“Seeing as how he’s so busy with his alcoholism and his euthanasia.” With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, Parker sent the newspaper skidding across the tabletop towards us, adding grimly, “And there’re one or two things here about
I reached out and stopped the paper sliding before it slipped over the edge onto the Italian tile, then unfolded it and scanned the story.
Somebody had been raking through the muck of my past history with a pretty fine mesh. They seemed to have caught just about all the most pungent bits of it, at any rate. My father’s current fall from grace was recapped with salacious glee, and my own alongside it. They built me up first—my army commendations, marksman certificates, trophies, Special Forces selection and high hopes—all the better to knock me down again. Laid out in the most lurid terms was the story of the vicious attack by four of my fellow trainees, the revelation of my affair with Sean, my ignominious expulsion.
Journalistically speaking, they picked over the carcass of my career and whooped as they waved the bones in the air. In their eyes, their words, I was damaged goods. They hinted in their snide way that either I had been brutalized out of my humanity, or that I was simply a product of my upbringing. And then they started in on my father again.
Sickened, I let the paper drop back down onto the surface of the table and glanced up. I could tell from the angle of his head that Sean had been reading it, too, and I knew Bill must have done so before he’d brought the paper through to Parker. I felt the heat steal up into my face.
Sean knew what had happened to me that freezing winter night, but only secondhand and at a distance. He’d been posted a few weeks before and it wasn’t until we’d met again, by chance, several years after the event that the truth had come out. And then he’d reacted both with anger and sorrow that had chilled me to the bone.
Now, he regarded Parker with a deadly gaze. “Do you think any less of Charlie because of what she went through?” he asked softly.
Parker shifted in his seat. “Hey, like I said, I’m not the issue here. But it looks like you and your dad are making headlines,” he said, focusing back on me. “This business he’s mixed up in with this dead doctor in New England is a hot story, and this just poured a truckload of gasoline right onto the flames. Nearly all the tabloids led with it.”
I winced. Sensing I was about to launch into another—longer and more profuse—apology, Sean cut in again.
“How bad’s the damage?”
“Bad enough,” Parker said flatly. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, slowly, pausing to squeeze the bridge of his nose before allowing the hand to drop away.
Bill’s face had darkened. “Besides all the questions about Fox’s colorful past,” he said, “we’ve been fielding accusations all day that we, as an agency, condone illegal activity by our clients and turn a blind eye to whatever they do while they’re under our protection.” He spoke without inflection, but the words were more than enough on their own.
Parker let out a breath, wry. “I think our legal bills this week will be enough to put both my lawyer’s kids through college.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, narrowly resisting the urge to hang my head. “Easy for me to say, Parker, I know, but I am. If I hadn’t believed my father was in genuine danger, I never would have gone in there in the first place.”
“Hell, I know that, Charlie,” he said. That weary smile again. His disappointment was harder to take than his anger would have been. “I knew when I hired you—both of you—that you were not the type to walk away from a situation, and I wouldn’t ask you to. I’m just having a real bad day.”
Something in his tone alerted me and I was aware of a plummeting sensation in the pit of my stomach, like an express lift or the first long drop of a roller-coaster ride. And I knew.
“The banking people pulled out,” Sean said suddenly, as though he’d been plugged straight into my central nervous system, too. It was not a question and I saw from both Parker’s and Bill’s faces that it didn’t need to be.
Parker opened his mouth, frowning, then shut it again and shook his head a little.
“I had a call this morning,” he admitted, “from the personal assistant to the personal assistant to the CEO— not the guy himself—informing me that they were reconsidering their options. Which is doublespeak for ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I guess.”
“I’m—” I began.
“—sorry. Yeah, I know,” he finished for me. “Question is, what do we do about it?”
“Well, can’t you re-present to the bank?” I said. “Won’t they let you explain the circumstances behind what happened and—”
“Do you want us to go?” Sean cut in, chopping me off in mid-breath as well as mid-sentence. “If it would cause you the least embarrassment to be seen to take decisive action, I won’t hold you to the agreement we have.” He paused, impassive, as though this didn’t mean everything to him when I knew plainly that it did. I knew what it was costing to keep his voice so coolly polite, indifferent, and—from Parker’s sudden immobility—he did, too.
For a moment neither man spoke. Bill twitched, as though desperate to put it to a vote and I knew which way he’d go. The silence stretched, gossamer thin in the over-dry, purified and conditioned air.
“For God’s sake,” Parker said at last, “will you take that damned stick out of your ass long enough to sit down? Both of you,” he added. “No, I don’t want you to go, okay? If you hadn’t been on board, Sean, we wouldn’t have stood a chance with the bank in the first place. This dies down fast, maybe they’ll come around. And if not, fuck’em. There’ll be other clients.” He gave a rueful little smile. “But not if we don’t figure this out—pronto.”
Parker rarely used bad language and, when he did, he sounded uncomfortable, as though it was something he felt was required of him rather than coming from the gut. There was more than a hint of bravado there, too. I knew what he’d put into trying to secure this contract and losing it would cost more than money. It was a question of face. In this game, reputation was everything.
I thought of the months of hard work, of the investment that had just been laid to waste and I wondered, had the positions been reversed, if I would have been so gracious. Probably not, I realized with a certain sense of shame. After all, my father had screwed up big-time as well, and look how I’d reacted to him … .
Without speaking, both Sean and I reached for the nearest chairs, slumping into them. As soon as I relaxed, my leg started muttering about being overworked and underpaid. Below the level of the tabletop, I surreptitiously jammed my thumb and forefinger hard into the muscle along the front of my thigh in an effort to persuade the nerves to gate.
Parker glanced at the pair of us, almost defiant, the hint of a smile lurking at the edge of his mouth. “So, Charlie, question is, what do we do about the situation with your dad?”
Across from us, Bill made a sound, like he was clearing his throat, but it could have been a growl. It was pretty clear that his choice of immediate action would have been to have both of us flayed alive and thrown off the roof of the building.
“‘We’?” I queried.
“I need this situation contained, and I need it contained fast,” Parker said. “I thought your dad was a well- respected guy. When we hired you, our searches on your family”—and he smiled slightly in apology “—came up clean. What the hell happened over the last six months?”
“I’m as amazed by his behavior as anyone else,” I said. “I dread to think how my mother’s going to react when …”
My voice trailed off slowly before I could finish. I felt three pairs of eyes swivel in my direction but I didn’t see them. My sight had turned inwards, riffling through the disordered filing cabinet of memories and senses.
“Oh my God,” I murmured. “My mother …”
“Do you think your mom even knows what’s happening?” Parker asked, not quite catching it. “If she doesn’t, then I don’t envy you the task of telling her what her husband’s been up to.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s trying to protect her.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Bill said, unable to maintain his silence any longer. He threw up his one remaining hand in frustration and I saw his other shoulder hunch as the ghost of his amputated arm tried to join the party.
