Trophies (29 page)

—fire lanced across my back like one of
Theresa's explosions mishandled—

"—Robbie!"

Oh, bloody
hell.

I surfaced from deep mental waters, frozen in
the middle of the sun-baked parking lot. The Suburban accelerated.
It was only seconds away. The driver wore a ski mask. In July. He
had to be broiling. What kind of an idiot—

—finally, Sherlock fired.

The Colt .45 is a primitive weapon. It's
huge, with a huge shell and an equally huge powder load. It's a
heavy weapon. It's powerful. It doesn't throw the slug far, but
throws it hard. The sound is explosive. Sherlock loved it for that
reason alone; even if he missed the target, he influenced it
through the sound, for no one was immune to that sudden roar.

I surfaced again. The Suburban swerved. It
was so close, I could feel the engine's heat and smell the oil. I
was too numb to feel fear. But I
knew
I was dead.

Sherlock fired again. Acrid smoke wafted
past, tearing at my memories, trying to drag me back underwater.
Something strong slammed into me, picked me up, threw me across the
concrete. I hit hard. Blinding pain smashed my left shoulder. I
rolled. Somewhere close, tires screeched.

My own Colt was in my hand. How it got there,
I had no idea. Finally I got it up, sighted on the Suburban. It
took both hands to hold the big weapon steady.

The Suburban's windshield was starred.
Another big hole was smashed into its radiator grille, which no
longer resembled hungry teeth but a screaming mouth. But no water
spewed. It was moving again. In reverse. It recoiled across the
parking lot like a wounded animal retracting into its den. Between
us lay Sherlock, stretched on the concrete, unmoving. The skid
marks stopped just short of his body.

I got the Suburban's engine area straight in
my sights but didn't fire. Sherlock was moving. He pushed up onto
his elbow. Together we watched the Suburban reverse out of the
parking lot, screech to a stop, and roar away.

I managed to set the Colt down before the
shakes engulfed me.

no time

There was no past, no future, only an eternal
present that drifted past like lazy water. The concrete beneath my
knees made no more impression than that gentle stream.

"Robbie. Talk to me."

"I'm here, boss. You?"

"Never better. Now come on."

He grabbed my Colt, grabbed me, dragged me to
the Camaro. Patricia tried to run toward us, her face frozen into a
shocked parody of an ancient Greek theater mask.

"Get back in the car!" There was no room in
his tone for disobedience.

Patricia obeyed.

Sherlock threw me into the front passenger's
seat, gave me the Colt, slammed the door. A moment later, he fell
into the driver's seat beside me, slammed the door. He actually
took the time to fasten his seatbelt before starting the engine,
shifting, revving out of the parking lot and into the street.

"Seatbelt, Robber."

My fingers fumbled. Patricia took it from me,
snapped it home. Sherlock shifted up.

"Charles?" Her voice was a whisper.

"Yes."

"Are you all right?"

I stared out the window. Failure pounded
through me, harder than the pain. "No."

My mind worked in freeze frames, like a jerky
old home movie. There was no continuity. I was lost in
thoughts.

Literally.

"Sherlock?"

"I'm listening."

"What hit me?"

"I did."

"Oh. Thank you."

Sherlock braked behind red tail lights that
led us nowhere. "Patricia, I need a faster way out of here."

"Um. Try cutting south and circling around
the hospital. We'll see how the Longfellow Bridge looks."

"What's the rush?" That was Lindsay's voice.
I hadn't realized how quiet she could be.

"Caren is in that house alone."

I woke up again.

Because now we didn't know where the Impala
was.

Nor the Suburban.

But both of them knew we were nowhere near
the house.

current time

"There's two of them," I said.

"I should have figured that out." Sherlock
slammed into overdrive, roared around a semi. Air brakes screamed
behind us. He accelerated again. "The styles, Robber. One's a cool
customer, waits quietly for what he wants, shoots and kills and
leaves. The other's a bumbling amateur, can't even kill someone
with a Suburban. Let me tell you, if you can't hit someone with
something as big as a Suburban, then you can't hit someone,
period."

Patricia leaned between our seats, her
fingernails digging into my now doubly sore shoulder. She stared at
Sherlock, her face etched in lines of shock. "What's going to
happen to Caren?"

Her voice sounded shaky. Actually, it sounded
like I felt. But one of us falling apart at a time was more than
enough. I covered her hand with mine and squeezed. Her answering
pressure was reassuring.

"Probably nothing." Sherlock weaved again,
leaving a horn sounding in his wake. "But I'm gonna get back to the
house first, just to make certain. Call her, Patricia. Don't stay
on the phone too long, in case someone's using the cells to trace
us. Just tell her we've had some trouble, to be careful and keep
that pistol handy. Then get off the line, okay?"

"Got it." That sounded better, stronger. She
scooted back; in a moment I heard her voice, but not her words,
murmuring behind me.

When Sherlock made a statement like that, I
knew I could take it to the bank. He would never let me down, not
if he had to die in the process. Coils of tension eased along my
shoulders, leaving me shaking in rivulets of sweat. I slumped
lower. My armed Colt .45 was still in my right hand, aiming toward
my feet. I was in more danger from myself at that moment than from
either of our enemies. I uncocked the big pistol, pushed the safety
on, then slid it back into the hidden holster and fastened my pants
and belt over it. The shakes were bad this time. More than ever, I
wanted a quiet hole to crawl into, somewhere no one would ever find
me or, if they did, where they couldn't reach me.

"Can you talk?" Sherlock asked.

So much for that thought. Dirt and scrapes of
blood marred his already disfigured right temple and his fatigues
badly needed cleaning. His narrowed brown eyes shifted from the
road, to the rearview mirrors, to the cars around us, back to the
road, in quick calm movements that showed no sign of panic and, I
was certain, missed nothing. My muscles loosened further. I should
have known I could depend upon him, no matter what direction he
faced when an attack started.

"I think so."

He braked behind a slower-moving car, waited
for a break in the traffic, shifted lanes and gears at the same
time. "What happened?"

He would want to discuss that, of course. I
didn't, especially not within hearing distance of Patricia. "I
froze."

He didn't take the hint. "You are not a
stupid man, Captain, and that was not a brush-off question."

Sherlock never resorted to rank. He'd make
use of anything and everything else — his brains, instincts,
physical abilities, luck, knowledge of human behavior, dirty tricks
— to keep us rollicking souls under control, to get the job done
and keep the bosses happy. In the five years I'd known him, he'd
only addressed me by my rank during our first meeting; of course,
that was also one of the rare times I'd addressed him as sir.

So he thought he needed my attention. Mist
edged in and cornered me, forcing out reality until it seemed the
Camaro traveled suspended through a foggy wasteland. Tension
returned to my shoulders, forcing out the physical pain. I'd
cheerfully face combat, under the worst conditions, rather than
admit the truth. For a year I'd fought, training my reflexes,
burying my oddities, never letting anyone see the internal damage
beneath the stoic façade. But I'd finally been caught and there was
nothing else left to say.

"He was right." Saying it hurt more than all
the current crop of aches combined. The pain radiated through me
like cracks through glass, shattering each nerve in passing. If
Sherlock saw fit to act on the admission, it was the effective end
of my military career.

After the war, we'd each spent time with
psychiatrists, being analyzed and poked and prodded like lab
specimens. The assessment mine had given was unequivocal: "This man
should not be in a front-line, active-duty unit."

Reading that had been one of the lowest
points of my life. If it hadn't been for Sherlock's argument that
his gang, being a NATO special forces unit, was technically neither
front line nor active duty, then the Kraut would have had no choice
but to boot me out. As it stood, both men showed remarkable
confidence in me, particularly as I didn't deserve it.

There was no getting around the fact — I
screwed up during the war. I'd been given an assignment and I'd
been wounded before completing it. That spotter, far too competent
for our forces' welfare, had spotted me, his intended sniper, and
called his machine-gunners to take us all out before I could take
him out. He succeeded and I failed. The battle was
mano-a-mano
and I lost.

And after I was wounded, I couldn't even lift
the rifle again. Kenny radioed for a medic because I couldn't, and
I'd fainted when they manhandled me off the front lines, another
low point in my life.

The Kraut and Sherlock had awarded me the
Bronze Star for "heroic or meritorious achievement" in action, but
it was so obviously a sop to my pride that it was humiliating. I'd
much rather have gotten the spotter than the medal, and hadn't yet
convinced myself to wear it. That felt too much like Prissy's
posturing and the presentation case remained hidden away with my
trophies, currently in the backpack at Patricia's feet.

I'd never discussed this with anyone, not
even the shrink, and especially not with Sherlock. Whenever anyone
brought up the subject, I went as far as necessary to demonstrate
it was a forbidden topic. I preferred to keep discussion of my
worst failure to a minimum, because I never wanted Sherlock or the
Kraut to regret keeping me on the team.

Had he finally reached that point? I closed
my eyes and wished I could blank out again. I've never been
particularly religious, but now I understood how one's soul can
pray without any conscious assistance. I based my identity on
inclusion in the gang, the most elite of elite teams and the only
community where I felt at home, and I waited without breathing for
his next words.

"Bull." Sherlock didn't ask what I was
talking about. As usual, he knew. "I didn't buy that argument then
and I'm not bidding on it now. You're too good for that."

That was approximately 180 degrees from what
I'd expected him to say. "Um, I'm not fishing for compliments, or I
don't think I am, but would you mind explaining that?"

He paused, working the Camaro through
traffic, then hit a fairly clear section of road and floored it.
For the first time I realized just how fast he was driving and
wished I could blank out again. In the back seat, there was no
sound from my two girls. I wondered if they were trying to overhear
this conversation or if they were petrified. When Patty cornered me
later, I'd find out.

"You weren't there the night Wings and I got
von Bisnon drunk, were you?" Sherlock asked. "That was a real hoot,
it was. Damn, that man can drink. And he has an hypothesis for
everything."

Where the hell was he going with this? For
that matter, where the hell were we? It took me a few moments to
recognize the columns and steps of the Widener Library, and I only
had those few moments because the building absolutely flew past.
Hopefully he hadn't driven this speed all the way from Boston;
hopefully my sense of time had blanked out for a while there, too,
and my life insurance hadn't been tested quite that severely.

"We all know he's brilliant. There's a reason
he's a general. Your point?"

But his next words were spoken over his
shoulder. "Thanks for the directions, Patricia. We made a lot
better time using your long shortcut." Like a homing pigeon on the
last lap, he wove through backstreets as if he'd been born in
Boston.

"Your point, Sherlock?" I wanted him to make
it quickly. We were almost to the house. It was bad enough Patricia
and Lindsay were being treated to this lecture without throwing
Caren into the mix. Doubtless it would impress her no end.

"Sorry. My point, Robber, is that von Bisnon
believes you gotta have a certain sort of personality to be
effective in special forces units, especially ours because it's so
damned different. And he says, when you find such a soldier, you
hang onto him and never let him go, no matter who says what else
about him. If at all possible." He swung the wheel and turned onto
Aunt Edith's quiet street.

"Oh, God," Patricia whispered.

I froze. Almost in front of the house crawled
a dark blue sedan. As Sherlock braked, it accelerated away, eased
around the corner into traffic, and vanished.

Sherlock revved the engine. But I touched his
arm before the Camaro traveled more than a few feet.

"No," I said.

He braked and stared at me; when he started
acting like an officer in the field rather than some sort of clown,
he tended to use his cobra stare to illustrate his messages. But
this time I stared back, deliberately not glancing toward the
civilians in the back seat. We'd gotten through the entire
miserable day without either of them being hurt. I wanted it to
stay that way. And it absolutely amazed me that for once, my
instincts trumped his.

He held my gaze, something predatory and
carnivorous smoldering behind that cobra stare. Then he nodded.
Without comment, he pulled into the driveway and paused before the
rough-quarried granite steps, near Patricia's Taurus and Caren's
Volvo station wagon. But he didn't shift into neutral nor cut the
engine, nor unlock the doors so we could step out. "Is there room
for this in the garage?"