First Drop (3 page)

And something about the predatory way he moved sent the hairs rising on the back of my neck in a way no rollercoaster, however scary, would ever be able to do.

He was already closer to Trey than I was and moving closer still, focused on him, intent. His shirt was hanging loose outside his chinos but his right hand was stealing underneath the hem, going for something that was concealed at his waistband. Something I couldn’t see, but could certainly guess at.

I broke into a run, using my arms to pump up instant speed like a sprinter leaving the blocks. At the last moment Trey became aware of my full-pelt charge and looked up, startled out of his surly guise. Oakley man was watching his expression. He started to twist, head turning.

And that’s when I hit him.

I ducked my shoulder and caught him with a full body slam without breaking stride. I hit him hard and low, and was lucky to stay on my feet in the process. I was luckier still I didn’t snap my damned collarbone. He wasn’t carrying muscle bulk but he was solid, all the same.

Oakley man went down in an ungainly sprawl, letting go the .40 calibre Smith & Wesson he’d been unholstering as he went. The pistol clattered onto the concrete and spun out of both our reach under the legs of the nearest group of fleeing passers-by. I didn’t stop to wait for him to retrieve it, just hurdled his legs and kept on going.

I grabbed hold of Trey’s shirt by the front and the collar and hauled him sideways off the wall, ignoring his wail of protest. But for once, he didn’t argue about doing what I suggested, or going where I wanted him to go.

Out of there. Fast.

I pushed the kid ahead of me, trying to keep my body between his back and our unexpected attacker. I knew I should have just kept my head down and kept running, but I couldn’t resist a quick glance behind us.

Oakley man was still on the floor. His hat was missing but the sunglasses were still in place, giving his face a terrifyingly blank stare. Worse, he had managed to recover his gun. He was clasping it firmly in both hands and swinging the muzzle in our direction, heedless of the crowd.

Finding the nearest exit suddenly wasn’t as important as finding cover. I jerked Trey sideways just as the first two shots rang out, so close together the second report sounded like an echo of the first. After that I didn’t need to urge him to greater speed.

Panic ripped through the immediate vicinity. I’d heard people screaming all day but this was different. This was the real thing. A scattering became a stampede as everyone strove to get out of the firing line. In doing so they inadvertently put themselves directly into it.

Oakley man wasn’t deterred by having human obstacles in his way. He fired another two-shot salvo towards us just as a terrified woman darted across our path. Both rounds caught her in the body. The second passed straight through in an explosion of blood. She was so close to us that we were both splattered with it as she tumbled.

I didn’t even stop to check if she was dead.

In a heartbeat, Trey had shifted from pain in the backside to principal. My sole concern was to get him away from the source of the danger and to keep him alive. Nothing else mattered.

I’d automatically taken in enough of the park layout during the morning to know where to find the exits. The security guards we encountered on the way were too busy heading for the trouble-spot to try and detain us, despite our freakish appearance.

We bolted out through the turnstiles and I was suddenly glad Trey had insisted we pay for preferred parking so he didn’t have to walk from the far parking area to the front gate. Nevertheless, by the time we reached the Mercury Sable I’d been allocated the sweat had glued my polo shirt to my back and drenched through where it was tucked in to the waistband of my shorts.

I fumbled with the key in the door, then bundled Trey straight across the front bench seat into the passenger side, jumping in after him. As I jammed the key into the ignition and cranked up the engine my eyes were frantically searching the nearest rows of cars for the first sign of those wraparound shades.

I yanked the column-mounted gearlever down into drive and released the parking brake, chirruping the tyres as we set off. I forced myself not to put my foot down too hard on the way out. If Oakley man didn’t know what car we were driving, there was no point in making it obvious. My eyes constantly scanned the rear-view mirror.

Trey sat huddled in the corner of the passenger seat furthest away from me, his eyes wide and blank with shock. I knew I should do something to reassure him, but for the life of me I couldn’t think what.

“Put your seatbelt on,” I said instead, calmly. He threw me a disbelieving glance, but buckled up without demur.
Shit, he really
is
frightened
.

I followed the signs for the freeway doing my best not to exceed the posted speed limit. No cars seemed to be making an effort to get close to us. Still, I didn’t start to breathe again until we were on I-95 heading away from Fort Pierce, south towards Fort Lauderdale.

It was only then, as my heartbeat finally began to settle and my brain started to come out of survival mode, that the question returned of where I’d seen Oakley man before. It lurked brooding at the back of my mind, an itch I couldn’t scratch.

I pulled the mobile phone they’d given me out of my pocket, noticing for the first time the blood on my bare forearms, and I remembered again the woman who’d been shot in front of us. I glanced down and saw that her blood was all over the front of my pale fawn polo shirt as well, a livid splash of colour already turning dark as it dried. Trey had a few flecks, but I’d caught the brunt of it and looked like an extra from a Tarantino flick. No wonder he’d been unnaturally co-operative.

I hit the speed-dial for the house. Whitmarsh was in charge of house security and he was going to go ape-shit. But that was nothing to what my boss, Sean was going to do when he found out my low-risk babysitting job had ended in a full-scale assault. The fact that, technically, Whitmarsh had authority over Sean would make very little difference.

The Pelzners’ home number rang without reply, the endless long burr of the US phone system. I let it ring until it clicked off, then tried it again, checking carefully that I’d punched in the right number. I steered with one hand, flicking my eyes from the phone to the road. There was no mistake.

I tried Sean’s own personal mobile, but all I got was a recorded message telling me the number I was calling was switched off. I knew that the house was never empty and my boss never had his phone off without leaving it on divert or answering machine.

Right there, in a big car on a big stretch of open road in a big country, I suddenly began to feel very small, and very lonely.

And then, because I’d pushed it to some peripheral part of my brain, my mental retrieval system finally connected and spat out the information I’d been searching for. I remembered exactly where I’d seen Oakley man before and I wished to God that I hadn’t.

It was just about this time I realised how much trouble we were
really
in.

The first State Trooper flashed past in the opposite direction less than ten minutes after we left the park. He was going like hell, lights and sirens at full bore, in a black and tan Chevy Camaro. Even the cops out here had cool cars.

The distance across the grassy central reservation was such that he couldn’t have seen us in any detail. Hell, in London they would have built housing on a tract of land that size, but Trey still ducked down further in his seat.

“Are you OK?” I asked him, taking my eyes momentarily off the road, but he just hunched his shoulders in a jerky shrug and turned his face away. If he’d been alone, I realised, he probably would have been crying. If I’d been alone, maybe I would, too.

I sighed, trying not to snap at him for clamming up on me right when I needed him to tell me everything and anything he knew. And I was pretty sure he knew more than I did.

Still, for all his pseudo grown-up posturing he was still a kid. An immature kid, at that, and he’d just been through an experience that would have left most adults little more than a puddle of jelly on the floor mat. At least he’d held it together long enough to keep running.

But from what?

Even though I’d worked out who our assailant had been, that hadn’t got me much further forwards. I still had no idea why he’d been after Trey. Kill or capture? I wasn’t sure about that one either.

A stark, vivid snapshot of the woman who’d run in front of us exploded out of nowhere, action frozen at the moment when the bullets struck and the blood sprayed outwards. I hoped with all my heart that she had survived, but I couldn’t find it in me to feel more than fleeting concern for an unlucky stranger. A fractional shift of fate and timing and that could have – would have – been us. There but for the grace of God . . .

I gripped the steering wheel tighter in an effort not to lose all self-possession. I focused on my anger instead. It was much safer ground.

I’d been kept out of the information loop ever since I’d arrived in Florida. With the clarity of hindsight I wished I’d pressed for more background, but they’d just kept patting me on the head and fobbing me off. I’d let it go because I was aware of being new in the business and I hadn’t wanted to make waves, to come across as too pushy.

What a time to turn over a new leaf.

***

At the time of the abortive attack on Trey Pelzner I’d been in America for just four days. I’d flown into Miami International airport expecting a laid-back couple of weeks’ jaunt in the sun, and no trouble.

Officially, I’d been working for Sean Meyer’s exclusive close protection agency for six weeks by then. Unofficially, my involvement in the world of the professional bodyguard had begun at a dodgy training school in Germany shortly after New Year.

When that particular course had ended in disarray Sean had sent me off to study with various experts on a one-on-one basis. By the beginning of March they’d reckoned I was ready for my first assignment.

The Florida job had come up at short notice. I’d been away up in Lancashire visiting friends when Sean had phoned one morning and told me to get back down to King’s Langley fast, and to make sure I’d got my passport with me.

“Where am I going?” I’d asked, almost flustered. “What else do I need to bring?”

“Just pack some clothes for hot weather,” he’d replied. “We’re supplementing an existing security team and they’ll provide any equipment we need once we get out there.”

I heard the “we” rather than the singular and couldn’t help the relief. “Who’s the principal?”

“Nobody you’ve ever heard of, don’t worry – this is not a celebrity job,” Sean had said, and I could hear the lazy amusement in his voice. “It’s for a small software company based in Miramar in Florida. They’ve had some threats made against their staff and they’re getting jumpy, that’s all.”

I’d frowned. It didn’t exactly sound like cause for a mad dash halfway down country, let alone across the Atlantic. “So why are they bringing us in?”

“I came across the company’s director of security when I was teaching a hostage negotiation course in Virginia last year and we hit it off,” he’d said. “When they needed extra manpower, she came to me.”

She
, I’d thought, and tried to suppress the unexpected spike of jealousy. After all, I had been the one who was putting the brakes on the relationship Sean and I had tentatively agreed to resume. I had been the one who was being cautious to the point of timid. Hell, it had been more than two months and we hadn’t even made it to the bedroom.

There were times when I’d wondered if he still wanted me the way he once had, with that kind of desperate, all-consuming intensity. Was he just being considerate because of what he now knew I’d gone through, or did the wounds we’d both received at the hands of the army still run deep, even after five years?

Maybe I’d been just too proud, or too scared, to make the first move and find out. If it all went wrong this time, that would be the end of it.

“OK,” I’d said, checking my watch. “I’ll set off as soon as I’m sorted. I should be back down there in less than three hours.”

He’d restrained himself from reminding me that just shy of two hundred and thirty miles separated us. It may be colder, wetter, and more exposed, but riding a motorbike also means you don’t sit in traffic jams on the M6 all the way past Birmingham.

“That’s fine,” he’d said. “I’m just about to leave now, but Madeleine’s booked you on a flight out of Heathrow first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure she puts together some background info for you to read on the plane.”

But by the time the American Airlines 777 touched down in Miami the following afternoon I didn’t feel much more enlightened than I had done before I’d taken off. The promised dossier was scant, to say the least. Even from my limited association with Sean’s company, I knew he never took on a job without being fully aware of the facts. I wondered at his tie with this unknown female director of security, that he would drop everything for her to fly nearly five thousand miles apparently so ill-prepared.