Third Strike

all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, you know?”

Sean appeared by my door, opened it for me. “All right?” he said.

I nodded. Last thing, before I got out, I slid the SIG, complete with its holster, out of my waistband and tucked it into the glove box, trying to ignore the deep sense of foreboding to be leaving it behind.

We climbed out and walked sedately towards the front entrance, the five of us. I saw my mother move close alongside my father, but she didn’t take his hand, even though I knew she wanted to. Terry had warned us there were security cameras on the outside of the building that would be monitoring our every move.

We’d talked over a cover story that afternoon. If questioned, Terry was going to claim we were legal people, working on something to do with the licensing of the new treatment in Europe. Important enough to warrant a weekend meeting. We were all wearing suits. Even my mother had dug in her voluminous suitcase and brought out something businesslike for the occasion. And between us we had a smattering of enough European languages to be reasonably convincing, unless anyone really gave us the third degree.

The front entrance was well lit, spotlighting our approach. Terry led the way, swiping her ID card through a scanner outside the first set of glass doors, which slid open in front of us. I followed her through. My father’s manners had him stepping back automatically to allow my mother to go ahead of him.

It was pure chance, then, that the three of us women entered the lobby first and, as we did so, I saw a figure emerge from one of the office doorways on the far side of the metal detectors. A blond woman, tall, slim. Familiar.

Vondie.

“Out, out, out!” I shouted, grabbing my mother as I started to wheel for the doorway. Sean didn’t hesitate. He piled into my father like a rugby tackle, forcing him back through the outer doorway when he’d barely stepped inside the building. Alarms started to shriek all around us.

Terry froze. I reached for her arm but she darted out of my grip, and I wasted maybe half a second going for her again. By which time it was too late. The doors had slammed shut and red lights glared above them. I caught sight of Sean’s face, bone white with fury, safe on the far side of two sets of antiballistic glass. Then he was gone, hauling my stunned father with him by the collar of his coat.

By the time I turned back, there were six Storax security men forming a semicircle around us. Big guys, not intimidated at all at the prospect of taking on a trio of unarmed women. Three had extending batons, two had TASER stun guns, and one was bare-fisted, carrying PlastiCuff restraints. Just for a moment, my own rage had me coldly calculating the odds.

Not good, I recognized. Not good at all.

Alongside me, I registered a tight little gasp. My mother. Slowly, reluctantly, the madness faded and I brought my hands up to shoulder height, empty. I’d nothing to fill them with but anger, in any case.

“Very, ah, sensible, ma’am,” said a man’s voice. “No reason for this to get nastier than it has to.” I let my head turn slightly and saw the small, rumpled figure of Collingwood step into view from an office marked SECURITY. He’d been watching us all the way in. Which meant he knew we were coming … .

“What did they offer you, Terry?” I asked, bitter. I turned, only to find that the lawyer was standing, openmouthed and apparently frozen. For a moment her shock seemed so genuine I thought I might be mistaken, that she hadn’t calmly and coolly set us up to walk into a trap. Her eyes flicked from Vondie’s triumphant features, to Collingwood, and back again.

Vondie advanced, pushing past the Storax security men until she was standing right in front of Terry.

“What’s the matter, O’Loughlin?” she taunted. “Seen a ghost?”

Terry took a step back, threw me a look of horrified realization and whirled towards Collingwood, gesturing to Vondie as she did so.

“You told me she was dead!” Terry said, face white as her voice cracked harsh. “You told me they’d killed a federal agent in the course of her duties and I’d be doing my country a service if I helped you bring them in. You showed me a goddamn photograph, for God’s sake! What was it—a fake?”

“Not a fake, exactly. I’m sure Charlie here will testify that photograph was the genuine article,” Collingwood said in that diffident manner of his. He exchanged a quick smile with Vondie. “Agent Blaylock wasn’t dead, is all.”

“You lied to me,” Terry said quietly, her body so tight, she was shaking. I glanced at her, but she wouldn’t— couldn’t—meet my eyes.

“I was somewhat, ah, economical with the truth, certainly,” Collingwood allowed, spreading his hands a little. “But when national security’s at stake, ma’am, I believe the end justifies the means.” I couldn’t fault the zeal in his tone. It sounded for all the world like he believed every word of it.

“What ‘means’ are those, Collingwood?” I asked. “The ones that had Vondie and good old Don Kaminski threatening to rape my mother if my father didn’t take part in his own downfall? That’s justified, is it?”

That got Terry’s attention. Her gaze shot past me to my mother’s set face. I took a quick look myself and found my mother had clamped her jaw shut to stop it trembling. A dark flush stained her cheekbones, but her back was rigidly straight and her chin was up with as much pride as she could muster.

“Or the ones that had you forcing Miranda Lee to overdose so she couldn’t reveal what had really happened to her husband?” I said, cold and clear. “How do you square it as a national security issue that this company knew what would happen to someone of Jeremy Lee’s ethnic background if he took the Storax treatment, and yet they issued no warnings? What was he to you—some kind of lab rat?”

“You sure have formed some interesting conclusions about all this,” Collingwood said, his fingers performing their habitual dance. “But I think we can continue this somewhere a little more, ah, private, don’t you?”

The door to the security office opened again and two more men in plain suits came out. Their faces were vaguely familiar. One was big, with a buzz-cut hairstyle that had me instantly placing him—the guy who’d put my father into the Lincoln Town Car outside the hotel in New York and taken him to the brothel.

The other didn’t ring quite so many bells, apart from the fact he was limping. That clinched it. The driver of the pickup truck we’d commandeered after the abortive ambush in Massachusetts. Both eyed me with something amounting to a dark glee.

Collingwood jerked his head and the Storax security men closed in on us. Or rather, on me and my mother, almost elbowing Terry aside. She stumbled blindly out of their way, clearly shattered.

The guard who reached for me was no more than twenty-five, dark-skinned, holding the PlastiCuffs so tight that the bones of his fist showed through. It was nerves that made him rough as he yanked my hands down behind me and zipped the restraints around my wrists. He moved across to pull my mother’s unresisting arms behind her.

“Do you have to do that?” I murmured, letting the pain slide out through the cracks, letting him see it. “How would you feel if it was your mother?”

The young man hesitated, his Adam’s apple bounced like a basketball in play. He shrugged, embarrassed to the roots of his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. Around him, a couple of the others shifted their feet uncomfortably.

“Do these people know there’s no ‘national security’ involved?” I demanded more loudly, eyes swinging to meet Collingwood’s. “That you’re working on your own, off the books? That, at this very moment, your superiors are as interested to find you—and in what you’ve been doing—as we were?”

Collingwood hesitated fractionally, his eyes meeting Vondie’s as if to check she was going to stand firm. I don’t know what passed between them in that instant, but it must have been enough. He let a smile curve his thin mouth.

“Nice try, Charlie,” he said, and if his voice didn’t have quite the same confidence to it that it had before, I was the only one who seemed to notice. “You sure do know how to, ah, think on your feet. I admire that,” he said with a bit of a chuckle, which he allowed to fade before going on in his most serious voice. “Thank you, guys. We’ll take it from here.” He nodded to the two men who’d just joined him. “The U.S. government sure appreciates your cooperation in the capture and containment of this dangerous suspect.”

“And her aged mother,” I tossed over my shoulder, acidic, as Buzz-cut grabbed my arm. “Don’t forget that heroic part, boys.”

“Charlotte,” my mother managed to protest, but I wasn’t sure if it was the provocation or the reference to