She advanced a few steps, eyes huge and everywhere at once, and asked in a small voice, ‘What happened?’
I could have dressed it up for her, but I didn’t. ‘He was shot in the head.’
She flinched. ‘Did he … was it, um, while he was protecting someone?’
I nodded.
She swallowed. ‘And were they OK?’ She saw my face, went scarlet and then pale in waves. ‘I mean, did he succeed? Or was it …?’ She stumbled to a halt, but I could finish that one for her.
‘Yes, Sean succeeded.’
She flicked me a quick nervous glance from under her lashes. ‘You sound like you resent that.’
‘No,’ I said, giving it thought before I answered. ‘It was part of the job. Sean was unlucky, that’s all. You can’t be a soldier and ignore the part luck plays. Half an inch one way and the bullet would have killed him stone dead. Half an inch the other and it would have missed him altogether.’ I shrugged. ‘Luck of the draw.’
Something trembled around the corner of her mouth. ‘You still sound like you resent it.’
‘I resent the circumstances that led up to it,’ I admitted, my eyes on Sean’s face. ‘They call us bullet catchers, but that is close protection in its crudest form. You get to the stage of having to put your own body between a principal and a bullet, it’s a last-ditch, desperate effort.’ I skimmed over her whitened features. ‘We spend our lives avoiding that moment.’
‘But you’re prepared to do it anyway,’ she said. ‘For a stranger. For someone you’ve only known a few hours, or a few days. Even though you’ve seen what might happen.’
I heard the strain splitting the edges of her voice. ‘Yes.’
She shook her head, bit her lower lip as if to keep from crying. ‘Why?’
It was a good question. I’d asked myself the same thing and never come up with an answer that didn’t sound trite. I glanced at Sean again. He hadn’t moved a muscle since we’d walked in, our voices rolling over him without eliciting any of the involuntary responses I’d come to hope for.
Would he rather have burnt hot and bright and fierce, and been snuffed out quick like a wet flame? Would he consider it good luck or bad, I wondered, the half an inch of life that he’d been left with? Survival was a long way from living.
I turned away, leaving the coffee on the bedside cabinet, putting up gentle sensory smoke signals into that sterile room. As I drew level with Dina she still hadn’t taken her eyes off Sean, hadn’t moved any closer.
‘Why don’t you want go to Europe to stay with your father?’ I asked in return. ‘Why be so stubborn? Why increase the risk?’
‘Because …’ she began, and her voice trailed away. She swallowed. ‘Because Mother wants me to go and hide until all this trouble is over, but how long will that take? Why should I put my life on hold and give up riding my horses every day, for something that might never happen?’
There was bravado in her words, but I caught the flare of fear in her voice, her face. Whatever she might say or do to prove otherwise, Dina was scared. She must have guessed that I’d seen it, because her chin lifted, defiant. ‘I guess running away just feels like cowardice.’
I nodded. ‘Then you understand how I feel.’
It wasn’t much of an answer, but I reckoned I’d bared my soul enough for one day.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The charity auction, I soon discovered, was one of the highlights of the Long Island social calendar, and was being held at a sumptuous country club on the North Shore. There were so many VIP guests attending that the club had assigned a frighteningly efficient elderly woman called Harling, whose sole job was to liaise with the numerous close-protection personnel. Or, as she saw it, to stop us gorillas from tripping over our own bootlaces and stealing the silver.
I went up there and met her the day before. She was wearing a long narrow skirt and white blouse with a high ruffled collar, the overall effect vaguely Edwardian. I, in contrast, had come on the Buell to cut down the time I was away from Dina, and had on a bike jacket over a T-shirt and Kevlar-reinforced jeans. Until I stated my business at the reception desk, I think they were planning on showing me the door with all haste.
As it was, the indomitable Ms Harling quick-marched me around the place, firing facts and specs back over her shoulder in time with the machine-gun rat-a-tat of her sensible heels. From having a paramedic team on standby, to knowing off the top of her head the local police response times, to having already cleared an emergency exfil route from the grand ballroom through the kitchens to the rear parking area, she seemed to have everything pretty well mapped out. When I told her as much, she unbent enough to bestow a fractional smile.
‘We certainly do our best,’ she said. Her tour had brought us neatly back to the front entrance and she glanced at her PDA – not quite as pointed as checking her watch. ‘Now, unless you have any questions …?’
‘Just one,’ I said. ‘If anything goes down, what means do the various close-protection teams have of ID’ing each other? I’d hate to be in a situation where I draw my weapon, only to be mistaken for one of the bad guys.’ I thought it best not to mention the words ‘friendly fire’.
Her plucked and carefully redrawn eyebrows rose slightly. ‘I will point out in the briefing packs that there are female protection personnel present,’ she said at last. ‘Although we have never encountered any problems in the past.’
‘Really?’ I murmured.
Her mouth relaxed a little more as her eyes drifted over my appearance, and this time I thought I detected the merest hint of a twinkle. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Most of the time, my dear, bodyguards look like … bodyguards.’
It took Dina all afternoon to prepare for the big night, from a facial and massage to a visit to her hairdresser and nail salon. She changed her mind at least three times about her outfit, despite having bought a selection specially for the occasion.
Eventually, I managed to talk her out of something I felt was trying much too hard and into a bold but simple bronze sheath of a dress that showed off her figure and hair to best effect. She teamed it with the pearl drop earrings she’d worn that first day I’d met her, out riding Cerdo on the beach. They had been her grandmother’s, she told me.
When I finally left her hovering indecisively in front of the mirror, I had barely half an hour to grab a quick shower and scramble into my own posh frock.
I had been planning to drag out my all-purpose stretchy dress for a return match, but Dina had flatly refused to be seen out with me in the same thing twice, and insisted on treating me to something new. I tried to say no, but she would not be deflected. In the end it was easier not to put up a fight.
I found what I was looking for in a designer outlet store, much to her dismay, on the marked-down rack. It was another black dress, although the silky material flipped almost to silver according to the light, like pearl lacquer on paint. It was a little crumpled, but nothing a night under my mattress hadn’t cured.
The dress was almost floor length, but had a split up the left thigh to give me mobility, and a bolero jacket that was sufficient to conceal the SIG.
The other advantage of the jacket was it had a high collar that largely hid the scar around the base of my neck. There were days now when I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that someone had once tried to cut my throat. I’d learnt to cover it, partly with make-up and partly by how I dressed, and tonight a string of graduated pearls – fake, of course – did the rest.
I stashed some essentials into a small evening bag and headed out, only to find that I’d still beaten Dina to the living area where Caroline Willner waited in flattering dowager pale blue, glittering with diamonds. Alongside her, looking very suave in a well-fitting tuxedo, was Parker. He automatically got to his feet when I walked in, gave me a slow appraisal.
‘Charlie. You look … wonderful.’
‘Thank you. I do scrub up on occasion,’ I returned with a wry grin. ‘You look none too shabby yourself, Parker,’ but he didn’t smile back. I saw Caroline Willner flick us a shrewd glance and realised belatedly that I’d probably been a touch too flippant towards my boss in front of a woman who was not only a client, but one who also used to be a countess.
