“Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste the round.”
I lurched back as the adrenaline boost drained away, almost collapsed against the wall near the doorway to the corridor. My left thigh burned and I resisted the urge to grab at it. I was damned if I was going to show more weakness in front of him.
As soon as we’d burst in, the girl had scuttled onto the rumpled bed by the far wall and tucked her legs up close to her body, head buried against her knees and her arms wrapped tightly round them. If you look insignificant enough, and you can’t see the monsters, maybe they will leave you alone.
Her submissive posture angered as much as it disturbed me. There was a thin dark red robe on the floor that was trying to be silk but was as artificial as the madam’s breasts downstairs. I leaned down, snatched it up and threw it across to her. She stopped rocking just long enough to clutch it in front of her body.
“Well, well,
My father darted him a savage glance but didn’t reply. The area around his cheekbone had already begun to swell, puffy. I hadn’t broken the skin but he was going to have a hell of a bruise.
Still clinging to that brittle dignity, he retrieved his tie from where the girl had dropped it in her flight, fed it back through his collar, and began reknotting it. His movements were apparently calm and sedate, but it was little more than a thin veneer. I could see the shake of his hands, the pulse in his jaw.
“So, you still think you don’t owe me any kind of explanation?” I said.
He refastened his cuff links and reached for the jacket he’d laid across the back of a narrow chair. The suit had been tailor-made for him by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row and fitted to perfection, in devastating contrast to the decayed dilapidation of that tawdry little room.
“I owe you nothing, Charlotte,” he said then, and his arrogance was astounding. “I make my own choices. I won’t ask how you found me—invading people’s privacy seems to be second nature to you—but I most certainly do not need your approval for my actions.” He allowed his lip to curl just slightly. “Nor do I require you to accompany me.”
He stilled. “Get out, Charlotte,” he said coldly. His eyes skated over Sean, who’d been standing watchful and silent during the exchange. “And take your nasty little bully boy with you.”
Sean shrugged off the insult and started for the door. As he passed, my father gestured to the gun Sean carried with an expressive flick of his fingers.
“Violence. Is that the only thing you people understand?”
We’d caught him in a run-down brothel with a naked teenage hooker and still he tried to take the high ground.
“Perhaps it is,” I said, not moving. “So how’s this for violence? If you don’t walk out of here with us, right now, I’ll knock you senseless and carry you out—and, believe me, it would be a pleasure. Either way, you’re leaving.”
His spine straightened. “You can’t.”
“Oh, don’t tempt me.”
“No, you
I registered the edge of panic in the rising tone with something akin to wonder. Of all the emotions he’d shown since we’d entered that room and exposed him, this was the first hint of fear.
“I can’t leave you here,” I said, without pity. “If my mother—”
“That’s just it.” He grasped the reference like a talisman. “Your mother. If you feel anything for your mother, Charlotte, then just leave me here and go before it’s too late. Please.”
“Too late? What the hell are you—”
Then, from underneath us, we heard crashing and highpitched screaming and loud voices bellowing commands. Sean and I ran into the corridor. About halfway along was a narrow window with a view down into the alleyway. When we looked down, all we could see were the flashing lights on top of the squad cars.
“Oh. Shit,” Sean muttered. His eyes met mine. There weren’t any other exits or we would have found them on our way up. The management was clearly more anxious about customers trying to skip out without paying, than they were about the possibilities of escape from a fire.
Sean picked the illegal Kel-Tec out of my nerveless grasp. Without having to watch his hands, he stripped the gun down to its frame and dumped it out of the window, where it fell five stories, straight into the open Dumpster by the entrance. His own weapon quickly followed. Nobody on the ground heard or saw a thing. Even so, I knew we were headed for deep, deep trouble.
We went back. My father hadn’t moved, but someone had hit fast-forward and he’d aged maybe twenty years. His face was gray in the dull light. “It’s the police,” I said. “The place is being raided.”
My father nodded, mildly resigned, as though I’d told him it looked likely to rain, and the sudden realization hit me that somehow he’d known this was going to happen. The girl continued to rock gently on the bed.
And we waited, the four of us, for the thunder of boots on the stairs.
“Well, congratulations, guys. I do believe this will go down in history as a screwup of monumental proportions,” Parker Armstrong said. He raised a tired smile that lost heart long before it reached his eyes. “As I understand it,” he added with morose humor, “they can see it from space.”
We were in the conference room at the agency. High-tech and spotless, it had been furnished with an eye to luxury and none at all to cost. The suspended ceiling seemed to hang in a cloud of ice blue neon, perfectly highlighting the swirling grain of the maple wall panels. At one end was a projector screen for presentations. It was rarely used, but I knew for a fact the sound system that went with it had cost more than my last house.
Parker was in the power seat at the top end of half an acre of mirror-polished table. Sean and I were shoulder-to-shoulder about halfway along, with Bill Rendelson scowling ferociously at us from the other side.
We’d been offered a seat but preferred to stand. I had to fight the urge to do so at attention. Back straight up, arms straight down so my thumbs were precisely in line with the seams of my leather jeans, knees just slightly bent so I could hold the position for hours if I had to. Only the lack of dress uniforms prevented this from being an action replay of the travesty that was my court-martial.
I felt thoroughly dirty. We were both still wearing the same clothes we’d been arrested in, roughly twenty- eight hours earlier. If it hadn’t been for some fancy footwork on the part of Parker’s legal team, we would probably still be in jail.
The last glimpse I’d had of my father was of him being bundled, handcuffed, into the back of a police cruiser. I’d asked the lawyer who’d got me out what had happened to him, but the man seemed to be billing by the word as well as the minute and my credit was obviously running short.
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware that I was starting to sound like a scratch mix. “But don’t blame Sean for any of this. I’m the one who dragged him into it.”
“Aw, come on, Charlie.” Parker sat back, his voice almost gentle in its admonition, even if his body language betrayed his impatience. “You know as well as I do that Sean makes his own decisions.”
“Of course,” I agreed quickly, before Sean could jump in, “but nevertheless, this was—and should have remained—a family matter.”
“‘Family matter’—is that so?” Parker echoed sharply. “You make it sound like some kind of sick tradition. Does your father always take you along when he goes visiting cheap hookers?’Cause that’s just plain wrong.”
He waited to see if I had anything better to offer him. I did not. A few days ago I would have laughed at the idea of my father even looking at another woman, never mind paying her for sex. Now it was like dealing with a total stranger who’d somehow taken up residence behind his tight-lipped face.
“Or maybe he doesn’t have time.” Without taking his eyes off the pair of us, Parker reached out his hand and Bill hurried to smartly slap a folded newspaper into it, precise as a theater nurse handing over a pair of forceps.
