Second Shot

Eight

You OK back there, Charlie?” Greg Lucas asked. “Comfortable? Warm enough? Shout out if Ella needs to stop to go to the bathroom or anything.”

“We’re fine at the moment, thanks,” I said. It took an effort to keep my voice pleasant. I didn’t think Lucas was being deliberately patronizing, but Simone had presented me more as the hired help than anything else and, so far, I hadn’t found a reason other than pride to contradict the opinion he’d formed. Now, his eyes flicked to meet mine in the rearview mirror and I saw the crow’s-feet at the sides of them crinkle as he smiled at me. I couldn’t see the rest of his face but so far he’d behaved without apparent guile, however hard I’d looked for signs of treachery.

We were in a new-model Range Rover Vogue SE, barreling north out of Massachusetts and into New Hampshire on Interstate 95. Simone up front with Lucas, and me and Ella in the rear seats. Our luggage — including the giant bear with the scowl-was piled up behind us.

It was the day after Greg Lucas had introduced himself to Simone in the lobby of the Boston Harbor Hotel, and, to my mind at least, it was much too soon to be going anywhere with him. Convincing Simone of that, however, had caused major ructions.

From the outset, she hadn’t liked the fact that I’d headed her off from inviting Lucas up to the suite to talk but had instead suggested more neutral territory in the restaurant. He’d momentarily looked a little surprised at my cool reception, but had agreed equably enough. We’d left him to secure us a table in the Intrigue Cafe while I took Simone back upstairs, ostensibly to drop off our coats and change Ella out of her boots, but mainly so I could get her on her own long enough to advise caution.

Not exactly what Simone wanted to hear.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Charlie!” she snapped, and there was a glitter in her eye I didn’t quite like. She was almost feverish with a kind of scared excitement. “Why would he pretend to be my father if he isn’t?”

I could think of over 13,400,000 good reasons, but didn’t voice them. Maybe Simone had realized that as she’d spoken, because she sighed without waiting for an answer and said, “OK, I’ll be careful, but you don’t know how long I’ve waited and wished for this.”

“I know,” I said, gently, “but that’s exactly why you shouldn’t rush into anything now It’s been twenty-five years since you last saw him. You admitted yourself that you couldn’t remember much about him, and he wouldn’t have had that beard while he was in the army. So, he must expect that you’re going to ask questions, that you’re going to be suspicious. Anybody would be. And that’s quite apart from telling him about your win. I certainly would not mention anything about that for a while-at least until you’re sure.”

She was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

“OK, Charlie,” she said, more subdued now but with a stubborn set to her jaw. “But he doesn’t exactly look as though he’s living out of soup kitchens, does he? And this is what we’re here for, isn’t it? So I could find and meet with him? And now I have found him-or might have,” she allowed when I opened my mouth to interrupt. “Look, either I get to know him a little and find out for sure, or we may as well go home now.”

I shrugged. “OK, Simone,” I said. “Just be careful, all right?”

She smiled, too fast, too bright. “I am being careful,” she said. “I have you with me, don’t I?”

Back down in the dining room, Lucas rose as we approached the table he’d selected near the fireplace at the far end, reminding me of the old-fashioned manners of Harrington, the banker. Lucas had shed his coat and was wearing a polo-necked sweater in some fine-knit wool that could well have been cashmere. He was quite slim apart from a barrel chest that enabled him to carry off a little excess weight around the center of an upright frame, and he looked confident and successful.

Simone hesitated when she reached him, as though not sure whether to kiss his cheek or shake hands. Lucas took over, putting both hands on her upper arms and leaning back slightly, head on one side as though he was surveying a work of art.

“So, it’s really my little princess, all grown up,” he murmured with a smile. His accent was a strange mixture of American inflection laid over something British and regional. Possibly Liverpudlian, but with all the rough corners knocked off it like a rounded pebble on a beach.

Simone’s answering smile was a little tremulous, her eyes bright with unshed tears. For a moment her throat was too constricted to speak, and Lucas just gave her arms a reassuring squeeze before turning to me.

“And who’s this?” he asked, friendly, casual.

“I’m Charlie Fox,” I said, holding out my hand to avoid the arm squeezing. “I’m here to look after-”

“Ella,” Simone supplied quickly. “Charlie’s here to look after Ella, my daughter.”

His check was so slight as to be almost imagined, but there was a certain reserve when he nodded to me that disappeared as he crouched to Ella’s eye level.

“Hello, Ella,” he said softly. “You know, you’re the spitting image of your mother when she was a little girl. She was beautiful, too.”

Watching his face as he regarded Ella, I was more inclined to trust him then than at any point previously Either that or he should have been working in Hollywood, because the way his expression softened was utterly convincing. Ella suddenly went all bashful, ducking her face under her curls and sidling behind my leg. He grinned at her, a flash of a younger, almost roguish smile, and straightened.

The waiter ushered us into seats and took our drink order before departing. There was a short awkward silence before both Simone and Lucas launched in at once.

“So, how long have you-?”

“How did you-?”

They both stopped, smiled, and both tried to say, “You first,” at the same time, ending up laughing together a little too hard. Simone shot me a hard little look that clearly said, How can you have any doubts about this man when we’re so clearly in tune?

“Ladies first-I insist,” Lucas said, linking his hands together, fingers relaxed, on the tablecloth.

“I was just going to ask how you found me.”

He looked surprised. “But surely you found me” he said, frowning. “That guy you hired-Barry O’Halloran. He came to visit me about a week or so ago, telling me my daughter wanted to make contact.” He said the word “daughter” with a certain wonder, as if he thought he’d lost the knack and had suddenly discovered it again. “Well, that came as quite a shock after all this time, let me tell you, but I told him, sure, why not?”

It was my turn for surprise. “You agreed?”

“Sure,” he said again, with a shrug. “I got no reason not to. She was a terrific kid.” He smiled at Simone again, rueful. “It wasn’t her fault that things didn’t work out between her mother and me. And, well, I’ve changed a lot since those days.”

At the soft sincerity in his voice Simone went a little pink, suddenly fussing with the collar of Ella’s dress. It was left to me to ask, “So, how did you find us here?”

“Well, Barry said he was going to call Simone as soon as he got back to the office and she’d probably fly right over. Then he left and I waited to hear.”

“When was this?”

He raised his eyes, remembering. “Oh, a week or ten days ago, I guess.”

‘A week or ten days,” I repeated blandly.

“That’s not long, Charlie,” Simone said, defensive, even though she’d been the one in the all-fired hurry.

Lucas nodded and smiled at her. “Well, I’ve been kind of busy lately, I admit, but yesterday I started to wonder what had happened and I tried to call Barry, and that’s when I found out about his accident.” He broke off and shook his head. “Poor guy, ending up in a river like that, huh? The winters can be brutal out here. Not like England. You gotta be prepared for the weather.”

“How?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

Simone stabbed me with a meaningful look and I moderated my tone with a smile. “Sorry. I meant how did you find out about the accident?”

“Oh, one of the local cops happened to stop by and I guess he must have mentioned something-or I brought it up-and that’s when I thought I’d better do some checking, just in case you’d flown right over, like Barry said, and were sitting here waiting for me to call.”

Even I had to admit that he had a disarming quality about him, but, I reminded myself, all the best con men do. Besides, that didn’t explain how he’d tracked us down so quickly.

“So how,” I began, ignoring Simone’s furious glance, “did you know we were staying here — at this hotel?”

“Process of elimination,” he said, the first hairline fractures beginning to appear in his cheerful demeanor now “I couldn’t leave my little girl waiting for me, could I? I started calling the hotels.”

My eyebrows went up. “All of them?”

He nodded. “I started at the top, which was lucky, because this is one of the best in town. As soon as I found out Simone was here, I hightailed it down.”

“But-”

“That’s enough, Charlie,” Simone said, her voice quiet but no less commanding for all that. “Poor…” Her voice tailed off and I realized that despite her earlier confidence, she was struggling to find the right word to use.

Greg Lucas treated her to his brightest, warmest smile. “Just call me Greg,” he said gently. “For the moment, anyways. Let’s take this one step at a time, honey, hm? I know how hard this is for you and I know I haven’t been much of a father to you,” he went on, reaching out and covering Simone’s hand on the tabletop with his own. Ella, I noticed, couldn’t take her eyes off the gesture. “But now we have a second shot at it, and I’ll do anything I can to make it work.”

Simone nodded, her lips pressed together for a moment. Next thing, she’d jumped up out of her chair and hugged him, fiercely. I heard her muffled voice saying, “I’ve missed you, Daddy. I’ve missed you.”

After only a moment’s hesitation, Lucas’s arms went round her shoulders and his hands drew soothing circles on her back. “I know, honey,” he said softly, but his face, visible over Simone’s embrace, was curiously stiff and cold. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, too.”

The following day, riding north into a sky heavy with the promise of more snow, I had to admit that Greg Lucas wasn’t behaving like a man who was after Simone’s money-if he knew anything about it. The Range Rover we were riding in was the latest model and so new it hadn’t had time to lose the smell of fresh leather inside. Besides, Range Rovers were expensive enough in the UK, but over here they carried even more cachet. And despite the fact that we were staying in a fancy hotel, Simone still didn’t look or dress or talk like she had money

She’d admitted to Lucas that she was an engineer by training and told him about her split-up with Matt. She carefully blamed Matt’s wandering eye for their estrangement and made it sound like he was little more than a distant memory Ella nearly dropped her in it at that point by saying, loudly, “But Mummy, you and Daddy were arguing about the money, too, weren’t you?”

Simone had flushed pink right to the roots of her hair and come up with a hasty excuse that Matt earned less than she did and it had caused some friction.

Lucas had swung his eyes towards me and said, “Well, you must be doing pretty well for yourself if you can afford full-time help for little Ella here.” Simone heard only the paternal pride in his voice, but I heard the trace of suspicion underlying it, and I’m not sure which one of us was picking up the right vibes.

Still, I tried to keep an open mind about Simone’s father. He certainly made every effort to be amenable, taking us on his own guided tour of Boston and for an early evening meal at the Top of the Hub restaurant on the fifty-second floor of the Prudential Center, where we could enjoy a stunning view of the Boston skyline. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t quite trust him.

And when he invited the three of us to stay at his home in New Hampshire, Simone had accepted practically before the words were out of his mouth. Partly, I suspected, to stop me sticking my oar in. She waited until Lucas had gone to the restroom before she quietly tore into me for my intransigence.

“The whole idea of this trip was for me to find my father, and I did not go to all this time and trouble only for you to scare him off again!” she said in a savage whisper. “For God’s sake, Charlie, lighten up!”

‘All I’m trying to do is ensure your safety,” I said, trying to keep hold of my own temper.

“Well, that’s fine and dandy,” she said, glaring. “Just don’t stop me doing what I want to do or I’ll damned well go on my own.”

I’d called Neagley to see what her impression had been of Lucas, but got her answering service. I left a message asking her to call me urgently. I also rang Sean for advice, but he wasn’t helpful.

“You’ve got first-class instincts, Charlie,” he said drily, “but you can’t stop Simone from seeing this guy unless you can give her a better reason than you don’t really like him.”

“I know,” I said. “But there’s something about this whole situation that makes me uneasy I just can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Well, until you can, you’re just going to have to go along for the ride. I’ll hurry Madeleine along with the background on Lucas at this end and we’ll see what pops up, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Neagley seemed to have managed to find out a fair amount,” I said, ruffled.

“I know, but what she’d got was public record. Yes, Lucas was SAS and by all accounts he had a bit of a hair trigger, but we need more than that. Trying to get information out of the Ministry of Defence is a nightmare, and they get especially awkward when it’s someone who’s been in the Regiment. Just stay sharp and you’ll be OK.”

I ended the call with a sense of nagging foreboding. The army hadn’t been quite so reticent when it came to leaking the story of my own downfall, so why were they being so difficult about spilling the beans on Greg Lucas when he’d been out for close to twenty-five years?

Mind you, even I had to admit that my case was different. The army brass hadn’t wanted me to get through the selection process to begin with. There’d been dismay in some quarters when I and two other girls had stayed the course and made it into training.

A woman wasn’t physically up to the job; a woman would compromise an operation if she was killed, wounded, or captured; a woman wasn’t psychologically equipped to kill, up close and personal. I heard every argument in the book-and quite a few that weren’t.

And I suppose, back then, they were right. When four of my fellow trainees decided to prove, in a drunken outburst of testosterone, that women really were the weaker sex, I hadn’t been able to dig deep enough into my own psyche to find the vital killer instinct.

That had come much later.

Keeping Ella amused was one of the trickiest parts of the journey north. She was bright and inquisitive, which meant you had to be on your toes all the time. She seemed to cotton on straightaway if you made an automatic response to any of her constant questions, and after half an hour in her company I was mentally exhausted.

I wondered how on earth Simone coped with her, day after day, but then remembered that up until Simone’s lottery win Ella had normally spent working hours in day care. That gave me another topic of conversation, at least, and over the next twenty minutes or so I learned all about Ella’s favorite teacher and the names of her best friends and that finger painting and making Plasticine animals was what she enjoyed doing most.

I even resorted to a game of I Spy, which would have been easier if Ella didn’t have a fairly fluid idea of coming up with objects that actually began with the letter she’d originally chosen. Plus we were passing through great tracts of wooded countryside, which somewhat restricted the options.

At one point we passed a huge billboard carrying the information that the New Hampshire Sweepstake lottery prize was now up to $365 million. I saw Simone’s head turn to look and caught the merest suggestion of a smile on her face.

She and Lucas talked in the front seats as we drove, their voices too quiet for me to be able to easily follow the conversation without craning forwards, at which point Ella, realizing she was being ignored by all the adults, became even more vocal. Eventually, I abandoned all my efforts at eavesdropping and gave her my full attention, which she liked much better.

After about an hour and a half, Lucas suggested a rest stop at the New Hampshire border, at which point I could cheerfully have kissed him. That changed with the sudden fear that I was going to be the one who was expected to take Ella to the toilet. Fortunately, it was Ella herself who insisted that she wanted her mummy to take her.

I went with them, as a matter of course. In front of Ella Simone didn’t say much other than to tell me that she was genuinely enjoying Lucas’s company. I bit back the comment that it was in his interests to make sure she did and just nodded. By the look on Simone’s face, it was not a satisfactory response.

We were halfway back across the snow-strewn parking area when my mobile rang. I stopped in order to dig it out of my inside pocket, watching while Simone and Ella carried on back towards the Range Rover. It was too cold for them to linger, even if they’d wanted to.

“Charlie? It’s Frances Neagley. You wanted to talk with me?”

“Yeah, thanks for getting back to me.” I said. I paused, partly to let the two of them get farther ahead of me, so they were out of earshot, and partly because I wasn’t sure where to launch in. “So, you’ve dispensed with your bodyguard?”

She was quiet for a moment and I could almost imagine her looking round, as though to check the man from Armstrong’s was still with her. “I haven’t,” she said.

“Oh.” My turn to pause. “But you spoke to Greg Lucas about your partner? He rang you, right? Before he made contact with Simone?”

“He’s made contact?” she said and her voice came out both tense and baffled. “When?”

“Yesterday.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Simone open the rear door of the Range Rover and lift Ella onto her booster cushion on the backseat. “He showed up at the hotel.” I tried to remember the exact wording. Had Lucas actually said he’d spoken to Neagley? I scanned my memory. Maybe not, but he’d certainly given that impression.

Simone had finished buckling Ella into her seat now and I started walking towards the car. She had already climbed into the passenger seat as I did so, and I saw the brake lights flare as Lucas shifted the transmission out of park.

“Lucas said that when O’Halloran didn’t get back in touch with him after their meeting he’d tried to call him,” I said quickly, breaking into a jog. “I assumed you thought he was on the level or you wouldn’t have passed on the details.”

“Charlie, I didn’t pass on anything,” Neagley said, sounding anguished now. “I haven’t spoken to the guy. Not a word. I don’t know how he found your client, but it wasn’t through me.”

Suddenly, the Range Rover swung out of its parking space. I abandoned the call, slamming the phone shut as I slipped and slithered across the icy surface that separated me from my principals. I didn’t even have the breath to curse. I could only watch as the big car picked up speed away from me between the rows of other vehicles. I made a mental note of the plate, the call I was going to have to make to the police already formulating in my head.

At the end of the row, the Range Rover’s brake lights came on and I put on a burst of speed in the vain hope I might still catch them, skidding on the icy ground. A moment later, they had pulled away again and for a second it looked like Lucas was heading straight for the exit. Then he swung round in a big lazy semicircle and headed back down the next row, towards me. I cut through the line of cars and practically threw myself in front of him. As it was, he had to hit the brakes hard enough for Simone’s head to snap forwards in the passenger seat. She looked startled, with the first beginnings of annoyance on her features.

My gaze swapped across to Greg Lucas but the way the light reflected on the glass meant I couldn’t see his features clearly.

I waited a beat, then walked down the side of the car and snatched the rear door open, scrambling in through the gap. By the time Simone and Lucas looked round, I’d already half-launched myself between the front seats, fist clenched ready to strike at the man’s throat. I knew I could take out his voice box with my left hand and yank the gear lever back into neutral with my right before he had a chance to pick up enough speed for the resulting accident to do us any damage. He would make very little noise as he died, and Ella-seated directly behind him- wouldn’t see enough to traumatize her too badly. Simone I’d worry about later.

Then Lucas swiveled in his seat and smiled at me.

“Sorry, Charlie, I didn’t mean to scare ya,” he said, sounding almost genuinely penitent. “I was just coming around to pick you up there.”

I pushed myself back into my seat slowly, uncurling my stiffened fingers and taking a deep breath to dilute the adrenaline that was coursing through my system. I checked his face carefully. Was it my imagination, or did the smile not quite reach his eyes?

“Of course you were,” I said softly, letting the double answer play out. “I never thought you were doing anything different.”