Second Shot

“We’d really like to speak to you alone, Miss Fox,” Young said pointedly, taking the lead so we didn’t mistake her for Bartholemew’s junior.

My eyes slid over Sean. “If he leaves,” I said, “so do you.”

Sean showed them his teeth and they both took on a pained look, like they’d been told if they really didn’t want the Rottweiler sleeping on the furniture, they’d have to physically remove it themselves.

“Er, we understand that you were acting as Miss Kerse’s bodyguard, is that correct?” Young asked, and something about the unbridled skepticism in her voice made me regret the decision to talk to them right from the start.

“Yes,” I said.

She raised a single eyebrow, mocking, and let her eyes travel over me, lingering over the tubes and lines I was hooked up to.

“Been doing the job long?”

“Long enough.” It was Sean who answered for me, staring out the two detectives. They’d been doing their own jobs for a while and they must have interviewed their share of murderers and gangsters, but neither of them liked being the subject of Sean’s dead-eyed stare.

“We assume, from the fact that you got it in the back, that you didn’t see who shot you?” Bartholemew took up the baton.

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“But you have an idea, right?”

I took a breath in, too deep, and had to wait a moment for the stabbing in my chest to subside. “I don’t know,” I said, stubborn. ‘As you so gallantly pointed out, I was shot in the back. I didn’t see who pulled the trigger.”

Bartholemew sighed, a noisy careless gush of breath that made me instantly jealous. “We have a preliminary ballistics match between the bullet removed from you and the gun found with Miss Simone Kerse,” he said flatly He let that one settle on me for a while. “I don’t suppose you’d like to hazard a guess as to why Miss Kerse would take it into her head to shoot her own bodyguard, now would you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I paused. “Is there any possible doubt that she actually fired the shots?”

“Well, her prints were on the weapon and she tested positive for gunshot residue. That’s normally good enough for the jury,” Bartholemew said, laconic. “We would sure like to have some idea of a motive, though.”

“You and me both,” I said. But in my head I saw a slow-motion replay of the moments before I was hit. I saw once again Lucas’s head square in my sights. Saw the way I’d let the gun rise, taken my finger off the trigger. Even in the moonlit darkness, it must have been clear that I wasn’t about to take the shot.

Was that why Simone had done it? I remembered the sheer fury in her voice down in the basement, when she’d called Lucas a bastard, when she’d said she’d loved and trusted him and sounded so desperately betrayed. I didn’t believe those first two shots she’d fired had been meant to hit me-or anyone else, for that matter. But out in the woods, well, that was a different story, despite Ella’s close proximity.

And who had Simone seen Lucas kill? Jakes? Was he the subject of her anger? Why-when she’d known Jakes for less than a day?

“We understand from Mrs. Rosalind Lucas that Simone arrived at the house with her daughter, Ella, and her other bodyguard, Mr. Jakes, in a state of some agitation. Can you shed any light on why that might be?”

“No,” I said. “I had a message on my mobile phone from Jakes. It should be about somewhere, if you want to check it. He said something along the lines that Simone had had a call from her father and wanted to go over to his place and that she was getting angry about having to wait. By the time I arrived there I found Jakes dead at the bottom of the stairs and Simone in the basement threatening Lucas and his wife with a gun.”

“But you don’t know why?”

“Not beyond what I’ve already told you, no,” I said dully My voice was starting to rasp in my throat now and I desperately wanted something to drink. Not just the ice cubes and minute sips of liquid the nurses seemed determined to tease me with, but a long endless glass of iced water. The urge for fluids I could actually swallow was fast becoming a fantasy.

Young frowned and studied the notebook that lay open on her lap. “We understand that Miss Kerse had spent some considerable time and money tracing her father. Can you suggest any reason why she might suddenly turn against him like this?”

“Maybe,” I said. I glanced at Sean, as if for reassurance. We hadn’t had time to discuss any theories and I was loath to voice them now, untried, but I didn’t see much of a choice. “The reason we moved out of the Lucases’ house was because there was a break-in the night before.”

Young leafed through the pages of the notebook and glanced at her partner, making a brief I-have-no-record-of-that kind of gesture with her right hand. He responded with a slight dismissive roll of his eyes that instantly put my back up.

“It wasn’t reported,” I said. “But you must have noticed that there was a brand-new window at the top of the stairs?”