Second Shot

She smiled at me, full, open and without guile and stretched out both arms, reaching for me. I hesitated for a second, then let Simone hand her over to me. Ella cuddled on tight, burying her face into the collar of my shirt, her hair tickling the underside of my chin. I held her very close, breathing in the soft smells of the baby shampoo Simone used to bathe her, and strawberries. For some unaccountable reason, I felt my eyes dampen and I determinedly put it down to the rawness of the wind. But right at that moment I would have killed or died for her, without a second thought.

And that’s when it really hit me. If Lucas and Rosalind did turn out to be trying to pull a fast one, it wasn’t just Simone’s heart they were going to break.

I looked back through the doors to where Rosalind was still watching us. For a second I allowed everything that was running through my mind to channel into that one hard stare. After only a moment, she turned away. I felt the rage lose its color until it was dirty gray like the snow, and just as cold.

If this was no more than a cruel hoax, how would Simone even begin to explain it to her daughter? They didn’t really love you, Ella-they were just pretending….

My mind snapped back to the target I’d just fired at on Lucas’s range. The last four shots. Two in the heart. Two in the head. And if anybody threatened my principals, I knew I had the guts to shoot like that for real. I’d already proved it.

Ami angry with them, Ella? No. But if they hurt you, that’s when you’ll see me really angry….

For the next two days, everything was calm. Rosalind and Lucas were perfect hosts. They played the role of doting grandparents with aplomb and spoiled Ella rotten. Felix Vaughan was notable by his absence. No more information arrived about Lucas from Sean-good or bad. Knowing there was nothing further I could do until the DNA test results came back, I’d just have to stay close to Simone and Ella, and wait for the first sign of trouble.

It came at four in the morning, when no doubt they expected that everyone would be asleep and at a low physical ebb. It was the textbook time for a grab raid. Ask any policeman-state or secret-and he’ll tell you the same thing.

Unfortunately for them, I hadn’t been in the U.S. long enough for my body clock to fully reset to local time. Four A.M. in North Conway was nine A.M. at home. I’d been awake for an hour and a half by then and figured I’d slept late as it was. I’d got up, silently, in the dark, pulled on my sweatpants and a T-shirt, and quietly eased through some stretching exercises and a few isometrics.

I normally ran when I was at home, and if I wasn’t on a job I spent four mornings a week in the gym, usually with Sean pushing me through a tougher workout than I would manage if I’d been doing it alone. The days I’d spent with Simone and Ella hadn’t allowed for more than some hurried callisthenics first thing each morning, just to stop me seizing up.

I didn’t need a light on to see what I was doing, so I worked in the dark, and I found myself thinking about Simone. And about Ella.

I’d always accepted that part of the job description of close protection was that I might have to lay down my life for my principal, and I’d been willing to do that. Not eager, perhaps, but willing, nevertheless.

The proof of that willingness was tucked away in a fold of cloth at the bottom of my bag. Two stopped 9mm rounds I’d deliberately put myself in the path of. I carried them as a kind of talisman. The only difference was, the person I’d been protecting then had been Sean. At the time, I would have died for him. And now, I realized I felt the same way about Ella.

Sean had warned me against making decisions based on emotion. But now I didn’t have a choice. Did that make me better at my job, or worse?

I was just finishing up the last of my hamstring stretches when I heard the noise from downstairs.

It was only a tiny ripple of sound, the scrape of a chair leg on the wooden floor, perhaps, quickly stilled. Not enough to have woken me if I hadn’t already been alert. I froze with my chin an inch from touching my left knee and straightened up very slowly, trying not to let my clothing rustle. The waning moon was still high and bright above the trees outside the bedroom window, but I squeezed my eyes tight shut as though that would divert auxiliary power to my hearing instead. Then I stood absolutely still for five seconds. Ten.

Nothing.

I shifted over to the bed, moving as softly as I could, and groped for the pair of trainers I’d left alongside it. I knew it was wasting time to put them on, but if I was going to have to do a full intruder search that meant going outside and it was around eleven degrees below freezing out there.