First Drop

Walt led the pair of us through to the living area and gestured us into the two sofas that faced each other across a shaggy rug and a glass-topped wicker coffee table. We followed him with neither quite wanting to offer our unprotected back to the other.

As we sat there Andrew regarded me for a few moments with a stony face, then he gave a snort of bitter amusement.

“I’ve come across some fugitives from justice in my time, Fox,” he bit out, shaking his head, “but I gotta hand it to you. You have to be one of the coolest.”

“Maybe that’s because I haven’t done anything I didn’t have to,” I returned. I waited a beat, then added, “Andrew,” to the end of it.

“That’s Special Agent in Charge Till to you, missy,” he shot back.

Special Agent in Charge no less. So he was FBI too, and not just a foot soldier. Nice to keep it in the family, Walt.

The old man held his hand up for peace. “Now, now, Andrew,” he said gently. “You’ve been busting to speak your mind all through breakfast, so let’s hear the worst of it.”

“This – person,” his nephew said delicately, not taking his eyes off me for a second, “is wanted for just about everything from kidnapping to homicide, including in connection with the shooting of a police officer down in Broward County. We’ve got half the cops in the state working on locating her and the Pelzner boy. And what you’re doing now by giving her shelter, Uncle Walt, constitutes a serious felony, as you are well aware.”

“You going to bring me in, son?” Walt asked, his voice mild. Andrew flicked him a single barbed glance.

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I asked with just a smear of taunt to the question, “Or doesn’t that apply here in the Land of the Free?”

Andrew’s face darkened but he didn’t rise to it.

Walt, meanwhile, had turned his attention over towards the kitchen, where Trey was dutifully wiping plates dry and being very careful not to drop any.

“I may be a little rusty these days,” Walt murmured, “but the boy sure doesn’t look like he’s being held against his will.”

Andrew allowed his eyes to slide in that direction for a couple of seconds. When he looked back, he was frowning.

“If your theory is right,” I said, neutral. “I’ve had him for less than four days. If you’re going to play the Stockholm Syndrome card and try to say that I’ve brainwashed him, or that he’s formed an unusual attachment to his captor in such a short time, you’re going to struggle like hell to make that one stick.”

Walt’s face didn’t show his sudden amusement outright, but I thought I detected a certain twinkle. “You have to admit, she’s got a point,” he allowed.

Andrew studied his uncle’s expression and sat back with a frustrated gesture.

“Perhaps if you’d seen this lady’s record you wouldn’t be so ready to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said sharply, then started rapping out the facts. He didn’t falter and he didn’t need to refer to any notes. Nice to see I’d made such an impression since I’d arrived in the US.

“British Army background. Expert marksman – well that didn’t take much working out. Selected for Special Forces. Then it all goes wrong and she ends up with a dishonourable discharge. How am I doing so far, Fox?”

“That’s Miss Fox to you, laddie,” I drawled, mainly to hide the growing unease. I liked my privacy as much as the next person. In fact, considering what my past contained, probably more.

He brushed aside my calculated insolence and kept going. “So after that she’s scratching a living teaching unarmed combat. Gets herself involved in a drugs racket. Year before last she ends up killing a guy – with her bare hands, for Christ’s sake!”

“It was self defence,” I gritted. “I was cleared of any blame.”

“Yeah well, looks like the courts over in good old England get it wrong sometimes too, huh?” he batted straight back, keeping his gaze on Walt now, working to convince him. His body was very still as he talked, as though he was putting all his effort into his voice. “Then there’s the part she played in a major civil disturbance last fall. There was a shooting there too, wasn’t there, Fox?”

I opened my mouth but he didn’t give me the chance to speak. “We did a search with Interpol and, surprise surprise, her name pops up again. Trouble in Germany. More shootings. Either you’re one unlucky lady, Fox, or you’re a magnet for trouble.”

“I was cleared,” I said again, more quietly this time. “You want to know what really happened with half that lot? Get in touch with Lancashire Constabulary back in the UK and speak to Detective Superintendent John MacMillan. I’m sure he’ll be willing to tell you all about the people I didn’t kill. The ones whose lives I actually helped save.”

MacMillan’s name was a surprise, I saw, but whether it was because it was familiar or whether the rank impressed him, I couldn’t tell. He regarded me gravely.

“I suppose you reckon you have a believable explanation of the events of the past few days, do you?” he asked quietly. “Just like that?”

“I’ll give it a go,” I said, calmer now. “It may not be believable to you, Special Agent in Charge, but it’s the truth so it’s the best I’ve got. Tell me, how much do you know about the workings of the stock market?”

***

It took a while to tell the full story. The FBI agent made rapid notes in a pocket book and only interrupted me twice. The first time was when I went through the attack on the young cop by the two men in the Buick. As soon as I mentioned shooting the guy who’d been in the passenger seat, Andrew looked up and said, “Shot him with what?”

“A SIG Sauer nine-mil,” I said, not making any moves to show it to him. “You’ll have found four empty casings at the scene, by the driver’s door of the Mercury. They’d already put us off the road by then and the cop was already dead,” I added pointedly. “The men in the Buick were using something fairly hefty. I didn’t get a clear look, but I would guess at possibly three-fifty-sevens. Large calibre handguns have their own distinctive sound. Oakley man – the guy at the theme park – had a forty-cal, like the one you carry yourself. Whitmarsh and Chris were both using nines at the motel.”

He paused a second, looked as though he might throw in another query, then nodded and went back to his notes.

Walt brought fresh coffee but it went cold on the table in front of us. At one point I glanced over and found that Harriet and Trey were standing by the kitchen cabinets, the crockery all put away now. They were listening to every word. The boy was white-faced, as though hearing about it again made it all that bit more real. Harriet had her arm around his shoulders.

Andrew’s second interruption came when I got to the part about the shoot-out at Henry’s place. As soon as I was done he demanded the details then relayed the information to his colleagues in a short phone call. He didn’t, I noted with relief, explain to them where the information had come from.

I gathered from his reaction that nobody had connected the incident at Henry’s with my much-reported killing spree. I wondered how Oakley man had explained away his involvement. If he’d known about Xander’s call to the emergency services did that mean he’d been on duty at the time? But if so, why hadn’t he been in uniform? Was he really a cop?

Well, I suppose now was my chance to find out.

“. . . uh-huh. Get back to me as soon as you have it,” Andrew rapped out now and finished the call without saying goodbye. One of the benefits of being in charge, it seemed, was an ability to dispense with normal politeness.

“Oakley man is the only one I can’t work out in all this,” I said. “He was one of the two cops who brought Trey home from the Galleria, but that was down in Fort Lauderdale. I assume he really is a cop, but if so what’s he doing responding to emergency calls in Daytona Beach? Somebody must be able to identify him.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me how to do my job, Fox,” Andrew said. “You let me worry about the peripheral players in this scenario, huh?”

“‘Peripheral players’?” I echoed smartly. “He’s one of the major players. Either he’s