Third Strike

CHAPTER 22

I faced my father’s staunch disapproval over breakfast the next morning.

He’d called horribly early—a little before six—and announced, almost defiant, that he intended to go down for breakfast and assumed one of us would feel obliged to accompany him.

Sean was still spark out, lying in a facedown sprawl diagonally across the massive bed. It was odd he hadn’t woken at the phone, but considering the energy he’d expended during the night, I reckoned he deserved to sleep a little longer. So did I, come to that.

“I’m just going to jump in the shower,” I said quietly. “Give me ten minutes—all right?”

My father agreed, reluctant, seemed about to say more but changed his mind.

“Very well,” he said instead, clipped, and left me to it.

True to my word, I was out of the shower, dried, dressed and armed inside nine minutes. Sean stirred as I came back in, rolled towards me. His face was shuttered.

“All right?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward as the memories resurfaced. “His lordship demands breakfast, so I’ll go down with him.”

He nodded. “And, no doubt, an explanation about last night.”

My face flooded and I paused with one hand on the door handle. “Well,” I said, “he might have to whistle for that.”

My father answered his own door sharply to my knock, already dressed in another of his immaculate, conservative suits. He gave me a narrow-eyed stare as though looking for something he could complain about. Not finding anything immediate seemed to annoy him all the more. He was positively glowering in the elevator, and the waiter who intercepted us at the hotel restaurant entrance almost stepped back in the face of such an obvious black mood, stuttering through his seasoned greeting.

I waited until we were both seated. My father took out his reading glasses and studied the breakfast items on offer with fierce concentration. He closed the menu with a distinct snap when the waiter returned to pour iced water.

“Eggs Benedict and a pot of Earl Grey tea,” my father told him, brusque, peering over the top of his frames. “And please be sure to boil the water for the tea.”

“Yes sir,” the waiter said, flustered. “And, er, are you ready to order, ma’am?”

“I’ll have a half Florida grapefruit, a bowl of Raisin Bran with two percent milk, wheat toast—dry—and a decaf,” I said. “And a glass of juice. Do you have cranberry?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Great. Make it a large.” For some reason, I seemed to have worked up an appetite.

The waiter almost grabbed our menus, took a last look at my father’s scowling face as though debating the wisdom of some further question, then fled.

“You’ve picked up the language, I see,” my father said when we were alone once more.

“Funny that,” I said equably. “What with us and the Yanks both speaking English.”

He made an impatient gesture with his left hand. “You’ve picked up the inflection,” he amended. “You still sound English, but you ask questions like an American. And what on earth is two percent milk?”

I shrugged, tugging the linen napkin out of its starched origami folds and draping it across my lap. “After the first few weeks you fall into the phrasing, otherwise you repeat yourself a lot. It seemed easier to adapt to survive—at least so I didn’t go hungry in restaurants.” I smiled. “And two percent milk is semi-skimmed.”

“Adapt and survive,” he murmured. “Yes, I suppose that’s what you do best.”

I would have queried that, but the waiter had hurried back again, with a pot bearing an orange tag for decaffeinated coffee, and my glass of juice.

“Your tea will be right out, sir,” he said to my father, beating a hasty retreat before an opinion could be expressed.

I took a sip of my coffee, which was unusually rich and dark and smooth, and propped my elbows on the table while I held the cup under my nose, just for the smell of it.

And all the time my eyes were circling round the restaurant, checking out the other diners, the reinforced glass panels in the service doors that gave me a view into the harshly lit kitchen, the exits, and the positioning of the staff. It was all becoming second nature now and knowing that was so made the colors brighter, the sounds sharper. I lived in that explosive sliver between the what if and the when.

“You better just come right out and say it,” I said mildly. “Whatever’s on your mind, I mean. Right now, there’s an elephant in the room that everyone’s avoiding mention of, and I don’t really fancy it sticking its trunk into my breakfast cereal.”

My father’s face ticked before he could stop it. He took a moment to control the surge of his temper, straightening his knife and fork until they were exactly aligned with his place mat. His hands were absolutely steady but then, in his profession they had to be.

“I used to find your flippancy at the most inappropriate moments somewhat difficult to take, Charlotte,” he said. “But I find it particularly distasteful after last night.”

“Ah yes—last night,” I murmured, keeping my voice lazily amused even though I felt my fingers tense around the coffee cup. I compelled them to unclamp and set the cup down in its saucer without a clatter. “O-kay, let’s get this over with.”

The waiter was back again, sliding a rack of toast and a teapot onto the table before running away. My father winced a little when he saw the string for the teabag dangling out from under the lid, but he heroically restrained himself from complaint.

“I’m not entirely sure what’s worse,” he said then, conversational. “The fact that he obviously hurt you, or the fact that you evidently enjoyed it.”

“Sean didn’t hurt me,” I said in a similar matter-of-fact tone, snagging a slice of toast and a little pot of strawberry preserve from the middle of the table.

My father linked his fingers together and regarded me over the top of them. “You have fresh bruises on your wrists that weren’t there yesterday,” he said, a dispassionate diagnosis. “Which means not only that you were held down with considerable force, but also that you resisted.”

What do I say to that? That Sean was angry? That he didn’t mean it? That I’d witnessed all too clearly the wave of disgust that had crossed his face when he’d seen what he’d done? So, which was the greater evil to admit to my father—deliberate cruelty or careless brutality?

And because I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make it worse, I didn’t say anything. Instead, I shrugged and took a bite of my toast, but my throat had closed dangerously and I had to chase it down with a mouthful of juice.

“Has he ever … hit you?”

“Yes,” I said, leaving just enough of a pause to push him for a reaction. There wasn’t one. “We spar together. Of course he has.”

A sigh. “Don’t be obtuse, Charlotte,” he said, and the clip was back with a vengeance. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“No, he’s never beaten me up, if that’s what you’re getting at.” I allowed myself a small smile as I took another swig. “I’m hardly in danger of becoming a battered wife.”

That got a response. Instant, more of a flinch than anything else.

I put down my glass, smile fading. “My God,” I said softly. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That we might get married and then it would be official—he’d be your son-in-law and you’d have to accept him? Is that it?”

“Of course not,” my father evaded sharply. “Do you find it quite so difficult to believe that I—we—might be concerned for your welfare?” And, when my skepticism was clearly demonstrated by my lack of answer, he glanced away and added carefully, “People who have been through the kind of trauma that you experienced, often have a certain amount of difficulty forming normal relationships afterwards.” He looked up abruptly, met my eyes. “They self-harm. They look for sexual partners who will hurt them. They need the pain in some way, like worrying at a nagging tooth. I find it … pitiful.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” I asked, limiting my physical response to a raised eyebrow when what I really wanted to do was reach for his throat. “Trying to alleviate some kind of karmic toothache?”

The waiter returned, this time bearing a large oval tray at shoulder height, which he put down on a foldout trestle and began to decant plates onto our table with all the flourish of a casino croupier dealing cards. My father waited until the man had scurried away again before he spoke.

“It defies logic that someone who’s been gang-raped would take any kind of pleasure in being forced,” he said, quietly frozen, “unless they have severe psychological problems. Problems for which we attempted to get you some professional help over a year ago. Yet you stopped going to Dr. Yates after only a few sessions.”

“I don’t have a problem forming a ‘normal relationship’—whatever you might deem that to be,” I said, outwardly calm as I poured milk onto my cereal, hating the way my skin heated at his words. “It’s the fact that I’ve formed one with someone you despise that really pisses you off.”

My dip into coarseness was deliberate but he let it slide this time, and that in itself was interesting.

“We don’t despise him,” my father said, and I noted he could rarely bring himself to use Sean’s name. I realized, also, that by using “we,” he was off-loading part of the blame for his attitude towards Sean onto my mother. How convenient.

“Well, you make a pretty good show of it, unless he’s useful for”—I paused, miming exaggerated thought process—“oh, I don’t know—keeping you alive, maybe?”

“It sounded like a war was breaking out in there,” he muttered then, his voice low, near to shaken. “It sounded like he was killing you, Charlotte. What the devil were we supposed to think?”

I put my spoon down with great care.

“How about anything but the worst all the time?” I said, fixing him with a stare that was as laconic as I could make it. “He’s a good man, with standards and a sense of honor, if you could only see it. And we love each other.”

I paused, hoping for some kind of acknowledgment of a valid point. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get one. “You were young once and in love, surely? Did you never have that desperate, all-out, break-the-furniture-and-to-hell-with-the-consequences kind of sex?” I demanded. “If not, then I rather think I pity you.”

I expected a cutting retort. To my utter amazement, not to mention my embarrassment, something flickered through his face and he blushed. My father actually blushed. He opened his mouth to deny it, of course, but I held up a peremptory hand.

“No!” I said quickly. “Don’t tell me! On second thoughts, I withdraw the question because, to be quite honest, I really do not want to know … .”

We finished breakfast largely in uncomfortable silence, with me desperately trying to dislodge the unwanted mental image of my parents engaged in rough sex. The metaphorical elephant was back, but for some reason now the picture in my head had it wearing a PVC corset and fishnet stockings, and carrying a saucy lash.

My father signed both meals to his room, and we rode the elevator up again without speaking, reaching his door first. He swiped the key card through the lock and pushed the door open almost without a pause. I followed him in, both of us coming to an abrupt halt just inside the doorway at the sight which greeted us.

My mother was sitting on the small sofa near the window, washed and dressed. Sitting alongside her, almost knee-toknee, was Sean. He was wearing yesterday’s suit with a fresh shirt and his usual tie, his hair still damp from the shower. Both of them were laughing and they looked up sharply at our unexpected entrance. Briefly, I saw the flash of guilt from my mother, that she’d been caught fraternizing with the enemy.

I shot a quick sideways glance at my father’s face and saw something cold and dark and tightly furious blaze there before he slammed the shutters down.

Sean met his gaze in cool challenge, as if daring him to make a big thing of this. For a moment they dueled silently, then my father turned away with the excuse of asking my mother if she wanted breakfast. His voice was politely neutral, but his shoulders told a different story.

“Thank you, no,” she said. “We’ve just had a cup of tea and that will be quite sufficient, I think.”

Sean pointedly continued his stare, then rose with casual grace and strolled towards us.

“I think perhaps we should go back and see Miranda Lee this morning,” he said. “See if she knows about the alterations that have been made to her husband’s records. If she saw them beforehand, she’s another witness. If we leave soon, we should miss the morning rush.”

My father nodded stiffly, moving aside to let him pass. I stood my ground and, as Sean drew level, I reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

He stopped, flicking his eyes down to my hand and then up to my face. His expression was wary, almost uncertain.

I stepped in to him, let go of his jacket to reach up, curving my hand to his clean-shaven cheek and pressing my lips very softly against his. For a moment, sheer surprise kept him immobile before he responded. A gentle chaste kiss that nevertheless served as an instant inflammable reminder of how the night had progressed.

I kept my eyes open, watched his flutter closed and open again slowly as I pulled back a little. There was confusion in them, yes, but a kind of joy, too. His pupils were huge.

“Good morning,” I murmured, husky and a little defiant, acutely aware of our audience.

He reached up, brushed a stray lock of hair back from my forehead with an infinitely gentle finger, as if needing to demonstrate he could touch me and not leave a mark.

“Yes,” he said, and he was smiling. “It is now.”

By the time we’d packed, loaded up the Navigator and checked out, it was a respectable-enough hour to call ahead and warn Miranda Lee that we were coming back, just in case she’d made plans.

I called her from my phone as Sean swung the Navigator through sunny Boston streets. It was warm enough not to wear a jacket unless you had something you wanted to conceal underneath it. Both Sean and I wore jackets.

My father had been terse since my little display of open affection towards Sean in their hotel room, but I felt liberated and reckless. Even though there was a part of me that was desperate to know what the hell Sean and my mother had been discussing so earnestly while we’d been gone.

Now, I recognized, was not the time to ask.

Miranda took awhile to answer her phone, and sounded distracted when she finally did so.

“It’s Charlie Fox,” I said. “Um, Richard and Elizabeth’s daughter,” I added when she didn’t immediately respond.

“Oh yes, of course! I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m a little out of it right now, but I’m glad you’ve called,” she said and gave a nervous laugh. “In fact, if you hadn’t, I’d probably have tried to call you.”

“Why?” I said, and it was the tone as much as the question that had Sean’s attention snap in my direction. “What’s happened?”

“You know how I mentioned about Terry O’Loughlin—in Storax’s legal department? Well, I had another e-mail just in—but it’s kind of weird.”

“Weird how?” I said. Now, my father was leaning in close from the rear seat.

“Well, it’s really brief—a warning. Just tells me to be careful and not to trust anyone.” Another short laugh. Definitely nerves. “I mean, after yesterday—discovering the house was broken into and everything, it’s freaked me out, you know?”

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “It sounds like Storax is playing mind games with you. Trying to scare you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s working.” She let out a shaky breath. “But what should I do?”

“Have you made any plans to go to your friend’s place—Vermont, wasn’t it?”

“I’m already packed,” she admitted. “I checked into a motel last night and only came back to the house this morning to get a few things. I was going to leave again right after lunch.”

I checked my watch, calculated the journey time. “Hang on till we get there, can you? We’re just getting onto the interstate. Unless we hit traffic, we should be with you inside an hour.”

“Okay, yes,” she said, in a rush. “I didn’t want to ask, but … thank you.”

I ended the call and relayed the gist of it to the others. “It sounds like Storax have got her rattled,” I finished. “Which is probably the point of the exercise.”

“Yeah,” Sean said, pulling out to overtake a line of Kenworth trucks, “and at the risk of scaring her even more, what do we tell her about what we found—or more to the point, what we didn’t find—at the hospital?”

My father took a moment to reply, but whether this was because he was considering his answer, or trying to bring himself to have a normal conversation with Sean, I wasn’t sure.

Eventually, he said, “We still don’t really know what Storax hopes to achieve by all this.”

“They’re covering their backs, surely?” I said, twisting so I could carry on a conversation with him in the rear seat more easily. He was sitting directly behind me, which made it more difficult. “They have to know there’s a chance that some of the patients being treated will suffer the same kind of side effects that Jeremy Lee did. And if they didn’t know that before his death, then they sure as hell did afterwards. It makes no sense that they haven’t completely withdrawn it and stopped the trials. By continuing, aren’t they opening themselves up to another thalidomide fiasco?”

“Withdrawing it could potentially cost them a great deal of money,” my father said. “And might allow a competitor to steal a march on them. Better for Storax if they can work on the problems quickly, without anyone finding out about them.”

“But if the rate Miranda said her husband deteriorated is anything to go by, surely the side effects would have shown up pretty quickly?” I pointed out.

My father shrugged. “Not necessarily. Jeremy was of Korean descent. Korea has one of the lowest instances of osteoporosis in the world. Of course, there’s considerable research to suggest this is largely due to environmental factors rather than genetics, but it’s an interesting point.”

“None of it’s enough to go to all this trouble over, though, is it?” Sean demanded. “Overdosing Lee, falsifying his records, setting up an elaborate operation to ruin your career? Never mind what they were prepared to do to your wife.” He tilted his head slightly to smile reassuringly at my mother in the rearview mirror—a gesture that had my father’s frown deepening into a scowl.

“How much does Storax stand to make out of this—if it goes ahead?” I asked, as much to distract him as anything else.

“Osteoporosis is becoming a major problem,” my father said, mentally shaking himself like a dog coming out of water. “When you take the worldwide licensing, a treatment as successful as Storax’s seemed to be, would be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, in annual revenue.”

“Even so,” I said. “I feel we’re missing something. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

“I agree,” Sean said. “One thing that’s been bothering me is how Storax managed to get their hands on someone like Vonda Blaylock at such short notice. Kaminski was already contracted to them for security—that much we know—but Blaylock is a government agent. How did they recruit her? And why?”

“Perhaps they knew that something like Jeremy Lee’s death would happen, sooner or later,” I said. “And, it never does any harm to have a backup plan.”

For once, the gods of congestion smiled on us. We made better than average time and left the main freeway at the exit we’d taken only the day before, following what I would classify as a fast A road that began to twist and turn. Then off again onto a minor road that sliced, curving, through a thickly wooded area.

There was very little other traffic now. Sean drove with easy precision, to the point where I could leave him to it and stay sitting mostly sideways to chat face-to-face with my parents.

So, I wasn’t in the best position to brace myself when Sean jumped on the brakes hard enough for the antilock system to activate. There was a whump, and the Navigator lurched sideways abruptly, wallowing, the quiet hum of its tires on the asphalt transformed into a harsh metallic grinding.

“What the—?” I began.

“Stinger,” Sean managed, fighting to control the abruptly unwieldy vehicle.

“A missile?” my father demanded, more outrage than alarm. “Someone just fired a Stinger missile at us?”

“Wrong Stinger. Spikes on a chain across the road,” I said shortly. “We just lost all four tires.”

The SIG was out in my hand, but I didn’t remember drawing it. I was twisting constantly in my seat, scanning the road all around us, searching for the ambush that could only be moments away. “Will it drive?”

“I’m doing my best,” Sean said. “But if it comes to a chase, it may well be quicker to walk.”

A flash of movement to the driver’s side caught my eye. The front end of a bloodred Ford pickup truck, big as a fire engine, shiny bull bars reinforcing the grille like a battering ram. It was heading straight for us out of a narrow side road that disappeared up into the trees. The truck covered the ground rapidly, with a roar of its massive V-8 engine that I heard even over the racket made by the Navigator’s stripped and battered wheels.

“Incoming!” I shouted.

Sean let go of the steering wheel and got his hands out of the way. Good job, too, or the vicious kick when the pickup hit us would have broken both his thumbs. Both doors and the B-pillar buckled, the side-impact air bags exploded and the windows shattered, raining down glass onto both Sean and my mother, who was sitting directly behind him.

The force of the crash whipped the Navigator into a graunching broadside across the road and onto the grass. The bare rims of the alloy wheels dug in and nearly flipped us, thrashing the cabin around like we were being shaken in the jaws of a monster. I clung to the door grip, peripherally aware of my mother’s terrified screaming in the backseat.

“Down!” I yelled at Sean. He instantly threw himself sideways, flat across the center console. I reached over the top of him with the SIG and put three rounds into the front screen of the pickup where I judged the driver’s head would be, the empty brass pinging off the inside of the Navigator’s dash. “Clear!”

“Out—now!” Sean said, rearing up to launch himself over to my side of the vehicle.

As soon as we’d come to a stop I’d punched my seat belt release and piled out backwards, keeping the SIG up to cover Sean as I checked our escape route.

Sean wrenched open the rear door and bodily dragged my father out. He landed heavily on his knees on the grass, dazed, shaking his head as if to clear the ringing from the cumulative concussion of explosive air-bag charges and gunshots. The shock of close-proximity live firing in a confined space took some getting used to, and he hadn’t had anything like the practice.

“Take him!” I reholstered the SIG and went back in for my mother.

Sean left me without hesitation, scooping up my father and thrusting him towards the tree line with one hand wrapped in the collar of the older man’s jacket. The Glock was out in Sean’s right hand and he kept the muzzle up all the way, moving at a sideways crab so he could cover my father’s back and still be ready for the occupants of the pickup to make their move.

I jumped into the backseat and found my mother in fullflight panic. Her seat belt had jammed and she was clawing at it uselessly, eyes wild with fear as I slid across the seat towards her. I flipped out the largest blade on my Swiss Army knife and hacked through the webbing of the belt itself, ignoring the locked buckle.

As soon as she was free, my mother nearly trampled me in her desperation to escape. If I hadn’t grabbed her, she would have scrambled right over the top of me and hit the ground running.

A man had jumped out of the driver’s door of the pickup—unscathed, I noted with irritation—and was heading round the front of the Navigator to cut us off. I almost slung my mother back into her seat and drew the SIG, bringing it up so my target’s head would appear in my gun sights as soon as he came into view.

He did so, moving in a fast professional crouch, holding a semiautomatic handgun in a double-handed grip, up and level in front of him. As soon as he had sight of us, he pulled the trigger. He was hasty and the shot went wide, hitting the headrest of the rear seat just to my right and kicking out a flurry of foam and stuffing.

“No!” my mother screamed and I realized in the fraction before I returned fire that her cry was as much to me as it was to our attacker. Ignoring her, I snapped off two rounds at the blur of moving target.

One shot went wide but I put the second through his upper thigh. He gave a yelp of pain and scuttled for cover, dragging his injured leg. Well, I had a certain amount of sympathy there.

I glanced towards the tree line but couldn’t immediately see my father and Sean, which meant they were safe in concealment. And if they’ve any sense, I thought fiercely, that’s where they’ll stay.

Then, behind us, another vehicle hove into view, a dark blue nondescript Chevy. It arrived at speed, the driver showing no astonished twitch at finding an apparent pileup half-blocking the road in front of him, which meant he was expecting this—or something like it.

The odds of successful evasion had just got longer.

“Out—now!” I said roughly to my mother before the approaching car had come to a full sliding stop. “We need to move! And keep your bloody head down.”

She looked confused, as though the new arrival might have brought assistance rather than further danger, but at least she didn’t argue.

As we jumped out of the backseat of the Navigator, I fired off another shot in the direction of the pickup driver just to keep his head down, and dragged my mother into a run for the trees.

As I did so, I heard shouts from the occupants of the Chevy. I spun, fisting my left hand into my mother’s coat and ducking my shoulder to haul her halfway onto my back, covering her body with my own as I brought the SIG up in my right hand.

I fired before my arm was at full stretch, aiming intuitively. Two figures had emerged from the Chevy, and some part of my brain registered a man and a woman. Their body language told me instantly that they were armed for immediate use rather than merely for threat. I chose the man as my primary target based purely on experience, knowing that he would likely pose the greater risk to our safety.

I sighted directly at the center of his body mass and squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession.

Running, weighted, my aim wouldn’t have won me any marksman badges, but it got the job done. Both rounds took him high in the shoulder, jerking him back and to the right. I just had time to see the mist of blood spray out, then he was falling.

Still lurching sideways, protecting my principal, I swung my arm towards the woman. She had moved into a shooter’s stance, legs spread, arms locked in front. If she’d any training at all she was in the far better position for a decent shot.

And, with shock, at that moment I recognized her—if not the face then certainly the white tape across her fattened nose.

Vondie.

So, not only training but also a damn good motive for wanting me dead. Looked like Collingwood still hadn’t managed to put a muzzle on his rogue agent—not enough to stop her from trying to take a big bite out of me, at any rate.

Suddenly, the car window alongside Vondie shattered as two fast shots from the trees put it through. She spun but clearly couldn’t spot Sean’s position. Outflanked, she jumped for the safety of her vehicle, abandoning the kill. The Chevy’s engine was still running, and she had the gearlever rammed into drive before the door was even shut, leaving her fallen colleague writhing alone on the ground in her wake.

Vondie swerved round the wreckage and, just when I thought she was completely faithless, the brake lights blazed as she anchored on and leaned over to throw the passenger door wide open. The man I’d lamed came hopping out from behind the Navigator and dived inside. Vondie stamped on the accelerator and the Chevy took off with enough anger to leave two long black streaks of burned rubber scarring the asphalt, and the bitter smell of gun smoke, blood and gasoline behind her.