Second Shot

He nodded briefly and went in for the kill. “So how did you know that the guy who came into the restaurant was Matt?” he said. Check. “He could have been any psycho stalker you care to name. Just because you’ve only been told about one threat doesn’t mean there won’t be others. You should know that, Charlie. You of all people.”

His voice was gentle and he hadn’t moved, but that very stillness seethed.

“Ella called him Daddy,” I said between my teeth, in a last-ditch castling to regroup. “He was carrying a pink rabbit.”

“You didn’t know that until after he’d made his move — and you’d made yours,” Sean countered. He took a step towards me, then another. It took conscious effort not to retreat. “You had him under control and you let yourself be distracted. The fact that he was Ella’s father shouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. Children are murdered by their fathers and women are murdered by their spouses every day.”

Checkmate.

Exasperation curled into anger like smoke into fire.

“So I made a judgment call,” I bit out.

“Really? Is that what you think it was?” He paused. “It was an emotional call, certainly.”

I felt my chin come up, almost bobbing to the surface. There may as well have been a red flag attached to it for the signals it sent to him. I snapped, “Of course, and that’s a failing.”

“In this job, yes,” he said, closing his eyes in a slow blink, like he was gathering strength. “Carry on making decisions like that in the field, and I can’t use you.”

My mouth dried. I swallowed in reflex and tried not to make it obvious that’s what it was. But I saw him note my body’s automatic reaction with cold hard eyes, and something flickered in his face. Disappointment?

“I can do the job,” I said, keeping my voice even only with willpower. “Haven’t I proved that to you already?”

He paused again, just fractionally, then inclined his head in slight acquiescence. Just when I thought he’d given ground, he said, in a voice I wasn’t sure I recognized, “Prove it to me again.”

My eyebrows arched in surprise. “What? Now?”

He nodded, more fully this time. “Here and now.”

I glanced around me, took in the dirty, oil-blotched concrete floor, the rows of parked cars. Both of us had shifted our stance, I realized. Sean into offense, me into defense. My elbows were bent and my hands had come up slightly, but I didn’t remember raising them.

We both tensed as a salt-splashed BMW blipped up the ramp from the lower parking floor, then slowed as it drew level. The driver was a middle-aged woman with aggressively coiffured hair who stared at the pair of us as she crawled past. Not because she had hostile intent or was concerned for my safety, but more likely because she thought there might be a chance we were about to vacate a valuable parking space.

When she was just past us, she braked, the rear lights flaring, and I saw her head angle towards the interior mirror. She must have realized, from our lack of movement, that we were having a standoff of some kind, that the situation was far from normal. But, would she intervene on my be-half?

After only a moment, the car’s brake lights snapped off again and the car began to edge forwards, then quickened. No, she wouldn’t.

My eyes went back to Sean. His body was giving off threat cues in waves, like heat. I could see them rippling outwards from his center.

“Sean, come on-”

“What?” he threw at me. “Do you want me to make things easy for you, is that it?”

And that’s when I saw the knife in his left hand.

In truth, I only saw it because he let me. Because he meant for me to do so. He was holding it concealed, with the blade slanted upwards so it was hidden by the sleeve of his coat. The hilt pointed downwards and as he spoke he’d flexed his fingers slightly to allow it to drop just into view between his forefinger and thumb. He must have palmed it just as he’d turned towards me.

Christ.

I stared at him and the hurt and the surprise must have been clearly visible on my face. How long have you been planning this?

I didn’t get an answer, vocal or otherwise. As we stood facing each other I was aware of the adrenaline now punching through my system, constricting my breathing and locking my muscles as it tried to override sense and training in a stampede of panic.

A knife. Oh, it would have to be a knife, wouldn’t it, Sean?

I swallowed again, shrugged out of the constriction of my jacket and let it drop to the ground, using the time to make my decision.

“OK,” I said softly, abandoning all pretense that I might still be able to dissuade him from this course. “If that’s the way you want to play it …”

I just had time to see the gleam form in his eyes.

“Hey, you!” yelled a voice from over to our right. “What’s going on? Back off or I’ll call the police!”