DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) (6 page)

Footsteps on the tiles had all of us turning, just as Sean Meyer circled the colossal flower arrangement and moved to join us. Presumably so they wouldn’t be mistaken for anybody important, all security personnel had been instructed to wear dark lounge suits rather than full evening dress.

Even without that distinction, nobody could mistake Sean for a member of the idle rich. It was something in the way he moved, the way he carried himself. The veneer of polish he’d cultivated had worn thin enough to see through. Not necessarily a good thing in our line of work.

And even if Mrs van Zant did not recognise the underlying grit, the way he stopped a respectful distance from the client and stood easy should have told her all she needed to know.

She ignored him after the briefest stare, but the interruption gave Blake Dyer the opportunity to extricate himself from her taloned grasp. He stepped neatly away to prevent her re-engaging, heading towards the gathering inside. It was clearly not the first time he’d had to diplomatically escape a woman’s clutches.

“Blake—” she began in a low voice, more urgently, but that was as far as she got before they reached the doorway to the next room, where the strings were louder, battling for supremacy over the hum of conversation.

“Blake! ’Bout time you showed,” came the buoyant tones of Tom O’Day. Here was someone who had no difficulty making himself heard.

He came striding through the crowd trailing little eddies of excess energy in his wake. O’Day was wearing a black suit that looked almost funereal on his tall frame. As he moved, the light picked out a pair of dragons woven into the fabric of the lapels in silky thread. Maybe not so traditional, then. The bodyguard, Hobson, was his constant shadow.

He clapped a solid arm around Blake Dyer’s shoulder, making him wince. For maybe half a second I wondered if breaking the event organiser’s fingers would count against me.

My eyes flicked to Hobson’s face. He was watching me as if he could read my thoughts.
Hmm, probably.

“Ysabeau, you’ll forgive me for stealing a few words with an old friend, I hope?” Tom O’Day said. And without waiting for an answer he whisked Dyer away.

Sean and I were swept along with him, me taking the lead this time. I’d already argued that it made more sense for me to stay close to our principal, leaving Sean to stay further out as an early warning system. Dyer had requested discreet protection and I looked a lot less like a bodyguard, for one thing. As he was not with his wife for this trip I could hover around him under the guise of companion—read into that what you will. It seemed that Sean had already read plenty.

Tom O’Day towed us across to a space beside an oil-black grand piano, halting beneath a gloomy life-size portrait of some bloke in Civil War-era garb. If the subject’s scowl was anything to go by he had not enjoyed the experience of being immortalised on canvas. Perhaps that was why the artist had gone heavy on ugly sludge tones by way of retribution.

A member of the wait-staff appeared almost immediately, bearing a tray of champagne flutes. Dyer courteously offered me a glass before taking his own. I had no intention of drinking on the job, but I accepted as camouflage, holding the stem in my left hand to leave my right free. The SIG was within easy reach in a small-of-the-back rig hidden beneath the weighted hem of my evening jacket.

“Tom—” he began.

Tom O’Day held up a silencing hand. “You don’t need to say it, Blake. I know what’s on your mind.”

Dyer took a minute sip of his champagne, was obviously pleasantly surprised by quality he hadn’t expected. “I doubt that, old friend.”

Tom O’Day sighed, let his gaze roam the assembled guests. We were in a ballroom, with high ceilings and a proper suspended wooden dance floor. The paintings of more ancestors, real or imaginary, glowered their disapproval from all around the walls.

“You’ve been away a while,” he said. “Things change—”

“And the more they do, the more they seem to stay the same,” Blake Dyer finished for him.

Tom O’Day smiled a touch ruefully. “Well, you may not like the look of the horse with the best form, but if it’s a sure thing to win a man would be a fool not to back it. Makes no sense to do otherwise.”

Blake Dyer, taking another sip, snorted into his glass. “And Ysabeau van Zant was that fast mare, was she?”

The rueful smile broadened momentarily before being manfully smothered. “You know as well as I do that nothing gets done around here without greasing the right palms. Way of the world.”

“This part of the world, certainly.”

Tom O’Day’s eyes skimmed over me in much the same way Ysabeau van Zant’s had done, but this time I put on my best part-of-the-furniture face. He nodded acknowledgement and I let my eyes drift around the room as if slightly bored, lifted the champagne glass to my lips without actually taking a swallow.

“We needed her,” Tom O’Day told my principal quietly. He waited an artful beat. “Didn’t have to
like
it overmuch, though.”

I glanced back. Blake Dyer finally allowed his face to relax for the first time since he’d entered the house. He rolled his shoulders a little inside that fitted jacket, opened his mouth.

A commotion by the doors from the hallway distracted him. Everybody twisted to look, necks craning. Even the ladies of the string quartet petered into silence, but since they were playing the live equivalent of lift muzak they might simply have reached the end of a piece.

Through the crowd I caught a glimpse of a tall young man with a lanky build and a distinctive gait.

I heard someone nearby say, “It’s Gabe Baptiste!” with something approaching awe in their voice.

Tom O’Day heard it, too. He nudged Blake Dyer’s arm, leaned in close. “Ysabeau was the one who sweet-talked the prodigal son into returning home. When young Lyle put himself in the hospital, she was the one who came up with a suitable replacement. Gabe Baptiste—hell, he would have been my first choice if I’da thought we stood a cat in hell’s chance of getting him to agree.” He shook his head. “Boy didn’t even come home for his papa’s burial. But Ysabeau makes the call and here he is. Don’t have the faintest idea how she did it.”

“Oh, I think you have more of an idea than that.” Blake Dyer flashed him a cynical look. “You just don’t
want
to know for sure.”

Across the room, Baptiste emerged from the knot of admirers who’d engulfed him, smiling, shaking hands. There was no sign of the outright fear he’d shown back in the hotel lobby when he’d come face-to-face with Sean Meyer. He was back in control, confident and cocky, a sporting superstar heading for legend status.

Maybe that confidence was the reason Baptiste was allowing his hands to wander more than they should over the tall cool blonde on his arm. I was surprised to recognise her as the young woman O’Day had introduced earlier—Autumn. She was currently managing a much more convincing impression of boredom than I had, a tolerant smile on her face at all the fuss. And yet, underneath it, I sensed something more than the surface illusion.

After our earlier meeting I’d checked over the guest list again. It merely said “O’Day, T—plus one” which hadn’t been overly helpful.

Now, I passed a dispassionate eye over the expensive silvered gown that fitted her like a second skin and speculated over several possible roles she might have been asked to play in the proceedings. It crossed my mind that she might be some kind of “professional” O’Day had brought along to keep the talent happy. I daresay she would not have been flattered by any of my other guesses, either.

Out of habit, I made a quick pass over the rest of the crowd, watching eyes and hands for anyone whose attention seemed oddly focused or who was using the new arrival as a distraction. It’s a routine I’ve been through a thousand times before, in all kinds of situations, with all kinds of principals.

On this type of low-level assignment, with a client against whom there have been no specific threats, it very rarely—if ever—came up positive.

This time was different.

The man who tripped my internal alarm system was dressed in a lounge suit rather than the tux of an invited guest, but was clearly not a member of the security contingent either. He was too lightly built to be a heavy, too hesitant to be someone who relied on speed rather than weight for the kill.

But he was almost incoherently angry and that made him just as dangerous.

I could see it in the tension of his upper body, the white-knuckle fists. He shouldered his way around the piano heading towards my principal—and if there wasn’t actually steam coming out of his ears it was a close-run thing.

“Sean,” I said quietly. I stepped around Dyer, closed on my target, checking his angle of intent. Definitely heading straight for us.

One more step, sunshine, and you’ve crossed the line . . .

The man kept coming.

I moved in, one long stride, and thrust my empty right hand between his arm and body as he took a mirror-image stride towards me. From there it was easy to his use own momentum to swing his arm back and round, locking it up hard behind him.

He turned into me automatically with a yelp of hurt surprise. I stuck out my foot and tangled it between his ankles. He went crashing to his knees. I followed him down, keeping the armlock in place, and reinforced it with a knee in the small of his back once he was there. I didn’t even slop any liquid out of the champagne flute I still held in my left hand.

I looked up, aware of a sudden buzzing silence. Blake Dyer was frozen, white-faced, but I guessed that this was an unpleasant reminder of the last time I’d worked for him. I’d taken out a potential threat at another high society gathering. Hell, at least I didn’t shoot this one.

Tom O’Day was staring down at me with a look of total bemusement on his face. His bodyguard, Hobson, might have just been told an off-colour joke in mixed company. He’d allowed a tiny smile to crack his stony face. Hard to tell if he was suppressing something bigger or simply didn’t find it funny.

Sean, I was gratified to see, had at least got himself in close to our principal, even if he was showing no emotion at all. I hoped people would read that reaction as calm rather than inertia.

And then, into that shocked hush, came the sound of a semiautomatic hammer going back. I slid my eyes sideways without moving my head, saw the muzzle and front sight of what was probably a Beretta, just visible in my peripheral vision.

“Let him up,” said a man’s voice. A British accent, north London, gruff with anger.

I released the lock and rose in one movement, moving back quickly. It’s been my experience that men who’ve been taken down by a woman often try to get their retaliation in really promptly. In which case it’s always wise to be out of range.

In this case the young man groaned a few times, flopping around until he managed to get his loose arm back under control. Conversation started up again, a little too loudly in the way it does when people are more excited than shocked by what they’ve just seen.

To my surprise, it was Tom O’Day who came forwards and scooped a hand under the young man’s elbow. It was only as he came to his feet and the two of them stood next to each other that I realised the startling family resemblance.

Oh . . . shit.

“I think you should apologise,” O’Day said.

“Of course,” I said at once, contrite. “I didn’t—”

“Not you—him,” O’Day interrupted, eyes twinkling. “Jimmy?”

“Dad!” The young man’s voice emerged as a squawk. He had his father’s facial structure without his confidence, height or breadth. “
She’s
the one who attacked
me
!”

“You came charging over here with a face like thunder, boy. In a room full of bodyguards, you’re lucky she didn’t break your arm.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that’s what she was?” Jimmy O’Day threw me a sullen look. There was a long pause, during which time he tried for defiance and his father beat him down with age and experience. I got the feeling their clashes usually ended the same way .

Eventually, Jimmy muttered, “Sorry.” His gaze shifted across to where the star guest had barely paused during the interruption to his grand entrance. The only change was that the blonde, Autumn, had disentangled herself and was heading over, concern on her lovely face. Baptiste was self-absorbed enough to have hardly noticed her departure.

“Jimmy, what happened?” she asked. “Did you fall?”

Tom O’Day harrumphed. “Boy’s a damned fool,” he said.

His son made an effort not to appear sulky in front of her. So, he still had male pride. “No, I was pushed.”

“Lucky she didn’t break his arm,” Tom O’Day repeated, ducking his chin in my direction. Whatever dignity Jimmy had regained, O’Day had just taken it away from him again.

Jimmy’s eyes flashed, then slid to the man who’d shoved a Beretta in my face. “No,
she’s
lucky Vic didn’t shoot her.”