Second Shot

“No, Daddy, I want to stay,” she said, touching his arm, her use of the word “Daddy” more confident than the first time she’d tried it, whatever doubts might have been raised in the meantime. “I can help. All this money-what good has it done me so far?” She lifted her shoulders, suddenly looking very young and almost gauche. “If it will help you-you and Rosalind-tell me how much you need, and take it.”

To his credit, Lucas only hesitated for a moment.

“No,” he said, and there was a quiet finality to his voice, so that I perhaps caught a glimpse of what must have been the old Lucas, of the SAS sergeant who’d terrorized new recruits to the point of insensibility, and I was just a fraction more inclined to believe in him. “Simone, I want you and Ella out of here as soon as possible. Listen to Charlie. It’s not safe for you here.”

“But-”

“Don’t argue, princess.” He touched her cheek and the tender gesture silenced her better than a slap.

He crossed to the bed, picked up the Smith amp; Wesson and refilled it with short, efficient movements, before slipping it back into his holster.

“I know I haven’t been much of a father to you,” he said, straightening his jacket to cover the gun, “but I won’t put you in harm’s way now if I can help it. Do what’s sensible. Go home.”

As he reached the doorway, Simone made a noise alongside me that could almost have been a whimper. When I looked, I saw tears beginning to form along her lower eyelids. Lucas sighed.

“You know it’s breaking my heart to do this, but I have to think of what’s best for my daughter, not for me,” he said gently as he pulled open the door and stepped through it. “See that you do the same for yours.”

The man whom I’d seen guarding Frances Neagley that day in the bar of the Boston Harbor Hotel arrived at the White Mountain just before three in the afternoon. He was big and quiet to the point of seeming shy around women, but his eyes were constantly on the move and he carried a 9mm Glock in a shoulder rig under his left arm. His name was Jakes, he told me in his soft-spoken Deep South accent. He had orders from his boss, Parker Armstrong, that he was to stay with us until they could send more people up from New York. I was glad to have him.

I’d spent most of the afternoon trying to persuade Simone to call it a day. She had taken some convincing, but she finally agreed to a tactical retreat. My biggest card was Aquarium man. The way he’d engineered his meeting with her in Boston and then led the attack on her up here in Conway had certainly unnerved her. It gave me a crack and I drove a wedge into it for all I was worth. By the time Jakes arrived, she’d caved.

I’d called Sean and within half an hour he’d called back to say we were booked on flights out of Logan the day after tomorrow, giving us time to get back down to Boston without breaking our necks in the snow. As I’d ended the call I’d checked the time. Less than forty-eight hours and we’d be in the air.

As soon as we’d checked in to the White Mountain, I’d asked the front desk to organize us a rental car. Without Lucas on hand, we were stranded without transport, and I didn’t think Charlie the limo driver would be prepared to slog all the way up to North Conway just to collect us.

The hotel had arranged for a four-wheel drive of some description on a one-way hire and said they’d drop it off that afternoon. At about five thirty, the front desk rang to say the rental company’s representative was in the lobby and would I go down to deal with the paperwork?

I picked up my jacket from the bed. Simone was watching my TV while Jakes read to Ella out of one of her storybooks in the other room. Something about a little princess and a frog, if the snatches I heard were anything to go by Jakes showed no sign of embarrassment as he read out the appropriate sections in his version of a frog accent, which seemed, bizarrely enough, to be distinctly Scottish. Ella was sucking her thumb as she listened to him, captivated.

I ducked my head into the room and he looked up, flashing me a quick grin without breaking off the tale.

“I won’t be long,” I told him. “Put the chain on behind me.”

There was only one person obviously waiting in the lobby when I got down there, a mustachioed man with a dark complexion, wearing a peaked cap with earflaps that stuck out from the sides of his head like a semialert hound’s. He was wrapped up in a thick ski jacket that he hadn’t bothered to unzip despite the roaring open fire at the back of the lobby, and he was carrying a clipboard.

“Miss Fox?” he said, thrusting a gloved hand out. “Howya doing? Say, you wanna go check over the vehicle first, then we can come back inside and get you all signed up?”

“No problem,” I said, glad I’d brought my jacket. “What have we ended up with?”

He held the door and followed me through it out into the sudden drenching cold. “Excuse me?”