Second Shot

He slid the gun into his pocket and gave me a quick bright smile as he climbed easily out of the Explorer, shutting the door behind him and hurrying after the two men. As he went, he pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and stared at it with what appeared to be his full concentration. He was frowning heavily, just some harrassed guy who knew he’d left something off his shopping list and was trying to remember what it was before he got inside. The performance was so convincing that neither of Vaughan’s men made him.

I was suddenly aware of being very alone inside the confines of the vehicle. Reynolds’s face loomed in my mind’s eye and I experienced a momentary wish, entirely selfish, that Sean had left the gun behind. Then it passed. If either of these two was a threat to Ella, then I’d much rather Sean was armed. He would, I knew, use the Beretta without a qualm if he had to, to protect the child. Regardless of the consequences.

It was hard to realize just how much I missed Ella. Her inventive food combinations, her occasionally sage pronouncements, her comical grumpiness first thing in the morning. I missed them all with a sharpness that surprised me.

I remembered Sean’s report on Lucas’s behavior towards his daughter as a baby, the injuries Simone had received before her mother had divorced him and run. He’d been a bully, pure and simple. Would he return to that now?

You didn’t just stop abusing. Lucas might not always have had the opportunity to indulge himself-certainly not since he left the army-but now he had another child to take his temper out on, over time he would surely revert to type. It was human nature.

And it was up to me and Sean to stop him before he hurt her.

The Explorer had started to mist up a little and the cold had a sullen dampness to it. Sean had left the keys in the ignition and I leaned across and flipped the engine on, just to run some heat through the car. The front screen demisted slowly.

It was another twenty minutes before I saw the Lucases emerge. Greg Lucas was carrying three bags of shopping in each hand, and his wife had Ella balanced on her hip.

They were some distance away and I craned forwards, trying to read Ella’s body language. Was there anything about her that seemed scared or anxious? She was wearing a pink jacket with a fake-fur-trimmed hood that was up around her face, and she had one hand to her mouth, probably chewing her hair. I could almost hear Simone’s voice telling her daughter to stop it.

While Lucas sorted his car keys and put the bags away, Rosalind stood happily holding Ella, rocking with her and talking, their heads very close together. Ella reached out and touched Rosalind’s hair and she smiled. Whatever Lucas’s feelings towards his granddaughter, I saw Rosalind was forming quite a bond. I wondered why that fact hurt me quite so much.

Now, Lucas fumbled a little with the keys and it was Rosalind who put Ella down long enough to open the tailgate of the Range Rover. Ella stood, a couple of paces away, fiddling with the buttons on her coat, in a world of her own while people hurried past to their cars.

I skimmed the sparse crowd for signs of danger but could see nothing immediate. I couldn’t see Vaughan’s men, either-or Sean. Not seeing them and knowing they were there was worse by far. I shifted in my seat, only too frustratingly aware of my physical limitations. They could be planning just about anything and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.

Then the bags were inside the back of the Range Rover and Rosalind was fussing with the order of them, leaving Lucas to turn his full attention to Ella. I tensed as he crouched in front of her. I was watching them through the side window with Ella three-quarters facing me and Lucas almost dead side on. I could see both their faces, blurred slightly by the distance between us. Ella’s showed a trace of wariness and her eyes kept darting over Lucas’s shoulder-then back over her own-as though she was expecting something major to come and take her away. Or she was waiting for someone.

Lucas stroked a gentle hand down her flushed cheek. And it was gentle. There was no hidden message in the gesture. It was affection and nothing more.

The driver’s door of the Explorer swung open and my head whipped round so fast I nearly ricked my neck.

“Sean!” I said. “Damn, you put the wind up me.”

“Nice to know you’re getting something out of it,” he said as he climbed in, throwing a small bag of groceries onto the backseat-a decoy to allow him to linger at the checkout. “My God, it’s like an oven in here.”

“Sorry, being so inactive makes me feel the cold like crazy,” I said. “So, what happened in there?”

He shrugged his way out of his coat. “They came. They shopped. They went,” he said. “The two guys we saw didn’t do much beyond hang around trying to attract the attention of security-or that’s what it seemed like, anyway. They followed Lucas around, flexing their muscles, then left at the same time as we did.”

“But they didn’t try anything?”