Third Strike

“Shame you’re gonna lose that flat stomach you’ve worked so hard on but, hey, you won’t have much else to do in the slammer other than work out.” She smirked. “That and try to prevent some big butch gang of lady truckers from raping you in the showers. Still, that’ll be nothing new to you, huh?”

That punched me out of shock, brought me scrabbling back to the surface, relit the fire. “You sound like you’ve been there, Vondie,” I threw back at her. “Miss it?”

“It’s Vonda,” she growled. She took a breath, got a grip. “So he really doesn’t know?” she murmured. “Pity. We could have used that.”

I tried a laugh that came out more as a gasp. “You have no idea what you’ll be letting yourself in for, if you try hitting Sean with this … .”

“Screw what he’ll do to me,” Vondie dismissed. “What’s he going to do to you? Consider a hypothetical for a moment. Even supposing by some miracle you get out of this, what happens to your precious so-called career now?”

She waved a careless hand towards the manila file that was still lying on the floor next to her chair. “Can’t go risking your life every day, being a bullet catcher, when you’ve got a kid, Charlie.”

“I—”

“And what’s Meyer’s reaction really going to be, huh?’ She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Is he still going to be so keen on you when you’re just the little wifey at home with the squalling brat? Right now, you think you’re somebody, huh? Working for Armstrong’s outfit in New York—and what about Parker? God, the ink’s not dry on your green card yet.”

She shook her head, as if bemused by the turn of events. “What happens when you don’t have that anymore? When you spend your days up to your neck in unwashed diapers and puke? Is Meyer still going to even want you—holding him down? Holding him back?”

She smiled again, warming to her theme. “Being able to blow some guy away at sixty feet isn’t exactly the kind of skill that will impress the local neighborhood PTA. And there isn’t much else you’re good for, is there, Charlie? Of course,” she added, her expression turning sly, “there’s nothing says you have to keep it.” She nodded towards the surgical tray, towards the loaded syringes. “We could do you a favor there.”

“You bitch,” I said, ragged, losing it as the rage fizzed the edges of my vision. “You utter fucking bitch …”

Vondie laughed out loud. “Oh, Charlie, your mother would be so shocked—what a potty mouth!” she said, her voice rich with delight. “Speaking of mothers, I seem to remember from our file on Meyer that his ma comes from a long line of good Irish Catholics. He may not go to Mass every Sunday, but I’ll bet it’s gonna go way against the grain, finding out you’ve aborted his kid.”

“He won’t.” Because I won’t. Because I can’t … .

“Find out?” Vondie shook her head in synthetic disappointment, making tutting noises. “Oh Charlie, keeping those kind of secrets will kill any relationship stone dead,” she said with mocking sadness. “You know that.”

She stepped to the trolley and picked up one of the syringes out of the surgical tray. She held it against the light and tapped it with her fingernail, as if checking for air bubbles. The liquid inside was a dull yellow. I’d no idea what it was, only that I didn’t want it inside me. Or inside anything I might have inside me, either.

“Speaking of secrets, time to get you to spill yours, I think. Of course, there are a few side effects to this stuff I probably ought to warn you about,” she said, gloating openly now. This wasn’t work to her. “Birth defects, that kind of thing, but let’s not allow little things like that to worry us.”

She’d moved closer, unable to resist it as she taunted. She was within a couple of meters now, leaning forwards, shoving that smug smiling face into mine.

“I warned you what would happen if you hurt my mother, Vondie,” I said almost under my breath. I thrashed impotently against the restraints, an apparently useless gesture that allowed me to get the feel of them and made noise, so she had to come nearer still to catch my words.

Come on, a little closer. Just a little closer …

“Well, that’s nothing to what I’d do if I thought you were going to hurt my child,” I muttered. “Past having your own are you? You dried-up old hag—”

She took that last step, offense coloring her face as she caught the gist.

I bounced up, bunched the muscles in my arms to jerk my feet clean off the floor, scissored my legs and lashed out.

I tried to tell myself later that it was never intended to be a killing blow. That I wanted to cause enough pain to incapacitate her, no more. So I aimed for her face, for the nose I’d already broken once, intending to add insult as well as further injury. But at the last moment she jerked upright and so I gathered a little more momentum before I struck, a little lower than I’d anticipated. Or so I tried to tell myself.

My foot landed hard, side on across her throat. Above my own bellow of effort and pain and rage, I swear I heard the quiet pop as her larynx collapsed.

Vondie dropped the syringe and fell backwards, windmilling her arms. She crashed into her own chair, which tangled her legs and tripped her. Her shoe skated on the manila folder she’d so carelessly dropped, then her back hit the far wall and she slithered down it, clutching at her throat and gasping, eyes wide with shock.

“Top five percent, huh, bitch?” I said, breathing hard. “Like I said—real slack year.”

Instinct had her battling to rise, clawing for purchase on the smooth face of the blocks. I strained against the cuffs that held me, but I knew they weren’t going to give way. There was nothing I could do but dangle there, helpless, and wait for her either to die or to kill me.

Whichever came first.

Vondie made it upright by no more than sheer bloody willpower. She lurched for the trolley again, grabbed another syringe without caring which, and came for me.

I twisted wildly, kicking out. No technique involved now, just anything I could think of to stop her getting that damned needle into me.

And in the back of my mind was the deep, sick sense of panic that it wasn’t just me she was trying to hurt.

As she lunged, I jumped again, managed to get both feet up and punched them out into her stomach. The blow sent her reeling backwards. She hit the trolley containing the drugs she’d been intending to use on me, overturning it in a clatter of steel on concrete and shattered glass, and fell amid the ruins, gasping her last breath.

I waited, but she didn’t get up again. She’d been dead from the moment I’d crushed her throat. She just hadn’t known it.

It took me a minute or so to get my feet back under me, by which time my arms were shaking. Everything was shaking. I was colder than I could ever remember and weary to the marrow of my bones.

Another death on your conscience, Fox. Now what?

I hung like that for a while. I had no way to mark the passing of time, so I don’t know how long. It felt like forever, but in reality was probably no more than a quarter of an hour. Long enough. More than long enough for me to think a lot about life—the one I’d just taken and the one that might have just begun.

The sound of the door opening behind me made me start. I braced, but knew I didn’t have the energy to mount another defensive attack. I heard footsteps come in, two sets, which faltered as the new arrivals took in the scene of my destruction. It was only a momentary pause.

Terry O’Loughlin moved delicately in front of me, eyes flicking to Vondie’s body. The other person with her turned out to be the young security guard who’d put the restraints on me and my mother out in the lobby.

“Ohmigod,” he kept saying, trying both to look, and not to look, at my body and at Vondie while he did so. “Is she, like, dead?”

So elegant in life, Vondie was awkward and ungainly in death, limbs sprawling, her skirt riding up, revealing a surprisingly utilitarian pair of white cotton knickers.

“I bloody hope so,” I said. I met Terry’s eyes, saw the shock in them, but anger, too. I hoped it was pointed at somebody else, or my chances had not just improved. “Either cut me loose or shoot me, Terry,” I said tiredly, “because if you’re not going to let me down, shooting me would be preferable to what Collingwood will do when he finds this.”