Second Shot

The door to the range crashed open behind me, but everything had taken on a surreal, oneiric quality, nothing was quite true anymore. I didn’t jump, couldn’t turn my head as a figure moved round in front of me from the right. I wasn’t even surprised when I saw who it was.

Felix Vaughan was carrying his favorite.45 H amp;K pistol in a double-handed grip and this time he had the suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. He approached Reynolds with soft-footed caution until he saw the gaping head wound. He paused a moment, staring at the body without expression. Then he straightened, shrugged out of his soldier’s skin and let some pretense of civility cloak him again.

“You?” he asked calmly.

“Yes,” I said in a remote voice. Staying upright was becoming an effort now. My right leg had begun to shake from the strain of taking all my weight. My vision was tunneling down, prickling at the edges. For the first time since I’d entered the range, I realized that every breath burned a dark molten hole in the bottom of my lung.

“I assume the one in the stockroom is yours, also?”

Ah. Too late to call that doctor now, then….

I didn’t answer, but he nodded as though I had. He looked at me for a moment longer, a hard penetrating stare that stripped away the outer layers and laid me bare. I slid my gaze away, ashamed, and he crouched to better inspect Reynolds’s face.

“Good shot,” he said at last, with quiet intensity “Well done.”

And getting praise from him brought the whole of my revulsion for the actions I’d just taken bubbling to the surface. My stomach heaved. I whirled away from him and put too much weight through my injured leg. It collapsed under me.

Vaughan caught me with surprising speed before I hit the floor. I should have been grateful but instead I fought against him, ineffectually and without technique, until I was utterly exhausted. It didn’t cause him much difficulty, nor did it take long.

I leaned against the rough fabric of his coat and shut my eyes. He smelt of wood smoke and wintergreen. Anything was better than the dull coppery odor of Reynolds’s blood.

In the periphery of my awareness, I heard more footsteps, running this time. Vaughan leaned back from me and called out to whoever was approaching. A second later the door crashed open again and then it was Sean who was in front of me, lifting me out of Vaughan’s arms and up into his own as though I weighed nothing. I let him do it. The fight had gone out of me now and I doubt I could have made it out under my own steam.

As Sean turned away his gaze lingered on the corpse.

“Reynolds?”

“Yes,” I said through stiff lips. “He had Ella.” It sounded plaintive, defensive.

Sean nodded, understanding more than I’d voiced.

“You did what you had to, Charlie,” he said, and right at that moment I probably almost believed him.

He carried me back through the stockroom to the front of the store. Vaughan, no more anxious than anyone else to be alone with two dead men, was right behind us. He’d picked up my fallen crutch and was carrying it with him. The three of us followed the path Matt had taken with Ella. That meant we had to pass the slumped body of the man with the glasses, still sitting propped against one of the gun safes, hands now slack in his lap. He was still staring at nothing but, this time, nothing stared right back. I averted my eyes.

In the store I found the two men who’d grabbed me from outside the White Mountain Hotel-Vaughan’s men-hanging round with guns in their hands and looking nervous. Frances Neagley was crouched next to Ella, helping Matt to mop the blood off his daughter’s face and clothing with wadded-up paper towel. The child had quietened to grizzling until she caught sight of me and then she started to yowl again, an almost knee-jerk response.

Matt threw me a look that was half angry, half apologetic as he swept her up and carried her through into one of the offices behind the counter, closing the door firmly behind the two of them. Out of sight and out of mind.

Neagley’s gaze was coolly assessing as she got to her feet, as though she had pieced together what it was I must have done in front of Ella to cause this kind of a reaction, and had come pretty close to the mark.

Sean put me down next to a chair and I drooped into it, leaning forwards to rest my elbows on my knees, scrubbing wearily at my face. My hands smelt of gunpowder and sweat and blood. The right one reacted slower and more clumsily. I let them drop and looked up to find both Sean and Neagley studying me.

“You OK?” the private investigator asked carefully.

I shrugged. “More or less,” I lied.

“The cops are on their way,” Sean said. “Are you ready for this?”

“Would it make a difference if I said no?” I watched Vaughan lean my crutch against one of the displays and move across to speak with his boys in quiet murmurs. “What are they doing here?”