DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) (17 page)

“Would you mind showing me to the bathroom?” she asked.

I bit back the comment that I was sure someone of her evident intelligence could find their own way unaided, and inclined my head politely.

Just outside the door she paused. “I’ll save you the trouble of investigating me, Charlie,” she said, “although I have no doubt that someone with your level of professionalism will have already set that ball in motion.”

“I rang New York as soon as we got back yesterday to ask Parker Armstrong to put together a packet on you,” I admitted. I checked my watch. “I’m expecting a call back from him any time.”

She smiled, genuine and infectious, engaging her whole face. “How about I give you the highlights now?” she said. “Yes, I did some modelling while I was at Harvard, but only because it was fun for a while, and easy, and helped buy my first Mercedes-Benz. I have an IQ in the one-seventies and was a partner in one of the largest PR companies on the East Coast before Tom head-hunted me to shake up his corporate PR division last month. Will that keep you happy for a while?”

“For a while,” I agreed gravely. “But Parker will also tell me what you like for breakfast, and what you wear to sleep in.”

She laughed out loud, a husky wisp of sound. “An oat-based smoothie before my personal trainer arrives at six every day,” she answered in turn. “And—like Marilyn Monroe—I wear nothing in bed but Chanel Number Five.”

I laughed with her. Hard not to. “You were terrific yesterday, by the way,” I said. “Not many civilians can keep it together under fire so well. I wondered if you might be a spook.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “And right back atcha’. I’ve worked with a lot of rich and famous people, been around a lot of security personnel. You’re right up there with the best of them, and I’d take a guess that the only reason you’re not running your own outfit right now, honey, is because you’re just a little woman in a big man’s world.”

“That’s not an assumption most people make more than once,” I said dryly.

The smile widened again. She opened her small clutch bag, magicked a card out of the interior without having to dig for it. “I could have you perceived as the leading close-protection expert in the country inside twelve months,” she said. “If you ever decide to hang out your own shingle, give me a call. What you have—what you are—trust me, it’s marketing gold.”

I smoothed my thumb across the embossed lettering. A.D. SINCLAIR—PUBLIC RELATIONS was all it said across the centre, with a discreet phone number in the bottom right-hand corner.

“I thought you worked for Tom O’Day,” I said.

“Honey, I can do that job before I have my morning coffee every day. I only agreed to Tom’s proposal on the basis that I had carte blanche to take on certain . . . side projects occasionally. Ones that interest me. And you interest me, Charlie.” She nodded to the business card. “Put that somewhere safe. I hope you’ll realise that you need it.”

She closed the clutch, slung the strap back onto her shoulder, started to head back along the hallway.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Autumn stopped, turned, and I nodded towards the bathroom, standing open and unused.

“No, thanks,” she said easily. “I believe I’ve done everything I needed to.”

We let Blake Dyer finish his breakfast in relative peace before we ganged up on him.

All I needed to do was exchange a single brief glance with Sean, and suddenly we were tuned in to the same wavelength again, like discovering a favourite radio station bursting through after travelling for miles with nothing but static.

How long it would last was anybody’s guess, but for now . . .

I took the seat Tom O’Day had so recently vacated. Sean moved up to stand behind Dyer’s shoulder, not quite looming.

Our principal saw the expression on my face and glanced between us, beginning to frown.

“Why is it I get the distinct feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say?” Dyer murmured. “Look, guys, I’m sorry. I know what we talked about, but Tom’s right—I can’t leave now.”

“Why?”

He sighed, took his time about replying. “Before she hit New Orleans, Katrina hit Florida,” he said. “I was in Miami and let me tell you, we took a beating.” He glanced at us. “She was only a Cat One at that point, but she seemed to last for ever. The damage . . . More than a dozen people were killed. I guess we thought we had enough troubles of our own without helping others.”

I saw the regret in his face. “I remember the initial reports on New Orleans played down the problems here.”

He nodded. “They did, but that doesn’t excuse it,” Dyer said. “We heard the weather reports. We knew that by the time Katrina hit the Gulf coast she was a Cat Five. We, of all people, should have known what that was going to mean. But we were slow responding—
I
was slow responding. And twelve hundred people died. Thousands more lost everything they had.” He looked up, fixed me with a determined eye. “I need to make up for that. I won’t turn my back on these people again.”

“And that’s commendable,” I said. “But it’s not the issue here. The real issue is why would anyone want to kill you?”

His eyebrows climbed in genuine surprise. “Who says they do?”

“An RPG aimed at the aircraft you were travelling in pretty much says it for you,” Sean put in.

Blake Dyer didn’t like the tone. He particularly didn’t like it from a man like Sean who was standing behind him at the time. He twisted in his chair. “You think that thing was aimed at me?”

“If not you, then who else?” I said, swinging his focus back. “If anyone had Sean or me on their shit-list, we wouldn’t have come. Our job is to protect you, not turn you into collateral damage.”

Blake Dyer picked up his coffee, a reflexive stalling gesture. He realised the cup was empty and set it down again. I could almost hear the tumult of his thoughts.

“What about young Gabe Baptiste?” he said. “He was born and raised here. Got himself in a lot of trouble here as a kid, too. Why else would he leave and never come back, even to lord it over those who never believed he had it in him?”

“Baptiste was a last-minute substitute on that flight,” I pointed out. “Up until a few minutes before take-off he wasn’t supposed to be on board at all—nor was Autumn Sinclair.”

“Or John Franks,” Sean put in, voice quiet but no less harsh for that. “And now he’s going home in a box.”

“I really don’t think I care for the way this conversation is going,” Dyer said, keeping his own voice even.

“And I really don’t care for being shot at without at least knowing the reason why,” I said. “But the thing is, if you disregard our advice after a threat of this type, the terms of the agreement you signed with Armstrong-Meyer mean we can walk away.”

I rose, deliberately smoothed the hem of my jacket over the SIG on my hip and knew he’d seen the gesture.

“What Charlie’s saying,
sir
,” Sean said over Dyer’s shoulder, “is that if this threat
is
directed against you, you’ll be leaving yourself wide open.”

Dyer’s face hardened. Finally too uncomfortable with being the filling in a bodyguard sandwich, he stood up, stepped back so he could glance at both of us.

“No,” he said. “I think you’ll find that it’s
you
who’ll be leaving
me
wide open, and I’ll see to it that everyone is aware of that fact.”

“You ignore us, we walk,” Sean insisted. “Nobody would call us on that decision.”

“Maybe not—
if
it was known that helicopter was brought down deliberately. But Tom is determined to put it out that this was nothing more than an unfortunate accident. How do things look for you then?”

For a second neither of us moved or spoke.

Much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. Either we left without further explanation and looked like total scaredy-cats to the whole industry, or we spilled the beans about what really happened to that helo, with all the shit-storm that would entail.

I’d learned enough about Tom O’Day’s business empire to realise a couple of things about him. One was that he had a very high-powered PR division, headed by a ferociously bright ex-Harvard graduate with a stratospheric IQ, who could spin things whichever way she wanted just for the hell of it.

Autumn Sinclair was not someone I wanted to piss off—for all kinds of reasons.

Of course, getting on the wrong side of a man as powerful as Tom O’Day would undoubtedly prove a very bad move as far as Parker’s professional reputation was concerned. Big as Parker was, Tom O’Day was a corporate giant. If we put the mockers on his pet project, O’Day could crush the whole lot of us without a second’s thought. Hell, he’d been prepared to emotionally blackmail his son’s godfather to keep him on side. What would he do to total strangers who crossed him?

We were over a barrel and Dyer knew it.

He nodded, just once, and began to turn away.

The reality of the situation hit both Sean and me at almost the same moment, but our reactions were very different.

I let my breath out fast through my nose. A gesture of annoyance and compliance, both at the same time.

But Sean lunged for Blake Dyer, grabbed his shoulder and spun him round, piling him backwards at the same time until they were both hard up against the nearest wall. Dyer’s head bumped against one of the room’s original canvases, almost dislodging it. Sean got a forearm across the older man’s throat and wedged it there, holding him effortlessly pinned.

I shot my chair back, snapped, “Sean, for God’s sake let him go.”

“He’s lying to us,” Sean said tightly over his shoulder. “Does he think we’re stupid or something?”

“Of course he’s lying to us—clients never tell
the whole truth and nothing but
,” I said calmly. “The question is only ever how much we’re prepared to let them get away with.

“Let him go,” I repeated. “I’m sure we can talk about this almost like grown-ups if we make the effort.”

“Talk’s cheap,” Sean said, and something in his voice, his whole stance, chilled me.

“He’s reverted back to military mode,”
Parker had said only yesterday. And it struck me that back in Special Forces Sean had not just been a first-class soldier, training instructor, lethal with a weapon or with an empty hand.

He’d been a bloody good interrogator as well.

Ruthless, tenacious, cold.

“Sean, let him go,” I said again, and this time there was an edge to my voice that had not been there before. I reached out and touched his shoulder lightly, careful not to get too close. Sean’s right elbow was halfway back towards my face before he curbed the instinctive response. I’d already made sure I was beyond his reach but it shook me, even so.

“Stand down, Sergeant,” I said, putting some bite into it now.

“When he starts levelling with us.”

“And what are you planning to do in the meantime—waterboard him in the bathtub until he starts babbling?” I demanded acidly. “You know as well as I do that confessions extracted using extreme methods are worthless.”

I met Blake Dyer’s eyes, keeping my face relaxed, trying to silently reassure him that I would not let anything happen to him, regardless of what words passed between me and Sean. He stood quiet, not struggling against the chokehold, which probably explained why he was still breathing.

Help me.

I will. I am.

Sean was not going to be talked down from this. So I’d have to take him down instead. I took a quiet breath, let it out.

Sean was braced with his left leg forwards, putting his bodyweight into the hold. I stepped in and stamped down onto the back of his right knee so the leg folded under him. As it buckled I grabbed for his right arm, digging my nails into the tender skin under his bicep.

With my left hand I reached over the top of his head to grab his face with clawed fingers, locating the delicate septum and the points of his cheekbones, pushing down and back. By the time he realised what I was doing and tried to duck forwards to evade me it was too late, I’d already taken control of his head.

My initial attack might have taken Sean by surprise in both direction and severity, but his training kicked in almost instantaneously. He let go of Blake Dyer and wrenched out from under my grip, twisting to launch a vicious left as he did so.

As I’d hoped he might.

Sean had always been lightning fast but now I knew I was faster. I watched the blow coming, side-stepped at the last possible moment and caught his hand and arm, using his own momentum to swing him further away from our principal, locking his elbow out straight to control his shoulder. Then I swept his legs from under him again.

Sean went down hard on his stomach. If he hadn’t turned his head just before he hit, he probably would have bust his nose in the process.