Third Strike

CHAPTER 32

“What?”

I jolted like she’d hit me with that damned TASER again. The single word was torn out of my throat as the implications rushed in through the shattered hole. “You’re bluffing,” I said, and couldn’t keep the shake out of my voice.

She has to be bluffing. I can’t be! No way! Can I … ?

She watched me flounder for a moment, head on one side. “You had no idea, did you?” She smiled thinly. “Well, in that case, let me be the first to congratulate you, Charlie. You think you’ll get to keep it?”

“You’re bluffing,” I said again. Better. No wobble this time.

“It’s too early for you to be showing any signs, but give it another few weeks and those hormone changes will be kicking right in. You won’t be able to ignore them. The mood swings, the nausea, the cramps and the cravings. Before you know it, you’ll blow up like a goddamn whale.”

She rose, taking care to smooth down her skirt, emphasizing her slender figure, and gave me another malicious smile.

“I assume that bastard Meyer is the lucky guy,” she said. “Seeing as you’re listed as cohabiting. Unless you’ve been fucking your new boss on the side, just to hedge your bets. Parker’s a cutie, isn’t he?”

I clamped my mouth shut and said nothing, but she didn’t need to be a mind reader to see the slur of wild emotion tumbling behind my eyes.

“Shame you’re gonna lose that flat stomach you’ve worked so hard on but, hey, you won’t have much else to do in the slammer other than work out.” She smirked. “That and try to prevent some big butch gang of lady truckers from raping you in the showers. Still, that’ll be nothing new to you, huh?”

That punched me out of shock, brought me scrabbling back to the surface, relit the fire. “You sound like you’ve been there, Vondie,” I threw back at her. “Miss it?”

“It’s Vonda,” she growled. She took a breath, got a grip. “So he really doesn’t know?” she murmured. “Pity. We could have used that.”

I tried a laugh that came out more as a gasp. “You have no idea what you’ll be letting yourself in for, if you try hitting Sean with this … .”

“Screw what he’ll do to me,” Vondie dismissed. “What’s he going to do to you? Consider a hypothetical for a moment. Even supposing by some miracle you get out of this, what happens to your precious so-called career now?”

She waved a careless hand towards the manila file that was still lying on the floor next to her chair. “Can’t go risking your life every day, being a bullet catcher, when you’ve got a kid, Charlie.”

“I—”

“And what’s Meyer’s reaction really going to be, huh?’ She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Is he still going to be so keen on you when you’re just the little wifey at home with the squalling brat? Right now, you think you’re somebody, huh? Working for Armstrong’s outfit in New York—and what about Parker? God, the ink’s not dry on your green card yet.”

She shook her head, as if bemused by the turn of events. “What happens when you don’t have that anymore? When you spend your days up to your neck in unwashed diapers and puke? Is Meyer still going to even want you—holding him down? Holding him back?”

She smiled again, warming to her theme. “Being able to blow some guy away at sixty feet isn’t exactly the kind of skill that will impress the local neighborhood PTA. And there isn’t much else you’re good for, is there, Charlie? Of course,” she added, her expression turning sly, “there’s nothing says you have to keep it.” She nodded towards the surgical tray, towards the loaded syringes. “We could do you a favor there.”

“You bitch,” I said, ragged, losing it as the rage fizzed the edges of my vision. “You utter fucking bitch …”

Vondie laughed out loud. “Oh, Charlie, your mother would be so shocked—what a potty mouth!” she said, her voice rich with delight. “Speaking of mothers, I seem to remember from our file on Meyer that his ma comes from a long line of good Irish Catholics. He may not go to Mass every Sunday, but I’ll bet it’s gonna go way against the grain, finding out you’ve aborted his kid.”

“He won’t.” Because I won’t. Because I can’t … .

“Find out?” Vondie shook her head in synthetic disappointment, making tutting noises. “Oh Charlie, keeping those kind of secrets will kill any relationship stone dead,” she said with mocking sadness. “You know that.”

She stepped to the trolley and picked up one of the syringes out of the surgical tray. She held it against the light and tapped it with her fingernail, as if checking for air bubbles. The liquid inside was a dull yellow. I’d no idea what it was, only that I didn’t want it inside me. Or inside anything I might have inside me, either.

“Speaking of secrets, time to get you to spill yours, I think. Of course, there are a few side effects to this stuff I probably ought to warn you about,” she said, gloating openly now. This wasn’t work to her. “Birth defects, that kind of thing, but let’s not allow little things like that to worry us.”

She’d moved closer, unable to resist it as she taunted. She was within a couple of meters now, leaning forwards, shoving that smug smiling face into mine.

“I warned you what would happen if you hurt my mother, Vondie,” I said almost under my breath. I thrashed impotently against the restraints, an apparently useless gesture that allowed me to get the feel of them and made noise, so she had to come nearer still to catch my words.

Come on, a little closer. Just a little closer …

“Well, that’s nothing to what I’d do if I thought you were going to hurt my child,” I muttered. “Past having your own are you? You dried-up old hag—”

She took that last step, offense coloring her face as she caught the gist.

I bounced up, bunched the muscles in my arms to jerk my feet clean off the floor, scissored my legs and lashed out.

I tried to tell myself later that it was never intended to be a killing blow. That I wanted to cause enough pain to incapacitate her, no more. So I aimed for her face, for the nose I’d already broken once, intending to add insult as well as further injury. But at the last moment she jerked upright and so I gathered a little more momentum before I struck, a little lower than I’d anticipated. Or so I tried to tell myself.

My foot landed hard, side on across her throat. Above my own bellow of effort and pain and rage, I swear I heard the quiet pop as her larynx collapsed.

Vondie dropped the syringe and fell backwards, windmilling her arms. She crashed into her own chair, which tangled her legs and tripped her. Her shoe skated on the manila folder she’d so carelessly dropped, then her back hit the far wall and she slithered down it, clutching at her throat and gasping, eyes wide with shock.

“Top five percent, huh, bitch?” I said, breathing hard. “Like I said—real slack year.”

Instinct had her battling to rise, clawing for purchase on the smooth face of the blocks. I strained against the cuffs that held me, but I knew they weren’t going to give way. There was nothing I could do but dangle there, helpless, and wait for her either to die or to kill me.

Whichever came first.

Vondie made it upright by no more than sheer bloody willpower. She lurched for the trolley again, grabbed another syringe without caring which, and came for me.

I twisted wildly, kicking out. No technique involved now, just anything I could think of to stop her getting that damned needle into me.

And in the back of my mind was the deep, sick sense of panic that it wasn’t just me she was trying to hurt.

As she lunged, I jumped again, managed to get both feet up and punched them out into her stomach. The blow sent her reeling backwards. She hit the trolley containing the drugs she’d been intending to use on me, overturning it in a clatter of steel on concrete and shattered glass, and fell amid the ruins, gasping her last breath.

I waited, but she didn’t get up again. She’d been dead from the moment I’d crushed her throat. She just hadn’t known it.

It took me a minute or so to get my feet back under me, by which time my arms were shaking. Everything was shaking. I was colder than I could ever remember and weary to the marrow of my bones.

Another death on your conscience, Fox. Now what?

I hung like that for a while. I had no way to mark the passing of time, so I don’t know how long. It felt like forever, but in reality was probably no more than a quarter of an hour. Long enough. More than long enough for me to think a lot about life—the one I’d just taken and the one that might have just begun.

The sound of the door opening behind me made me start. I braced, but knew I didn’t have the energy to mount another defensive attack. I heard footsteps come in, two sets, which faltered as the new arrivals took in the scene of my destruction. It was only a momentary pause.

Terry O’Loughlin moved delicately in front of me, eyes flicking to Vondie’s body. The other person with her turned out to be the young security guard who’d put the restraints on me and my mother out in the lobby.

“Ohmigod,” he kept saying, trying both to look, and not to look, at my body and at Vondie while he did so. “Is she, like, dead?”

So elegant in life, Vondie was awkward and ungainly in death, limbs sprawling, her skirt riding up, revealing a surprisingly utilitarian pair of white cotton knickers.

“I bloody hope so,” I said. I met Terry’s eyes, saw the shock in them, but anger, too. I hoped it was pointed at somebody else, or my chances had not just improved. “Either cut me loose or shoot me, Terry,” I said tiredly, “because if you’re not going to let me down, shooting me would be preferable to what Collingwood will do when he finds this.”

She stepped forwards. “I had no part in this, Charlie,” she said, fierce to the point of tears as she fumbled with the restraints. “Please believe me.”

“I do,” I said.

My arms dropped abruptly and I discovered I’d been entirely right about one thing. Being strung up was nasty but, for the moment, being let down seemed worse. My knees went and, if Terry hadn’t arrested my descent, I would have fallen. The blood pounded back into my whitened fingers, making the nails pulse as though I’d plunged both hands into boiling water. I tried to cradle my arms to my body, but all they did was flop like a pair of drowning fish. The young security guard fumbled out of his jacket and draped it round my shoulders. His face was past scarlet and heading for a shade of purple.

I tried to smile my thanks but my eyes kept sliding past him, wouldn’t focus.

“Go and tell them we’ve found her,” Terry said to him. “Tell them to hurry!” He all but ran out of the room.

And, by the sound of it, straight into a fist.

All we heard was the contact of something hard meeting something softer by comparison, the explosive whump of air being knocked out of the guard’s lungs, and the solid thud as he hit the ground.

Terry started, but before she could do more than half-rise, the door was pushed open again and Collingwood came in. He was carrying a standard-issue Glock 9mm with the lazy facility of someone completely at home with a firearm, and the dead-eyed stare of someone who thinks nothing of using it.

He took in the scene almost instantly. My incapacity. Terry, crouched with her arms protectively around my shoulders. And Vondie’s body. He moved towards her as though his legs were taking him of their own volition, against his better judgment. Silently, he stood over his dead agent, as if to confirm she was really gone. But there was nothing in his rumpled face. No pain, no sorrow, no anger.

I skimmed my own eyes over the corpse with something close to regret. Regret that I hadn’t grabbed the opportunity to take the gun off her hip the moment I’d got loose. As soon as the thought had formed, I dismissed it. I wouldn’t be able to hold the damn thing straight yet, anyway. My arms were burning with pins and needles, so I wanted to rub them to ease the violent scuttering under my skin, but I couldn’t bear the touch.

Collingwood turned towards us, the gun still held casually at his side, the fingers of his free hand twitching.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly. “That was a mistake you’ll pay for.”

“For God’s sake,” Terry said, her voice cracking. “She was torturing Charlie!”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Collingwood said, certainty ringing through his voice like struck crystal.

Desperate measures. Was that all you were doing, Vondie? Trying to break me? Is that why you told me I was pregnant? Even though …

“What ‘desperate times’?” Terry demanded.

“Whether you want to believe it or not, Ms. O’Loughlin, we are at war. The enemies of our country plot against us constantly,” Collingwood said. “We must, ah, use every means at our disposal to combat that threat.”

“And that includes torturing innocent women?” Terry threw at him, the anger almost, but not quite, subjugating her fear. She rose, shoulders stiff. “I must have missed the day they taught that class at law school.”

“Sacrifices have to be made,” Collingwood said blankly. “Collateral damage.”

Collateral damage. Is that how Vondie thought of me? She was going to pump me full of drugs, knowing what they’d do to an unborn child. Was that just collateral damage, or was she simply having a good time?

“Is that all Dr. Lee was to you?” she asked. “And his wife? And Charlie, her parents, Sean? Me?” She stepped forwards, looked him straight in the eye. “What about me, Mr. Collingwood? Am I just collateral damage, too?”

He stared back and I saw his shoulders drop a fraction. For a second, I thought she might actually have got through to him.

“Yes,” he said. He bent his elbow to bring the Glock up, pointing straight at her. “Move back a little farther, if you don’t mind, Ms. O’Loughlin. I really would hate to have to kill you unless it was entirely necessary.”

“Yes, I’d hate that, too,” said a voice from the doorway, and Sean slid into view fast and smooth. Like Collingwood, he too had a Glock, but he was holding it at shoulder height, right hand supported by left, finger inside the guard and already taking up the first stage of the trigger, which acted as the safety. The gun was a hairsbreadth from firing, but Sean’s voice was steady, relaxed, showing no strain.

His eyes darted sideways, just once, but I knew he’d taken in the whole thing in that single rapid survey. Knew he’d seen what they’d done to me, could fill in most of the rest.

But not all of it, Sean.

For the first time since he’d entered the room, Collingwood’s face showed a hint of unease. He glanced at Terry, not letting the muzzle of his own gun deviate. He gave a kind of sad smile and looked back at Sean.

“You pull that trigger, son, chances are I’ll fire anyhow.”

Sean shook his head and smiled politely. “Two through the mouth will take out your brain stem,” he said. “The only thing you’ll do is die. Quickly.”

“You Special Forces boys are all the same—all show,” Collingwood said. “Had a sniper in Afghanistan who swore the same thing to me. Tried it on a rebel who was holding a ten-year-old girl hostage. Bastard still blew her brains out as he dropped.”

“Perhaps your sniper wasn’t as good as he thought he was.”

Sean was good enough, I knew. He always had been. And if they’d matched off hand-to-hand, he was good enough to break Collingwood’s neck before the older guy had a chance to spit.

“Perhaps he wasn’t,” Collingwood said. “Either way, somehow I don’t think you’ll risk it, son. Not today. So, I’ll give you three seconds to put that gun down before I shoot the lady lawyer here. One.”

Sean’s Glock stayed up and on target. So did Collingwood’s. It was Terry who’d begun to tremble. Sean didn’t waver.

What kind of a father will he make?

“Two.”

Sean shifted slightly. Collingwood wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t let his gaze slide sideways to check the movement. As if they’d planned it, Terry O’Loughlin leapt forwards, her right foot swinging, and kicked him in the balls like she was hoping for nothing better than to see them reappear as lumps in his throat.

Collingwood’s reactions were nowhere near as good as Sean’s had been under the same circumstances. The government man didn’t even get to twitch before the blow landed. He certainly didn’t get the chance to take a shot of his own before Sean was on him, twisting the gun out of his nerveless fingers.

Collingwood folded up slowly, mouth working without producing sound other than a slow exhalation, like the last gasp of a deflating rubber dingy. Sean watched him go down and turned away.

“I have to hand it to you, Terry,” he said as he came past her, “you’ve got one hell of a set of legs on you.”

“Mm,” she said, breathless, her voice almost remote. “I played soccer in college.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet you were a striker.” He bent in front of me, fingers under my chin to tip my head back, checking the size of my pupils. “What did they give you, Charlie?” he asked, and if he seemed cold and detached, I knew that was the only way he could deal with this.

“They stuck me with something to put me out after they cattle-prodded me,” I said. My throat felt raw like I’d been screaming. I nodded towards the smashed contents of the trolley. “Vondie was after payback as much as info, I think, but she didn’t get a chance to add anything else to the mix.”

He brushed my chin with gentle fingers, brought my focus back. “Good,” he said softly, and smiled at me.

I nearly told him right then. Nearly let it burst out of me, but the words just lodged in my throat.

“What?” Sean said quickly, but behind us Collingwood got enough of his breath back to begin to groan.

“It’ll keep,” I said, dredging up a smile of my own from reserves I didn’t know I had.

It’ll keep until I know for certain.

We heard footsteps outside the door. Sean turned, braced, shielding my body with his own, but it was my father who came in. On the outside, he looked as together as always, even his tie was perfectly knotted. But inside was a different story. He saw Collingwood stirring limply on the floor, then caught sight of Vondie’s body and froze. It was the sight of him, more than of Sean, that snapped me back to reality.

I struggled for my feet, had to claw my way up the wall to make it. “How the hell did you both get in?”

“Terry,” Sean said shortly, but his eyes were on my father. “Turns out there was a back way, after all.”

Terry had found my clothes. They must have been stashed somewhere close but I hadn’t seen them. She handed them over, flushed, looking miserable. I needed help to get into them again. My father had seen me naked more times than either of us could count, but he still kept his back turned while Terry and I struggled.

Going to need practice dressing someone else—someone helpless—aren’t you, Fox?

I shut it out, yanked on my shirt with enough force to split a seam at the back of the arm, then let Terry nudge my fat fingers aside to button it.

“Did you get hold of Parker?” I asked Sean.

“We tried—believe me,” he said with feeling. “It went to voice mail every time. I’ve left him half a dozen messages.”

“Voice mail?”

“Yeah. I’m hoping that means he’s in flight.” He had moved up alongside my father and there was something strangely similar about the way both of them stood and gazed down at Collingwood while he got himself back together.

“Where’s Elizabeth?” my father demanded, in a quiet arctic tone I didn’t quite recognize, even from him.

Collingwood looked up, eyed the pair of them. “My guys’ll have taken her somewhere nice and, ah, safe,” he said. “How long she stays that way depends on you. You let me go and maybe she might come out of this in one piece.”

Sean stepped forwards and hit him in the face, a casual downward left that nevertheless had all his weight and muscle behind it, delivered so fast it seemed no more than a trick of the light. One moment the government man was half-sitting, propped on an elbow. The next, his head jerked back and bounced off the wall behind him. He rode it as best he could, brought a hand up and tested the inside of his lip.

He smiled for the first time, a full-blown grin.

“Is that the best you’ve got, Meyer?” he said, spitting out a bubble of blood. He reached up and tugged at his hair, and a section of it covering his crown came loose and dropped into his lap. Underneath the toupee, the top of his head was completely bald. The ugly scar tissue shone in reddened blotches like a crude patchwork quilt.

“I was an intel man working with the Afghanis,” he said. “Got ambushed by a group still loyal to the Taliban. They had me three days—three days—and I didn’t tell them a thing, Meyer. Think you’ve got three days to work on me now?”