Fifth Victim

‘Really?’ she said, her voice cool. ‘Your decision, of course, but I couldn’t help overhearing the phone call you received, and it sounded rather urgent to me.’ She gave me a slight smile. ‘I shall be in my sitting room, if there’s any news of my daughter.’ And with that she turned on her immaculate heel and walked out of the room, tall and composed by what could only have been a major act of self-control. Landers caught Parker’s eye and followed her out. If I didn’t know him better, I might have suspected he was relieved by the excuse to leave.

There was a long uncomfortable silence after they’d gone. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and waited for Parker to speak. He did not appear to be in any hurry to do so.

‘Is it Sean?’ I asked then, keeping my voice level with the same kind of effort that Caroline Willner must have employed.

‘No,’ Parker said, suddenly realising what I must have thought. ‘Jesus, no. Don’t you think I would have told you something like that right off the bat?’

I closed my eyes for a moment, relief flooding in. I’d missed seeing him the last couple of days, my mind so filled with life and death of another kind. For once, his condition had failed to fill my every waking minute. So, now – alongside the relief – guilt came crashing in over the top like a freak wave.

Am I leaving him behind? Is it starting already?

Unbidden, unwelcome, I felt the burn of tears behind my eyelids and my ears were filled with a roaring so fierce I didn’t hear Parker cross the floor between us until he took hold of my arms.

‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean …’

‘It’s just, the last time we talked about … Sean, you said there were signs …’ I paused, swallowed all that betraying, useless emotion back down again. ‘That he wasn’t going to come back from this.’ I stopped, shrugged helplessly.

The action loosened Parker’s grip. He let his hands glide up and down my arms, soothing.

‘And you said you couldn’t deal, Charlie, and I totally get that. I won’t burden you with any decisions right now.’

‘Oh, great.’ I gave a shaky laugh that turned sharply downhill somewhere in my chest. ‘So, now I’m going to worry about you keeping bad news from me.’

His hands tightened again, and he ducked his head, forcing me to make eye contact. ‘I won’t lie to you, either,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s changed since we last spoke, OK?’

Parker’s concern and his integrity were two of the characteristics I valued most about him. But suddenly the image of dancing together at the charity auction seemed very fresh and clear in my mind. My heart rate accelerated, mouth drying. I looked into those cool grey eyes and saw I wasn’t the only one assailed by the memory.

‘He’s interested,’ Dina had said. ‘I can tell.’ At the time, I’d dismissed it as her attempt to get a rise out of me.

But if it wasn’t … what then?

‘I’m sorry,’ Parker said again.

And then he stepped in close, cupped my face between gentle hands, and kissed me.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

It was the tenderness that was almost my undoing. With Sean, the sexual fascination between us had always been so fierce, so intense, that at times it almost seemed like confrontation.

But Parker revealed himself completely in the brief longing of his touch. It lit along my nerves like ice and fire and drew responses I wasn’t prepared for, including the urge to meet him more than halfway.

This wasn’t just sex. This was love.

Confusion reigning, I broke the kiss, stepped back. But, glancing into his face I saw anguish in the realisation of what he might have given away of himself in that evanescent moment. Of what it might mean – for all of us. He took a breath.

And I realised with a flowering dismay that I could fall for him. If I let myself. They might share many traits, but he was not Sean. I would not open my eyes every morning and see an echo of what I had lost. This could be something else completely. If I let it.

I reached up, touched his cheek, murmured, ‘Don’t.’

He captured my hand with his own, held it while he turned his head and pressed his lips into my palm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I never meant for—’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Neither did I.’

He gave a rueful smile that did nothing to quiet the chaos of his gaze, and let go of me. With distance, we could both regain some semblance of sanity.

In a voice that was still woefully inadequate, I said, ‘Wow, it must be bad news if you’re prepared to go to those kind of lengths to distract me.’

He knew what I was doing, of course he did, but he let it ride. Eventually, with great reluctance, he said, ‘I had a call from Epps.’

‘Conrad Epps?’ It was a stupid question, but the connotations knocked me sideways into stupidity. Conrad Epps held some high-grade position within the US security services. I could only guess at the scope of his power, but when my father had found himself in serious trouble over here the previous winter, only someone with Epps’s clout had been able to disentangle him.

The only trouble was, once you turned over the kind of rock men like Epps liked to lurk under, it could never quite be turned back again. He didn’t do favours for nothing – he kept score. And because of that, we were sucked into his private war with the Fourth Day cult in California, during which … Well, let’s just say that if Epps had left well alone, Sean would not be in his current condition.

I had very mixed feelings about Conrad Epps.

‘What does he want now?’ I demanded roughly. ‘And what’s it going to cost us this time?’

Parker raised an eyebrow. He was regaining his poise, but there was still a tension about him that I mistakenly put down to our encounter, rather than the news he had to impart.

‘He called with an apology – and a warning,’ he said. ‘Charlie … they lost him.’

‘Lost …?’ It took me a moment to put the correct meaning on that word. Lost as in misplaced, as in escaped. As in free and clear …

And this time, I didn’t need to ask who he was talking about.

I knew.

The man who had put Sean in his coma, who had lied and cheated, and murdered, for no more desperate reason than his own desire to possess something that didn’t belong to him. For greed. For power.

Shit!

‘I should have killed that fucker when I had the chance.’

‘Then we wouldn’t be here,’ Parker said quietly.

‘No,’ I agreed. I tried to raise a smile and only got halfway. ‘At best, I’d probably be on Death Row.’

Parker shook his head with a hint of sadness. ‘Epps wouldn’t have let you die, Charlie,’ he said. ‘How could he just let someone with your … talent go to waste? But he would have owned you to the grave.’

I didn’t respond to that. It’s always hard to counter an argument you recognise to be bloody impregnable.

‘How?’ I said then. ‘How did he get away, I mean?’ I couldn’t even bring myself to say the man’s name. It was easier to be coolly objective about the whole thing. To speak about him as an abstract concept, rather than an utterly worthless human being.

‘Epps was not forthcoming with details,’ Parker said dryly.

‘Yeah, no surprises there.’

He sighed. ‘Look, I know how you feel. Trust me. I was there. I saw what that bastard did – and not just to Sean.’

I swallowed down the sour taste in my mouth, recognised that Parker had been as hurt by what had happened almost as much as I had. We’d both lost Sean, however permanent or temporary that might turn out to be. Perhaps it was the solidarity of loss that had just brought us together – or so I tried to tell myself.