Second Shot

Twelve

By ten thirty that morning, I’d moved Simone and Ella into the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the elegant White Mountain Hotel on West Side Road. The suite was spacious and had a connecting door to the room next to it, which I’d taken.

I’d called Sean and brought him up to speed on the night’s events, keeping my report cool and impersonal, particularly the part about the shooting of the teddy bear. Sean had responded in kind. There would be a time for emotional reaction, but we both knew this wasn’t it.

At Sean’s suggestion, I’d also called the private investigator Frances Neagley in Boston and given her as much information as I could about Aquarium man. She’d listened gravely, superhumanly restrained herself from saying, “I told you so,” and promised to find out what she could. She asked if I was bringing in additional security and, when I said Sean was arranging it, she offered me the temporary loan of her guy from the New York agency, Armstrong’s, until they arrived.

“Well, I could certainly do with some backup, but what about you?” “Right now,” she’d said, “I think your need is greater than mine.” I’d removed the suppressor from the Beretta to make it easier to conceal, and was carrying it in the right-hand outside pocket of my jacket. I knew I’d be in deep trouble if I was caught with it, but if it was a choice between that and facing another attempt on Simone and Ella unarmed, I thought it was worth the risk. Just the weight of it there was a comfort.

The only thing I hadn’t done-at Simone’s absolute insistence-was call in the police. Instinct told me it was a bad idea to try to keep them out of it but, at the end of the day, no harm had been done beyond a broken window and the loss of some stuffing from an oversize bear. I could appreciate Simone’s viewpoint that explanations would have been long and, bearing in mind the Lucases’ ignorance of her financial situation, possibly embarrassing.

Not only that, but she swore she wasn’t going to risk putting Ella through the same kind of press uproar she’d experienced at home. I tried to convince Simone otherwise, but it ended in a clenched-teeth argument with her telling me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t like it I could go home and leave her to it. I gave in at that point. How could I abandon them now? Besides, it wasn’t the first time people had tried to kill me.

And it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Nevertheless, when there was a knock on my door shortly before eleven I answered it with caution. I took great care when I looked through the Judas glass to ensure whoever was out in the hallway would not be able to tell when my eye was in line with the peephole.

Outside was Greg Lucas. He was rocking a little on his feet, obviously uneasy, the distortion of the fish-eye lens making the movement more apparent. The dressing taped to his forehead seemed much bigger than I remembered the size of the injury demanding.

I waited a beat. I deliberately hadn’t told him our room number. Had Simone called him? I glanced back at the connecting door to Simone’s room. She was trying to settle Ella down for a nap after her disturbed night and the door was closed. I transferred the Beretta from my jacket to the back of my jeans, under the tails of my shirt, and slipped the security chain.

“Hi, Charlie,” Lucas said. “Can we talk?” He gave me a weary smile, one that attempted to bond us through a shared struggle, one soldier to another at the end of a bloody engagement.

I didn’t want that kind of connection with him. I jerked my head and said, “You’d better come in.”

As soon as he was through the door I shouldered his face up against the wall to the bathroom, regardless of his recent injury, and patted him down. He seemed neither surprised by my action nor offended by it.

“Right-hand side,” he said mildly.

“Good job you pointed that out. I might never have thought to look there.”

“Just trying not to make you nervous,” he said. “We all had a difficult night.”

He was carrying a short-barrel Smith amp; Wesson.38 revolver in a belt rig on his right hip. I tugged the gun free and stepped back, not taking my eyes off him as I dropped the cylinder and emptied the chambered rounds out onto the coverlet of the bed.

“Simone’s with Ella,” I said. “I’d rather she wasn’t disturbed.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “It’s you I’ve come to see.”

“In that case, make yourself at home,” I said. “Coffee?”

He nodded again. I left the partially dismembered gun on the bed and went to pour two cups from the little coffeemaker on the desk. It was surprisingly drinkable coffee and I was on my third lot since we’d checked in.

When I came back the gun was still where I’d left it and Lucas was over by the window, staring out at the picturesque view of the Echo Lake forest and the mountains beyond.

I joined him, handing over his coffee cup and sipping my own while I waited for him to try to find a way into what he wanted to say. By his silence, I gathered it wasn’t easy

And, somewhat childishly, I didn’t feel inclined to help him out. Instead, I concentrated on admiring the winter wonderland scene outside the glass. It should have been idyllic. In any other circumstances, it probably would have been.

Lucas had aged under stress. The dressing on his forehead was universal skin tone, but his waxy skin was almost white by comparison. He raised his coffee with both hands, as though thankful for something to occupy them.

“You don’t make this easy,” he said at last with a brief smile in my direction.

I sighed, admitting defeat or we’d be here all day. “What is it you want to say to me, Greg?”

He took a breath, as if gathering all the loose ends back into himself. “They could have killed her last night, couldn’t they?” he said. “Simone and Ella, I mean. They could have killed them both.”

I shrugged. “But they didn’t,” I said. ‘And you and I both know that wasn’t their plan, don’t we?”

He stiffened, made a conscious effort to relax, then saw I’d noticed both reactions and gave up on trying to hide either. “Do we?”

“Oh, come on, Lucas!” I said, allowing some bite to show through without letting my voice rise because the last thing I wanted was Simone hearing us. “Think about it for a minute-the masks, the suppressors on the guns, the fact they didn’t even bother getting close enough to my bed to find out I wasn’t in it before they wiped me out. It was a kidnapping attempt, pure and simple.”

He stuck his nose back into his coffee cup, almost gloomy, as though hearing it out loud somehow made it more real for him. Eventually, he looked up, looked right at me and said, “I want you to take Simone and Ella home.”

I took a moment to drain the last of my coffee, then put the empty cup down on the desk behind me, using the time it gave me to consider.

“Why?”

He blinked. “Why?” he repeated. “Charlie, as you’ve just pointed out so correctly, someone tried to kidnap my daughter last night.” He leaned forwards slightly, lowered his voice. “Right out of my house.”

“So you’re afraid for your safety,” I said, a deliberate taunt delivered in a bland tone, maybe a small payback for that car park stunt the day we’d driven up here.

His lips thinned. “No, but I’m certainly afraid for their safety,” he shot back. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” I said evenly. “And I did my best to ensure it this morning. I’ve already taken steps to make sure any further attempts won’t succeed, either.”

He seemed suddenly uncertain how to proceed. “Well… good,” he said. He gave a rueful smile. “She was a lovely kid. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed her, but I’d rather send her away now than lose her again for good.”

I turned slightly, so I was facing him, and saw … something. Something that flitted in and out of his eyes, quick as a fish, then was gone.

Guilt. Not big guilt. Not weigh-you-down-and-crush-you-with-the-sheer-bone-numbing-size-of-it guilt, but guilt, nevertheless.

“How long have you known?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Neither you nor Rosalind has asked the right questions about all this, Lucas-like ‘why?’ for a start,” I said. “That should have been the first thing you wanted to know. Armed men break into your house in the middle of the night and make a damned serious attempt to snatch your daughter and granddaughter from under your nose, and you just don’t seem surprised about it. Where’s the righteous anger, the outrage?”

He kept his eyes resolutely on his cup, even though it was as empty as my own had been. I lifted it out of his fingers and put it down on the desk. It landed with more of a rattle than I’d been intending.

“Look, there are things going on here — I can’t explain,” he added when he saw I was about to speak. “You’ll just have to take my word for it. I thought I could keep Simone separate from it all, but I can’t. There’s a chance,” he went on, flicking his eyes to my face as if to check how I was taking all this. “There’s a chance that last night was aimed as much at me as at Simone’s — “

He broke off and I gave him a thin smile. “Her money?” I finished for him.

He nodded, folding his arms so that his shoulders were hunched, as if he were cold.

“Yes, OK, we know about the money,” he admitted, sounding every one of his years. “Ever since Barry O’Halloran came to see me.”

“He told you?” I said, surprised.

“He didn’t have to. He told me my daughter was looking for me and as soon as I realized how much effort had been put into finding me, I ran her name through a search engine on the Web. There were any number of hits from the tabloid newspapers back in England.”

Ah, of course

“So you discovered your daughter was a millionairess and lo and behold you suddenly decided you did want to be found after all.”

“I’d already made that decision,” he said with dignity. “I would just rather have waited until the business we’re involved in here was over and done with.”

“Which is?”

“That’s got nothing to do with you, Charlie.”

“It is if you want me to persuade Simone to go home,” I said mildly. “I’m guessing Felix Vaughan is an integral part of whatever’s going on.”

“You’re right. And, I admit, when I first heard about it, I thought that some of that money would sure help get us out of the hole we’ve got into with him, but not if it’s going to put her in danger. Nothing’s worth that. So, do what you have to, Charlie, but persuade her to go home.”

“I’m not leaving.”

We both swung round to find Simone in the connecting doorway between the two rooms, one hand on the frame. She came in and closed the door quietly behind her, watching through the diminishing gap, presumably that Ella didn’t wake. Simone gave the Smith amp; Wesson on the bed a single almost incurious glance as she passed it.

“Look, Simone, honey-”

“No, Daddy, I want to stay,” she said, touching his arm, her use of the word “Daddy” more confident than the first time she’d tried it, whatever doubts might have been raised in the meantime. “I can help. All this money-what good has it done me so far?” She lifted her shoulders, suddenly looking very young and almost gauche. “If it will help you-you and Rosalind-tell me how much you need, and take it.”

To his credit, Lucas only hesitated for a moment.

“No,” he said, and there was a quiet finality to his voice, so that I perhaps caught a glimpse of what must have been the old Lucas, of the SAS sergeant who’d terrorized new recruits to the point of insensibility, and I was just a fraction more inclined to believe in him. “Simone, I want you and Ella out of here as soon as possible. Listen to Charlie. It’s not safe for you here.”

“But-”

“Don’t argue, princess.” He touched her cheek and the tender gesture silenced her better than a slap.

He crossed to the bed, picked up the Smith amp; Wesson and refilled it with short, efficient movements, before slipping it back into his holster.

“I know I haven’t been much of a father to you,” he said, straightening his jacket to cover the gun, “but I won’t put you in harm’s way now if I can help it. Do what’s sensible. Go home.”

As he reached the doorway, Simone made a noise alongside me that could almost have been a whimper. When I looked, I saw tears beginning to form along her lower eyelids. Lucas sighed.

“You know it’s breaking my heart to do this, but I have to think of what’s best for my daughter, not for me,” he said gently as he pulled open the door and stepped through it. “See that you do the same for yours.”

The man whom I’d seen guarding Frances Neagley that day in the bar of the Boston Harbor Hotel arrived at the White Mountain just before three in the afternoon. He was big and quiet to the point of seeming shy around women, but his eyes were constantly on the move and he carried a 9mm Glock in a shoulder rig under his left arm. His name was Jakes, he told me in his soft-spoken Deep South accent. He had orders from his boss, Parker Armstrong, that he was to stay with us until they could send more people up from New York. I was glad to have him.

I’d spent most of the afternoon trying to persuade Simone to call it a day. She had taken some convincing, but she finally agreed to a tactical retreat. My biggest card was Aquarium man. The way he’d engineered his meeting with her in Boston and then led the attack on her up here in Conway had certainly unnerved her. It gave me a crack and I drove a wedge into it for all I was worth. By the time Jakes arrived, she’d caved.

I’d called Sean and within half an hour he’d called back to say we were booked on flights out of Logan the day after tomorrow, giving us time to get back down to Boston without breaking our necks in the snow. As I’d ended the call I’d checked the time. Less than forty-eight hours and we’d be in the air.

As soon as we’d checked in to the White Mountain, I’d asked the front desk to organize us a rental car. Without Lucas on hand, we were stranded without transport, and I didn’t think Charlie the limo driver would be prepared to slog all the way up to North Conway just to collect us.

The hotel had arranged for a four-wheel drive of some description on a one-way hire and said they’d drop it off that afternoon. At about five thirty, the front desk rang to say the rental company’s representative was in the lobby and would I go down to deal with the paperwork?

I picked up my jacket from the bed. Simone was watching my TV while Jakes read to Ella out of one of her storybooks in the other room. Something about a little princess and a frog, if the snatches I heard were anything to go by Jakes showed no sign of embarrassment as he read out the appropriate sections in his version of a frog accent, which seemed, bizarrely enough, to be distinctly Scottish. Ella was sucking her thumb as she listened to him, captivated.

I ducked my head into the room and he looked up, flashing me a quick grin without breaking off the tale.

“I won’t be long,” I told him. “Put the chain on behind me.”

There was only one person obviously waiting in the lobby when I got down there, a mustachioed man with a dark complexion, wearing a peaked cap with earflaps that stuck out from the sides of his head like a semialert hound’s. He was wrapped up in a thick ski jacket that he hadn’t bothered to unzip despite the roaring open fire at the back of the lobby, and he was carrying a clipboard.

“Miss Fox?” he said, thrusting a gloved hand out. “Howya doing? Say, you wanna go check over the vehicle first, then we can come back inside and get you all signed up?”

“No problem,” I said, glad I’d brought my jacket. “What have we ended up with?”

He held the door and followed me through it out into the sudden drenching cold. “Excuse me?”

“What kind of vehicle?” I expanded as he strode away towards the parking area at the side of the hotel. I had to hurry to keep up, shivering inside my jacket. The wind had picked up a little and it knifed straight through to my bones the moment we stepped out of the door.

“Oh, the vehicle?” he said, suddenly sounding vague. “Well, it’s right over there, so you can see for yourself.”

He pointed and, like a fool, I let my gaze drift in the direction he indicated. When I looked back, he’d taken his hand out of his right pocket and, this time, there was a gun in it. A black semiautomatic, maybe a Colt, but in this light it was hard to tell. The Beretta was in my own pocket, but I knew I didn’t stand a chance of getting to it in time. I let my breath out slowly and forced myself to relax.

“Nicely done,” I murmured.

The mustachioed man gave a tight little smile in acknowledgment of the praise and jerked his head to the side.

“Keep walking,” he said.

“What’s the point?” I said, eyes tracking his every movement for sign of a way in. The barrel of the gun was disappointingly steady in that regard. “If you’re going to drop me, then drop me here. Why do I need to die tired?”

“I ain’t gonna drop you unless I have to,” the man said. “Someone wants to talk to you, is all. But you give me any trouble, ma’am, and you better believe I’ll do what I got to.”

“And if I don’t feel like talking?”

The man smiled again, almost. “All you really got to do is listen,” he said. “And trust me, you’ll do it a whole lot better if you ain’t in pain. So, we gonna do this the hard way, or the easy way?”

I paused, considering for a moment. As I did so I heard the long scrape of the side door of a van opening, away to our left. Any hopes I had of the noise causing a distraction were instantly dashed, however. Mustache never even flinched. I glanced sideways myself and found out why.

Another man had emerged from a dark-colored van. He was medium height, neither small nor bulky, and his close-cropped hair gleamed slightly red in the lights from the hotel. He was also carrying a semiautomatic. My chances of escape had just halved.

“Quit messing with her and get her in the van,” he said easily to Mustache.

Mustache still hadn’t taken his eyes off me. Both of them had the look of pros, relaxed, confident and unlikely to make any slips I could take immediate advantage of. I cursed under my breath for walking so lamblike to the slaughter and shrugged my compliance, allowing the red-haired man to pat me down with rough efficiency. He took my mobile phone, then quickly found and confiscated the Beretta.

“Tsk, Charlie,” Mustache said, and I couldn’t suppress a twinge of unease at his use of my first name. “Now I’m betting you ain’t got a license for that.”

“Why?” I said. “Do you?”

He didn’t answer, just giving me a shove in the small of my back towards the still-open sliding door. I climbed in, aware of a sense of deep foreboding. After I’d left the army I’d made a living for a while teaching self-defense classes to women. One of the most important points I’d stressed was not to allow yours elf to be taken to a place of your assailant’s choosing. Yet, as I waited for an opportunity to grab for the gun that never quite arose, here I was, breaking all my own rules.

Mustache climbed in after me, threw his clipboard into the back, and slammed the door shut. The red-haired man got into the driver’s seat, reversed out of the parking space and stuck the gearshift into drive. The whole thing had taken no more than a couple of minutes from us walking out of the hotel lobby. There had been no witnesses.

As we began to move forwards I caught a glimpse of the hotel’s lights glittering through the darkened back windows of the van, and wondered what the hell I’d just got myself into.

The two men drove me down into North Conway and almost all the way through the town until we finally pulled off next to a little seafood restaurant called Jonathon’s. They stopped the van and the red-haired man twisted to face me, laying his arm along the back of the seat. He was wearing an ornate ring on the little finger of his right hand. The light was behind his head and I couldn’t see his face clearly

“Now, you been a good girl so far,” he said. “Are you going to behave, or do we need to go through the whole threat business again?”

“That depends,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “on what happens next.”

The redhead smiled enough for me to see his teeth in the gloom. “Someone inside wants to speak to you,” he said. “We go in, you talk, you come out, we give you a ride back to the hotel.”

“O-K,” I said slowly “And the threat business?”

“Oh, we don’t need to go into that, but just let me say that sure is a cute kid you’re looking after.”

I felt my face freeze over. “I think I’ve been pretty patient so far in allowing you two to drag me down here, but that, my friend,” I said softly, “was a big mistake.”

“Hey, now who needs to quit fooling around with her?” Mustache said. “She’s said she’ll do it, so she’ll do it. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”

As my two escorts walked me towards the restaurant, one on either side, I asked, “As a matter of interest, how did you engineer that grab raid back there?”

The redhead merely looked smug, but Mustache was prepared to be more talkative. “I was hanging around in the lobby, keeping an eye out for you, and I heard them at the desk calling up the rental company. Soon as she mentioned your name, I went out and got myself a clipboard and some official-looking papers.” He shrugged. “Reckoned it was a whole lot easier than trying to deliver you pizza you ain’t ordered.”

Tou reckoned right.

They’d put their guns away but had a tight grip on my upper arms instead, just above the elbow. The redhead did the talking to the waitress who offered to seat us, nodding to an occupied corner table. It was too early for it to be busy. In fact, when I glanced around I saw that the man I’d been brought to meet was the only diner. It came as little surprise to recognize Felix Vaughan.

I did a fast visual sweep of the place as I was walked across towards him. Formica-topped tables, plain wooden chairs, rough plaster and simple clapboard walls, painted white like a beach house. The look was completed by mooring buoys and other nautical items strung along the walls, including an old harpoon gun.

Vaughan was sitting, eating a large portion of what I would have called king prawns, but I’d learned were classified as shrimp over here, from a paper plate. They’d obviously arrived still fully dressed and he had sticky fingers and a stack of empty shells to one side of him. He looked up as we approached and carefully wiped his hands.

“Miss Fox,” he said, nodding to the chair opposite. “Please, won’t you join me?”

His voice was polite, but the men on either side of me forced my obedience, dragging me into a seat and then making sure I stayed there with a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“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.”