Second Shot

Twenty-three

Only about half the lights in the front of the store had been on, and it was dimmer still in the stockroom, with the high storage racks looming off like narrow darkened alleyways to our left, and the row of solid gun safes to our right.

I was leaning heavily on the crutch to counterbalance the weight of the Beretta in my right hand. It was getting heavier all the time and the spare magazine in my pocket bumped annoyingly against my hip. I stopped and fished it out, handing it back to Matt.

He looked at it blankly for a moment. “Are you sure?” he asked in a low voice.

I nodded. I was putting all my energy into focusing on what was to come and I didn’t have anything left over to formulate coherent words. Besides, how could I tell him that I doubted I’d have the strength to fire the rounds I’d got, never mind to reload?

I was going to have to make them count.

And then, from a doorway ahead of us, a man stepped out into view. He was dressed in a dark shirt with an open ski jacket over the top. He wasn’t particularly tall, quite slim, wearing gold-framed glasses. I recognized the size and the shape of him, rather than the face-Reynolds’s partner from the kidnap attempt at the Lucases’ place. The man who’d seen Reynolds captured and who had calmly abandoned him.

Cool, calculating and not to be underestimated.

He came out with purpose, head already turned in our direction, gun in his right hand but held loosely, down by his side. Rosalind had called ahead. He knew we were coming, so we were not a surprise to him.

I saw his eyes flick to the space behind us, to where Rosalind should have been, covering the pair of us, herding us forwards. His eyes flew back to me, startled. He saw the Beretta in my hand and he started to bring his own gun up to fire, diving for the cover of the nearest wall of racking.

I stayed planted lumplike in the middle of the space between the racking and the gun safes. It felt as though I had a bloody great target painted on my chest. I had to stand and fight because I couldn’t run and hide. And I had to be totally ruthless because I couldn’t afford to let him get a second shot.

I swung the Beretta up, using my whole shoulder. The crutch was trapped tight into my armpit. I daren’t let go of it this time, but I released the handle to wrap my left hand round my weakened right, wedging my elbow hard into my ribs to stabilize my aim. As a shooter’s stance went, it wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was the best I could do.

I didn’t wait for the man with the glasses to complete his move, or give him a chance to drop the weapon, or shout a warning. I didn’t attempt to aim for an area of his body where I might wound rather than kill him, either. Most of the time, unless you’re looking at your target through a sniper’s scope, that’s a fallacy anyway. You shoot to stop, and if the other guy dies, well, at least it wasn’t you.

I was vaguely aware of a hot white flare from the end of the gun facing me, and some part of my brain registered the fact that he’d fired fractionally first. I was a stationary target, which was bad, but he was moving, which proved better.

The shot went wide to my left, close enough to my ear that I heard the high-pitched whine as it passed, but that could just have been the outrageous noise of the report, bruising my ears. I sensed Matt flinch down behind me, but I didn’t have the mobility to duck myself.

As soon as I had the sights more or less leveled on the center of my target’s mass, I pulled the Beretta’s trigger twice in quick succession, no finesse, feeling the vicious slap of the recoil through my palm. It exploded along my arm and up into my shoulder, a jolt that took my breath away. If I’d missed I wasn’t certain I could go again so soon.

I hadn’t missed. The man with the glasses stopped moving suddenly as the realization that he’d been shot caught up with him. After the initial shock, the pain hit him hard and fast. He froze, as though by keeping quiet and still he could somehow evade it.

You can’t, friend. Trust me on this….

With a kind of disbelieving grunt, his fingers opened to let go the gun, and he folded both hands almost tenderly across his stomach.

He staggered backwards a pace. Then his knees gave out, twisting him so his back hit the gun safe nearest to him and he slid slowly down the face of it until his rump hit the floor. He was starting to gasp now. He sat there, legs splayed out in front of him, staring at nothing.

I didn’t so much lower the Beretta as simply stop making the effort to keep it raised. Without the support of my left hand, I could barely maintain my hold on the gun. The pistol grip was greasy with sweat. I grabbed the handle of my crutch so I could edge forwards. Matt was behind me like a shadow.

The man with the glasses looked up with difficulty as I reached him, like his head was suddenly too heavy for him to lift his chin. He gave a breathless little laugh.

“Who’d have thought it?” he murmured, wonder in his voice. He let his hands flop to inspect the blood that coated his palms, as though he couldn’t quite work out how it had got there. I saw that I’d managed to place both rounds into his stomach. One had just nicked the belt of his jeans so the leather had split and frayed. The other was slightly lower, and the blood that oozed from it was very dark, almost black. Probably from his liver, I noted with detached interest. Without a medic he didn’t have long.

His gun had fallen next to him, less than half a meter away from his thigh. Another Beretta. He seemed to have lost interest in shooting us, but I nudged it farther out of his reach with the rubber tip of my crutch, just in case.

“Where is she?” I said.

The man’s face twisted. “Get me a doctor.”

“Tell me where Ella is and you’ll get one.”

“I need one now!” His voice was scared but there was more to it than that. He had the air of ex-military about him, and I guessed that he’d been around firearms enough to know how badly he was hit. He swallowed, desperate not to plead with me but prepared to do it, all the same. “I–I can’t feel my legs.”

“Where’s Ella?” I repeated, dogged, shutting down the emotion that was struggling to rise, the sharp empathy with what he was going through. Behind me I heard the quiet hiss of Matt’s indrawn breath.

The man with the glasses held out a moment longer, his breathing quick and shallow, then caved. He indicated with a sideways flick of his eyes, farther back into the stockroom. “Range,” he said.

“How many of you are there?”

“Just me and Reynolds.” He was panting now. He made a poor attempt at a smile, but there was a bitter edge to it. “She said that would be enough.”

I didn’t need to ask who “she” was. I straightened, stepping awkwardly over his legs.

“Hey,” he said, wheezy. “What about that doctor?”

I glanced back at him without pity. “When we’ve got Ella, and she’s OK, we’ll call you one,” I said. “And if she’s not OK, you’ll wish you were dead anyway.”

He tried to laugh again, but he was crying at the same time. The pain brought him up short, cut him off. “She should have finished you while she had the chance.”

I gave him a tight little smile of my own. Had everybody known but me?

“Yeah,” I murmured. “It’s a shame about that, isn’t it?”

As I hobbled away I sensed Matt hesitate next to the wounded man, torn over whether to help him or follow me. Eventually, Matt’s desire to find his daughter won out. He caught up with me within a couple of strides. I glanced at him as he reached me, just to see how he was holding up. He was staring.

“What?”

“How can you just leave him like that?” he demanded in a rough whisper, gesturing backwards. “How can you just…?” He tailed off, unsure what it was exactly that he wanted to ask.

You think this is easy?

I turned away, limped on. “You want your daughter back? This is the only way I can do it,” I said thickly. “You saw what Reynolds was like with me. What do you think he’ll do to her?”

Matt didn’t answer. We’d reached the door to the range. I paused outside it, swapped the Beretta to my other hand while I wiped my damp palm on my sweatpants. Never was a garment more aptly named. I Youched Matt’s arm. He almost flinched.

“If it all goes bad and you get the chance to grab Ella,” I said, keeping my voice low even though I knew the range was soundproofed, “take her and get out-understand? Don’t wait for me.” Because if Reynolds gets his hands on me again, I wont be getting out….

Matt nodded, eyes so wide I could see the white of them all the way round the iris. He was scared witless, but he was holding it together for the sake of his child. If she remembered nothing else about him as she grew up, I thought fiercely, she ought to remember this.

The outer door into the range was on a strong self-closer, so nobody could accidentally leave it open. The last time I was there, the day I’d matched against Vaughan, it had just been part of the scenery. I hadn’t even noticed it. Now I could barely get the door open against its mechanical opposition. Matt had to lean in close and lend a hand.

Reynolds was waiting for us inside. How could he not be? As we pushed the inner door open I took in the whole scene in an instant, like the flash of a strobe, a snapshot.

He was standing on the other side of the small room at one of the firing points — the same one, coincidentally, where Vaughan had stood. Blond, good-looking and supremely self-confident, he was dressed in the same three-quarter-length tweed coat he’d worn that day on Boston Common and he was smiling the same friendly, open smile he’d given Si-mone at the Aquarium.

He was holding Ella so she was straddling his left hip with her little hands gripped so tight onto his coat it was like she was making fists in the rough material. He had his left arm around her body, supporting her, keeping her close. The very sight of him with his hands on her threw up a burst of white noise behind my eyes.

As we’d opened the door, Reynolds began to shift his stance, drawing his right foot back to present his left side — the side with Ella-as the target. He, too, had a semiautomatic pistol in his right hand and his grip on it was firm and strong. The gun was aimed at Ella’s head, the muzzle almost Youching her downy cheek.

I lurched a full step into the room and fought my flagging muscles to bring the Beretta up. This time, as I brought my other hand up to grab it, I jettisoned the crutch. One chance, and one chance only. After this, it wouldn’t matter much one way or the other.

I saw him take in my shambling gait, my sweat-stained clothing, the fact that I needed both hands to raise the Beretta at all, and the effort it was causing me to do so. I saw the smile start to widen. I could almost hear the thoughts that rushed through his brain. He held all the cards. No way would I risk a shot when he was holding Ella so close, when I could hardly stand and my aim was likely to be all to hell. He might not have to bargain his way out of this, after all. Might not have to leave witnesses behind …

And he made a snap decision. He took the gun away from Ella’s head and began straightening his arm to aim it at me instead, and I knew this was no idle threat. You only bother to threaten someone with a gun if you’re reluctant to actually use it. Reynolds had no such qualms.

I’d humiliated him at the Lucases’ place, and Matt and I had outma-neuvered him at the apartment. And now he had the opportunity to kill us both and make his escape with a hostage worth millions. There was no contest. His only disappointment would be that he didn’t get to make me suffer first.

His mistake.

The muzzle of my Beretta continued to rise in front of me, slow and ponderous, like the nose of an overladen airliner coming off the runway. It seemed to take forever, but actually it all happened in the blink of an eye. The gun reached cruising altitude and I stared along the barrel at a target so small the sights practically obscured it.

I’m sorry, Ella. I’m so sorry …

And I took the shot.

The noise in the confined space was monstrous. The round hit Reynolds smack in the center of that smug, self-satisfied smile. It smashed through both his front teeth with hardly a pause, continued its slight upward path grazing across the roof of his mouth, plowed on through the stem of his brain and then removed a good chunk of the back of his skull on the way out. It glanced off the bare concrete ceiling of the range at about the ten-meter mark and must have eventually come to rest somewhere in the thick sand berm at the far end of the elongated room, along with thousands of other spent rounds.

Reynolds’s body jerked as if on a wire. It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn he just had time for the shock and the anger to register. I saw it on his face and was triumphant. He fell back, cannoned off the firing point and started to rebound forwards, with Ella still clutched to his body as he went down.

Matt unfroze and darted past me to grab his daughter before she would have gone crashing into the floor, snatching her from Reynolds’s dying grip.

Ella, who’d been quietly terrified to this point, broke her silence with a vengeance. She screamed and screamed, on and on so the world didn’t seem a big enough place to contain her anguish. She’d seen too much and it had finally broken her. Matt threw me a single desperate accusing glance and hurried out with his blood-spattered daughter in his arms.

I could hear Ella still howling as he ran with her through the stock room and out into the front of the store. The sound faded like a passing train, dropping another level as the outer door from the range swung slowly closed behind them.

Dazed, with the aftereffects of the shots still sending up a muffled buzzing in my ears, I let my hands drop to my sides and stared dumbly at Reynolds’s body in front of me.

At least he’d fallen half on his side with his face tilted away from me, so I didn’t have to look at it. His heart had ceased to pump fluids round his system, but the damage to his skull was sufficient that gravity ensured they continued to leak out of the entry wound anyway. A dark pool was seeping into the concrete around his head.

It was suddenly very quiet in there, and very cold. My crutch had fallen too far away for me to reach and I found I couldn’t move in any case. I’d overstressed just about everything to make this last effort for Ella. Now it was done there was nothing left inside. I could almost feel my mind begin to drift. I remembered her screams. We’d saved her life, yes, but at what cost?

Somewhere in the far distance, I heard voices and shouting, but I didn’t call out. My only action was to relax the fingers of my right hand enough for the Beretta to fall to the floor next to my foot. If it was the police, I didn’t want there to be any more misunderstandings. And if it was anyone else, well, I simply didn’t have it in me to do any more. Not when the only person at risk now was myself.

The door to the range crashed open behind me, but everything had taken on a surreal, oneiric quality, nothing was quite true anymore. I didn’t jump, couldn’t turn my head as a figure moved round in front of me from the right. I wasn’t even surprised when I saw who it was.

Felix Vaughan was carrying his favorite.45 H amp;K pistol in a double-handed grip and this time he had the suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. He approached Reynolds with soft-footed caution until he saw the gaping head wound. He paused a moment, staring at the body without expression. Then he straightened, shrugged out of his soldier’s skin and let some pretense of civility cloak him again.

“You?” he asked calmly.

“Yes,” I said in a remote voice. Staying upright was becoming an effort now. My right leg had begun to shake from the strain of taking all my weight. My vision was tunneling down, prickling at the edges. For the first time since I’d entered the range, I realized that every breath burned a dark molten hole in the bottom of my lung.

“I assume the one in the stockroom is yours, also?”

Ah. Too late to call that doctor now, then….

I didn’t answer, but he nodded as though I had. He looked at me for a moment longer, a hard penetrating stare that stripped away the outer layers and laid me bare. I slid my gaze away, ashamed, and he crouched to better inspect Reynolds’s face.

“Good shot,” he said at last, with quiet intensity “Well done.”

And getting praise from him brought the whole of my revulsion for the actions I’d just taken bubbling to the surface. My stomach heaved. I whirled away from him and put too much weight through my injured leg. It collapsed under me.

Vaughan caught me with surprising speed before I hit the floor. I should have been grateful but instead I fought against him, ineffectually and without technique, until I was utterly exhausted. It didn’t cause him much difficulty, nor did it take long.

I leaned against the rough fabric of his coat and shut my eyes. He smelt of wood smoke and wintergreen. Anything was better than the dull coppery odor of Reynolds’s blood.

In the periphery of my awareness, I heard more footsteps, running this time. Vaughan leaned back from me and called out to whoever was approaching. A second later the door crashed open again and then it was Sean who was in front of me, lifting me out of Vaughan’s arms and up into his own as though I weighed nothing. I let him do it. The fight had gone out of me now and I doubt I could have made it out under my own steam.

As Sean turned away his gaze lingered on the corpse.

“Reynolds?”

“Yes,” I said through stiff lips. “He had Ella.” It sounded plaintive, defensive.

Sean nodded, understanding more than I’d voiced.

“You did what you had to, Charlie,” he said, and right at that moment I probably almost believed him.

He carried me back through the stockroom to the front of the store. Vaughan, no more anxious than anyone else to be alone with two dead men, was right behind us. He’d picked up my fallen crutch and was carrying it with him. The three of us followed the path Matt had taken with Ella. That meant we had to pass the slumped body of the man with the glasses, still sitting propped against one of the gun safes, hands now slack in his lap. He was still staring at nothing but, this time, nothing stared right back. I averted my eyes.

In the store I found the two men who’d grabbed me from outside the White Mountain Hotel-Vaughan’s men-hanging round with guns in their hands and looking nervous. Frances Neagley was crouched next to Ella, helping Matt to mop the blood off his daughter’s face and clothing with wadded-up paper towel. The child had quietened to grizzling until she caught sight of me and then she started to yowl again, an almost knee-jerk response.

Matt threw me a look that was half angry, half apologetic as he swept her up and carried her through into one of the offices behind the counter, closing the door firmly behind the two of them. Out of sight and out of mind.

Neagley’s gaze was coolly assessing as she got to her feet, as though she had pieced together what it was I must have done in front of Ella to cause this kind of a reaction, and had come pretty close to the mark.

Sean put me down next to a chair and I drooped into it, leaning forwards to rest my elbows on my knees, scrubbing wearily at my face. My hands smelt of gunpowder and sweat and blood. The right one reacted slower and more clumsily. I let them drop and looked up to find both Sean and Neagley studying me.

“You OK?” the private investigator asked carefully.

I shrugged. “More or less,” I lied.

“The cops are on their way,” Sean said. “Are you ready for this?”

“Would it make a difference if I said no?” I watched Vaughan lean my crutch against one of the displays and move across to speak with his boys in quiet murmurs. “What are they doing here?”

Sean followed my gaze. “When we got to Vaughan’s place we found that he was expecting us — as you probably know,” he said. “But, fortunately for us, he was prepared to listen to what we had to say before it got to any shooting.” He pulled a rueful face. “Good job, too, or we’d be filling a number of little wooden boxes by now.”

“And he convinced you he hadn’t got Ella.”

He nodded. “And that Rosalind had sold us a pup,” he agreed. “And then when she called him and offered him a trade, it actually convinced him that we were telling the truth-that we’d genuinely believed he’d got Ella. He knew Lucas wasn’t Lucas almost from the start-it was what gave him his hold over the pair of them. The last thing Vaughan wanted was Simone exposing the deception, or he’d lose his leverage. He never wanted to involve her in any of this. That’s why he tried to persuade you to get both Simone and Ella out of line of fire.”

Vaughan finished his conversation and came over, sliding his pistol inside his jacket as he approached. He’d clearly caught Sean’s last words, because he favored me with the ghost of a smile.

“I may be guilty of many things, Charlie, but child kidnapping and murder are not among them,” he said flatly. “Besides, I doubt dear Greg and Rosalind are going to get away with any of this and I found I had nothing to lose by hightailing it down here and helping your boss bring them down.” He waved a hand around him at the store. ‘After all, if that happens, I take over this place.”

“Aren’t you worried the police might look into your own business dealings a little too closely for comfort?” Sean asked, a hint of a challenge in his cool tone.

Vaughan showed his teeth more fully. “I’m a careful man. They can look all they want,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll leave you to explain things to the cops.” He handed Sean a set of car keys that I recognized as belonging to the Explorer, and nodded to me. “Good-bye, Charlie. And good luck.”

I didn’t respond, waiting until the doors had closed behind Vaughan and his men before I glanced back at Sean.

“What was he up to with the Lucases?”

“He’s been using them as a central distribution point for stolen military gear,” Sean said almost casually. “Mixing it in with genuine surplus stuff. Quite a lot of weaponry, from what Lucas was telling me. You must have noticed how everyone seems to be using U.S. Army-issue Beretta M nines? All from Vaughan’s contacts.”

“And Rosalind wanted out,” I said. “In fact, I got the impression she never wanted in in the first place.”

“Vaughan contacted Lucas when he was looking for an outlet and Lucas was quite keen to strike a deal, but Vaughan spotted him for a fake almost right away,” Sean said. ‘After that, I don’t think Rosalind had much of a choice if she wanted to keep up the pretense.”

Neagley looked round. “Where is she, by the way?”

I flushed as the realization struck. “Oh hell-we left her outside,” I said guiltily. “Gagged and tied to a chair round the side of the building.”

“I’ll go fetch her,” Neagley said, heading for the door.

“She admitted that she used Reynolds to arrange your partner’s accident,” I said to her. “I’m very sorry”

Neagley just paused and nodded, her face shuttered as though this news was no real surprise to her.

After she’d gone, Sean retrieved my crutch from where Vaughan had left it and leaned it against the side of my chair. I was coming round, I recognized, to the point where I might actually be able to use it. I made the effort to keep my mind locked on the present.

“Where’s Lucas?” I asked.

Sean glanced round, frowning. “I don’t know,” he said. “We left him in here while we searched the place.”

“You don’t think-”

The lobby door banged open again and Neagley stood in the gap, looking pale and tense.

“Sean, you’d better come,” she said.

I grabbed the arm of my chair and the crutch and heaved myself upright, every muscle squealing at the effort.

“No, Charlie,” Sean said. “Stay here.”

“That’s what you told me last time,” I said, “and look what happened then.”

His mouth flattened but he helped me struggle back into my jacket, which had still been lying in a heap on the floor from when Matt and I had gone after Ella. Even after a brief respite, walking was a battle. Sean had to lend me some support or it would have taken all night to follow Neagley outside.

The cold instantly highlighted the residual dampness in my coat, arrowing straight into my chest. I started shivering as soon as the door had swung shut behind me. Neagley led the way round the side of the building. As I rounded the corner I wasn’t sure what I was going to see, but the sight of Rosalind-still taped to her swivel chair but with a dreadful familiar stillness about her-wasn’t it.

For a second I thought she’d frozen to death, and then I saw the gunshot wound to the middle of her forehead. I stared at her blankly, aware of two sets of eyes suddenly turned in my direction.

“I didn’t,” I said, swaying as the shock buffeted me. “We’d disarmed her, tied her up. Why the hell would I kill her?”

“Because she’s the one who shot you?” Neagley said calmly. Sean’s head snapped towards her and she shrugged. “Matt told me.”

“I didn’t,” I said again, like sheer repetition was going to make them believe me. I had to swallow back the tears. “I — “

“Wait!” Sean said. He spoke quietly but it was still enough to cut me off. I followed his gaze and saw nothing but the Lucases’ Range Rover, parked where Rosalind had left it. It took a moment for me to realize that the interior light was on.

Sean nodded to Neagley, who pulled the short-barreled little Smith amp; Wesson out of her jacket pocket. The two of them circled round behind the vehicle, leaving me to flounder along behind them, moving dreadfully slowly over the frozen ruts of snow underfoot.

By the time I reached the Range Rover they had both front doors open and Neagley was pointing her gun firmly at the figure of Lucas, who was sitting slumped in the passenger seat with his head in his hands. Sean had used a discarded glove to lift Lucas’s S amp;W revolver out of his hands by the barrel, being very careful not to disturb any prints.

“What happened?” Sean said, his voice gentle.

Lucas lifted his head blindly, tears streaming from his eyes. “I loved her,” he said. “It broke my heart to leave her behind.”

For a moment I couldn’t work out who he meant. Then it clicked in that he was talking about Simone, rather than his oh so recently dead wife. Simone as a child after she’d watched him kill the man she’d believed was her father.

“I gave up everything,” Lucas went on, sobbing now. “Everything I had, everything I was, to become him.” For the first time the disgust and the self-loathing tore through the veneer of the life he’d created for himself. In the distance came the first yelp of sirens thrashing through the night air towards us, but he didn’t seem to hear them.

I glanced at Sean. He shook his head.

‘And it was never enough,” Lucas went on bitterly, staring out through the dirty windscreen at his wife’s body “She took everything I had to give and wanted more. I tried so hard to be what she wanted. But it was never enough….”

It had started to snow again, big fat flakes that floated down and laid themselves almost graciously on whatever they Youched. They had already covered Rosalind’s head and shoulders like a white lace shroud.

“Lucas —,” Sean began, but the other man shook his head vigorously.

“No,” he said. “Don’t call me that anymore. I spent God knows how many years trying to be Greg Lucas, trying to be the kind of husband Rosalind wanted. And then she took away the last thing that meant anything to me and tonight I realized, she never really wanted me at all, did she?”

He pulled back his focus and looked at me directly. “I found her out here and took that tape off her mouth and do you know what her first words to me were?”

I didn’t answer and his gaze swept me up and down. “She said that you were half-dead and a woman and you were still twice the man I’d ever be.” His face crumpled, consumed by bitterness and anger and regret. “So I finally decided to become exactly the kind of cold, hard, ruthless bastard she wanted me to be,” he said, “and I shot her.”