“OK, I’ve located Ms Raybourn,” the receptionist said, smiling at me. “She’s with Mr Brown at the moment, then she’s due for a massage and a facial after lunch.”
Randy glanced at me with something akin to respect. If my mother was important enough to have meetings with the main man, his look clearly said, I’d gone up in his estimation.
“Where’s Mr Brown’s office?” I asked. “I’ll just go and kinda wait until she’s done there.”
“He’s upstairs and I have instructions not to disturb him,” the receptionist said, still smiling but with a touch more steel than before. “If you’d like to wait out by the pool, I’m sure someone will let you know when she’s done.”
I plastered on a cheery smile and cursed inwardly as Randy led me through the clubhouse itself and out to a paved terrace overlooking a curvy pool with a waterfall and a bar in the centre.
Kids were running round the water’s edge, shrieking the way only small children can to signify enjoyment. Their parents were sitting in the water drinking lurid coloured cocktails made with half a fruit salad and half a dozen little paper umbrellas. If drowning their sorrows in drink didn’t do the trick, there was always the real thing to fall back on. Or into.
But this didn’t get me any closer to Gerri Raybourn. And it was much too public for what I had in mind.
Something was folded tight inside now, clamouring to be allowed out. For the first time I was afraid of what might happen if I let it loose. I pushed away that fear.
Randy was making moves to disentangle himself. I could see his greedy eyes flickering over the likely-looking purchasers who were being assigned to other salesmen. I could see him calculating his lost commission with every second he wasted on me. My best hope was slipping away.
As he started to turn I reached out and clasped his arm. He tensed under my fingers instantly, trying to make the most of his biceps. Pride was always a useful vanity to exploit.
I gave him my most wheedling smile.
“You’re not leaving me already, are you?” I said, a little breathless. “Only, it’s kinda hot and crowded out here.” I tugged at the collar of my shirt to demonstrate the effect of the heat and the crowds. I loosened a couple of buttons in the process. His eyes followed for a moment, lingered. Encouraged, I even tried a quick flutter of the eyelashes, ladling on the innuendo. “Isn’t there anywhere, like,
Inwardly, I was flinching. Surely nobody would ever fall for such a blatantly awful pickup as this.
For a moment Randy studied me with a slightly narrowed expression. I could almost hear the wheels turning as he made up his mind whether a quick fumble he could boast about in the changing rooms at his local sports club tomorrow was worth missing out on a possible lucrative deal. It only took him a couple of seconds before he decided that it was.
“Well, OK honey,” he murmured, and he’d lowered the pitch of his voice as well as the volume. “I guess I could give you the—” his eyes dipped to my cleavage again, “—
I simpered and followed as he led the way back inside. He was hurrying now, his mind totally controlled by some other part of his anatomy.
He hustled me down a short corridor and tried two offices before he found one that was unoccupied, the lights switched off. As soon as the door was locked behind us he had me backed up against a filing cabinet, his hands everywhere. Jesus, here was a boy who didn’t need to be asked twice. He had the bad breath of a smoker, despite those gleaming white teeth.
I locked down my revulsion somewhere round my back teeth, hardly feeling it. Under the surface I was crackling like a high tension power line in the rain. The further into this course of action I got, the less chance there was of turning back. I had to go through with it.
What was more, I wanted to.
I wrenched my mouth free, turning my head away enough to mutter, “Wait. I got something in my bag for you.”
I managed to get my arms inside his and lever him away. Looked like he really did live up to his name. He let go of me with reluctance and watched as I reached into the bag.
“You sure came prepared, huh?” he said thickly, giving me a knowing leer.
“Yep, I sure did,” I muttered.
When my hand came out of the bag again, the SIG was in it. I had to wedge the end of the barrel against Randy’s breastbone and prod him back with it before I finally got his full attention. I wiped his slobber from my mouth with the back of my other hand.
“Hey! What’s going on?” he blustered, too annoyed yet by the sudden interruption to be as frightened as he should have been. “What’s your game, honey?”
“I am not your ‘honey’,” I bit out, dropping all pretence at the American accent. I shoved him backwards and circled so I was between him and the door. For the first time he began to show alarm.
“I want to know where Brown and Gerri Raybourn are,” I said, cold. I made a big show of racking back the SIG’s slide to chamber the first round. The noise alone made him recoil. “If you can’t tell me, I will shoot you and find somebody else who can.”
“I don’t know where they are!” he protested. “Jesus, lady, I’m just a freakin’ time-share salesman, y’know?”
I didn’t speak, just adjusted my grip on the SIG so the business end was centred about on the logo on the front of Randy’s shirt.
His face collapsed and he started to cry. “I just work here,” he sobbed. He reached out towards me with both hands, pleading, then thought better of it. “Hey, I got a wife and a baby.”
I recalled the ease with which he’d been persuaded into the office and the disgust rose.
“Stop giving me even more reasons to shoot you,” I snapped. I stepped back to one of the desks and picked up the phone receiver. “Just call your switchboard and find out where Brown is.”
“That’s it?” he said, pathetically hopeful now. “That’s all I have to do and then you let me go, right? You don’t hurt me?”
Letting him go was going to be a tricky one. He was the type who would swear on his mother’s grave that he would stay quiet, then scream for security the moment he was out of range.
“Just make the call, Randy,” I said.
I stayed close up behind him while he dialled the switchboard operator. Mr Brown, she told him, was on his usual extension, but he was on a call. Would he hold?
I pressed my finger down firmly on top of the phone, cutting him off, then peeled the receiver out of his hand and dropped it back on its cradle.
“Hey, you promised I could go,” he said. His tears had vanished now, his bravado starting to come back with a touch of belligerence, too.
“Take me to him,” I said.
When he made to argue I brought the gun up a little more firmly into view. This time when his eyes followed it they had a hint of cunning to them, as though he was waiting for his chance. What better way to serve his grasping ambition than to save the boss from some gun-wielding nutcase.
It seemed a shame to disillusion him.
“You watch the news much, Randy?” I asked.
He shook his head, nerves making him babble. “A little, y’know. Mostly I’m a sports kinda guy. I just catch the headlines.”
“Uh-huh. And have you seen any reports about an English girl who’s been shooting people left, right and centre over the last couple of days?”
As soon as I said it, it clicked. I saw it in his suddenly bone-white face. He nodded. I never thought all that bad publicity would come in so useful.
“Just bear that in mind,” I murmured as I pushed my whole hand, still gripping the gun, back into my bag to keep it out of sight, “if you should think about doing anything stupid or heroic on the way to Brown’s office, hmm?”
A lamb now rather than a lion, the salesman led me out of the office, back down the corridor and into a lift across the hallway. We only went up one floor but Randy obviously didn’t like to walk.
