Second Shot

“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. I held up the Beretta so she could see the suppressor on the end of the barrel, keeping it away from Ella’s view. “You don’t bring this kind of thing to a burglary, Simone. This was a snatch.” She paled and started to shake but I couldn’t leave it there. ‘And guess who brought this with him?” I added.

If anything, Simone grew paler still. “Who?” she demanded.

“Your friend from the Aquarium,” I said. “The one who you called and set up that meeting with that day on Boston Common. I don’t suppose you also told him we were coming up here and-”

“No!” she cried. “How could you think I’d put Ella in danger after-?” And then it was her turn to break off, aware she’d nearly said more than she was willing to, more than was wise, in front of the Lucases. “How could you think that?” she muttered, more quietly.

I felt my shoulders weight. This was getting us nowhere. I turned to Rosalind and Lucas. “I think we should call the police,” I said. “Do you need a medic as well?”

“No,” he said. “It looks worse than it is. I’m fine.”

“Do we really need to involve the police?” Simone asked quickly.

I stared at her. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Two armed men break in here in the middle of the night and you’re asking me if we really need the police? Get real, Simone! I should insist we pack up right now and get you both on the first flight out of here.”

“I’m not leaving, Charlie,” she said. Her voice had deepened the way some people’s do when they’re losing their balance on the edge of breaking down. I’d pushed her about as far as I could tonight and I hadn’t the heart, or the energy, to make a stand over it now.

I sighed. “Look, let’s talk about this later, OK?” I said. “Let me just do a quick checkup here. You and Ella ought to go back to bed for a few hours, see if you can get some sleep.”

She nodded and reached for Ella, but the little girl clung all the harder to my thigh. I had a sudden flashback to the hallway of the house in London, when the paparazzi had struck.

“It’s OK, Ella,” I said. “You go with your mummy. I won’t be far away-I promise.”

She looked up at me with those luminous eyes. ‘Are you going downstairs again?”

I thought of the shadows, and of the fear that would build in a child’s mind from such a night.

“Yes,” I said gently, trying to slay the monsters I could see forming. “I’ll be going downstairs again.”

“We-ell, if you are … can I please have a cookie?”

I heard Simone’s quiet gasp of disbelief.

“YOU are the cheekiest little madam I’ve ever come across,” she said, but her voice was choked. “You can wait for breakfast like everybody else.”

Ella allowed herself to be parted from me, still arguing the case for premeal cookies with her mother. My leg felt surprisingly cold without Ella around it.

I checked their room first, particularly the window locks, but it was clear. I did the master suite next, the first time I’d been in there, but it was also secure. I ducked my head into my own room expecting it to be the same, but as soon as I opened the door I knew there was something wrong, something in the air.

I flicked the light on. Hannibal the giant teddy bear was still lying under the bedclothes where I’d left him, but in the short space of time between separating from his friend on the landing, and reappearing after I’d tackled Aquarium man outside Simone’s door, I found that the slim man with the glasses had definitely been into my room.

Oh, not all the way in, perhaps. He probably hadn’t taken much more than a couple of steps over the threshold, sliding the door quietly closed behind him. I’d certainly never heard a thing, but now, when I peeled back the blankets, I discovered that poor old Hannibal had proved a convincing substitute for me.

Convincing enough for the slim man to have put three bullets into him, at any rate.

I couldn’t feel any particular anger about that. It was line i, page i, for just about any kind of rules of engagement against a protected principal.

First job-kill the bodyguard.

Twelve

By ten thirty that morning, I’d moved Simone and Ella into the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the elegant White Mountain Hotel on West Side Road. The suite was spacious and had a connecting door to the room next to it, which I’d taken.

I’d called Sean and brought him up to speed on the night’s events, keeping my report cool and impersonal, particularly the part about the shooting of the teddy bear. Sean had responded in kind. There would be a time for emotional reaction, but we both knew this wasn’t it.

At Sean’s suggestion, I’d also called the private investigator Frances Neagley in Boston and given her as much information as I could about Aquarium man. She’d listened gravely, superhumanly restrained herself from saying, “I told you so,” and promised to find out what she could. She asked if I was bringing in additional security and, when I said Sean was arranging it, she offered me the temporary loan of her guy from the New York agency, Armstrong’s, until they arrived.