Second Shot

Sixteen

The next day they got me out of bed and tried to work out some kind of a system so that I could move about under my own steam. My right arm had finally started to show some signs of life, which was a good thing. The downside was that it showed these signs of life in the form of a buzzing in my fingertips, extreme sensitivity that meant I couldn’t bear anything to touch my skin, and spasms like cramp in every muscle from my elbow downwards.

The wound to the back of my shoulder was such that I had very little control over my trapezius muscles. Gripping anything in my right hand was dubious, and raising my arm in any kind of lateral movement was out altogether.

My back around the site of the wound was stretched and tender, although the skin itself was numb. It made me fearful to overstress any of it, in case it all pulled apart. There was an odd feeling of tension and restriction under the surface, like a shirt that hasn’t quite been buttoned up in the right holes. The thought of having to use my back muscles to operate a pair of crutches actually made me feel faint.

But I also couldn’t put any weight through my left leg. The bullet had entered through my hamstring muscle at the back and exited through the quadriceps at the front. The fact that it had bypassed bone, arteries and major nerves on its way was a miracle but, even so, I had all the strength of a runt chicken in my lower limb.

In the end, the physiotherapist gave me one crutch for the left side and walked slowly alongside me as I staggered half a dozen paces down the corridor getting the hang of leaning on it. All the way, I dragged my left foot and damned near bit through my bottom lip in an effort not to break down and weep with the sheer bloody effort it entailed for apparently such small reward.

One of the nurses found me a chair to collapse onto and the physio held my hand while I shook and gasped like a marathon runner at the end of the home stretch and contemplated the vast distance back to the sanctuary of my bed again.

“It’s going to be a long road back, Charlie,” he told me, disgustingly cheerful, “but you’re lucky to be here at all, and it will come, if you’re prepared to work hard.”

Work.

I’d spent a lot of time thinking about work-about my job — since I’d laid there and listened to Sean and my father discussing me so coldbloodedly In the absence of anything better to occupy my mind, I’d picked apart every sentence, second-guessed every nuance, and come to a couple of conclusions that were more painful to contemplate than any physical injury I might have suffered.

As soon as you begin to doubt yourself-or others begin to doubt you-you’re finished.

Those words, more than any others, haunted me. What was the point of coming back, if there was nothing to come back to?

It had nothing to do with me having let my emotions dictate my actions out there in the forest. I’d tried over and over to analyze those final few minutes, but however I looked at it, I couldn’t have justified shooting Lucas as he stood there holding Ella. Whichever way I dissected the facts, he hadn’t been threatening her life-he’d merely been trying to save his own.

If I’d taken the shot, I wouldn’t just have traumatized the child, I would have been guilty of murder. If it had been the first time I’d used lethal force, a good legal team might have swung some kind of a plea.

But it wasn’t.

I tried to work out how many lives I’d taken and found, to my horror, that I couldn’t precisely remember. And that made it so much worse.

Or others begin to doubt you….

What if Sean had lost his faith in me? And who could blame him? I’d failed to protect a principal. Not only that, but I’d allowed a principal to be killed, not by a lone assassin or a known threat, but by the very people who should have been coming to our aid.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as far as Sean was concerned-as far as the reputation of his company was concerned- it was a disaster. I knew that if it got out that he and I had anything other than a professional relationship, that would make things ten times worse. Sean was known to be a highflier. His staff were well paid because they were the best, and proud of it. But in truth that also meant there were plenty out there just waiting for him to crash and burn. Above all else, I hated the idea that I might be the cause of his downfall.

Suddenly it was like being back in the army, just after my attack. I wasn’t just physically at a low ebb but mentally bruised and emotionally battered as well. I needed Sean more now than I’d ever done, but I knew I could not-would not-drag him down again.

W

hen Sean walked in that afternoon, my unsettled thoughts must have made my greeting wary in some way. He studied me for a moment before responding, as though he could read my mind. No surprises there. He’d always been too sharp for comfort.

They’d propped me more upright in the bed, so I was able to watch the easy way he moved round the room. He didn’t take the chair next to the bed, choosing instead to lean on the wall near the window, tilting his shoulder against it and folding his arms. I desperately wanted him to touch me but knew I’d chew my own tongue off rather than ask.

“The nurse said they got you up today,” he said.

“I went for a stroll along the corridor,” I agreed lightly.

He nodded. “I wondered how long you were going to just lie there and loaf.”

That was all it took. My eyes started to burn, the lower lids filling so that I daren’t blink or he would have seen the tears. He saw them anyway.

Now he approached me, stroked gentle fingers down my cheek, thumbed away the wetness. Damn, and I was going to play it so cool….

“Hey, come on, Charlie,” he said softly “Fight it, or it will ride you all the way to the bottom.”

“Fight it?” I said, almost a snort. “At the moment I can’t fight sleep. I let you down-I’m a total, utter waste of space!”

He sighed and gathered me up close, careful where he put his hands. I laid my head against his shoulder and let him rock me. We stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, until the crying had worn itself out and left me. Then he eased back and looked down and there was no softness to his gaze.

“So, you were awake,” he said.

I could only nod silently. He sighed again.

“I won’t lie to you, Charlie,” he said. “Losing a client the way we lost Simone is always bad.”

“The company’s going to suffer,” I said dully. “Your reputation, everything you’ve worked for- “

“No, it won’t- not if I can help it,” he cut in. “And that means finding out what the hell went on out there. It’s worth the cost of staying out here a little longer. We need to know what made Simone try and kill you. The good new is that Simone’s banker has just retained us to look into his client’s safety.”

“Who-Simone?” I said roughly. “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

He shook his head. “Ella,” he said. “With Simone gone, Harrington’s just acquired his youngest client.” He let that one penetrate for a moment, then added, more briskly, “Plus, Parker Armstrong’s prepared to chip in to find out what really happened to Jakes. Right now the explanation the police have given us is just too convenient.” He moved back a little farther, giving me space. “Where did Simone get her hands on the gun, for a start?”

“Out of Lucas’s storeroom, probably,” I said. “The lock was off and the door was open when I got down there.”

“Why, though? Why would he give her a gun? Had Simone ever expressed an interest?”

“No,” I said, swallowing, trying to focus on being matter-of-fact. “If anything she was very anti about them. Definitely didn’t like them around Ella.”

“Right, so how did she end up with one? And if she was so anti that she’d never fired one before, how did she manage to shoot you so accurately-twice, in the dark?”

“She could have been aiming for Lucas and missed, but I can’t believe she would have risked hitting Ella,” I said. I shook my head. “I didn’t see her coming at me. Didn’t hear her, either, for that matter, until afterwards. Maybe she wasn’t aiming for me at all. Maybe she just let off a couple of wild shots and I got in the way. She could have been aiming for anything.”

Another brief freeze-frame of memory flipped out in front of me. The way Simone had appeared over the edge of that ditch with the gun held rigidly out in front of her. And I remembered, too, the anger in her eyes, anger that I could have sworn had turned to shock when she’d seen me lying there….

“So you think it might have been unintentional?” Sean asked, as though he’d read my mind.

“I don’t know,” I said. I scrubbed at my eyes with my left hand, forgetting that although they’d unplugged my IV line, they’d left in the butterfly I nearly took my eye out in the process.

“You’re using it more,” Sean said.

I looked down and found I’d been absently smoothing down the tape holding the butterfly in place into a vein in the back of my left hand, using the fingers of my right. For a moment I just stared at them. The nerves were still fizzing and every hair on my forearm felt wired to the mains, but at least the arm seemed prepared to be part of my body again, however distant, rather than some disengaged piece of meat.

“YOU can get past this, Charlie,” he said with quiet vehemence, and I knew he wasn’t just talking physically. “It will get better.”

“Yeah, well, it better had,” I said, dragging up a smile from somewhere. “The loafing in this place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

He might have said more, but we both heard the footsteps in the corridor outside my room, and when a tall thin figure in a somber three-piece pinstripe suit appeared in the doorway, he didn’t take me by surprise.

“Miss Fox,” Rupert Harrington greeted me gravely. “How are you feeling?”

“On the mend, sir,” I said, forcing a determined brightness into my voice that hadn’t been there only a few seconds before.

Simone’s banker eyed me doubtfully for a moment but didn’t call me on it.

“Ah, good,” he said at last, nodding. “That’s good.”

He still hadn’t advanced from the doorway and seemed almost hesitant about doing so. I was almost on the point of telling him that gunshot injuries were not generally contagious, when he spoke again.

“Look, I have somebody with me whom I’d rather like you to have a chat with, but I’m not sure how you’re going to react to him and-”

“Mr. Harrington,” I said, stopping him dead, “I’m hardly in any state to bite, am I? Not at the moment. Bring him in, whoever he is.” Some kind of detective, perhaps-taking over looking after Ella’s welfare? I ignored the spike of jealousy. After all, I didn’t make such a hot job of it myself, did I?

Harrington stepped sideways slightly and made ushering motions to someone standing farther out in the corridor, out of my sight. There was a pause before a bearded young man shuffled into view, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched as though he would rather have been anywhere but here. Well, that made two of us.

“Er, hello … again,” he said.

Simone’s ex-boyfriend-Ella’s father-Matt.

Possibly the last person I would have expected to see in the company of the immaculate banker. Matt was, after all, the very reason that Harrington had originally hired us.

Sean moved round the bed so he was between me and the doorway, and for some reason the action irritated me.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “What are you expecting him to do?”

Sean’s answering glance was hooded, but he didn’t stand down.

Harrington stood looking awkward. “As I said, I realize this may seem somewhat irregular- “

“You could say that,” Sean murmured, not taking his eyes off Matt.

“-but I’d appreciate it if you would hear what this young man has to say before you make any judgments,” the banker finished with a little more snap to his tone.

“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a good time,” Matt said, eyes flitting nervously from one of us to the other. He looked older, his gaunt face haggard, and a suspicion of red around his eyes and nose. Whatever his problems with Simone, I recalled belatedly, they’d lived together for five years and shared a daughter. The violent abruptness of Simone’s death was always going to hit him hard.

The thought that he’d come to hear the grim details firsthand brought on an icy tightness in my chest.

“Come on in, Matt,” I said, giving him a weary smile. “And I’m the one who’s sorry-for everything. I was supposed to be keeping her safe.”

I saw his shoulders drop a fraction. “But, according to the police, she’s the one who shot you“‘ he said, and his tone revealed bewilderment as much as bitterness. “What happened?”

“I wish I knew,” I said.

Matt nodded as though that was the answer he’d been expecting. He’d developed a sudden interest in the toes of his old basketball boots, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

“So,” Sean said. “What is it you have to say to us?”

Matt swallowed. He had a prominent Adam’s apple and it bobbed nervously in and out of the vee presented by the open collar of his shirt.

“Look, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me-or to think I’m telling the truth for that matter,” he said. “But whatever you may have thought of me, I genuinely loved Simone. We had our troubles, yeah. She was insanely jealous — ” He broke off, realizing that any mention of insanity in the woman who’d been shot dead by the police was probably unfortunate.

“And I love my daughter,” he muttered, earnest now, his voice low and shaking with sincerity “You people just have no clue how much I love my daughter.”

I said nothing. Matt was wrong. I had a very good idea of what he felt for Ella, even though I was no blood relation to her. Unless you counted the stuff I’d spilt trying to keep her from harm.

Matt had paused, trying to collect his thoughts, find the right place to start his story. Eventually, he said, almost tiredly, “A couple of years ago, when Simone’s mum was very ill, we came over to Chicago to see her. She’d been too ill to travel for a while and she’d never seen Ella and we thought it was probably her last chance,” he went on. He smiled a little sadly. “Pam was a nice lady. I liked her, you know? She was obviously in a lot of pain but she never made a big thing out of it, and she was just so happy to finally get to see Ella.”

Matt wore a Russian wedding ring on the thumb of his right hand, three intertwining bands of gold. He played with them absently, rolling the narrow bands over and over one another, up and down his thumb. A habit, something to occupy his hands.

“Anyway, we ended up talking quite a bit, her and me, because even then Simone was starting to talk about finding her father, and while we were over here she was quizzing Pam about him a lot. I suppose she realized how serious things were with her mum’s health and if she didn’t ask her questions now, she’d never get the chance. But her mum wouldn’t talk about him.”

“Nothing?” I asked.

Matt shook his head. “Not to Simone-she just stalled her. Then she took me on one side one day when Simone had taken Ella out, and she told me that Greg Lucas was a right miserable bastard who made her life hell and she hoped to God that Simone never got to meet him again. She made me promise,” he went on with a shaky smile, “to do whatever I could to stop her tracking him down.”

He cast a reproachful glance at Harrington, who had taken a seat by the window and was picking imaginary lint from the knee of his wool trousers, pretending not to hear.

“She must have told you more than that,” I said, remembering the air of sheer desperation when I’d tackled him in the restaurant.

He swallowed again and nodded.

“She had this boyfriend-John,” he said.

“Who did?” Sean asked. “Simone?”

“No-Pam,” Matt said, frowning at the interruption to his train of thought. “She said she met John a while before she and Greg split, and eventually John was the one who gave her the courage to leave her husband. She got a divorce and they moved away, made a fresh start, but Greg kept tracking them down, threatening them, hounding them. They were constantly on the move. Then, when they’d been living in one place for about six months, she came home one day and found John had just disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

Matt nodded. “She said she’d only been out for a couple of hours — left him looking after Simone. When she came back the place had been broken up a bit-couple of things smashed like there’d been a fight. Simone was all alone in the house, hiding under her bed, crying her eyes out, and John had vanished.”

His eyes flicked between Sean and me, as if checking to see how the story had been received. Harrington’s face was shuttered. This was clearly not the first time he’d heard it. I shifted a little, carefully, in the bed.

“Were the police involved?” I asked.

“She told me they weren’t very interested,” he said. “He was an adult whose girlfriend’s ex was cutting up rough. They thought he’d just done a runner and she reckons they didn’t put much effort into finding him.”

“And what about Lucas?”

“Pam said that was the weird thing. Having been practically stalking her, he never bothered her again. When she made some inquiries of her own, she was told he’d left the army a month or so before John went missing. And he left the country the day afterwards.” He paused, face somber. “Pam swore John wouldn’t have just upped and left her and Simone. She was absolutely convinced Greg Lucas had murdered him.”

A brief silence fell into the void created by Matt’s words. All I could think of was that Ella had been left in the care of such a man. And that I hadn’t taken him down when I’d had the chance. The memory of Lucas using her as a shield, hiding behind her body, came roaring through my mind like a monster, licking at the back of my eyeballs with the flames of its tongue.

“Surely you must have told Simone what her mother said?” Sean demanded. “If not at the time, then later?”

Matt’s head sagged. “Pam made me promise I wouldn’t ever say anything,” he said. He must have been aware how lame that sounded because his head swung up again, stared pleadingly between us, as though begging for understanding. “I gave her my word that I wouldn’t tell. And then, when I did finally break my promise, it was too late,” he added dully. “Simone and I had already split by then.” His eyes skated over Harrington and the accusation sharpened the glance into barbs. “People had been telling her I was just after her money. She didn’t believe me.”

Harrington cleared his throat. “This information only came to our attention since Miss Kerse’s tragic and untimely demise,” he said with a little sideways glance at Matt. “Naturally, we are concerned for Ella’s welfare.”

And suddenly the reason the banker was here, with Matt, became clear. If Lucas wasn’t fit to have charge of Simone’s millions, Harrington had allied himself with the next in line to the throne.

“Naturally,” Sean said, and the cynical note in his voice told me he’d drawn the same inference.

Harrington colored slightly and plowed on. “Part of the reason I’m here,” he said, “is that I’ve spoken with my board and we feel we’d like to retain your services.”

I gave a short laugh. “What as?”

Everyone frowned at me, briefly united in their disapproval.

“When we flew into Boston yesterday I drove straight up to see Greg and Rosalind Lucas,” Matt said flatly “They refused to let me in.” He went back to his miserable study of the floor. “I just wanted to know my little girl was all right and they wouldn’t even let me see her.”

“On what grounds?” I asked. “You’re her father-you should have automatic rights over her.”

“They said Simone had told them I was a junkie,” he said, and now the bitterness was loud and clear. “They said they didn’t want someone like me to have any contact with their granddaughter, and that the courts over here would back them up.”

I raised an eyebrow at Sean, who shrugged. “If that’s the case, then they’re probably right,” he said calmly “They’d have to present some pretty compelling evidence, though.”

“Of course it’s not the bloody case,” Matt said, his voice rising. “So what if I’ve done the occasional bit of weed on a weekend? Who hasn’t? But the way they were saying it, I’d be shooting up in alleyways and dragging Ella into crack dens.” He broke off, took a breath, glanced at Harrington. “They seem pretty well-off people, and I know you told me the DNA test came back a match-so it looks like he really is Ella’s granddad. I don’t stand a chance of getting her back, do I?”

“Not when there’s so much at stake,” the banker said. He coughed, as if forcing himself to regurgitate what he considered to be confidential information. “Whoever has charge of Ella also has, at today’s exchange rate, around twenty-five million dollars to play with.”

Matt eyed him glumly. “Looks like I’ve got a fight on my hands, then.”

“Not quite, old chap,” Harrington said, and I thought I caught just the faintest glimmer of a smile slide across his thin lips. “I’d say we’ve got a fight on our hands, hm?”