Third Strike (4 page)
He’d taken a few of the top guys out on the town and had called in every spare operative on his books to provide a maximum force, minimum fuss, security detail for them. We’d gone to extraordinary lengths to be visible in the most unobtrusive manner possible.
Parker had put me working the inner ring, closest to the principals. Mostly, he’d done it because he was aware that women blended in much better in low-profile social situations than hulking great blokes. I’d certainly learned to dress like a young city exec since I’d been working for him. But it was also a good opportunity to show faith in me—admittedly without much risk. Either way, I was profoundly grateful.
Parker had kept Sean at the forefront, too, and he knew how to play the game when it came to sweet-talking potential clients. We’d taken them to watch the sun go down over cocktails in a rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue that had a great view of the Empire State Building, then gone on to eat in one of the best restaurants in trendy TriBeCa.
It could have been romantic, had we not been working, and had we not been in a group whose main characteristic was an ego to match the size of the investment portfolios they handled, and the cocky self-assurance that went with it.
So, Sean and I had hardly exchanged a word all evening, and nothing in private. We hadn’t even traveled home together. I’d changed at the office and taken the Buell, and Sean had stayed for the debrief with Parker and arrived by cab two hours later.
He’d got back to find me sitting curled up on the sofa in the airy living room, making a poor attempt to read a survival equipment catalog. I’d glanced up as he’d walked in stripping off his jacket and tie, unclipping the Kramer paddle-rig holster containing the .45-caliber Glock 21 he habitually carried. He was tall, deceptively wide across the shoulder without having the overdeveloped neck of a gorilla, and devastatingly but unself-consciously good-looking. My mouth had gone instantly dry at the sheer intensity of his face.
So it was only afterwards, as the cool air dusted the sweat from our bodies, that I finally had the chance to ask the question uppermost in my mind.
He shifted slightly and let his fingers drift along my spine, circling outwards to delicately trace the fading scar of the bullet wound in the back of my right shoulder.
“It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, Charlie, you know that,” he said gently. “But what you’ve been through changes you. Christ Jesus, you nearly died. It can’t not.”
“It was probably worse from the outside, looking in,” I said, knowing that was only partly true. “And anyway, I didn’t die.”
Hell, not long enough for it to count.
Hell, not long enough for it to count.
But as I said it I tried not to think about the Vicodin I’d taken before the start of the evening. I was too scared of getting hooked to take the painkillers regularly, but they’d successfully taken the edge off the ache that had plagued me all day.
I blocked out my father’s stinging comments.
You may be walking without a limp any longer, but your health will never be exactly what one might describe as robust again. A little light office work is about all you’re fit for.
You may be walking without a limp any longer, but your health will never be exactly what one might describe as robust again. A little light office work is about all you’re fit for.
Had Parker seen that? Is that why he’d made that comment about me being good at organization—because he wanted me to keep me reduced to nothing more?
Sean’s fingers stilled a moment and I realized I’d braced myself against the memory. I took a quiet breath and let my limbs float heavy.
“Depends on what you classify as normal, I suppose,” he said. “I’ve been there, too, don’t forget. I know how it changes your perception of things—of how far you can go—because you know what the ultimate consequences are for failing.”
“I know you’ve been hurt—shot, beaten, threatened with execution—but trust me, Sean, you have no idea,” I said, hearing the rough note in my voice.
His hands stilled again, then tightened around me, cradling my head. I felt his lips brush my hair, then one of his fingers trailed delicately down the side of my neck and across the base of my throat, following the faint line of an old scar that was another constant reminder never to drop my guard. Shame it hadn’t always worked.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “That was crass.”
“Yes it was. I can still function, you know,” I said, unwilling to let him off lightly. “I’m not completely socially stunted. Didn’t I prove that tonight?”
“You did,” he said. “In fact, you were so successful in
not
looking like a bodyguard that one of the prats from the bank actually asked if you were, ahem, part of the entertainment package.”
not
looking like a bodyguard that one of the prats from the bank actually asked if you were, ahem, part of the entertainment package.”
I stiffened for a moment, then a giggle escaped me and before I knew it we were both laughing.
“My God,” I said. “What did you say to that?”
“I told him, only if he was likely to find it
entertaining
to be disemboweled slowly through his navel.”
entertaining
to be disemboweled slowly through his navel.”
“I bet you didn’t.”
“You’re right, I didn’t,” he admitted. “I smiled as though he’d said something witty and informed him with excruciating politeness that you were one of our top operatives and that, if he valued certain parts of his anatomy, perhaps he shouldn’t repeat that kind of speculation within Parker’s earshot—or yours, for that matter.”
The amusement subsided and, just when I thought I’d got away with it, Sean asked quietly, “So, are you going to tell me what happened between you and Nick today?”
My turn to sigh. I rolled onto my back and stared up into the gloom while I recounted the news report I’d seen on TV, and the subsequent encounter with my father. I debated on editing the content slightly, but in the end it all came spilling out practically verbatim, until finally I talked myself to silence.
Somewhere in the grid of streets below us, a car cranked up and accelerated away. I listened to its blowing exhaust through two gear-changes before the noise was swallowed up by the background chatter of the city.
Sean still hadn’t spoken. I listened to the tenor of his breathing and smiled at the ceiling
“Stop it,” I said.
“What?”
“Gloating.”
“I never said a word.” He did injured innocence rather well. “Did I say a word?”
I rolled partway back so I could prop onto an elbow and look down at him. “You didn’t have to. I can hear you cackling from here. It’s very juvenile.”
He grinned outright then, wholly unrepentant. “Well come on, Charlie,” he said, not trying to hide the amusement that glistened in his voice. “Even you have to admit—after all that rampant disapproval—it’s bloody funny to find out your old man’s finally fallen off his high horse.”
“No,” I said slowly. “That’s the trouble—it isn’t funny. Even if I discounted half the things he said afterwards—”
“Which you can’t.”
I let my breath out fast, an annoyed gush. “Yeah, right, that’s easy for you to say. You haven’t spent half your life trying to get his attention and the other half wishing you hadn’t succeeded.”
“That’s just it,” he said, and he’d matched my tone. “I can view him as an outsider—God knows, he’s always done his damnedest to make me feel that way. He’s a coldhearted bastard at times, but he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to be vindictive. And he’s not a drunk.”
He tilted his head so I knew he was looking directly at me. I felt the prickle of it across my skin even though I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Reasons?”
He crooked one arm behind his neck to support it. “You’re physically fit. We both know that and, hell, he probably knew before we did. Calling you a cripple is gross exaggeration and he’s not a man prone to flights of fancy. So why did he say it? What did he hope to achieve?”
“O-kay,” I said, reluctantly absorbing his words. “But what about the drinking problem? How can you be so sure about that?”
He gave a soft, bitter laugh. “My father was a drinker, remember?”
I’d never met Sean’s father. Long before Sean and I first met, the man had been killed in an inebriated car crash, which wrecked his ambition to die of liver failure at the earliest age possible. By all accounts, he had not been a happy drunk. I squeezed Sean’s arm.
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” I felt him shrug. “All I meant was, I know the signs and your old man doesn’t have them. Besides, how long do you think he could keep the shakes quiet when he spends every day holding a scalpel?”
I sank back onto the sheets, frowning.
“But I heard him admit to it, completely unequivocally, on camera, and it’s the kind of admission that will totally ruin his career—if it hasn’t done already. Why the hell would he say that, if it’s not true?”
“Seems like he said a lot of things today that weren’t true,” Sean said. “You either accept he’s flipped his lid and we book him a nice padded room at Bellevue, or you go and bully the truth out of him.”
He paused and, though I couldn’t see his face clearly I could hear by his voice that the smile was back full strength. “After what you did to Nick today, I’d say you’ll have no trouble on that score.”
One of the things I quickly learned to love about New York was Central Park early in the mornings. I ran there, and whenever I could find an excuse, I detoured through it using one of the numerous sunken roads.
It was extravagance on a grand scale to have such an expanse of carefully created countryside tumbling down the spine of one of the most expensive areas of real estate in the world. Early on, I’d been staggered to discover that the park covered more than eight hundred tranquil acres. Not just the lungs of Manhattan, but the heart of it, too. New York is never entirely still. There’s always some part that twitches, shrieks or quivers. But Central Park is the closest thing to stillness that it has.
The leaves were just beginning to turn—losing their lushness and not yet fully ablaze—building up tension towards what I’d been promised would be a stunning autumn display.
I left behind the dog walkers and the power walkers and rode south down wide streets made narrower by the sheer height of the buildings on either flank. Brief flashes of sunlight splashed down between them as I wove through the spray of the sidewalk sweepers and the steam rising from the subway vents.
The Buell cantered lazily beneath me, all that bunched muscle constrained by no more than the slight rotation of my right wrist, bouncing gleefully over the generically appalling road surface. I eased back to let a stoplight drop from red straight to green at an intersection in front of me, then cranked on the power, feeling the shove in the small of my back as the rear tire bit deep. And it came to me, quite suddenly, that I was happy here. Content, even.
And I was
not
going to let my father’s bitter spill of lies spoil it for me.
not
going to let my father’s bitter spill of lies spoil it for me.
Because Sean was right—it was out of character. My father might well carry over the clinical detachment from his work into his family life, but he’d never been mean-spirited with it.
Until now.
By the time I reached midtown, traffic was starting to herd towards the morning crush, jostling to the usual accompaniment of Morse code horns. I ignored the halfhearted bleat from a yellow cab I caught napping in the inside lane—if I didn’t cause him to slam on the brakes, it didn’t count as obstruction—and pulled up on the opposite side of the street from my father’s hotel.
I let the bike idle by the curb for a moment, unzipping my sleeve to check with the Tag Heuer wristwatch Sean had bought me as a ‘Welcome to America’ present.
By it, I worked out I had roughly an hour before politics dictated I show my face in the office, even after a late-night assignment. Plenty of time for what I had to say.
I’d aimed to arrive at the hotel late enough not to rouse my father from his breakfast, but early enough to catch him before the most convenient and obvious of the morning flights to the UK, just in case he was planning to cut and run.
I eyed the same regal-looking doorman standing outside the front entrance and wondered if he’d still let me walk in unchallenged today, when I was in my motorcycle leathers.
Hm, probably not.
And just as I was debating my options, the mirrored glass doors to the hotel swung open and my father stepped out.
My first instinct was to abandon the bike and go to confront him right there. I’d got as far as reaching for the engine killswitch when another man stepped out of the hotel alongside him, keeping close to his elbow. The second man was dressed like a cheap businessman—but a cheap businessman who has his hair cut by a military barber. My hand stilled.
As I watched, my father slowed to glance across at the man with the buzz-cut, frowning. Uncertainty oozed from every pore of his skin like a sickness.
Buzz-cut moved like someone bigger than his size, with an utter physical self-assurance that almost bordered on brash. He never broke stride, simply drew level and hooked his hand under my father’s arm. Even from twenty meters away, I saw Buzz-cut’s fingers pinch deep into the delicate pressure points on either side of the elbow joint.
My father stiffened, first with outrage, then with pain. The shock of it knocked the fight out of him and he allowed himself to be swept forwards.
My first thought, when I saw the way the guy carried himself, was that Buzz-cut must be a cop. He had a tense alertness, a slightly hunched stance, like he was constantly expecting someone to throw the first punch.
But I didn’t think that even hardened NYPD detectives, would hustle someone of my father’s standing out of his hotel in such a way. If they’d wanted to break him down before questioning, then marching him through the lobby in handcuffs would have done it nicely. For some people, humiliation works better than a beating, any day.
Just as Buzz-cut succeeded in propelling my father to the edge of the curb, a black Lincoln Town Car drew up smartly alongside them. It was identical to the vehicle my father had climbed into after his abrasive encounter with the news reporter only the day before, but they were too common in New York for me to read much into that.
The driver pulled in fast, braking hard so my father’s companion had the rear door open almost before the car had come to a complete stop. It was smooth and precise and way too slick to be any kind of lucky coincidence. Buzz-cut must have called him in before they left the hotel lobby.
Their timing impressed me. I’d spent too much time micromanaging exactly this kind of rapid inconspicuous exfil not to recognize expert work when I saw it.
After that one brief show of resistance, my father allowed himself to be ducked into the backseat without further demur. I read the tension in his neck and upper body only because I knew to look. The doorman gave them a bored salute, oblivious.
Buzz-cut took a moment to scan the street before he climbed in, and there was nothing casual about that highly proficient survey. I felt his gaze land on me and linger. Even though I knew the iridium coating on my visor meant he couldn’t see my eyes, I had to fight the instinctive desire to break the contact too quickly.
Instead, I let my head turn away, nice and slow, and concentrated on my breathing, on relaxing my shoulders, letting my mind empty.
Not watching. Just waiting.
I was confident enough to know, as Parker had pointed out, that I was very good at blending into the scenery. The fact that this man took an extra second to check me out meant either I was losing my touch, or he was a real pro.
And—if he wasn’t the police—what did that mean?
I let the Lincoln get to the end of the street and make a left before I toed the bike into gear and followed. If the driver was as experienced as his companion, he’d spot a tail within a hundred meters.
As I shot through on a closing amber and launched into traffic, I flicked my headlights off. Usually, I never ride without them or most car drivers don’t know you’re there—right up to the point you go under their wheels.
But in this case, being seen was the last thing I wanted.
I kept half a dozen cars back from the black Lincoln, using the extra height the bike gave me to keep him in sight. The car had a cheap glass-mounted phone aerial, which had been stuck on haphazardly at the far right-hand side of the rear window. It was distinctive, and made them marginally easier to track.
Even so, I knew these guys were too good for me to stay undetected on their tail for long. I needed help and had no way to get it.
Sure, my mobile phone was tucked away in the inside pocket of my leather jacket, but it was no use to me there. I cursed the fact I hadn’t bothered to fiddle around getting the Bluetooth headset that went with it to sit comfortably inside my helmet before I’d set off. That was still in my pocket, too.
I wasn’t armed—unless you counted my habitual Swiss Army knife. Parker had enough clout to ensure both Sean and I received our coveted New York City concealed-carry licenses in very short order, but I didn’t routinely carry unless I was working. Although I was now the fully licensed owner of several firearms, they were all locked away either at the office or the apartment. I had no choice but to stick with my father as long as I could, and ad-lib after that.
Where are they taking you?
I wondered.
And—more to the point—why the
hell
are you letting them?
I wondered.
And—more to the point—why the
hell
are you letting them?
We threaded our way downtown and then, to my surprise, kept going. Over the Williamsburg Bridge and into Brooklyn. The Lincoln left the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at the first exit and carried on down Broadway into Bushwick, the area dropping by stages. Fortunes change fast in New York. Things can go from safe to scary in the length of a city block.
Inevitably, by hanging back far enough not to get made, eventually I got cut off at a light. I swore long and loud behind my visor as I watched the Lincoln disappearing into the blur of traffic ahead, wallowing over the ruts like an inflatable dinghy in a heavy swell. But, just when I thought I was going to lose them completely, the driver slowed up ahead and made a right. I pinpointed the location by the nearest signpost and dropped the clutch like a drag star the moment the light went green above me, forgetting for a moment how easily the sheer grunt of the Buell would whip up the rear tire.
Great, Fox. Draw attention to yourself, why don’t you?
I almost missed the side street where the Lincoln had turned. It was little more than an alleyway, with the obligatory overflowing Dumpster partially blocking the entrance, and a network of zigzag fire escapes caging in the narrow slot to the sky. I slowed long enough to spot the Lincoln stopped about halfway along, but didn’t follow.
Instead, I kept going, made two quick right turns to bring me out at the far side of the alley. It must have been a squeeze to get the fat Lincoln past the Dumpster in the first place and there was no way the driver would want to reverse out again so, logically, he’d exit here. After London’s intestinal mass of side streets, the U.S. grid pattern was a breeze.
I cut the Buell’s engine and was aware of the silence that rushed in to fill the vacuum as the throaty rumble died away. After a moment, somewhere behind me in one of the run-down warehouse buildings, something like a jackhammer was being put to work with enthusiasm. Other than that, the distant roar of traffic and the litter rolling gently across the cracked road surface, it was almost peaceful.
I paddled the bike backwards into a narrow gap between two huge boxy American cars, both of which had more rust than original paint. As I nudged the kickstand down and settled the bike onto it, I undid the strap on my helmet, reached for my phone. At least I’d remembered to charge it. Sports bikes are irritatingly short of cigarette lighter sockets when you get caught with a dead mobile.
Sean picked up on the second ring, as he nearly always did. I’d never yet seen him fumble for an awkward pocket.
“Meyer.”
“It’s me,” I said. “Want to take a guess where I am?”
There was a slight pause, then he said, “Well, I assume from the background noise that you aren’t naked in bed and covered in half a pint of whipped cream.”
“Yuck,” I said. “If that’s your fantasy, you can wash the sheets.”
“I’ll take that as a no, then.”
“Besides,” I went on, “you know full well where I was heading when I left home this morning. What kind of sick and twisted mind paints that kind of a scenario from a visit to my father?”
He laughed. “Hey, for all I know, your father has hidden depths.”
I glanced across at the alleyway. “Yeah, I rather think he’s plumbing new ones right now.”
Sean’s amusement snuffed out. “Tell me,” he said.
I described the scene outside the hotel, giving him as clear a picture as I could manage of the man with the buzz-cut who’d put my father into the Lincoln. Out of habit, I’d kept a mental note of the number of turns and lights since we’d crossed the bridge, so I could direct Sean to my current location with some precision, even if I couldn’t tell him exactly where
here
was.
here
was.
“Well, if your old man has a self-destruct button, looks like somebody pressed it,” he said when I was done. “And you’ve no idea who these guys are or what he’s up to with them?”
“No,” I said. “But the longer he’s in there, the worse feeling I get about the whole thing.”
“Okay, Charlie, listen to me. Sit tight and wait for backup. I’ll be with you as fast as I can. Do
not
go in until I get there, all right?”
not
go in until I get there, all right?”
“All right,” I agreed, but the reluctance must have shown.
“Promise me,” he said, and I knew from his tone he’d hold me to it.
I glanced at the open mouth of the alley again, just as movement caught my eye. A shifty-looking guy walked out, turning up the collar of his cheap jacket. He glanced both ways when he reached the open street, furtive. There were no passing cars and I didn’t think stepping out into traffic was what had him worried.
“I shouldn’t have let them lift him in the first place,” I said, hearing the stubborn note. “If he’s not out in twenty minutes, I’m going in after him—alone if I have to.”
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