Second Shot

Thirteen

Vaughan’s boys dropped me off at the bottom of the steep driveway leading up to the White Mountain, tossing my mobile phone out into the snow after me. They did not return the Beretta, more’s the pity.

I waited until they’d turned round, avoiding the spray of slush from their wheels, and their dirty rear lights were bumping away before I stooped to retrieve the phone, drying it on my shirttail. They’d switched the phone off and I turned it back on again as I trudged back towards the hotel entrance. It rang almost immediately with a voicemail message.

“Charlie? It’s Jakes. Where are you?” said a man’s voice, anxiety threading clearly through it. “Erm, look, Miss Kerse wants to go to her father’s place. She got a call, about ten minutes ago, and she says she wants to go over there right away. I kinda told her we ought to wait for you to get back first, but she’s getting kinda angry and she won’t wait any longer. So, I’m gonna go over there with her and, when you get this, that’s where we are, OK?” There was a pause, as though he expected me to speak, or offer some kind of advice or approval. “Call me when you get this, OK?” Then the bleep of the call being ended.

I tried to get the phone to show me what time the message had been recorded but fumbled with the technology As I redialed, I was cursing under my breath.

The driveway curved round behind the hotel, but the shortest route was up a steep, snow-covered bank to the front entrance. I took it without hesitation, plunging into soft powder.

The cold scoured my throat as I struggled up the incline past the huge veranda that housed the heated outdoor swimming pool, listening to Jakes’s phone ringing out without reply Inside the lobby the blast of warmth from the central heating and the blazing log fire hit me like a wall. I staggered, coughing. The woman on the reception desk stared at me like I’d just beamed down from the Star ship Enterprise.

“Miss Fox! Are you OK? Did you have trouble with your car?”

I stared at her, uncomprehending, then realized that my jeans were wet past the knees and I was shaking.

“I need a phone,” I managed. She flicked her eyes at the mobile I clearly had clutched in my hand but thrust the desk phone at me, the way you shove a toy into a dog’s mouth to try to stop it jumping up at your clothing. I punched in the number of Simone’s room and waited, impatient and in vain, for it to be answered.

When I knew for sure that it wasn’t going to be, I swore under my breath again-or not so under my breath, if the sudden paling of the woman on the other side of the desk was anything to go by.

“Listen, I need some transport.”

“Well, I can call you a cab-”

“I don’t have time to wait for a cab,” I said, aware of the panic scrabbling at the inside of my chest, causing my heart to pound. I was sweating with the heat and the fear.

So tell me, Vaughan had said with that patronizing smile of his, has she found out the truth about him?

Oh God. Simone … Ella…

“Don’t you have a rental car out there on the lot?” the woman asked.

“That guy … it wasn’t them,” I said.

“Well, wait a minute now.” She frowned, dug around under the desk and came back up with a set of car keys. “There you go. The boy came and dropped it off not more than a half hour ago. Said if you could swing by the office first thing tomorrow, they’d deal with the paperwork and such then.”

A half hour ago…. We must have almost passed each other on the driveway. I grabbed the keys with hardly a word of thanks and sprinted for the door again. She called something after me, but I didn’t hear it.

The cold bit me as soon as I was out of the door, like it had always been waiting just below the surface, like I’d never really been warm. I didn’t care.

As I jogged through the parking area, I fumbled for the button onthe key fob, stopping short as the hazard lights flashed on a white Buick SUV to my right.

I jumped in, fumbling with the unfamiliar controls, and cranked the engine. I knew I headed down the driveway faster than it was wise to do, but the way the Buick slipped and slithered despite its four-wheel drive only served to make me angry, like it was trying to slow me down.

I don’t remember getting between the hotel and the main road. The only reason the junction registered was because the traffic light was on red, but I suppose I would have hesitated there anyway. Miss Kerse wants to go to herfather’s place, Jakes had said. Did that mean the surplus store, or the house? Left for Intervale, or right for the center of North Conway? I stabbed my thumb on the button to redial and listened to the empty ringing until the lights dropped onto green overhead and the driver behind me blew his horn.

Her father’s place.

The house. I turned right, not knowing why I’d made that decision, or if it was the right choice. I gunned the Buick down the main street, not seeing the prettiness of the lights wrapped round the trees outside the Eastern Slope Inn, until I reached the turnoff on the left for Mechanic Street, towards Mount Cranmore. The family houses I’d noticed the first time Lucas had taken us to his home looked very different in the dark, all lit up along the eaves like storefronts. The lights were deceiving and I almost missed the turn for Snowmobile, jamming the brakes on at the last moment.

I drove past the Fitness Center and plunged into darkness on the other side of the lights. Maybe it was the illuminated ski runs farther up the mountain that made things look so shadowy at ground level, but people apparently didn’t go for excessive outside lighting here. Maybe they liked to be able to see the stars, which were scattered starkly across the inky blue-black sky above the trees.

I stopped the Buick just short of the driveway and shut off the engine. I was close enough to be able to see that Jakes’s nondescript Ford Taurus was parked in front of the steps leading up to the front door. The two lamps on either side of the doorway were lit, but otherwise the place was in darkness. I wished wholeheartedly that Vaughan’s men had given me back the Beretta.

I slid out onto the road, staying low behind the front end of the Buick while I waited for my eyes to adjust and tried to take stock. There was nothing for it-I was going to have to get closer.

I left the cover of the Buick and ran across, doubled over, to duck behind the Ford. There was no response from the house. I waited a moment longer, took a couple of deep breaths, then pelted for the door.

The door itself was closed but not locked. I eased it open and stepped through into the hallway There was a little light bleeding through from the two lamps outside on the deck, but it was dark enough so that I didn’t see the body until I almost fell over it.

I stumbled back, biting off a gasp. A man, lying on his back at the foot of the stairs with his right leg twisted awkwardly underneath him. It was too dark to see his face clearly. I forced myself to kneel alongside him, feel for an arm and work along to the wrist so I could check for a pulse. Nothing. I ran my hands up over his torso, looking for obvious injury As my hands reached his left hip, I found the holster and identified the familiar blunt shape of a Glock semiautomatic.

Jakes.

I swallowed, pulling the gun free. Whatever had happened here, he hadn’t seen it coming. Not enough to have got his gun out, at any rate. I ran my hands up to his head, gently, waiting for the fatal wound, but there didn’t seem to be one. There was no blood. He didn’t even smell dead. So what the hell had happened? Unfairly, maybe even unjustly, I cursed Jakes for allowing himself to die without even drawing his gun.

I pulled out my mobile phone and dialed 911.1 gave them the address and the fact that there was a man dead and a child in danger but I didn’t stay on the line to give further details.

I picked up the gun and got to my feet without a sound. I knew Jakes wouldn’t have carried it without one in the chamber, but I eased the slide back a fraction anyway, enough to see the indented nose of the hollow-point round through the eject port. There was no conventional safety. It was ready to go. Point and shoot.

Over to my left, from the kitchen, I heard a faint noise, muffled almost to the point of silence. I turned slowly, as if that would help me get a better directional fix, but there was no repeat. I moved across towards the kitchen, holding the Glock out in front of me, doublehanded. It wasn’t quite so dark there, thanks to the windows that lined that side of the house. I could see the lights from the ski run a little way off through the trees.

I came round the corner of the first kitchen cabinet fast, leading with the gun, and found myself taking aim at a small figure huddled down in front of the oven.

Ella’s eyes were huge in the half-light and awash with tears. She had her knees bent up and clutched to her chest, as if by making herself smaller she might succeed in disappearing altogether.

“Ella,” I whispered, lowering the muzzle of the Glock so it was pointing away from her. “It’s OK, sweetheart. It’s me — Charlie.” The words seemed to have no effect. I tried: “Where’s your mummy?” but that didn’t seem to work, either.

I eased closer and crouched next to her, putting a hand out to stroke her head. She flinched at my touch. She was trembling all over and, when I inhaled, I realized that she’d had a bit of an accident as well. Shame she was too old to still be in nappies. Still, I suppose I couldn’t blame her, poor kid. God alone knew what she’d seen here.

“It’s OK, Ella,” I said quietly, trying to be soothing but aware that I only succeeded in coming out with a horribly fake brittle tone. “I need you to stay here and keep very quiet-like you were doing. Can you do that for me?” No response. “I’ll be back very soon. I promise.”

But as I started to rise, it must have penetrated that I, too, was going to abandon her. She pounced for my leg, fastening her little arms round my calf and holding on for grim death.

“Sweetheart, I’ve got to find your mummy,” I said, trying to prise her hands loose. Damn, she had a grip a pit bull would give its canines for.

“Don’t leave me alone,” she wailed, her voice like a siren. “I want to come, too. I want my mummy.”

I shushed her, alarmed, and found myself saying, “OK, OK, you can come. But you have to be very, very quiet.”

She nodded furiously, unlocked her stranglehold on my leg and held her arms up to me. I stared at her for a moment, her eyes and nose streaming delightfully and a distinct sogginess around her bottom.

“Oh, you have to be kidding,” I muttered.

Her lower lip had firmed, but as I hesitated it started to wobble and I could almost see her gather in her breath for a burst of raucous weeping. Before she could get into her stride I swept her up onto my left hip. She grabbed hold of my jacket collar in both hands and dug her bony knees into my ribs. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile that was blankly met, then tried to ignore her.

Not easy to carry out a full search with a small damp child clamped to the side of you, but I did my best. First we went up, checking the bedrooms on the upper floor. I made sure I spun Ella round as we went upstairs so that as I stepped over Jakes’s body she didn’t get a clear look at him. The window on the landing had been reglazed, but the brass-stemmed lamp Lucas had used to threaten Aquarium man with was lying on its side on the floor, with the shade torn, and the rug was half turned back.

A struggle, I wondered, then a fall? Was that what had happened to Jakes? Coming down the stairs was worse. There was nothing much I could do to block Ella’s view of him lying in the hallway.

“Is he sleeping?” she whispered in my ear, and I heard the hopeful note in her voice.

“Yes, Ella,” I lied. “He’s sleeping.”

There was something unholy about the thick darkness as I felt my way down the stairs to the basement. The door at the bottom was shut and I opened it very carefully, only to find the lights were on down here. I shoved the door wide and went through it fast, ducking to the side, moving like an ape cradling my young with Ella attached to my side. To my right were the storerooms where I’d suspected that Lucas kept his guns. It did my nerves no good at all to see one of the doors standing open.

To my left was the door to the home cinema room. At first I couldn’t tell if it was occupied or not, but as I edged closer I heard the sharp staccato sound of voices inside.

Simone’s voice, in particular.

My first reaction was relief that she was alive. But crowding in on top of that came the realization that Simone was screaming at someone, the sound disguised by the soundproofing of the room. I glanced at Ella. She’d stiffened in my arms at the sound of her mother’s voice, still at an age where she picked up more by tone and vibration than by the words themselves. I wished that I didn’t have to take her in there with me, but I knew she wouldn’t let me leave her out here any more than she would have let me leave her upstairs.

Ah well, this is what they pay you for.. .

I turned the handle and pushed open the door.

Inside, the occupants of the room swung to face me. Simone, Rosalind and Lucas. Simone was holding a SIG 9mm that looked very like the one I’d fired on the range at Lucas’s store. Tears streaked her face and her eyes were wild.

For a split second, time slowed. I took in the scene like a freeze-frame in a movie, seeing everything and nothing in the blink of an eye.

The room was laid out with a blank wall for the home cinema screen at the far end, flanked by two tall loudspeakers. A projector was suspended from the ceiling and four huge recliner chairs, two at each side, faced the screen. Other than that, there was no furniture.

Lucas was standing to my left, near the chairs. He still had the dressing on his forehead from his tussle with Aquarium man, and was now leaking from a new wound somewhere high up in his hairline, but he didn’t seem to notice the blood sliding down his temple and cheek. His back was very straight like he was awaiting execution. Next to him, his wife was slumped in her seat, her normally tidy hairstyle awry She was staring at a spot on the far wall, away from Simone, and I would have thought she was in shock until she suddenly focused on my arrival.

Simone herself was bent forwards as though she was in pain, and shaking so hard she could hardly hold the gun. She gripped it in both hands, holding it away from her body like she was afraid of it, of what it might do, her hands much too tense. Perhaps that was why, as I entered and she turned, automatically bringing the gun round towards me, her finger tightened on the trigger.

The SIG discharged, twice in quick succession, almost slam-firing as the recoil took Simone by surprise and caused her to loose off a second shot.

The first round hit the wall high to my left, splintering chips of blockwork. The second went into the ceiling.

The noise of the gun discharging was enormous. Ella gave a single high-pitched squeal of terror, right in my ear, deafening me almost as much as the shot had done. I dived sideways and down, twisting my head away, rolling so I landed on my back, cradling the child.

As I went I could have sworn I heard Simone yell, “You bastard. You bastard!” but I had no idea at whom the words were aimed. If her shooting was anything to go by, it could have been anyone.

“Simone,” I shouted. “For God’s sake put the gun down before you kill somebody!”

“It’s too late,” she yelled back, the edge of hysteria in her voice. “It’s all too late now.” She gulped, her breath catching in her throat as though a sorrow too great to bear had suddenly overwhelmed her.

Too late. I remembered Jakes, lying dead in the hallway.

“Simone, what the hell is going on?”

“He killed him!” She was weeping openly now, great raw sobs that were wrenched out of her. “I saw him do it. I loved you!” she shouted at Lucas. “I trusted you! You bastard. You utter fucking bastard!”

Ella went rigid, then started to struggle violently against me, crying for her mother. It was like trying to hold on to a feral cat. She squirmed out of my grasp and scrambled away from me, terror lending her a speed and agility I didn’t think she possessed. I half-rose and grabbed at her, but she zipped out of reach, moving into full view between the seats and the doorway.

“Ella!” Simone cried, as if realizing for the first time she was there. Simone must have realized, too, that in firing at me she’d also risked her daughter. She gave a howl of outrage, barely human.

Ella froze at the unfamiliar sound. I stretched for her again, my fingers just brushing her sleeve as I sought a better grip.

Lucas, sensing what might have been his only chance, suddenly broke out of his immobility and lunged for Ella himself, whisking her out of my tenuous grasp. He scooped the child up, swinging her legs clear of the ground, and went for the doorway with her shrieking in his arms. I threw myself forwards, trying to hook a hand under his ankle, to slow or trip him, but he lashed out, catching me across the cheek with the back of his fist. For a second all I saw was instant static, jagged patches of lightning, a jumble of confused images. I let go and went crashing backwards.

By the time the world righted itself, Lucas was through the door, still clutching Ella. Simone hurled herself after them, throwing the door open and disappearing through it. I vaguely heard the muffled sound of feet pounding up the stairs, lessening into near silence as the door closed almost quietly behind her. I turned and found Rosalind still crouched in her chair, seeming too dazed to react.

“Rosalind, what the fuck is going on?” I lurched to my feet, staggering as the room tilted for a moment before it steadied and I could go for the door myself.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She just went crazy, screaming at Greg over and over. Oh my God,” she spluttered, choking up. She got a grip, then said, more calmly, “You can shoot.” I glanced back, took in her white face. “Will you…?”

Shoot Sitnone? Or Lucas?

“If I have to,” I said, answering both questions. As I went through the doorway I threw a last parting shot over my shoulder: “Jakes is dead-the cops are on their way.”

I wanted to ask Rosalind what the hell had happened, who had killed Jakes and what on earth Simone had found out about Lucas that had suddenly turned her into a gun-wielding homicidal maniac. Ask? No, I wanted to scream and shout at the woman, to shake the answers loose.

I jammed my temper back in its box. There’d be time for that when the final body count was in. My job now was to make sure it stayed at one.

I went up the basement steps fast and through the ground floor of the house trying to pick up the trail. Lucas was running, apparently unarmed, carrying fifty-odd pounds of struggling four-year-old child to weigh him down. Logic said he should have made for the front of the house, for a vehicle and a means of escape, but in that brief snapshot I’d had of him in the basement, I’d seen fear written all over him. People who are afraid do not behave the way you expect them to. Yes, he’d been trained, and according to his record he’d seen action in some of the nastiest theaters of war in the world. But confronted by his daughter, with a gun, he’d reacted not like a soldier but… how?

Like a criminal? By taking a hostage, something to trade his own life for.

Or like a coward?

I turned away from the front of the house and moved towards one of the doors out onto the rear deck, which led down into the woods. If Lucas was looking for somewhere to run, somewhere to hide, instinct told me he would have chosen this direction.

I stepped out onto the deck and stopped, pressed up against the outside wall of the house and holding my breath to listen for some sign that I was right. It only took a moment before I heard it-the snap of breaking branches, a bitten-off cry, the sound of a child wailing.

I moved to the steps and jumped down into the fresh snow at their foot. The moon had risen now, shining strong enough to produce eerie shadows from the trunks of the trees. It was enough to light the ground and I could see that two sets of footprints led away from the house and into the trees. Wide-spaced prints with the deepened heel impression of people running. Lucas and Simone. I headed in the same direction, but it was impossible to follow the trail for long and I lost it within a few meters of getting into the tangle of close-knit trees.

“For God’s sake, give it up!” I shouted, to Lucas as much as to Simone, my voice stark and loud in the gathering gloom. “The cops will be here any moment.” And I hoped that they’d taken me seriously enough that it was true.

Nobody responded. I closed my eyes for a second, tried to get a lock onto the sounds of flight through the debris of fallen trees across the shrouded ground.

There!

My eyes snapped open and I started to run, heading away from the house on a diagonal course, heading up the slope with the ski run to my left. The trees turned into a forest very quickly, closing ranks as though to defy an easy trail.

Suddenly, up ahead, I saw the fleeting movement of shadow flitting between the narrow trunks. Adrenaline injected into my system, giving me a burst of speed. I closed the gap and saw that the figure was Lucas, still clinging to Ella. She’d stopped screaming now and I just prayed that was of her own accord. The thought that this man had hurt her brought a cold hard flame of fury into my chest.

“Lucas!” I snapped, bringing the Glock up straight and level. “Hold it right there or I swear I’ll shoot you in the spine.”

For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me but then he faltered, his coordination deserting him as the fear-induced strength dissipated, leaving him almost spent. I crabbed nearer, dusting through the snow at my feet, keeping the gun up, and could hear him sobbing for breath. He had no coat and it was desperately cold. He must have been almost done. But not quite.

“What are you going to do, Charlie?” he said. He turned to face me, hefting Ella higher so that she was shielding most of his upper body. He ducked his head close to hers, so they were together, touching. “You really think you’d risk trying to shoot me, without even knowing why?”

“I don’t need to know why,” I said. I edged closer. Lucas was above me, on the higher ground. Between us was a ditch. I stopped on the rim of it, only a few meters away from them. “You’re a threat to my principal. That’s good enough.”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Am I? Don’t you think it’s Simone who’s a threat to me? And what about you? She fired at you, too. And at her own daughter! You both could have been killed.”

“ YOU know as well as I do she didn’t mean to do that.”

“Didn’t she? Dead is still dead, meant or not,” he said flatly. ‘And how do you know she didn’t mean it? You saw Jakes, didn’t you?”

I stilled. “You’re not trying to tell me she killed Jakes,” I said. “Get real, Lucas.”

But when I heard a noise off to our right I tensed, just the same as he did.

“Right now,” I said, “I just want to get Ella to safety. Give her to me, Lucas. Whatever’s going on between you and Simone, for God’s sake leave Ella out of it.”

If anything, he gripped the little girl tighter. “No way,” he said. “She’s my insurance. My guarantee. Let’s face it, Charlie, are you going to risk taking a shot?”

I hadn’t lowered the Glock a fraction, still had it out in front of me. Lucas was less than four meters away, uphill and slightly to my right, keeping his face pressed against the side of the child’s head as though the touch of her alone would keep him safe, like a protective force field.

Ella had given up her struggles now and was passive in his arms. She might even have been clinging on around his neck. After all, though she could well have been terrified, this was the man she’d learned to call Grandpa. You couldn’t just undo that in an instant. I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t judge how aware she was of exactly what was going on around her.

I mentally calculated the amount of Lucas’s head visible alongside hers and knew that, technically, I could take him out. One round, straight through the mouth. If I was quick I could probably reach Ella before he finished falling.

But I wouldn’t be able to stop her seeing what I’d done. Wouldn’t be able to stop her witnessing a bloody death. A sight no child should ever have to see. She was only four. How much would she forget in time? And how much would haunt her forever?

Slowly, gradually, I let the muzzle of the Glock rise, uncurled my finger from the trigger and laid it along the outside of the guard instead.

“OK, Lucas,” I said. “You’re right. I’m not going to — “

That was as far as I got.

The first shot ripped hot through my left thigh, jerking me off balance. For a few long seconds the only thing I felt was the jolt and the shock of it. Then the pain came rushing in. My nervous system overloaded and shut down, leaving my mind screaming for action. I started to turn, sluggish and clumsy, and that’s when something hit me in the back like an express train.

I watched with a kind of horrified fascination as the Glock went tumbling into the snow from fingers that didn’t seem to be mine any longer. I caught the briefest flash of movement above me, saw Lucas already twisting away, already fleeing without hesitation. I could see Ella’s face staring back at me over his shoulder as he ran with her into the trees. I’ve never seen such terror on the face of a child.

I’d promised her she’d be safe with me, that I wouldn’t leave her. I’d promised her mother that I’d look after the pair of them, come what may.

I tried to take a step after Lucas’s rapidly disappearing figure but it was all so heavy, nothing quite worked anymore.

Oh, so this is what its like….

I stumbled and went down.