Second Shot

Jakes had been a good man, but I wished I’d been the one who’d gone with her. If I had … yeah, right, said the sarcastic voice in my head, because you managed things so well after you did finally get there.

I mentally shook myself out of that downward spiral. The police were convinced it was an open-and-shut case as far as the “who” was concerned. What was driving me mad was trying to work out the “why.”

“Have you got any further with tracking down this guy Oliver Reynolds?” I asked.

Neagley shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “Maybe you scared him off when you grabbed him. Or maybe he injured himself getting away. He did have to jump through a window, after all.” She glanced at her watch, then at Sean. “We ought to get going,” she said.

Sean nodded and rose, gathering the empty pizza box and folding it in half. “Neagley and I are going to go and do some digging around,” he said.

Matt jumped to his feet. “What do you want me to do?” he said, eager.

Sean’s eyes drifted over me. “You two just stay put here,” he said, like I’d been contemplating going out jogging. When Matt opened his mouth to object, Sean added, “Why don’t you make some calls — see if you can find yourself a decent legal man. Won’t Harrington help out?”

Matt looked crestfallen. “I asked. He said he couldn’t be seen to be taking sides and if it came out-,” he began.

Sean took a business card out of his pocket and handed it over. “Call Parker Armstrong,” he said. “He was Jakes’s boss. He and I know each other-we’ve worked together in the past. He’s a good guy and he’s offered to help us get to the bottom of this.”

Matt stood there for a moment, fingering the card in his hands. “I don’t know what to say,” he ventured at last. “I don’t know how to thank you for-”

“There’s no need,” Sean cut in, lifting his jacket from the back of a chair and shrugging his way into it while Neagley grabbed her own coat and picked the car keys out of her pocket. They’d almost reached the door before he stopped and glanced back. “Besides, we’re not doing it for you.”

After Sean and Neagley had gone out, Matt got straight on the phone to Armstrong in New York, who in turn put him onto a firm of lawyers specializing in child custody cases who worked out of Manchester, New Hampshire.

There wasn’t much I could do to help other than sit and listen to one side of the conversation. Besides, I soon realized that without the others to act as a buffer Matt was still uneasy around me. Eventually, I clambered to my feet, picked up my crutch, and mouthed, I’ll be in my room, to him. He clamped his hand over the phone mouthpiece and nodded distractedly at me.

I hobbled back into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. I’d only been out of bed for a couple of hours but it was looking decidedly welcoming. I switched the TV on low, picked a news channel, and lay down on top of the covers to watch. I think I’d nodded off before the end of the first item.

I woke up with a start that sent my breath out in a hiss. The news anchor still seemed to be rattling on about the same story, but the clock in the corner of the screen showed I’d been out of it for about three-quarters of an hour.

My mouth felt terrible after the coffee and pizza, but the glass of water Sean had put out for me earlier was empty and I was damned if I was going to shout Matt and ask him to bring me another. I struggled up off the bed and limped slowly across the room, realizing that I was finding it a little easier to use the crutch now, if nothing else.

Out in the living area, I looked around but didn’t immediately see Matt or call out to him. Hell, he was probably jet-lagged to all hell and back and sleeping himself. It was only when I was almost in the kitchen area that I glanced across and spotted him sprawled on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table. Not where anyone would have chosen for a nap.

“Matt?” I said, alarmed. I hurried-as much as I could hurry-across and eased myself down onto the floor alongside him, ungainly. “Matt! Are you OK?”

He had a trickle of blood running down behind his left ear from a small wound at the back of his head. I pressed two fingers into the hollow beneath his ear and felt what seemed to be a strong pulse. I hadn’t heard anything, but I remembered the silenced Berettas that the men had used when they’d broken into the Lucases’ house. When I parted Matt’s bloodied hair and realized there was no bullet hole hiding underneath it, the relief was great.

But not that great. Assuming Matt hadn’t fainted and hit his head on the coffee table on the way down, that still meant…

I caught a soft noise from behind me and started to twist instinctively The pain brought me up short before I’d turned halfway