A
bodyguard?” Simone Kerse said blankly to the man sitting next to me. “Rupert, have you gone totally crazy? I absolutely do
not
need a bodyguard.” She raked me with a fierce gaze. “Of any description.”
My first meeting with Simone, just ten days before I was shot, over a wickedly expensive lunch at a very upmarket restaurant just off Grosvenor Square in the embassy district of London. Not exactly an auspicious start.
Simone had a very slight American accent, more an inflection than anything stronger. She was also young and strikingly good-looking, and nothing at all like my preconception of an engineer.
Just as, it seemed, I was nothing like her preconception of a bodyguard.
Rupert Harrington, on the other hand, could only have been a banker. In his early fifties, tall and thin and bespectacled, he had very little hair and a permanently anxious expression. It crossed my mind after meeting him for the first time that those two facts could easily have been connected.
“I can assure you, my dear,” he said to Simone now, with a touch of asperity, “that a number of the bank’s clients have had cause to require the services of Mr. Meyer’s people and he comes with the highest recommendations. And even you must admit that this has all gone rather beyond a joke, hm?”
He sat back in his chair, careful not to spoil the impeccable line of his conservative dark blue pinstripe suit, and flicked a pained glance in my boss’s direction as if to say,
Help me out here, would you?
“I agree,” Sean Meyer said obligingly, his voice bland but with an almost imperceptible underlying thread of amusement. Not at the situation but at the banker’s discomfort because of it. “The threats have been escalating. If you won’t go to the police, you’re going to have to take your own measures.”
He leaned forwards slightly, resting his forearms on the starched white tablecloth and looking directly into Simone’s eyes. There was something utterly compelling about Sean when he pinned you down with that dark gaze, and Simone was no more immune than anyone else.
“I’m not suggesting we surround you with a bunch of heavies,” he went on, “but if you won’t accept a full team then you should at least consider the kind of discreet, low-profile security we can offer. That’s why I brought Charlie along for you to meet.”
He nodded in my direction as he spoke, and both Simone and Harrington swung skeptical eyes towards me.
In between them, although somewhat closer to tabletop height, another pair of eyes regarded me unwaveringly And, I don’t mind admitting, that was the gaze I found the most unnerving.
Simone’s young daughter, Ella, sat on a booster cushion alongside her mother and carefully speared a dessert fork into the pieces of yellow smoked haddock that had been cut up into child-friendly pieces on her plate. It wasn’t the kind of food I would have expected a four-year-old to enjoy, but she was shoveling it in with apparent enthusiasm and chewing largely with her mouth open. I tried not to watch.
Simone’s gaze drifted to her daughter and lingered there for a moment with no apparent sign of displeasure. I suppose, if you were maternally minded, Ella was the sort of child who would induce instant broodiness. She was petite, with a miniature version of her mother’s dark ringleted curls framing a heart-shaped face. Couple that to big violet-colored eyes and she had “spoiled little brat” written all over her. I wasn’t too disappointed that her mother seemed so set against my being assigned to protect the pair of them.
Suddenly, Simone let out an annoyed breath through her nose, as though gathering her internal resources.
“OK, so Matt’s having a hard time accepting our breakup—and lately I suppose he has gotten to be something of a pain in the butt,” she allowed, her eyes still fixed on Ella. She smiled at the little girl, wiped a rogue piece of fish from her chin and turned away with clear reluctance. Her focus landed squarely on me. “But that doesn’t mean I need some kind of nanny.”
Much as I didn’t particularly want the job, I thought the nanny gibe was a bit below the belt. I’d made an effort to look smart and businesslike for this meeting. Dark brown trouser suit, cream blouse. Under protest, I’d even gunked on some lipstick.
Sean was wearing a charcoal gray made-to-measure that subtly disguised the height and the breadth of him but, to my eyes, did little to hide the deadly grace that was an innate part of his makeup.
I’d caught a glimpse of our reflections in the mirror above the bar when we’d arrived at the restaurant and I reckoned, to the casual observer at least, we probably looked like accountants. That was certainly the effect we’d been aiming for.
Harrington opened his mouth to protest at his client’s comments, but before he could speak Sean cut in again. “As I understand it, you’ve had constant phone calls and you’ve been forced to change your mobile number—twice,” he said calmly “Your ex-boyfriend has been hanging around outside both your home and your daughter’s nursery school. You’ve had notes left on your car. Unwanted deliveries. I think you need a little more than some kind of nanny, don’t you?”
Simone switched her attention from me back to Sean. In contrast to the rest of us, she was dressed in battleship gray cargo trousers and a dark red chenille sweater with sleeves that came down almost to her fingertips. Her curly dark hair was pulled loosely back into a ponytail. Harrington had told us she was twenty-eight, a year older than I was. She looked about eighteen.
“You make it sound so much worse than it is, Mr. Meyer,” she said, folding her arms defensively. “Notes on my car? OK, they’re love letters. Unwanted deliveries? Sure, bouquets of flowers. Matt and I were together five years, for heaven’s sake! We share a child.” She swallowed, lowered her voice. “You’re making him out to be some kind of stalker.”
“Isn’t he?” Sean asked, head tilted slightly on one side. His voice had taken on the same cool note and his face the same impassive watchfulness that had always unnerved me so badly, back when he had been one of my army training instructors, and had always seen entirely too much.
Simone flushed and avoided his gaze. Instead, she spoke to Harrington directly. “I’ll talk to Matt again,” she said, her tone placatory now. “He’ll see sense eventually.” She smiled at the banker with a lot more affection than she’d shown to either Sean or me. “I’m sorry you felt you had to take such drastic action on my behalf, Rupert, but there wasn’t any need, really.”
Harrington looked about to protest further, but he correctly read the stubborn expression on Simone’s face and raised both palms in an admission of defeat.
“All right, my dear,” he said, rueful. “If you’re quite sure.”
“Yes,” Simone said firmly. “I am.”
“Mummy, I need to go wee-wee,” Ella piped up in a loud whisper. The smartly dressed elderly couple at the next table clearly subscribed to the unseen-and-unheard school of child raising. They were too British to actually turn around and glare, but I saw their outraged spines stiffen nevertheless.
If Simone noticed their disapproval, she ignored it and smiled at her daughter. “OK, sweetie,” she said, sliding her own chair back so she could lift Ella down and take her by the hand as she got to her feet. “If you’ll excuse us?”
“Of course,” Harrington said, good manners compelling him to stand also.
Sean had already risen, I noted, and for a second I was struck by the air of urbane sophistication he presented. This from a man who had left behind his roots on a run-down housing estate in a small northern city, but who still knew how to slide right back into that rough-diamond skin when the occasion demanded. The banker would not recognize Sean on his home ground.
My eyes followed mother and child as they weaved their way between the busy tables. Although Simone was not my principal—and at that stage I didn’t expect she would become so—watching people was beginning to become a habit, all part of the career I’d chosen. Or maybe the job had ultimately chosen me. I was never too sure about that.
Sean didn’t need to learn to watch anyone. For him it was an instinct ingrained deep as an old tattoo, indelible and permanent. He was just too driven, too focused, to ever let himself begin to blur.
“I’m awfully sorry about this,” Harrington said as the men sat down again and rearranged their napkins across their knees. “She just won’t listen to reason and, quite frankly, her refusal to admit there might be any kind of danger, either to herself or to little Ella, terrifies us, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“How much did she win?” Sean asked, reaching for his glass of Perrier.
“Thirteen million, four hundred thousand, and change,” the banker said with the casual tone of someone used to working with those kinds of figures on a daily basis, but I still heard the trace of a sneer in his voice as he added, “It was, if I understand it correctly, what they term a double rollover.”
“Money’s still money,” Sean said. “Just because her ancestors didn’t steal it doesn’t make her any less rich.”
Harrington had the grace to color. “Oh, quite so, old chap,” he murmured. “But Simone is having some difficulty adjusting to the fact that, from the day she bought that winning ticket, her life was never going to be quite the same again. Do you know, she arrived at our office this morning having actually come into town, with the child, on the Tube? Didn’t want to have to try to park in the middle of London, she said.” He shook his head, as though Simone had suggested walking naked through Trafalgar Square.
“I told her she should have hired a car and driver to take her door-to-door and she looked absolutely baffled,” the banker went on. “It simply doesn’t cross her mind that she can afford to do these things. Nor does it occur to her that, by
not
doing them, she’s putting both herself and her daughter at risk from every crackpot and kidnapper out there—quite apart from the situation with her former, er, boyfriend.”
“It does, as you so rightly point out, make them prime targets—Ella especially,” Sean agreed. “How serious a threat
do you
consider her ex?”
“Well, if you’d asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have said he was a minor irritation, but now …” The banker broke off with an eloquent shrug. “One of the first things Simone did with her money was hire various private investigation agencies to try and trace her estranged father. One of them now believes they have a promising lead, and ever since that report came in, this Matt chap just seems to have become completely unreasonable.” Harrington paused, frowning. “Perhaps he believes a reunion between Simone and her father will spoil his own chances of a
reconciliation with
her,” he added with an almost imperceptible curl of his lip. “She’d have to be quite mad to take him back, of course.”
“What’s the story with Simone’s father?” I asked.
Harrington’s head came up in surprise. Not at the question, but that I’d been the one who’d put it. Even on such short acquaintance, I’d realized that Harrington didn’t speak to anyone he considered at servant level unless he had to, and even then he avoided eye contact. With that in mind I’d let Sean do most of the talking so far. From the expression on the banker’s face, he clearly hadn’t expected me to wade in at this late stage. His eyes swiveled warily in my direction.
Sean flashed me a lazy smile, one that would have made my knees buckle if I hadn’t already been sitting down, and raised an eyebrow to Harrington, as if to repeat the question.
Harrington coughed. “Naturally, one doesn’t wish to be indiscreet, but… well, as I understand it, Simone’s mother was an American, who came over here and married an Englishman, Greg Lucas—an army chap, so I understand. They divorced when Simone was not much more than a baby, and mother and child went back to the States —Chicago, I believe it was—but her father rather dropped off the map, as it were.”
He broke off as the wine waiter glided up to the table and smoothly topped up his glass, finishing the bottle. Harrington ignored him and I wondered briefly what kind of pivotal decisions were made in the afternoons in the world of high finance after boozy lunches just like this one.
“I assume Kerse is Simone’s mother’s name?” I said when the waiter had departed.
Harrington nodded. “She went back to it after the divorce. Anyway, Simone’s mother died a few years ago. There were no siblings, her grand-parents on both sides are long gone and Simone herself is currently expending considerable effort—not to mention her now not insubstantial resources —on attempting to locate this Lucas chap.” He stopped to take a sip of his wine.
“Unsuccessfully?”
“Hm.” Harrington dabbed fastidiously at his mouth with his napkin. “So far, but then, as I mentioned, a couple of weeks ago one of the firms she’s using in Boston thought they’d made some progress and she’s been talking about going over there ever since.”
“Boston,” I repeated blankly, glancing at Sean and finding no reassurance there. “As in Massachusetts, not Lincolnshire?”
Harrington frowned. “Naturally,” he said with a flicker of irritation. “The rumor was that Simone’s father had followed his ex-wife to the USA, so of course that’s where she started looking.” He paused, eyes darting from one of us to the other and registering the sudden undercurrents. “Urn, one knows America is supposed to be a civilized country and all that, but bearing in mind Simone’s somewhat unique circumstances, and given the trouble with her ex, we’d be happier if she had some kind of security consultant along with her when she goes over there.” He nodded to Sean but didn’t shift his gaze away from me. “Mr. Meyer suggested you’d be just the lady for the job, as it were,” he finished with a hearty cheerfulness that didn’t quite succeed in masking his natural aversion to female equality in the workplace.
Sean had no such prejudices. During the seven months that had passed since I’d started working full-time for his exclusive close protection agency, he’d sent me on jobs all over Europe, South Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and I hadn’t turned a hair.
Things didn’t always go smoothly, of course, and sometimes that had nothing to do with dangers from outside sources.