“You don’t,” I said, cutting him short. “And do you think I don’t know that, anyway? Do you honestly think I would stay with someone who deliberately set out to intimidate me? To hurt me?” I huffed out a breath. “You must have a pretty low opinion of my own sense of self-worth, Sean.” A wisp of an earlier conversation drifted through my mind. “And you’re not the only one,” I muttered.
It took Sean all of a second to latch on to that. “Your father?”
“He made his feelings clear over breakfast,” I said lightly. “Told me how pitiful he found me—that I must be a whack-job to have enjoyed any of it.”
“Your father actually used the expression ‘whack-job,’ did he?” Sean murmured. “Don’t you just hate it when he comes out with all that technical medical jargon?”
I shrugged, more an annoyed roll of my shoulders. “So I’m paraphrasing,” I allowed. “‘Pitiful’ is definitely one of his, though.” I debated silently for a moment about how much of the rest to tell him, then said, “When I told him I wasn’t likely to turn into a battered wife, he nearly had a heart attack.”
“At the ‘battered’ part or the ‘wife’ part?”
“Either—or both. Take your pick.”
A mile passed in silence. The periphery of the Camry’s headlights picked out some unidentified large bird of prey lying as crumpled roadkill on the shoulder of the highway, the feathers of one stiffened wing ruffling slightly in the wash from the passing cars like it was waving for help.
“Does the prospect have any appeal for you?” Sean asked then. “Marriage?” There was nothing in his voice, no clue to which way he hoped I’d answer.
“I’m assuming that
wasn’t
some kind of proposal,” I said, with the same care I’d use to approach a suspect device. “I think, at the moment, I like things the way they are. What’s that old saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I’m not sure I’m good wife material—battered or otherwise.” I only caught Sean’s shoulders shift by some infinitesimal amount because I was looking, and looking hard. “Why?”
Sean pulled out to overtake a truck that seemed to be going only a few miles an hour slower than we were, despite hauling a double trailer-load of tree trunks behind it. The driver was tired enough to wander slightly into our lane as we drew alongside. Sean accelerated out from under him, then let the cruise control pick up again.
“Because it’s not a question that’s occurred to me before,” he said. “And this is the kind of journey where no doubt we’ll get to say all kinds of things that haven’t occurred to us before.” He took a breath, cocked his head as if considering. “I don’t think I’m good husband material, either. And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father,” he added, his voice hardening just a touch.
“Well, like I said—if it ain’t broke …”
“That’s not to say it will never need fixing, at some point in the future,” Sean said then, his voice calm, almost remote. “It’s just, right now, I think this is probably all I have to give you … to give anyone. But,
if
—or
when
, but more likely
if
—I ever get to the stage where I feel inclined to propose, it would be to you, Charlie.”
Inside my head I heard a soft hissing sound, like a lover’s gasp or spray on summer lawns, followed by a smooth vortex of tightly spiraling, conflicted thoughts.
Too much.
Not enough.
As good as you’re going to get.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, listening to the rhythm of the tires over a section of mended road surface. And I found myself smiling. “My parents would utterly freak out.”
“All the more reason for you to say yes, then—
if
or
when
it ever happens.” I saw the answering flash of his teeth. And, as if I’d asked the question out loud, he added, “And no, you’d never be battered if you were my wife. Not by me, at any rate.”
I reached across and brushed my fingers along his cheekbone, where the hollow dipped it into shadow. The skin was tightly stretched. He was concentrating on the road ahead and almost flinched under my touch.
“I’m not made of glass, Sean,” I said, keeping my voice deceptively gentle. “Four of them couldn’t break me. You won’t come close. And I meant what I said last night.”
“Which part?”
“The part where I told you if you dared hold anything back, I’d kill you where you stood.”
He let a laugh form, even if it was a shaky one. “Ah,
that
part,” he murmured, and his voice turned wry. “I think you almost did.”
I grinned at him, mostly in relief. A feeling that lasted right up until a disembodied voice spoke up from the backseat.
“I’d like to stop for a short break when it’s next convenient,” my father said, sounding cool and collected and not at all like a man who’s only just woken from an uncomfortable nap. “No rush,” he added. “Please—do finish your conversation first … .”
We drove through the night, Sean and I, heading steadily southwest, one town blurring into the next on the endless road. We passed signs for familiar English place names in unfamiliar locations, all jumbled together until it was like something out of a long bizarre dream.
Dawn broke as we crossed the border from Virginia into Tennessee, the sun rising ragged over the Appalachians. It sparkled on the dew in roadside pastures, stretching the outlines of the trees and the dozing horses. We chased our own shadow for a hundred miles before it fell away and was trampled beneath the Camry’s wheels. The daylight, which started out so softly tentative, sharpened to a vicious edge by noon.
By 3:30 P.M., allowing for the hour we’d gained going from Eastern to Central time, we were approaching Memphis, Tennessee. We stopped at a roadside diner that had been cryogenically frozen sometime in the mid-fifties. An antique jukebox played a series of old maudlin country numbers, to which the wait staff sang along with more enthusiasm than technical accuracy. Raucous, but welcoming.
Our waitress must have been sixty-five, with skin the color of bourbon and the legs of a woman half her age, which she showed off beneath a skirt that was barely longer than her apron. She also had an accent thick enough to slice as she called my father “sugar” and bumped him with her hip as she declared how much she just loved the way he done talk.
I half-expected my father to tighten up like a clam’s armpit at her impertinence. To my surprise he seemed happy to chat to the woman, whose name was Glory, even going so far as to compliment her on the caterwauling she’d been subjecting us to.
“I
knew
you folk must be believers,” she said, beaming at us. “You on this road, headin’ west, and you gotta be goin’ to Graceland.” She finished scribbling on her pad, already heading for the kitchen, which we could see into behind the long counter, calling back over her shoulder, “You see the King, sugar, you be sure to done tell him Glory never lost the faith, now. We know he ain’t dead. It’s all some gov’ment conspiracy. Yes sir.”
“Of course,” my father said gravely. “I’d be delighted to pass on your message.”
“‘Delighted,’ huh?” She laughed and shook her head as she slapped in our order. “You sure talk pretty, sugar.”
My father waited until she was out of earshot, then looked at the rest of us, totally puzzled. “The king of where?” he said.
Once we’d stopped, it was hard to get going again. We drove for another couple of hours before Sean finally caved and agreed that we needed to rest up until morning. By that time, we were just approaching Little Rock and night had fallen hard on Arkansas. The city looked very bright as it loomed on the horizon, initially beautiful against the utter black. It was only when we got nearer that the glitter seemed to take on a slightly tarnished quality.
We picked out a small nondescript chain hotel near the airport. It was close to the interstate and promised Jacuzzi rooms, free HBO movies, and a business center.
We left the Camry under the impressive portico at the front entrance while we gave the woman on the desk a sob story about having our passports and wallets stolen. We assuaged her immediate suspicions by producing a large enough cash deposit to counterbalance any qualms that we were about to trash the place and skip out. I think our air of bone-deep weariness mixed with English respectability won her over.
She gave us adjoining rooms, told us what time the complimentary breakfast would be laid out in the lobby, and had already wished us a pleasant stay before it occurred to her that might be difficult.
As we trudged back out to fetch our luggage I was aware of being so tired my vision was vibrating with the effort of keeping my eyes focused. I noted the movements of the people in the lobby almost on autopilot. If someone had pulled an Uzi out from under his coat I would have seen it, but I was probably too far gone to comprehend what it meant.
More than twenty-four hours sitting in a car without sports seats made me feel like someone had been kicking me repeatedly in the base of my spine. I was praying that, sometime sooner rather than later, the nerves into my left thigh would overload and shut down.
Walking out of the hotel, I could feel the gathered heat releasing from the ground up into the darkness. The night air was hot, and humid enough to drink, sticking my shirt to my back almost instantly. Sean popped the boot and he and my father grabbed the bags while my mother wheeled out a luggage trolley from the lobby.
It was only as Sean swung my bag up with the others that I remembered I hadn’t re-zipped it fully after our last stop. I stretched out a hand, but I was too tired and too slow. The little brown plastic bottle of Vicodin I’d stuffed just inside the top of the bag went spinning onto the ground and rolled to a stop by my father’s foot.
He picked it up before I could stop him, recognized the type of the bottle and scanned the label automatically. He was halfway through handing it back when he stopped, frowning, and looked up at me.
“These are yours, I assume, Charlotte?” he said. He held the pill bottle top and bottom with a disdainful finger and thumb and shook it gently, gauging the level of the contents by the resultant rattle.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for the bottle, but he whisked it out of reach. Fatigue is not a good sedative for temper. Mine lurched into life, leaving blotches of vivid color splashed behind my eyes. I held my hand out. “Do you mind?”
“That my daughter’s on Vicodin? Certainly,” he said. He shook the bottle again and peered at the date on the label. “And, it would seem, consuming them at a rate of knots. How long have you been taking these?”
I glanced to Sean for support, but he had that closed-up look to his face. He didn’t need to speak for me to see his mind working it out.
“On and off,” I said bluntly, “since I was shot.”
“I see. Naturally, you are aware that Vicodin is addictive if taken long term.”
“Of course I am,” I said, aiming for haughtiness but not making it much past defensive instead. “I don’t use them regularly—just when I need to. When my leg’s bad.”
Like now. Give me the damn bottle!
“Were you taking them the day you passed your physical?” Sean asked suddenly, and the unexpected coolness of the question took me by surprise. Our closeness in the car, our solidarity, suddenly evaporated in the face of his veiled accusation.
“I—”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, both of you, leave the poor girl alone!” my mother said. “Don’t you think she’s got enough on her plate without you both jumping on her over this?”
“I’m sorry if you feel that the danger of our daughter turning into a drug addict is something we should just ignore, Elizabeth,” my father said.
My mother laughed. It was a bone-tired laugh, with a touch of hysteria skimming just under the surface. “Of course we shouldn’t ignore it, but I hardly think this is the time or the place to make it into an issue, either,” she said stoutly. “How many times have you told me people make bad decisions when they’re in pain? Surely you agree that’s the last thing any of us want at the moment—least of all Charlotte?”
“Vicodin is a mix of acetaminophen and hydrocodone,” my father bit out. “Hydrocodone is a narcotic pain reliever and acetaminophen increases its efficiency. Among the many possible side effects are impaired reactions and reduced mental alertness. In other words, it can severely affect the decisionmaking process. One has to be careful about letting a patient drive, or operate machinery. But you’re quite happy for Charlotte to be running around with
that,
” he said, gesturing dismissively in the direction of my hidden SIG, “and very little compunction about using it, when she’s on this type of medication?”
My father must have been tired, too. It was the first time I think I’ve ever heard him sound so testy with her, but my mother was undaunted. She drew herself up straight as a duchess and treated him to a lofty stare.
“And have Charlotte’s actions so far shown her to be anything but entirely rational?” she asked with brittle dignity. She allowed herself a shaky smile. “Terrifyingly so,” she added, and her voice softened. “Whether we like it or not, Richard, our lives are in Sean’s and Charlotte’s hands and I, for one, am prepared to trust her judgment implicitly.”
My father gave a single muffled tut, the only outward sign of his annoyance. He glanced at Sean, as if for support. I didn’t expect for a moment that he’d get it.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were still taking painkillers, Charlie?” Sean said quietly.
My brain was working too sluggishly to do more than gape at him for a moment. “Don’t start, Sean,” I snapped. “Nothing I’m taking has stopped me from doing my job. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, but are you doing it in spite of the Vicodin?” he said. “Or because of it?”
My mother stepped between us and put an arm around my shoulders. “Be sensible and leave it for now, Sean,” she said gently. “We’re all tired enough to say things we’ll regret in the morning. Come along, Charlotte,” she murmured steering me towards the hotel entrance. “I think for once we can forget equality of the sexes and leave the men to bring in the luggage, hm?”
I shrugged her arm away. “I can still do my job,” I said, dogged, stepping away from her and struggling not to stagger.
“Of course you can, darling,” she said, “but at what cost?”
As we walked through the automatic doors into the lobby, I glanced back and saw Sean and my father, still by the open boot of the car, watching us. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, I noticed, unconsciously presenting a united front. Ironic that the first time they were in any kind of accord, it was to team up against me.
We slept like the dead, all of us. Ten straight hours. When I woke, I reached out a hand and found Sean’s side of the bed already empty but still warm from his body heat. When I lifted my head I heard the sound of running water in the shower, and I rolled over slightly to check the time on the digital clock by the bed. It was 6:08 A.M.
And as I moved, I noticed something else on the bedside table that hadn’t been there when I’d crawled into bed the night before—my bottle of Vicodin. For a moment the fear ran through me that perhaps Sean had junked the contents, to prove some kind of a point. I reached out and picked it up. The plastic bottle had some weight and I couldn’t help the sense of relief that went with that discovery.
“If you need them, take them,” Sean said from the bathroom doorway. I hadn’t noticed the water shutting off. The light was a little behind him, so his face was in shadow. He had one bath towel wrapped loosely round his hips and was wiping his neck with another.
I felt something hard and frozen tighten at the center of me. “For the moment,” I said baldly, “yes, I think I do.”
“I know,” he said, moving so he was in the light. His eyes were very dark and very cold. “But when we get back to New York, you are going to come off them. And if you need help to do that, we’ll get it for you.”
My chin came up and I met his gaze steadily. “I’m not hooked, Sean,” I said. “I won’t need any help.”
He regarded me for an elongated moment, then nodded just once.
“Okay” was all he said.
The business center was deserted when we went down to the lobby, so Sean was able to log on to the e-mail account Parker had given us without fear of anyone looking over our shoulder. There were two e-mails in the Inbox from the nondescript address Parker had set up for himself. Not worried about downloading viruses, Sean opened the first one.
Parker had clearly spent some time digging into Storax—background and financials. The number of zeros on the end of their annual profit figures had my eyes crossing.
“French parent company,” Sean muttered, scanning the highlights. “Subsidiaries in Germany, Switzerland and the Far East, as well as the U.S. government contracts for bird flu and anthrax vaccines. Fingers in lots of pies.”
“Well, Collingwood told us they had clout,” I said, “and he had no reason to lie about that.”
“Habit?” Sean suggested. He kept scrolling down. “Ah, here we are—Terry O’Loughlin. Bit sketchy, but I don’t suppose Parker wanted to raise any flags.”
The information Parker had uncovered simply said that Terry O’Loughlin had been listed as an employee of Storax Pharmaceutical for the past five years, and was registered as living alone at an address in an affluent suburb of Houston.
“Looks like they pay their legal people pretty well,” Sean murmured. O’Loughlin drives a two-year-old Porsche 911 GT3” To make identifying our subject easier, Parker had included the registration number of the car and the color—Guards red.
“If we’re going to try approaching this guy, we might be better confronting him at home,” I said. “We stand a better chance than trying to force our way into Storax’s headquarters, at any rate. My breaking and entering skills are somewhat limited.”
“Yeah,” Sean said with the ghost of a smile. “One day, when we’ve got time, I’ll show you how to do the job properly.”