Fourth Day (23 page)

‘When Maria and Liam left here five years ago, they joined Debacle together,’ Randall Bane said. ‘She didn’t tell me what she planned to do.’

‘Would you have tried to talk her out of it?’ I asked dryly. ‘I thought you encouraged everyone to find their own path?’

‘I do.’ For a moment his eyes were very dark and very difficult to read. ‘But Debacle was Liam’s choice, not Maria’s. She went only to be with him.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ There was a hint of bitterness in his voice that I’d never heard there before. ‘Afterwards…she was never quite the same again.’

‘She witnessed his death, didn’t she?’ I said. ‘That would be enough to break anybody.’

‘Perhaps.’ He glanced at me again, fathomless and brooding. ‘It would not have broken you.’

I was sitting on the folded-down tailgate of a big Ford crew cab pickup truck, which had brought Bane out to the
campsite, together with Yancy and a couple of the other security men.

They’d found me keeping a watch over the
still-unconscious
Nu. Maria had closed down into shock by the time they arrived. I’d wrapped her in blankets and stayed close, but she hadn’t spoken again, just sat silently rocking herself into a protective trance.

Nu hadn’t moved. I’d checked his airway and his pulse, which was a steady tremble in his veins. There was a protruding rock beneath his skull and he’d landed on it hard enough to break the skin, and the bone beneath. The fluid coming from his ears – not a good sign – told me he was beyond my medical abilities, so I’d left him where he’d fallen.

About an hour after my 911 call, I’d heard the first approaching vehicle and assumed it must be the paramedics, but stayed put. Our fire was the only light showing out here, so they didn’t need additional guidance from me. I left the SIG in my leg pocket, albeit with the flap open.

It was my gun. Not just the same make and model, but my personal weapon. I didn’t need to check the serial number. I’d know it anywhere. The one I’d buried on the way into Fourth Day and had last seen on the desk in Bane’s study. I could hazard a pretty good guess at Nu’s plan. Shoot Maria first, then suicide me and leave the SIG in my own dead hand.

What I didn’t know was why.

But when the vehicle engine finally stopped and I heard doors slam, it was Bane who strode into the camp, followed by Yancy and the others, fanning out, M16s ready.

Bane faltered, taking in Maria’s almost catatonic state
and Nu’s immobile body. Yancy shouldered his weapon and bent over Nu.

‘I thought this was supposed to be quality alone-time,’ I said, aware my voice was still too loud and there was a vicious throbbing in my ears. ‘It’s turning into quite a party.’

‘One of the patrols heard gunshots,’ Bane dismissed, face satanic in the firelight. ‘What happened here?’

I nodded towards Nu. ‘Your boy there decided to use us for target practice.’

Yancy twisted. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, eyes flicking over me. ‘Hurt bad, though.’

‘Yeah, well, he had it coming.’ Still unsteady, I got to my feet, vibrating with tiredness as the adrenaline hangover kicked in. The blood had dried on my neck and was starting to itch. ‘I can understand you wanting rid of me, Bane, but what the hell has Maria done to you?’

Bane didn’t answer immediately. I saw his gaze range round the campsite, taking it all in. He spotted the bullet hole in Maria’s tent, so either he was sharp, or he’d devised the plan and was just checking how far Nu had managed to get before being so unexpectedly thwarted.

‘Maria is an innocent,’ he said at last. ‘I have no idea why John would try to harm her, as you say.’

‘Well, think harder.’

Bane fell silent. Eventually, he glanced at Yancy. ‘Tyrone, please take Maria out of here.’

‘She stays.’ I held up the cellphone I’d taken from Maria. ‘I’ve already called this in. Trying to cover up for her will only make it worse when the cops interview Nu…
if
he ever comes round, of course. He landed with quite a crack.’

Yancy’s eyes flicked over Nu. ‘I knew this Brit bastard was up to something,’ he muttered.

Bane silenced him with a single look. ‘What happened?’ he asked again, something subdued about him.

‘A convenient opportunity for you,’ I said. ‘Or an engineered one – I’m not sure which. A chance to get rid of two liabilities at the same time.’

‘And in what way, exactly, might you both be considered liabilities?’

‘Well, I’ve seen things I really shouldn’t have done,’ I said, glancing at Yancy, who’d straightened and moved closer. I deliberately ignored him, skimmed my eyes over Maria’s huddled figure instead. ‘And her because people are closing in on you, Bane. Heavy people, and she’s just too delicate to hold the line. What are you afraid she might tell them about you?’

‘Not everyone is as resilient as you are, Charlie,’ he said, evasive, ‘but if you think I’d sanction something like this, you are gravely mistaken. I have always tried to protect Maria.’

‘I saw her run from you, scared, days before we took Witney,’ I said flatly. ‘Now you send the pair of us out here, prepped as sacrificial lambs. Nu was even using
my
gun, just to make it look good.’ I fished the SIG out of my pocket and displayed it loosely, partly to show it to him, and partly to disguise the fact that I was reaching for it at all.

‘Bastard,’ Yancy repeated. He swung round and glared at the supine figure, shifting his weight so that for a moment I thought he meant to put the boot in.

As for Bane, something flashed through his face, emphasized by the light from the fire. Anger and sorrow.
Suddenly, I realised this was as much a shock to him as it had been to me. Whatever Nu had been up to, he’d done it without Bane’s blessing. And possibly without Yancy’s knowledge.

And that…changed things.

‘I sent Maria out here as your guide because I thought she could learn something from you, not the other way around,’ Bane admitted. ‘I hoped she would absorb something of that resilience I mentioned. Something of your strength.’

‘Why?’

Those eyes pierced me again. ‘Because I spend my life trying to help people, but my biggest regret has always been that I seem unable to help the one person who means most to me – my own daughter.’

The police and paramedics arrived at the same time, and from then on the activity became frenetic. I let the uniforms take away my SIG with gloved hands, dropping it into an evidence bag. This was getting to be a habit.

The paramedics quickly decided to airlift Nu to the nearest trauma centre. They wanted to take Maria in as well, but I pointed out that transporting the victim to the same hospital as the man who’d tried to kill her might not be good for her state of mind. Bane intervened. I don’t know what he said to them, but eventually they entrusted a sedated Maria to his care. He left with her, in the big pickup, shortly afterwards.

The female paramedic who checked me over told me I’d been lucky, and that my hearing should recover in a day or two. It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced gunshots at close proximity, but the muffled whine was starting to annoy. I hedged when she asked careful questions about my residual black eye.

By the time the air ambulance helicopter lifted off with
Nu on board, the sky was lightening towards another mild day.

Yancy appeared at my elbow. ‘I’m gonna drive you back to the compound in the Jeep,’ he told me. ‘There’s a Detective Gardner waiting on you there.’

‘Oh, goody,’ I murmured. Still, at least I hadn’t shot anyone this time, although Nu might have been better off if I had.

Yancy was not as good an off-road driver as Maria, so the first part of the ride was a lot rougher, leaving very little room for conversation. That might have been the idea.

As we neared habitation, however, the terrain smoothed out and I was finally able to ask, ‘So, who’s Nu working for?’

Yancy shrugged, eyes on the track ahead. ‘Don’t know. But he’s been acting kinda strange lately.’ His eyes flicked sideways. ‘He was harder on you than he had reason to. Thought it was because of what you are, but now?’ He shrugged again, an annoyed twitch. ‘Who knows how that mother’s mind works.’

We reached the barn behind Bane’s quarters and Yancy swung the Jeep back into its allotted bay. The sun was rising faster now, the light changing every minute, warmth seeping through.

As we climbed down, Bane himself appeared through the same doorway Maria and I had used the day before.

‘How’s she doing?’ Yancy asked immediately.

‘Maria’s sleeping.’

Yancy picked his M16 off the back seat of the Jeep and cradled it meaningfully. ‘I’ll go watch over her,’ he said. He nodded briefly, and strode away, head hunched into his
sizeable shoulders, as though he took the attempt on the girl as a personal affront.

Knowing this might be my last chance, I put a hand on Bane’s arm as he turned away.

‘Was Liam Billy’s father?’ I asked, and felt him tense momentarily under my fingers, then relax.

‘Of course not,’ he said, so blandly I couldn’t distinguish truth from lie. ‘This way.’

He led me back into the building and along the corridor to his study. When he opened the door and ushered me through with a gentle hand at the small of my back, Detective Gardner was sitting casually behind Bane’s desk. She was in jeans and a linen jacket today, the hem hooked back to show the gun on her hip.

Another plain-clothes man stood by one of the bookcases, head tilted to read the titles. He was wearing a sober suit with a police shield tucked into his belt. He turned as we came in and I faltered at his grim expression.

‘Thank you, Mr Bane,’ Gardner said. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

Was it deliberate that her words were a direct echo of Conrad Epps, that day on the canyon road in Calabasas, or were they too throwaway to have hidden meaning?

Bane considered for a moment, as if her order was a request, then turned to me, almost solicitous. ‘Charlie?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, zeroed on Gardner. ‘Let’s just get this done, shall we?’

Bane’s fingers hooked under my chin, snapping my eyes to his. He stared down into them for a long searching moment before releasing me, apparently satisfied.

‘All right, Detective,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Please
remember that Miss Fox has been through an ordeal last night, and treat her accordingly.’

‘We’ll be gentle with her,’ Gardner promised coldly.

Bane nodded shortly and went out, closing the door behind him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gardner’s companion move away from the bookcase, swing to face me. I turned my head and he pinned me with a near-black gaze.

‘Hello, Miss
Fox
,’ Sean said softly. ‘Abandoned your cover pretty quickly, didn’t you?’

‘It was already hopelessly compromised.’ I glanced at Gardner again, but she seemed content to let Sean do the talking for now, watching us like we were playing a chess final. ‘Bane knew exactly who I was, the day after I arrived. They knew I’d brought an emergency kit, and could work out where to look for it. Either Epps hasn’t plugged that leak, or Parker has one of his own.’

Sean said nothing. I swallowed, added, ‘And Nu recognised me.’ My lips twisted. ‘Turns out he applied for Special Forces – was part of the intake after mine. He knew all about me.’

Sean frowned. ‘I don’t remember him.’

‘He washed out,’ I said, ‘but he remembered you.’

Sean prowled round in front of me, narrowed eyes raking my face and lingering, as I knew they would, on the stubborn bruise around my eye. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. He was waiting for an explanation. I couldn’t find one that wasn’t far too defensive.

At last, it was Gardner who said, in that world-weary cop’s tone, ‘So, you gonna tell us what happened?’ And I heard the unspoken
this time
curl around the end of her question.

I took a breath and ran through the events of the night, quick and concise. Sean leant against the edge of Bane’s desk and crossed his arms while I spoke, shutting me out. I tried to blank the gesture, kept my voice calm and level as I recounted Nu’s ambush, Yancy’s anger, and Bane’s revelation about Maria.

‘It’s pretty clear that
she
was the one – not Dexter – who witnessed Liam Witney’s death in Alaska,’ I finished.

‘So, why didn’t she come forward?’ Gardner asked.

‘Because she’d fall to pieces under questioning,’ I said. ‘You didn’t see her after the shooting last night. She’s an emotional train wreck. I’m not surprised Bane wants to protect her.’

Witney had tried to do the same thing, too, I recalled. Maybe he’d coaxed the story from Maria, but realised there was no way he could ever ask her to testify. Was that why he stayed close – a last link to his dead son?

‘And you definitely don’t think Nu was following Bane’s orders to get rid of the pair of you?’ Sean said. ‘An emotionally unstable daughter might be enough of a handicap…?

I shook my head, aware only of the annoying buzz still present at the periphery of my hearing range, of a dragging tiredness. ‘No way.’

He and Gardner exchanged another silent glance, but I didn’t catch the meaning. It was like being excluded from a private conversation in a public place.

‘It’s very unfortunate that Nu should be…incapacitated at this time,’ Gardner said then, neutral. ‘I was planning on coming out here today to question him about the kidnapping and murder of Thomas Witney.’

‘What?’

‘We got security tapes from the office building across the street, puts him at the motel on Sunset right about the time Witney was getting his brains blown out.’

‘I thought Epps took everything and you’d been told to lay off.’

‘So I’m stubborn – sue me.’ She shrugged. ‘Tape quality was poor, but the lab cleaned it up some. This is not like on TV – they got a constant backlog, and we’ve only just gotten the tape back,’ Gardner said. ‘So it’s sure convenient for Bane that suddenly Nu can’t answer questions.’

‘Wait a minute. You think…?’ I shook my head. ‘Actually, I don’t know what the hell you think!’

‘We know Witney was taken by someone he trusted,’ Sean said. ‘Otherwise, they wouldn’t have uncuffed him. He thought he was being rescued – until it was too late.’

‘We think we can prove Nu’s involved,’ Gardner said. ‘Question is, was Bane pulling his strings?’

I had a sudden flash of images – the kill list of ex-members now safely hidden inside the hollow leg of the bed in my room, of the circled newspaper story, the training manual and the doctored cigarette. And I knew I should tell Sean all this, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something
off
about the whole thing.

Like someone was pulling
my
strings.

‘No,’ I said.

Sean let his breath out fast. ‘You’re covering for him, Charlie. Why?’

‘I just don’t believe Bane is the big villain he’s being painted, all right?’ I rubbed a hand across my face. ‘Epps thinks he’s Bin Laden by another name, and Sagar told me
all kinds of horror stories about what goes on in here. So far, I’ve seen no evidence to support any of it.’

Sean jerked upright, crossed to me in a couple of long strides and grabbed my arms before I could react, spinning me round. If I hadn’t been running on no sleep, I might even have countered him in time. But I didn’t.

He propelled me forwards, almost roughly, fingers biting, until I was in line with a mirror on the far wall. In it I saw a ragged figure with slightly singed hair and a marked face. The remains of the black eye were probably at their most colourful, I realised, although the tenderness had diminished along with the swelling.

Looming behind me, Sean’s face was tight and pale. He bent close to my good ear. ‘Just look at yourself, Charlie,’ he whispered, somewhere between anguish and savagery. ‘You think I don’t know you well enough to tell you’re in pain just by the way you move?’

I opened my mouth to protest, but he twisted me sideways and, oblivious to our audience, slipped his hand under the loose tails of my shirt, dragging it up to half expose my back.

I knew without needing to see them that other bruises had formed and bloomed and spread across my torso. I heard Gardner’s sucked-in breath and was unreasonably irritated by it. Clumsily jerking myself loose, I yanked my shirt straight again and backed away from him.

‘I had to make it look good, you know that.’

Sean made no moves to follow, just stood expressionless. ‘Christ Jesus,’ he muttered at last. ‘Bane had the shit kicked out of you, and you’re
defending
him?’

‘
He
didn’t do anything,’ I snapped. ‘Why the hell can’t you keep an open mind?’

Sean folded his arms again. ‘It’s not
my
mind we’re concerned about.’

‘What?’ I demanded softly.

‘This operation’s over, Charlie,’ he said, final as a prison door closing. ‘You’re coming out of here with us, right now. By force, if necessary, if you feel the need to make it
look good
.’

I glanced across at Gardner, but her face told me she was way past supporting any actions I might take. ‘And what will that achieve, exactly? I don’t have anything concrete to report to Lorna Witney.’

‘If you haven’t found out anything by now, you’re not going to,’ Sean countered, brutal. ‘What will staying here do for you?’

I opened my mouth, closed it again, but before I could get much further than that, Gardner’s cellphone began to blare. She answered it without taking her eyes off the pair of us, spoke briefly, and closed the phone up again.

‘We’re ready to leave,’ she said, getting to her feet. There was a long pause and her focus switched to Sean. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

But as she strolled towards the door, she took something off her belt and tossed it to Sean, who caught it one-handed. I saw enough to recognise a set of handcuffs.

‘Just in case.’ She gave me a dark look and went out.

When Sean and I were alone, I asked roughly, ‘You think you’ll need those?’

‘You tell me,’ he said, voice low. ‘Why are you really here, Charlie?’

‘Because I need to be.’ I sighed. ‘Because I’m a mess and, believe it or not, Bane is helping me to get my head together.’

‘And this…problem, whatever it is – you couldn’t bring it to me?’ he demanded. ‘After everything we’ve been through together?’ The bitterness was starting to leach out like contaminated groundwater. ‘I thought what we had was stronger than that.’

I heard the past tense and closed my heart to the sudden pain. ‘Sean, you were all part of it…’ I broke off, aware from his face I’d said the wrong thing. ‘Shit, I’m making such a bloody hash of this.’ I sank into the chair near the desk, staring at my own tightly clasped hands. Sean hadn’t moved, I noted, but he seemed much further away than he had ever done. A worm of fear uncoiled deep in my belly.

‘You remember when we got back from Texas – after that business with my parents?’ I asked, and when he nodded I took a deep breath and said baldly, ‘I discovered I was pregnant.’

I expected a reaction. What I got was nothing for the longest time. Anticipation pushed a narrow blade very slowly into my chest, burning as it went.

Eventually, Sean said, ‘Pregnant,’ his voice totally without inflection. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’

‘I was in a tailspin,’ I said, aware my knuckles had turned white under the skin. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

‘“Do” in what way?’ he queried, dangerously soft. ‘Didn’t you think something like that was important enough to discuss with me?’

‘You weren’t there, Sean!’ I burst out. ‘I was freaked out. I thought I’d lose everything – you, my job, my green card. I thought I’d get sent home and I was in a total panic. You were working away when I found out.’ If that wasn’t entirely true, it was close enough to make no difference.
But I felt my face heat at the minor lie, knew he’d seen the involuntary reaction by the narrowing of his eyes. Still I blundered on. ‘How could I tell you something like that over the phone?’

He launched across the study to bend over me. ‘You’re talking in the past tense,’ he said, white-faced, grabbing my arms like he wanted to shake me until my teeth fell out. ‘What the fuck
did
you do, Charlie?’

‘What do you think I did?’ I broke his grip, shoved to my feet, hurt and angry, wanting to punish him for his lack of faith and only punishing myself. Logic didn’t come into it.