Third Strike

glanced back at the page briefly, raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “You did.”

“Why?” I asked, still breathless from the constriction in my chest. “Is that how you managed to make it?”

Her smile didn’t waver, but something tightened around her eyes. “I passed out in the top five percent of my class,” she said, and there was no mistaking the pride.

“Yeah,” I drawled, aiming for languid as I rolled my head round a few times, trying to work out the giant kinks. “I’ve heard that can happen in a slack year.”

Vondie let her breath out fast. She closed the file, held it over the arm of her chair and let it go, very deliberately, so it hit the floor with a sharp smack. Of no further interest.

I blinked a few times. I don’t know what they’d given me, but it was dispersing fast. I’d lost the muzzy feeling in my head and my vision was almost clear.

“Where’s my mother?” I said. My mind revolted at the thought of them doing this to her, treating her like this. She didn’t have the resources, the resolve, to cope. It would finish her.

Vondie got to her feet and came closer, the limp I’d given her in Cheshire almost imperceptible now. She was smiling broadly. “Well, well, I have to admit that normally it takes my interviewees a little longer to cry for their mommies,” she said, making a big show of looking at her platinum wristwatch. “Congratulations, Charlie—I think that’s a new record.”

I stopped forcing my eyes to lock onto different distances around the bare room and focused totally on her instead.

“If you’ve hurt her, you know I will find you and I will kill you,” I said with utter calm. I’d never meant a promise more, but I felt nothing. No emotion, no anger. Just certainty. Utter, cold, glittering, diamond-tipped certainty.

Vondie flinched before she could control it, saw that I’d registered her involuntary reaction, and damped down a scowl. Instead, she began to circle, lips pursed, eyes flicking up and down my body in slow, deliberate insult.

“I kind of thought you’d be in better shape—someone in your profession,” she said in a beautifully disparaging tone.

I didn’t respond. She disappeared out of my field of view and I forced myself not to move my head to try and follow her path. But I couldn’t stop myself tensing up, like seeing the fin slice under the surface of the water and waiting for the first crushing bite from the depths.

When it came, her touch was almost a caress, and far more creepy because of that. I felt a cool finger very softly trace the ugly scar of the bullet wound in my right shoulder blade and forced myself not to twist out from under it.

“Got it in the back, huh?” Her voice was soft, too, and very close to my ear. “Running away, were you, Charlie?”

I let my head come up a fraction, just enough to reinforce the memory of the head butt that had smashed her nose. I heard her quick sidestep, the little gasp the sudden movement provoked, and knew I was walking a very dangerous line here.

She stalked back round to stare me in the eye—but not too close. “What a pity you took Don out like that,” she said, her voice regretful. “They’re still not sure if he’ll lose the arm.” She paused for another dismissive visual sweep. “He would have had such fun with you … .”

“Like to watch that kind of thing, do you?” I said, ice in my chest now, flooding my limbs with such cold I struggled not to tremble. “Is that how you get your kicks?”

She smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You can indulge yourself in this little round of bravado all you like,” she said. “But it’s all going to be for nothing. News flash, honey, this is a pharmaceutical company. They got stuff here that will have you screaming for mercy and spilling your guts—in every sense of the word—in minutes.”

She gestured to my left. I twisted my head and noticed, for the first time, that someone had wheeled in a little trolley, on which was a steel tray containing several sets of latex gloves and a number of hypodermic syringes. I had no idea what was in them, and even less desire to find out.

I felt my chin come up. “So, what’s keeping you?”

She sat down again, smoothing her skirt as she did so. “We want you to suffer, not to die,” she said casually. “We took a little blood while you were out and the lab boys have been running a full tox screen, just to make sure there’s no danger of anything unexpected happening to you.” She checked her watch again and shrugged. “You’ve been out for a while. They should be back with the results any time now. Soon as they are, we can get this party started.”

A moment later—so soon I swear Vondie must have orchestrated it—there was a tap at the door. They’d hung me with my back to it so, when anyone came in or out, I’d have the fear of anticipating their identity and purpose to add to the humiliation they were already putting me through. A nastily sophisticated little touch.

Vondie threw me a triumphant glance as she rose to meet the new arrival. I didn’t see who it was. Male, by the tonal frequency of the voice. Harried—shocked, even. I let my body droop slightly, like I was really hurting until I heard the door close again. Not much acting involved.

I expected Vondie to regain her seat for a leisurely read, but she stayed behind me at first, so all I heard was the rapid flick of turning pages.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Charlie,” she said at last, apparent pleasure in her tone. “According to the lab boys, you have Vicodin in your system. Something hurts, huh?”

This time when it came, her touch—in the deep scar at the back of my left thigh—was a sharp jab. My leg buckled and I swung precariously, gulping down the pain with enough air to swallow the noises I was desperate not to make.

By the time I’d staggered upright enough to have my feet and my breath back under me, she was seated again, watching.

“Not enough of it for you to be addicted,” she went on, as though there’d been no interruption. “But we could soon change that.”

She smiled at my frozen expression for a moment, milking it, then dipped her eyes back to the lab report. She’d almost scanned right to the bottom of the page when she stopped abruptly.

I saw her shoulders stiffen, the paper quiver as her fingers did the same. My gut tightened the same way, like we had some kind of visceral connection.

She looked up again, eyes glinting. “So, tell me, Charlie,” she said softly. “Who’s the father?”

CHAPTER 32

“What?”

I jolted like she’d hit me with that damned TASER again. The single word was torn out of my throat as the implications rushed in through the shattered hole. “You’re bluffing,” I said, and couldn’t keep the shake out of my voice.

She has to be bluffing. I can’t be! No way! Can I … ?

She watched me flounder for a moment, head on one side. “You had no idea, did you?” She smiled thinly. “Well, in that case, let me be the first to congratulate you, Charlie. You think you’ll get to keep it?”

“You’re bluffing,” I said again. Better. No wobble this time.

“It’s too early for you to be showing any signs, but give it another few weeks and those hormone changes will be kicking right in. You won’t be able to ignore them. The mood swings, the nausea, the cramps and the cravings. Before you know it, you’ll blow up like a goddamn whale.”

She rose, taking care to smooth down her skirt, emphasizing her slender figure, and gave me another malicious smile.

“I assume that bastard Meyer is the lucky guy,” she said. “Seeing as you’re listed as cohabiting. Unless you’ve been fucking your new boss on the side, just to hedge your bets. Parker’s a cutie, isn’t he?”

I clamped my mouth shut and said nothing, but she didn’t need to be a mind reader to see the slur of wild emotion tumbling behind my eyes.