He followed my gaze and let out a gasp, half rising in his seat. I put a hand on his shoulder and eased him back down again.

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying a small smile. “If he was out to get us we wouldn’t have seen him coming.” And I hoped that it was true.

I walked down the couple of steps from the diner and threaded my way through the cars waiting for the next green light at the junction. Not that there would be any gaps for them to pull out into, even when they got the signal.

The man stood still and watched me come to him.

When I reached the pavement I stopped and made a show of glancing around.

“So where’s the heavy mob, Walt?”

“No heavy mob,” Walt said simply. “No SWAT team. Just me.”

He was wearing the same battered Panama hat I’d first seen him in, and now he regarded me gravely from under its brim. I stuck my own hands in my pockets, aware of the tensely frozen audience on the other side of the street.

“Oh really?” I said, not trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.

Walt smiled a little, the action crinkling his eyes until all I could see were pinpoints of a gunmetal grey beneath his washed-out brows. “Let’s just say that Harriet and I kinda persuaded young Andrew to call off his dogs until he’d had time to check out your story some.”

“And?”

He nodded slowly. “And so far, it checks out.”

“So, why are you here?”

I didn’t bother to ask how he’d found us. I didn’t really need to. That first morning Trey and I had eaten breakfast with the old couple, the kid had been full of the Spring Break Nationals, shooting his mouth off about the event. I remembered thinking at the time that Walt had paid unusual attention to him. Now I realised it was probably from habit of half a lifetime spent in criminal investigation. Never overlook the smallest fact. You never know when it’s going to come in useful.

Like now, for instance.

Walt didn’t answer straight away, his eye apparently caught by a huge drophead Chevy Impala with metalflake paint and gold wire wheels that was being driven by a kid who didn’t look old enough to buy cigarettes. Walt shook his head and turned back to me.

“I called that young feller you mentioned – John MacMillan,” he said. Only someone of Walt’s years could get away with referring to a policeman as senior as Detective Superintendent MacMillan as “that young feller”.

I started to nod, then paused as a thought struck me. “On a Sunday?”

“Oh, you mention multiple homicide and kidnapping and it tends to kinda get folks’ attention,” Walt said softly. “Even on a Sunday.”

“Yes, when you put it like that, I suppose it does,” I said, my own voice wry. “So, what did he say?”

Walt took his time about replying, giving me a thorough scrutiny. It took effort to stand calm and casual in the face of it.

“He said you’d damned near gotten yourself killed on a coupla occasions since he’d first met you,” Walt said, still watching me minutely. “Said you’d just about laid down your life to protect the people who were important to you.”

His eyes flicked away from me briefly then, shifting to the little group at the diner across the street and to one face in particular. I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know which of them he was looking at.

I felt my chin come up and tried not to make it a challenge. “MacMillan say anything else?” I asked, neutral.

“Yeah,” Walt returned lazily, swinging his attention back to me. “He said you had good instincts and as how I should probably trust them.”

“And is that what you’re going to do?”

Again, Walt was silent for a moment, frowning while his mind turned over. I didn’t push him. Whatever he was reaching a decision on, it was clearly heavy enough to require such thought. Rushing him would not, I reckoned, be in my best interests.

“I guess so,” he said at last, quietly, and he nodded almost to himself. “The guy you called Oakley man?” His tone made it a question.

“Yeah.”

“His name is Haines,” he said, flat, “and you were right – he’s a cop but that’s not all he is.” His gaze searched my face for reaction but I didn’t have one to show him. “When he’s off duty he moonlights as a security consultant. Early last year he did a little private work down in Miami for a company manufacturing auto parts.”

I shrugged. I didn’t see the significance. “So?”

“At that time the head of security at the company was a lady called Gerri Raybourn.”

I couldn’t keep that one from making its mark. It hit me like a fast unexpected blow to the stomach, stealing the air from my lungs in a rapid hiss. I’d known Gerri was behind Whitmarsh, but confirming her connection to Oakley man made her solely responsible for everything that had happened.

A whole host of chaotic thoughts tumbled out of the back of my mind, jostling against each other, striking sparks. And following them was a slowly spreading black rinse of anger.

Gerri Raybourn had murdered Sean. It might not have been her personally who pulled the trigger, but she’d done it, nonetheless.

I looked back at Walt, aware that my face had locked down and my body had stiffened with the shock.

“Has Special Agent Till picked her up yet?”

“On what grounds?” Walt asked, his voice reasonable. “The only person who’s accusing her of anything is you and, you have to kinda admit Charlie, right now that don’t account for a whole heck of a lot.”

“So what are you saying, Walt?” I asked bitterly. “If I don’t turn myself in, she gets away scot free?”

“No,” he said, voice careful. “But it would sure help if you could provide some evidence.”

I went still. “What kind of evidence?”

“Well, you’re maybe the only person she’s likely to make any kind of a confession to,” he said. “Just supposing you were to get to talk to her, and just supposing you was to be wearing a wire of some description.”

“So, your nephew’s looking for someone else to do his dirty work for him,” I said.

That earned me a raised eyebrow and a calm stare that made me regret my hasty jibe. It was only stubbornness that kept my face defiant.

“Andrew’s a fine agent and he’s a fine young man. Fair-minded and thorough,” Walt said. “But he has to work within the law, not outside it. If we – you – can bring him something solid, he won’t ignore it, that I can safely promise you.”

I tilted my head and gave him a cynical smile. “You reckon you can talk your nephew – not to mention the FBI – into planting a wire on me and sending me all the way down to Fort Lauderdale to try and prise a confession out of Gerri?” I asked.

“Gerri’s not in Fort Lauderdale,” Walt said. “She has a time-share apartment a little ways down the coast from here and ever since there were reports of you and Trey being in this area, she’s been staying there.”

“And the wire?”

“Well, I don’t have the access to that kinda equipment that I used to,” he admitted, “but I got one of those little voice-activated memo recorders that works pretty good.” He nodded towards my bag. “It would fit in there OK and she’s not likely to search you.”

I glanced back across the street. Trey was on his feet now, looking poised to flee. I gave him a small wave to try and reassure him. He sank back into his chair again but didn’t appear any less tense, even so.

I thought of Sean, dead and mutilated in a Florida swamp. Of all the ways I’d feared our relationship might end, that hadn’t been on the list.

I turned back to Walt, who was standing with his hat brim tilted so the sun was out of his eyes.

“OK,” I said. “Where do I find this time-share.”

Walt studied me for a moment, his face grave. “If you’re sure you really want to do this, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll take you there myself.”