Third Strike

CHAPTER 35

“Here,” Terry O’Loughlin said, “drink this.”

She handed me a cone of water from the cooler in the room she’d coaxed us into after the man with the mustache and his team had departed.

I took what I was offered, grateful, realizing as I did so that I still had Collingwood’s Glock in my hand. For a moment I struggled to recall quite how it had got there. Still punchy.

Out of habit, I jammed the gun between my thigh and the chair cushion, keeping it within reach, and took a sip of water. It was cold enough to feel the glassy slide of it right down the inside of my ribs, clutching at my heart as it went.

My mother had been clamped to my father’s side ever since Sean had put her down. My father had snatched her close, splaying his hands across her back and burrowing his face into her hair, like he was trying to take the very essence of her into himself. Proof of life.

I heard sobbing, but I couldn’t have said for certain which of them it emanated from.

I desperately wanted to reach for Sean in the same way but I knew, if I did so, I was likely to break into pieces and it would all come spilling out. And I couldn’t bring myself to do that in front of Parker, in front of my parents. Even in front of Sean. So I shrugged off the hand he put on my shoulder, throwing a quick later smile in response to his frown of concern.

Vondie was lying, I told myself again as I pulled away. No way can it be true. We’ve always been so careful … .

Terry had quietly taken charge, shepherding us gently into what looked like a staff break room nearby, where there were low chairs and tables and the watercooler.

Beside me, Sean sat leaning forwards with his forearms resting on his thighs, shoulders hunched, staring low into nothing.

Pure exhaustion sucked the blood out of my veins. Adrenaline, as I knew full well, was a single-minded taskmaster, strident and brutal. As it dissipated, I felt my system overload by way of retribution. A vicious headache—I told myself it was from the TASER or the drugs—had started hammering at the base of my skull. The more attention I paid to my body, the more I found there wasn’t a part of it that didn’t ache, from my neck and shoulders to the soles of my feet. It was another jolt to remember why.

It had been a long time since I’d killed somebody that way—up close and personal. That part of it didn’t get any easier with practice.

“I won’t ask if you’re all right,” Parker said, hitching the crease of his suit trousers as he sat down opposite. If it wasn’t for those watchful eyes, you’d have thought him urbane, unthreatening. “Because I can see you’re not—any of you.”

“No,” Sean said, and he was looking at me while he said it.

My mind was drifting. I pulled it back on track with effort. “Parker, what the hell are you doing here?” I said. I jerked my head in a vague gesture to indicate the direction in which the man with the silver mustache and his burly entourage had departed. “And who was that guy?”

Parker glanced at Sean, then let his gaze shift to Terry, still hovering by the watercooler. “As soon as it became clear that Collingwood wasn’t on the level, I began trying to go over his head,” he said. He let out a slow breath. “Not easy. Nobody likes to hear there’s something rotten at the core of their own organization, and the kind of agency Collingwood is a part of, well, they like to hear it even less.”

“But you convinced them,” Sean said, and it wasn’t a question. It was praise.

Parker took a drink of water, ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Collingwood’s immediate superior was stalling, so I had to fight my way farther up the food chain. Epps—the guy you just saw—let me just say you don’t get much higher without being voted into office.”

“So, he has the power to make all this … go away?” I said faintly. I scrubbed a tired hand over my face, but the image of Vondie’s crumpled body and Collingwood’s damaged spine was imprinted on my retinas. I glanced at my father. He and my mother were sitting thigh-to-thigh on the sofa to Sean’s left, not quite listening, but not quite oblivious to the conversation going on around them, either.

Parker nodded. “Once I laid it all out for Epps, he took immediate action. Guy at his level wants something done, it gets done. We were already in the air with a full HRT—Hostage Rescue Team,” he elaborated for Terry’s and my parents’ benefit, “when Sean’s messages came through.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father straighten, very slowly.

No. Oh no.

Sean must have seen it, too.

“You did what you had to, Richard,” he said, speaking fast. “We had no way of knowing how close Parker was when we went back in.”

“But if we’d only waited a little longer,” my father said, swallowing the bitterness that threatened to spill out over his words, “I wouldn’t have had to do any of it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” Sean said with quiet vehemence. “We didn’t know, and couldn’t afford to wait.”

My mother reached out and threaded her fingers through her husband’s. Her gaze was fixed on his face, which was still pale and shiny from the aftermath, anxious at his obvious distress. He glanced sideways at her and flinched away from the absolute trust he saw there, like it burned him.

Because he no longer trusted himself.

“I’ve always prided myself on being a rational man—one who doesn’t let my emotions rule me,” he said in that remote voice. “I know you sometimes find me cold, Charlotte. I am required by my profession to be clinical, but I have never considered myself to be without compassion.”

He broke off, swallowed again. “But I realize now that what I did back there … in that room, was utterly indefensible in human terms. I can offer no justification for it.”

“They would have killed her,” Terry said suddenly, conviction in her voice. “I think Collingwood would have killed all of us.”

“Perhaps,” my father said, dismissive, like maybe she was humoring him. “But he didn’t get the chance, so we’ll never know for certain.” He looked up, met my eyes and I saw the violent slur of emotions washing behind his own. “I honestly do not know how you live with yourself, Charlotte. Doing what you do. Knowing what you can do. Why do you think I worked so hard to save that man after we were ambushed in Boston—in spite of what he’d done? So my own daughter wouldn’t have another death on her hands, on her conscience.” He took a breath to shore up his voice enough to go on.

“But now I have to live with the fact that while I was in that room, torturing another human being, I had no doubts whatsoever about what I was doing. None. And I should have done, don’t you think?”

And with that, my cold, detached and rational father put his face in his hands and wept like a child.