Third Strike

CHAPTER 21

Despite Sean’s evasive driving techniques—or perhaps because of them—there were no signs of anyone following us after we left the hospital. Eventually, we headed back towards the Back Bay area, stopping at a little Japanese noodle bar, little more than a storefront café, for an early meal.

My father and Sean kept up their quietly confrontational stance throughout, leaving me and my mother to play peacemaker. My mother was, understandably, still invigorated by her performance at the hospital. I had to keep trying to muffle her enthusiastic recall.

It was fortunate that we were the only customers in at that hour, and the blank-faced girl who took our order didn’t seem able to process more than the basics in English. Still, I didn’t like the idea of anyone being close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation.

Stopping my mother chattering on about every thought process she’d gone through, however, proved easier said than done. In the end I had to distract her with talk of distant family holidays and old school friends I’d long since lost touch with, but who, for some strange reason, still seemed to be in regular contact with my mother.

And even that turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword as far as topics went. Every single damn one of them, it seemed, had married well and produced hordes of startlingly precocious and beautiful children for their grandparents to dote on.

Eventually, her excitement dimmed enough even for her to recognize the static silence that clung between Sean and my father. The pauses grew longer, then joined up into one long pause, unpunctuated by speech altogether. By that time I was thankful for the respite.

When we’d finished our last pot of green tea, my mother pushed her chair back and announced she needed the ladies’ room. When I rose to join her, she gave me a blank look, then nodded gravely as she realized why.

The waitress didn’t understand that question, either, but she caught the general gist and jerked her head towards a doorway near the rear of the restaurant. The little girls’ room turned out to have two cubicles with a tiny sink wedged to the side of them. There was barely room to turn on the tap and, when you’d managed that, you struggled to get both hands in the bowl at once.

To my surprise, perhaps, my mother didn’t seem perturbed by her surroundings. Neither did she seem desperate to use the facilities, but instead fussed around washing her hands and tidying her hair in the mirror on the wall next to the sink. I got the distinct impression she was stalling.

Eventually, she glanced up and met my eyes in the reflection.

“I do wish you wouldn’t keep sniping at each other, Charlotte,” she said, attempting to soften the slightly pained note with a hesitant smile. “Nothing good will come of provoking him.”

“Me?” I said, feeling an annoyed twitch run sharply across my shoulders. “I’m not provoking anyone.”

Her sigh brought me back. “You’re provoking each other.”

“I see. And are you planning on also having this conversation with him about not winding me up?”

She frowned. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said in a slightly affronted tone, bending to peer at the little strip of paper towel that was sticking out of the bottom of the dispenser on the wall. “I just think you should be careful not to push him too far, that’s all.” She tugged ineffectually at the towel, but it wouldn’t budge.

It was my turn to sigh. I took a step forwards and pumped the handle on the side of the dispenser, twice. It rolled out two sheets, which I tore off and dumped in her hands.

Can lie us out of trouble, but can’t dry her hands unaided. Full of surprises, my mother.

“I’m not the one who’s doing the pushing,” I said then, aware that I was scowling. “But if he shoves me, he can only expect me to shove back.”

“Two pigheaded people …” She shook her head. “He only does it because he cares. I didn’t realize just how much, but he does,” she said, with an almost wistful look on her face as she dropped the scrunched-up towels into the waste bin and took a last look at her appearance. “Strange.”

“I know he’s a cold-blooded bastard, but why is that so strange?” I said, cut to the bone. “Isn’t a man supposed to care about his daughter?”

She turned with an oddly puzzled look on her face, which cleared as she made the connection. “Oh my goodness,” she said, her voice chiding. “You think I mean Richard.”

My own face went totally blank. “Don’t you?”

“Oh no,” she said. She gave a breathless little laugh as she reached for the door. “I was talking about Sean … .”

When we got back to the table, I could tell from the stony expressions on both men’s faces that they hadn’t been chatting about the cricket scores while we’d been gone. As soon as he saw me, Sean got to his feet and, though his movements were as smooth and coordinated as they always were, there was a darkness simmering beneath the surface.

I thought of my mother’s warning, and something bright and cold slithered down my spine in response.

“The bill’s taken care of,” Sean said, scanning my face and clearly not liking what he saw there. “Let’s go.”

We didn’t talk at all on the way back to the hotel, when we left the Navigator in the adjacent parking garage and walked to the elevators, nor from the elevators to our two adjoining rooms, but the silence was deafening. I found myself almost wishing for trouble. Something—anything—to give me a reason to lash out, relieve the tension that was mushrooming inside my skull and prickling my fingertips.

We said an abrupt good night and saw my parents locked down for the night. And when Sean very quietly shut our own door behind us and flicked on the bedside light, the room suddenly seemed very small and very close. We must have accidentally altered the setting on the air con before we went out, too. There was no other explanation for why it seemed hot enough in there to have the sweat break out across my palms and send it crawling along my hairline.

“We should talk about the plan for tomorrow,” I said, desperately scrabbling for casual as I shrugged out of my jacket and slipped it onto a hanger. “For a start, what do we say to Collingwood about—”

Sean’s hands on my shoulders made me jerk in reflexive surprise, going for an instant block before I could countermand the action. He evaded without thinking, spun me round so my back hit the door frame to the bathroom, hard enough to jolt. He’d stripped off his own jacket, I noted dumbly, draped it carelessly across the bed. His face was so tightly controlled he was white with the pressure of it.

“Your father suddenly seemed to remember something of his obligations over dinner,” he said, and his voice was deceptively light. “While you and your mother were out of the way, he took the opportunity to give me the full parental speech.”

“The parental speech?” My heart rate picked up. Not in pace, just in ferocity, so I could feel each vibrating beat like a punch behind my rib cage. “I didn’t think we were gone that long.”

“He was concise—you might almost say pithy—and I got the gist.”

“So … what did he say?”

Sean feathered his grip, letting his hands fall away from my shoulders as though he couldn’t trust himself to leave them there any longer. Bereft of his touch, I shivered.

“He told me not to hurt you any more than he seems to think I have done already,” he said with the careful blankness I’d once heard him use to give an operational briefing on the aftermath of a massacre, disconnecting himself. “He knows I’m pushing you to finally sever ties with the nest and, perhaps, you’re not ready to take that step.”

“I see,” I said, matching my tone to his, detached and impersonal. “If that’s the case, why push me to take it?”

“Apparently, it’s mainly because I’m a selfish bastard—I’m paraphrasing here, you understand,” he said.

He took a pace backwards and leaned his shoulder on the wall opposite, folding his arms so his fingers were tucked under his, armpits. He tilted his head back, staring past me at a point of nowhere as if he had to put effort into remembering words I knew would be acid-etched into his brain.

“He told me you’d already been through more than most people ever have to face in a lifetime. That you’d been broken in every way that mattered—mentally, physically, emotionally. And, in his opinion, the blame for most of it can be laid squarely at my door.”

“That’s rich,” I said, rough with a dangerous cocktail of emotions, “coming from him.”

Sean shrugged. “But, the trouble is, he’s probably right,” he said, and the casual acceptance in his own voice sent a greasy fear sliding through my gut. “So, first thing tomorrow I’ll call Parker and get him to send up Joe McGregor to take over from me. He’ll help you keep them safe until this bloody mess can be sorted out.”

I’d always thought that phrase about your heart sinking was purely metaphorical, but I felt the sudden lurching contraction in my chest. I wanted to say a hundred things, but when I opened my mouth all I actually managed was, “What about you?”

“I’ll go back to New York, see if I can help Parker untangle things at that end.” He sounded matter-of-fact, as though he had nothing to gain or lose by the action.

For a moment I couldn’t react, couldn’t break the paralysis his announcement caused. When he could bear my shocked gaze no longer, Sean lifted himself abruptly away from the wall and moved further into the room, almost restless as he pulled off his tie.

I found my voice, used it to say, “I don’t want McGregor,” and hated the plaintive note.

“Why?” Sean turned back, impatient now, hands on his hips. He carried the Glock high on the right side of his belt, with a slight forward cant. “He’s young but he’s good, and his experience is solid.”

“But he’s not you,” I said, small and subdued. “I want you.”

He let his head snick down and left, biting off whatever retort was forming on his lips, closed his eyes and took a breath.

“You don’t know what you want, Charlie,” he said wearily. He glanced up and the defeat in his eyes terrified me. “I thought, last summer when we were in Ireland, that you knew, that you’d made up your mind. But it only takes a few days in the delightful company of your parents before your resolve all goes to shit.”

He sucked in a breath, let it out slowly as though willing the fragile hold on his temper to last just a little longer. “I’m tired,” he said, flat. “Tired of not being sure how you feel about me. Tired of being shunted out of sight when it suits you, like some dirty little secret—okay to fuck in private, but God forbid you should ever have to acknowledge that fact in public.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, grinding out the words over my distress. “You know damn well we can’t make a show of being a couple, not in the job we do. Even Parker doesn’t quite trust us not to let it get in the way!”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t worth arguing about anymore, and started to turn away, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt.

Fury blazed. I shoved away from the wall and reached him in two fast strides, grabbing his arm, flipping him to face me.

If I’d been expecting to catch him off form, off balance, I should have known better. Sean twisted out of my grip with the kind of fluid, practiced ease that had always made him so deadly at hand-to-hand. He sidestepped, graceful as a fencer, and sent me sprawling onto the bed like he was brushing away an unwanted fly. Now I wasn’t even worth the trouble of fighting properly.

He’d been carelessly gentle but, even so, I had acquired a lot of new bruises lately and the thump as I landed reminded me of every one of them. I elbowed up and stared at him, my vision starting to shimmer.

“Is that all I am to you, Sean?” I demanded, using anger to drive the shake out of my voice. “A quick fuck?”

He went very still and stared down at me, the only movement in his face a muscle jumping at the side of his jawline.

Nothing good will come of provoking him, my mother had warned.

Maybe if that cautionary note had been sounded by anyone else but her, I might have paid more attention. As it was I cast aside all sanity and threw another stupid, reckless challenge his way. “Only, I’ve been fucked before, and I didn’t think what we had together was quite in that category.”

For a moment he didn’t react. Then, with an almost feral growl deep in his throat, Sean pivoted and swept the ornate lamp off the desk behind him with a single backhanded blow. It yanked the plug out of the socket and spun the glass base against the bathroom wall, shattering it into fragments. The explosion of violence was stark and shocking.

Appalled, I threw myself sideways off the bed, dropped onto my feet on the far side of it, scrambling to meet his eyes. They were burning, ferocious, in the face of a stranger. The fear caused a massive spike like an electrical short. I’d always sensed the beast in Sean ran very close to the surface but he’d never fully uncaged it before. Never with me. Until now.

He advanced, head down, utterly focused, kicking aside a chair. I backed up, my heart thundering against my breastbone, the blood roaring in my ears as the adrenaline rampaged shrieking through my system.

He reached me, reached for me, ramming me backwards until the wall brought us up short. I told myself I could have stopped him, could have evaded him, but I wanted—no, I needed—to know how far he would take this. How far he would hurt me.

Because then I’d have my final answer.

His fingers clamped around my wrists, jerking my arms up and out, pinning me against the wall. He crowded me with his body, forcing an awareness of the height and the breadth and the weight of him.

The memories triggered by that deliberate act ripped through me, caving my chest until I could barely breathe. He leaned his face close to mine and watched with a cold hard gaze as every scrap of color bleached out of my face and I struggled to hide the sudden bloom of panic in my eyes.

“Sean!” The words were torn from me, weak and watered. “Please …”

I’d pleaded that night, too—begged and pleaded. For all the good it had done me then.

Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.

“I’m not them, Charlie,” he said, almost a whisper that I struggled to hear above the rasp of air in my clogged throat. “I’ve never been them—except inside your head. And every time you flinch away from me—yes, just like you’re doing now—you’re blaming me for what they did to you.”

“I don’t blame you.” Was that pathetic little voice really mine?

“Yes, you do,” he said, certain as stone. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and back up again. Eyes so dark they were almost black, with the tiniest flecks of gunmetal and gold around the pupil. “Just as your bloody parents blame me, for not teaching you better, for not protecting you.”

“Sean, you weren’t even there!” I protested, still reedy but stronger than before. “You didn’t know—”

“I blame me,” he said, and the quiet admission undid me. He let go of my wrists and stepped back, a flicker of selfloathing in his face as he saw the reddened marks his grip had left on my skin.

Just then, there was a tentative rapping at the dividing door. My father’s voice from the other side: “Charlotte? We heard a noise. It sounded like … Is everything all right in there?”

Sean raised his eyebrow in my direction.

Well, are you going to lie to them again? Pretend there’s nothing wrong?

“Everything’s fine,” I said, a pain in my belly like a twisted knife as I watched the light fade out of Sean’s eyes. “We knocked over a lamp. It’s fine.”

There was a long, dubious pause. “All right,” my father said heavily. “If you’re sure.”

“Yes,” I said, almost normal. “I am.”

Sean started to turn away from me, closing down. I knew I was losing him and I couldn’t have been any more scared if he’d been dying.

I levered off the wall and went for him again. This time, when he tried another almost dismissive throw, I countered, stepped in close, got my hip under his and used his own demonstrated advantage in size against him.

The room was too small for fighting. Sean landed hard and awkwardly, halfway onto the bed, and jackknifed straight back onto his feet again, light as a cat, but there was a glitter in his eyes now. I told myself that anything was better than the dull-eyed beaten stare he’d had before.

“You knew what you were taking on with me, Sean,” I told him harshly. “If you wanted somebody perfect, you should have taken Madeleine home for real, while you had the chance.”

“I never wanted Madeleine,” he said, quietly vehement. “I only ever wanted you, from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. Wanted you so badly it was like a bloody sickness. I’ve never changed my mind about that. But sometimes I think you have.”

The words were spoken with such soft certainty that I felt something break inside. It must have been something connected to my eyes, because they began to flood with tears.

“You know how I feel about you, damn it,” I said, keeping my chin up and my gaze on his even though my sight had blurred away. He tilted his head to one side and regarded me as though he could see right through to my soul. He probably could. I’d laid it bare for him. “I love you. That’s never changed for me, either.”

“Hasn’t it?” He held his arms out, in challenge as much as invitation. “Then prove it.”

I moved into him without hesitation, reached up and fisted my hands in his hair and pulled his mouth down to mine. Despite that, the kiss started out slow, smooth, tender. I had no intention of letting it stay that way.

Something ignited, as it always did when I was with Sean. Sometimes I thought that fire was never entirely extinguished, like a pilot flame waiting for the explosive rush of fuel to become a full-fledged ferocious burn. All consuming, unstoppable.

In moments, I had his shirt peeled open and was fumbling with his belt. He yanked the holstered Glock out from his waistband and dumped it behind him onto the bed. He’d already done the same with my SIG, had parted my shirt from my trousers and jerked it upwards to dance his fingers across the heated gap of skin between the two.

I don’t remember him unclipping my bra, but suddenly my breast was in his hand, his mouth. I let my head fall back, gasping, as any logical sections of brain fell over and refused to reboot.

Eyes blind now, I was barely aware of his hands lifting me onto the desk. My trousers and the rest of my underwear had gone somewhere along the way and those diabolically knowing fingers teased and tormented until it was all I could do not to implore him for release.

My shirt was off my shoulders, bunched and tangled around my elbows, riveting my arms behind me. I fought the terror of being restrained, battled it down, opened my eyes as Sean leaned in close, bit my lower lip oh so gently.

“Trust me,” he murmured and I knew he’d seen both the fear and my attempts to resist it. “I’ll never hurt you, Charlie … .”

“I know.”

He smiled at me, an utterly beautiful, heart-stopping smile, and began to trail slow burning kisses along the length of my neck, almost reverently across the scar that circled the base of it, and down the bow-tight, quivering arch of my body.

His breath accentuated the sweat dewing my skin, created an acute sensitivity that made me flail helpless under his touch. The thrumming moan in my throat was guttural, barely human. The need was prowling through me, starting to rage as he kept me teetering on the knife edge of utter ruin. My hands thrashed weakly and the telephone followed the lamp onto the floor, crashing off the edge of the desk.

Glazed with desperation, I lifted a weighted head on the end of a feeble neck and found him watching me through slitted lids. And then I understood what he was waiting for. I’d spent the last few days kicking him squarely in the ego and now he wanted total surrender by way of recompense. More than acceptance, only a kind of mindless subjugation would do.

I gave it to him.

His hands and mouth demanded more. I was panting, crying, clawing towards a peak I couldn’t quite reach.

“Sean! For God’s sake …”

“What?” he demanded, and the grip he was having to exert on himself made his voice sound coldly furious. “What do you want?”

“You!” I nearly shouted it, throat raw. “I want you!”

“Careful, Charlie.” He spoke in my ear, whisper rough, almost mocking. “These walls are terribly thin, you know, and we don’t want your parents to know what we’re about, now do we?’

I fought my arms free, tearing my shirt into tatters in the process, and grabbed him with vicious fingers.

“I don’t give a shit about my parents,” I managed through gritted teeth. “Just do it. Right now. And don’t you dare hold anything back or I swear I’ll kill you where you stand.”

He was too far gone to laugh, but I just had time to see the triumph, the pure male exultation blaze into his eyes. Then he was inside me in one long driving thrust. I hadn’t touched him but he’d done enough for both of us. A wild cry leapt from my throat as my body closed greedily around him, and that was all it took. The twisted mass of frustrated tension that had been building up inside me burst loose, bellowing with wrath and glory as every sense overloaded.

“Hold on to me!” Sean demanded, hoarse. “For the love of Christ, hold on to me … .”

Still his hands gripped my hips, almost cruel, heedless of bruises old and new, balancing me at the edge of the desk and making it slam into the wall with every wild plunge of his body into mine. He’d tortured himself as well as me, making both of us wait. But by the time he let go with an almost primal roar, I followed him over again.

And disintegrated, like an overrevved race engine, pushed too hard to the finish. I was dying and certain of it. No way could my heart hit that hard, that unevenly, without one or other of us going into full cardiac arrest.

And then I realized the pounding was a fist on the dividing door.

“Charlotte! Are you all right?” My father’s voice again, sounding shaken to the core. “Open this door! What the devil is going on in there?”

Sean’s face was buried in my shoulder, arms wrapped tight around my body, muscles trembling violently. We both were. I let my head fall back against the wall behind me, closed my eyes and felt his lips brush against the side of my neck.

“Haven’t you ever heard two people making love before?” I called back, croaky. “Go away and leave us alone … .”