Second Shot (20 page)

“What happened?”

She shot me a dark look. “He got loose,” she gritted out, her voice brimming with a suppressed fury that eventually vented into shrillness. “Greg could have been killed!”

Lucas ducked away from her ministrations the way a horse avoids flies. “I’m OK. Don’t fuss,” he said, blurry, gesturing vaguely to the looped coils of Aquarium man’s erstwhile bonds. “I guess I wasn’t quite watching him as close as I should have been, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, remembering the smug little smile Aquarium man had given me. “I should have made sure it was tight enough to cut his damn circulation off.”

Simone’s door opened and she put her head out again.
Why couldn’t the woman just do as she was told
…
?

“Daddy!” Simone cried when she caught sight of Lucas’s injury. She ran out and knelt in front of him, grasping for his hand.

“I’m fine, honey Don’t you worry,” he said, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s just a scratch. I guess I’m not quite as quick on my feet as I used to be, huh?”

Simone gave him a tremulous smile.

I felt something brush against me and found that Ella had sidled out onto the landing, sucking her thumb, and had ducked under the muzzle of the Beretta to attach herself to my right leg. She was wearing white pajamas with pink ponies on the front and clutching the battered Eeyore so tightly his glass eyes were bulging. I transferred the gun into my other hand and stroked the side of her face. Her skin was warm and very soft. She snuggled harder against me, not speaking.

“What did they want?” Simone asked in a subdued voice.

My hand stilled in Ella’s hair.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. I held up the Beretta so she could see the suppressor on the end of the barrel, keeping it away from Ella’s view. “You don’t bring this kind of thing to a burglary, Simone. This was a snatch.” She paled and started to shake but I couldn’t leave it there. ‘And guess
who
brought this with him?” I added.

If anything, Simone grew paler still. “Who?” she demanded.

“Your friend from the Aquarium,” I said. “The one who
you
called and set up that meeting with that day on Boston Common. I don’t suppose you also told him we were coming up here and—”

“No!” she cried. “How could you think I’d put Ella in danger after—?” And then it was her turn to break off, aware she’d nearly said more than she was willing to, more than was wise, in front of the Lucases. “How could you think that?” she muttered, more quietly.

I felt my shoulders weight. This was getting us nowhere. I turned to Rosalind and Lucas. “I think we should call the police,” I said. “Do you need a medic as well?”

“No,” he said. “It looks worse than it is. I’m fine.”

“Do we really need to involve the police?” Simone asked quickly.

I stared at her. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Two armed men break in here in the middle of the night and you’re asking me if we really need the police? Get real, Simone! I should insist we pack up right now and get you both on the first flight out of here.”

“I’m not leaving, Charlie,” she said. Her voice had deepened the way some people’s do when they’re losing their balance on the edge of breaking down. I’d pushed her about as far as I could tonight and I hadn’t the heart, or the energy, to make a stand over it now.

I sighed. “Look, let’s talk about this later, OK?” I said. “Let me just do a quick checkup here. You and Ella ought to go back to bed for a few hours, see if you can get some sleep.”

She nodded and reached for Ella, but the little girl clung all the harder to my thigh. I had a sudden flashback to the hallway of the house in London, when the paparazzi had struck.

“It’s OK, Ella,” I said. “You go with your mummy. I won’t be far away—I promise.”

She looked up at me with those luminous eyes. ‘Are you going downstairs again?”

I thought of the shadows, and of the fear that would build in a child’s mind from such a night.

“Yes,” I said gently, trying to slay the monsters I could see forming. “I’ll be going downstairs again.”

“We-ell, if you are … can I please have a cookie?”

I heard Simone’s quiet gasp of disbelief.

“
YOU
are the cheekiest little madam I’ve ever come across,” she said, but her voice was choked. “You can wait for breakfast like everybody else.”

Ella allowed herself to be parted from me, still arguing the case for premeal cookies with her mother. My leg felt surprisingly cold without Ella around it.

I checked their room first, particularly the window locks, but it was clear. I did the master suite next, the first time I’d been in there, but it was also secure. I ducked my head into my own room expecting it to be the same, but as soon as I opened the door I knew there was something wrong, something in the air.

I flicked the light on. Hannibal the giant teddy bear was still lying under the bedclothes where I’d left him, but in the short space of time between separating from his friend on the landing, and reappearing after I’d tackled Aquarium man outside Simone’s door, I found that the slim man with the glasses had definitely been into my room.

Oh, not all the way in, perhaps. He probably hadn’t taken much more than a couple of steps over the threshold, sliding the door quietly closed behind him. I’d certainly never heard a thing, but now, when I peeled back the blankets, I discovered that poor old Hannibal had proved a convincing substitute for me.

Convincing enough for the slim man to have put three bullets into him, at any rate.

I couldn’t feel any particular anger about that. It was line i, page i, for just about any kind of rules of engagement against a protected principal.

First job—kill the bodyguard.

B
y ten thirty that morning, I’d moved Simone and Ella into the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the elegant White Mountain Hotel on West Side Road. The suite was spacious and had a connecting door to the room next to it, which I’d taken.

I’d called Sean and brought him up to speed on the night’s events, keeping my report cool and impersonal, particularly the part about the shooting of the teddy bear. Sean had responded in kind. There would be a time for emotional reaction, but we both knew this wasn’t it.

At Sean’s suggestion, I’d also called the private investigator Frances Neagley in Boston and given her as much information as I could about Aquarium man. She’d listened gravely, superhumanly restrained herself from saying, “I told you so,” and promised to find out what she could. She asked if I was bringing in additional security and, when I said Sean was arranging it, she offered me the temporary loan of her guy from the New York agency, Armstrong’s, until they arrived.

“Well, I could certainly do with some backup, but what about you?” “Right now,” she’d said, “I think your need is greater than mine.” I’d removed the suppressor from the Beretta to make it easier to conceal, and was carrying it in the right-hand outside pocket of my jacket. I knew I’d be in deep trouble if I was caught with it, but if it was a choice between that and facing another attempt on Simone and Ella unarmed, I thought it was worth the risk. Just the weight of it there was a comfort.

The only thing I
hadn’t
done—at Simone’s absolute insistence—was call in the police. Instinct told me it was a bad idea to try to keep them out of it but, at the end of the day, no harm had been done beyond a broken window and the loss of some stuffing from an oversize bear. I could appreciate Simone’s viewpoint that explanations would have been long and, bearing in mind the Lucases’ ignorance of her financial situation, possibly embarrassing.

Not only that, but she swore she wasn’t going to risk putting Ella through the same kind of press uproar she’d experienced at home. I tried to convince Simone otherwise, but it ended in a clenched-teeth argument with her telling me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t like it I could go home and leave her to it. I gave in at that point. How could I abandon them now? Besides, it wasn’t the first time people had tried to kill me.

And it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Nevertheless, when there was a knock on my door shortly before eleven I answered it with caution. I took great care when I looked through the Judas glass to ensure whoever was out in the hallway would not be able to tell when my eye was in line with the peephole.

Outside was Greg Lucas. He was rocking a little on his feet, obviously uneasy, the distortion of the fish-eye lens making the movement more apparent. The dressing taped to his forehead seemed much bigger than I remembered the size of the injury demanding.

I waited a beat. I deliberately hadn’t told him our room number. Had Simone called him? I glanced back at the connecting door to Simone’s room. She was trying to settle Ella down for a nap after her disturbed night and the door was closed. I transferred the Beretta from my jacket to the back of my jeans, under the tails of my shirt, and slipped the security chain.

“Hi, Charlie,” Lucas said. “Can we talk?” He gave me a weary smile, one that attempted to bond us through a shared struggle, one soldier to another at the end of a bloody engagement.

I didn’t want that kind of connection with him. I jerked my head and said, “You’d better come in.”

As soon as he was through the door I shouldered his face up against the wall to the bathroom, regardless of his recent injury, and patted him down. He seemed neither surprised by my action nor offended by it.

“Right-hand side,” he said mildly.

“Good job you pointed that out. I might never have thought to look there.”

“Just trying not to make you nervous,” he said. “We all had a difficult night.”

He was carrying a short-barrel Smith & Wesson .38 revolver in a belt rig on his right hip. I tugged the gun free and stepped back, not taking my eyes off him as I dropped the cylinder and emptied the chambered rounds out onto the coverlet of the bed.

“Simone’s with Ella,” I said. “I’d rather she wasn’t disturbed.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “It’s you I’ve come to see.”

“In that case, make yourself at home,” I said. “Coffee?”

He nodded again. I left the partially dismembered gun on the bed and went to pour two cups from the little coffeemaker on the desk. It was surprisingly drinkable coffee and I was on my third lot since we’d checked in.

When I came back the gun was still where I’d left it and Lucas was over by the window, staring out at the picturesque view of the Echo Lake forest and the mountains beyond.

I joined him, handing over his coffee cup and sipping my own while I waited for him to try to find a way into what he wanted to say. By his silence, I gathered it wasn’t easy

And, somewhat childishly, I didn’t feel inclined to help him out. Instead, I concentrated on admiring the winter wonderland scene outside the glass. It should have been idyllic. In any other circumstances, it probably would have been.

Lucas had aged under stress. The dressing on his forehead was universal skin tone, but his waxy skin was almost white by comparison. He raised his coffee with both hands, as though thankful for something to occupy them.

“You don’t make this easy,” he said at last with a brief smile in my direction.

I sighed, admitting defeat or we’d be here all day. “What is it you want to say to me, Greg?”

He took a breath, as if gathering all the loose ends back into himself. “They could have killed her last night, couldn’t they?” he said. “Simone and Ella, I mean. They could have killed them both.”

I shrugged. “But they didn’t,” I said. ‘And you and I both know that wasn’t their plan, don’t we?”

He stiffened, made a conscious effort to relax, then saw I’d noticed both reactions and gave up on trying to hide either. “Do we?”

“Oh, come on, Lucas!” I said, allowing some bite to show through without letting my voice rise because the last thing I wanted was Simone hearing us. “Think about it for a minute—the masks, the suppressors on the guns, the fact they didn’t even bother getting close enough to my bed to find out I wasn’t in it before they wiped me out. It was a kidnapping attempt, pure and simple.”

He stuck his nose back into his coffee cup, almost gloomy, as though hearing it out loud somehow made it more real for him. Eventually, he looked up, looked right at me and said, “I want you to take Simone and Ella home.”

I took a moment to drain the last of my coffee, then put the empty cup down on the desk behind me, using the time it gave me to consider.

“Why?”

He blinked. “
Why?”
he repeated. “Charlie, as you’ve just pointed out so correctly, someone tried to kidnap my daughter last night.” He leaned forwards slightly, lowered his voice. “Right out of my house.”

“So you’re afraid for your safety,” I said, a deliberate taunt delivered in a bland tone, maybe a small payback for that car park stunt the day we’d driven up here.

His lips thinned. “No, but I’m certainly afraid for
their
safety,” he shot back. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” I said evenly. “And I did my best to ensure it this morning. I’ve already taken steps to make sure any further attempts won’t succeed, either.”

He seemed suddenly uncertain how to proceed. “Well… good,” he said. He gave a rueful smile. “She was a lovely kid. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed her, but I’d rather send her away now than lose her again for good.”

I turned slightly, so I was facing him, and saw … something. Something that flitted in and out of his eyes, quick as a fish, then was gone.

Guilt. Not big guilt. Not weigh-you-down-and-crush-you-with-the-sheer-bone-numbing-size-of-it guilt, but guilt, nevertheless.

“How long have you known?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Neither you nor Rosalind has asked the right questions about all this, Lucas—like ‘why?’ for a start,” I said. “That should have been the first thing you wanted to know. Armed men break into your house in the middle of the night and make a damned serious attempt to snatch your daughter and granddaughter from under your nose, and you just don’t seem surprised about it. Where’s the righteous anger, the outrage?”