Second Shot (35 page)

“Is that why you hurt Charlie?” Ella asked, wide-eyed, frowning.

For a moment Rosalind just gaped at her before she turned and glared at me, defiance and anger and guilt all written there, as though it were all my fault for pushing her too far and letting the child see me do it.

“She didn’t hurt me, Ella,” I said, managing to produce a rough facsimile of a reassuring smile even though one side of my face was stiff and smarting. “I slipped and fell, that’s all. Don’t worry.”

“I want you both to leave now,” Rosalind said with dignity. In the kitchen the coffee machine was still making gurgling noises, but I didn’t think we were going to get that drink, after all.

“All right,” I said quietly. “But think about what we’ve told you, Rosalind. You can’t make a fight of this. Better to give in with good grace, don’t you think?”

Rosalind stiffened her shoulders. ‘And what would you know about that?”

She followed us to the door, but keeping her distance, Ella clinging to her hand as though her life depended on it and chewing a strand of her hair. On the front step I turned and smiled down at her.

“Bye, Ella,” I said, a part of me still hoping for some sign of remembrance, of the affection she’d previously shown me.

Ella just stared, confused and uncomprehending, until the closing door cut her off from my view. And that, I realized, stung far more than a slap to the face could ever do.

T
hey’re on the run,” Matt said, sounding confident for the first time. “With what Mr. Armstrong’s told me, it’s only a matter of time before I get Ella back.” The underlying relief bubbled up through his voice, struggling to be contained. He was almost jubilant.

We were sitting in the bar at the White Mountain Hotel, having just had dinner at the Ledges Dining Room there. A young woman was playing a mix of soft jazz on the grand piano that stood on a raised platform between the two rooms, and a sports channel was showing highlights of last season’s baseball on the flat-screen TV behind the bar. One of the teams was the San Francisco Giants and Neagley’s eyes kept sliding to the action. I remembered her saying she was from California and guessed that she hadn’t switched her allegiance when she moved east.

We made an odd party in such elegant surroundings. I was still in the sweatpants that were all I could comfortably manage, and Matt always had that slightly untidy air about him. The kind that seems to make otherwise quite sensible women want to smooth his hair and do his laundry. Only Sean and Neagley looked as though they’d dressed for the occasion.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Matt,” Sean warned now, reaching for his glass. He’d had wine with the meal, but now he’d moved on to mineral water. “This thing’s a long way from over yet.”

“Why—what are they going to do?” Matt asked, unwilling to have his celebration squashed entirely. He looked round at the three of us, who must have appeared pessimistically subdued by comparison.

Neagley shrugged. “Who knows?” she said quietly, swirling her scotch round in the bottom of her own glass. “They’ve proved they’re capable of plenty so far.” And I knew she was thinking of her dead partner. We might never find out whether his death was an accident or not.

Matt gave her a rueful smile and squeezed her arm as though he read her thoughts. There was something intimate about the gesture that stopped short of invasive. He seemed to have a heightened female empathy. I could imagine he got more attention than his looks would have suggested. And Simone had been jealous, I remembered. Corrosively so.

Funny, when I’d first met Simone that day in another restaurant, some three thousand miles away, I’d thought of Matt as the enemy, someone from whom I had to protect my client and her daughter at all costs. Now he was the one we were all fighting for.

I glanced over and found, despite his apparent jubilation, Matt’s eyes were misty. We’d had to tell him, again and again, every tiny thing we could remember about Ella’s appearance today and he’d been storing it away ever since, hugging the memory close like a blanket. “My baby,” he said and his voice wavered a little. He took a swig from the glass of Sam Adams in front of him. “My God, I miss her.”

Into the silence that followed that statement came the trilling of my mobile. I rooted in my jacket pocket, ignoring the pointed stares from other diners at nearby tables. Irritation with the mobile phone, it seemed, was universal.

I fumbled the phone open awkwardly with my left hand. “Hello?”

“Charlie?” said a man’s voice. “It’s Greg Lucas.”

“Is it really?” I said, skeptical, mouthing his name to the others. “That, it seems, is a matter of opinion.”

I heard his annoyed expulsion of breath. “Can we put that matter aside for the moment?” he snapped. “This is serious.”

More serious than what happened to the real Greg Lucas?

“Go on,” I said.

“It’s Ella,” he said, his voice rising. He stopped, got control of it, and added, “She’s gone.”

“
What?”
Now it was my turn to snort. Then I was speaking fast and low. “I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing, Lucas — “

“For God’s sake,” he burst out, anger and anguish distorting his voice. “This is no game! I got back from the store and found Rosalind absolutely distraught. She said you’d been round to see her this afternoon. They came and took Ella, right from the house, just after you left.”

“Who took her?” I demanded. The others had been listening to my side of the conversation and all three of them tensed at that. Matt started to speak but I waved him quiet. I waited, but Lucas still didn’t respond. “Who took her?”

At last he said, reluctantly, “We think it’s Felix Vaughan. From what Rosalind said, it sounded like a couple of his guys. They turned up while we were out shopping this morning, trying to scare us, I think. Looks like they got bored with that and went for the real deal.”

“Have they said what they want?”

“What do you think?” Lucas said, acid now “Money. Ten million dollars. They left a note when they took her. If we go to the cops, they mail her back in pieces.”

“Are you at the house?” I said, struggling to fish my crutch out from under the table with my right hand. Sean was already on his feet. “We’ll come now.”

“No!” Lucas said sharply “They might be watching the house. I-I can’t risk that.” I had to hand it to him, he sounded genuinely shaken. But then, whatever his identity, he
was
Ella’s grandfather, after all. “We’ll come to you.”

“What if they try and call you?”

“They have my cell, and they said they’d call tomorrow, anyway. Where are you?”

I glanced at Sean. He seemed to understand my unspoken question and gave me a brief nod. “We’re up at the White Mountain Hotel,” I said.

“OK, we’ll meet you up there,” he said, then added with a bitter twist to his voice, “personally, I’d rather meet you in hell, but Rosalind seems to think you may be our only chance of getting Ella back alive.”

I
t was already dark outside. We waited in the car park with the lights of the hotel behind us. It was dazzlingly cold, with the monolithic slab of Cathedral Ledge looming up into the star-cast sky above. I’d picked out the constellation of Orion hanging high and bright above the trees as we came out. We sat in the Explorer with the engine running and the air con set to full heat, but I was shivering violently nevertheless.

Ella.

I recalled, starkly, her terror when the press photographers had ambushed her in her mother’s kitchen. The brush of her lips against my neck afterwards. An urge to rampage against the men who’d taken her now was so strong I had to clasp my hands tight in my lap to keep them from acting.
So this must be part of what it’s like—maternal instinct.
I’d thought that particular emotion had passed me by.

I had the front passenger seat purely because I needed the legroom. Sean was behind the wheel, leaving the backseat to the others. Neagley was sitting behind Sean.

As soon as we’d climbed in, Sean had reached over and taken the Beretta we’d won from Reynolds out of the glove box. Neagley had studiously looked in the other direction as he checked it over and slid the gun into the side pocket of his jacket. I noticed she pulled her handbag with the .357 Smith & Wesson a little closer towards her, bringing the gun out just far enough to confirm it was loaded and ready to go. Habit, more than necessity.

Sean twisted in his seat.

“Have you ever had cause to use that for real?” he asked, nodding to the revolver.

Neagley hesitated, then shook her head. “Not really,” she admitted. “I don’t even take it to the range much.”

“So why have it?”

“Because it’s great for concealed carry and because I thought that if I ever
did have
to use it, something this size would stop a truck.”

Sean smiled at her. “If Vaughan’s in that damned Humvee of his, we might be glad of it.”

“Just who
is
this Vaughan bastard?” Matt demanded. He was sitting hunched up, arms wrapped round his body like he was about to be physically sick.

“He’s another ex-Special Ops man,” Neagley supplied. “Spent the best part of four decades with the U.S. military, but he left in an all-fired hurry a couple of years back. Something to do with army supplies for the Gulf disappearing and turning up on the civilian market. They couldn’t prove anything, but there was enough suspicion to get him kicked out.”

I moved carefully round in my seat so I could see her face. “These stolen supplies wouldn’t have been turning up at surplus outlets not unlike the Lucases’ place, would they?” I asked, and she nodded. “Well, that explains their connection, I suppose.”

“Fuck that,” Matt said sourly. “What the hell’s he doing kidnapping Ella?”

“It all boils down to money,” Neagley said. “Vaughan wants it. Ella’s the key”

Matt rubbed his hands slowly over his face. “How I wish Simone had never bought that bloody ticket,” he said. “You think it’s going to be the answer to all your prayers, don’t you? But it’s been a nightmare from start to finish.”

‘And it’s going to get worse before it gets better—one way or another,” Neagley said grimly.

“Heads-up,” Sean murmured. “Those look like Range Rover headlights.”

He was right. The Lucases drove the length of the car park towards us very slowly, like they were looking for indications that we were going to cause them trouble along the way. I suppose I couldn’t blame either of them for being nervous, under the circumstances.

The Range Rover came to a halt about ten meters away and I saw vague movement beyond the lights as both front doors opened.

Sean put his hand on the door handle and glanced sideways at me.

“Don’t bother saying it,” I warned. “I’m coming, too.”

He shrugged and climbed out without a word, leaving me to make my own way

Both sides met on the middle ground, like some kind of Cold War exchange. It was starting to snow again, I saw, tiny butterfly flakes that swirled in the combined beams of the lights from both vehicles, and it was colder than the grave. I thought the period in the car had warmed me through, but I quickly discovered it was all superficial. As soon as I was outside again, I froze down to my bones almost instantly.

It’s just like Christmas, Mummy,
Ella had said in Boston.

Not like Christmas now, Ella….

Lucas and Sean approached until they were only a meter or so apart and stopped to stare at each other in the sparkling glow from the light-wrapped trees. Lucas waited until I’d haltingly closed up to them before he asked, “So who’s this?” without taking his eyes off Sean.

“Sean Meyer,” I said, short. “My boss.”

“Ah.” Lucas nodded slightly, barely a twitch, as though he knew if he made any sudden moves he was likely to get bitten.

Sean watched him, shoulders apparently relaxed, completely expressionless. Lucas’s eyes kept flicking nervously to Sean’s hands, which were buried in his coat pockets, as though he could sense the Beretta hidden beneath the material.

“We’re wasting time,” Rosalind said, the sharpness in her voice not quite masking something I took to be fear that vibrated along under the surface. “We know Felix has got Ella, for God’s sake! What are we waiting for?”

Lucas, galvanized by the urgency in his wife’s voice, started to move, clearly expecting us to follow.

“Hold it,” Sean said quietly. “We’re not going anywhere until we’ve got a few things settled.”

Lucas threw him a look of pure distaste. “You want to haggle over a price for my granddaughter’s life, is that it?” he jeered.

Matt pushed his way forwards. “She’s my daughter,” he said. “D’you really think we don’t care what happens to her?”

Lucas stared at him, then let his eyes skim across the rest of us. I don’t know what he expected to see there, because he made a brief gesture of impatience. “I don’t need your help anyway,” he muttered, turning his back and taking a step towards the Range Rover.

“You do need us, or you wouldn’t be here,” Sean said. “Maybe the Greg Lucas who served at Goose Green and Port Stanley might not need our help, but a salesman like John Ashworth certainly does.”