Katie stepped back further, fear in her eyes.
Sean saw her move and couldn’t help but throw out his arm and pull Katie towards him. She was so petite and vulnerable with the largest, pleading brown eyes he had ever seen. “Not you, Vincent Black!” he comforted. “Son of a bitch has been playing me for eighteen months!” he added, looking at Vincent’s photo.
That information changed Sean’s outlook on many things and most importantly, picking up the phone to get some much needed help.
Sean reached for his cell. “Just out of interest, did he go to the funeral?”
“Who’s?” asked Katie, not wanting to talk about Sean’s own funeral.
“Sean’s,” replied Sean without any hint of anguish.
“No, I wanted a very private affair, just very close family,” she replied nervously, unable to look him in the eye and ignoring his use of the third person for his own name.
That basically meant her and James. Sean’s close family was Vincent but he wasn’t there and beyond that, his ex-military colleagues. Brothers for life or so they promised each re-union they had. Every one of them a hypocritical bastard. Not one of them had gone to his funeral. Not one. Sean was genuinely upset. Technically, of course, it wasn’t his funeral but nevertheless. What if he had become a drug pedaling scumbag, he was still their brother and pseudo son and as far as they were concerned, it was him.
“Bastards!” he blurted aloud.
Sean gently pushed Katie aside as he dialed Vincent’s number. He opened the nearest door and walked into a room fit for a four-year-old boy. Sean’s photos lined the wall and had pride of place next to the small single bed. James hero-worshipped the dead Sean. Most of the photos were of Sean in his military uniforms, adding to the bizarreness of the situation.
With his focus firmly back on the task at hand, he hit the dial button.
“Err, hello?” came a sleepy voice on the other end of the call.
“You didn’t go to my funeral, you prick!” blurted Sean. He had promised himself he wouldn’t say anything but hearing Vincent’s voice stirred up too many emotions. Sean really did look on him as a father and finding out that he had abandoned him was not easy. Particularly when he was sat on the bed of a young boy who hero-worshipped pictures of him.
“Sean, is that you?”
“Who the fuck else do you know whose funeral you didn’t go to?” replied Sean, barely containing his anger.
“But it wasn’t you!”
“You thought it was!”
“Well…”
“Don’t even try and suggest otherwise, you paid her my pension!”
Game, set and match.
“I’m sorry,” said Vincent, any hint of fight had gone from his voice. “I have regretted that decision, every second for the last three months.” He answered with all his heart.
Although Sean was furious, he could tell that Vincent was being sincere. “Don’t think I’ll be going to yours!” threatened Sean, half-heartedly.
“At least that’s how it should be. You should bury me, not the other way around.”
Sean realized then, from the sincerity and truthfulness in Vincent’s voice, just how hard it had been for him over the previous three months. The anger faded and with it any doubt as to what he needed to do. All thoughts of the beach were shelved. There was a young boy in danger.
“Truce?” offered Sean.
“Absolutely!” replied Vincent, a bounce back in his voice. Sean was alive and well and being his usual pain in the ass self.
“I’m not forgiving you about the pension, though! Don’t think I don’t know what that means,” threatened Sean. Vincent had not terminated Sean’s contract with the CIA, eighteen months earlier.
Vincent mumbled something inaudibly in response which Sean ignored; it would have been some bullshit lie about a clerical error.
“I need some help.”
“Just say the word and you’re back on the payroll!” offered Vincent cheerily. “I’ll have a team with you in four hours.”
“I’m fine on my own, thanks. Anyway, I thought I still was on the team,” replied Sean sarcastically.
“Right up until we thought you were dead! Payroll are a little pedantic about things like that.”
“I need to know where a call came from.”
“You know I can’t…”
“Seriously, don’t even think about it, I’m this close to disowning you!”
“Give me the number, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I don’t have the number, just the IMEI number of the phone and the serial number of the SIM card that received the call.”
“Jesus, you never did make things easy. Give them to me and I’ll see what I can do.”
Sean repeated both numbers twice to ensure Vincent had written them down correctly.
“Oh, one last thing,” asked Sean as they were about to end the call. “Any idea what the Russians are doing involved in this?”
“Did you say the Russians?” replied Vincent quizzically and with some confusion.
“Yep, two Russians came in here, guns blazing. I’d swear a hit team saw me and bugged out. Suggested I get the wife and kid and disappear.”
“Russians?! What the…” contemplated Vincent. “I have no idea. So what are you doing with the wife and son?”
Sean realized then that Vincent didn’t know about the kidnap. So much had happened in such a short space of time.
“The wife’s here and thinks I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Stress and the son has been kidnapped by the Mexicans.”
“Jesus, are the FBI on it?”
“It happened in front of me. I chased the kidnappers to the border. I phoned the FBI but wasn’t sure if they’d be a help or a hindrance. I’ve a feeling there’s an awful lot of dirty money flowing around down here. I decided to keep it to myself.”
“The local police?”
“Nope, just me!”
“I’ll be with you in four hours!” replied Vincent firmly.
“No,” Sean almost shouted. “I’m better on my own. If I need bodies, I’ll give you a shout. In the meantime, I need to know where that call came from and everything about the Mexicans and who the other Sean worked for, particularly any American contacts, it seems that’s what the Mexicans are after.”
“I’m on it…but Russians?” he pondered again as he ended the call. Their involvement had obviously fazed him more than the kidnapping of young James Fox.
As Sean stood up, a burgundy baseball cap hanging on the far wall of the bedroom caught his eye, the Native American image proudly adorning its brow, one he was all too familiar with — The Washington Redskins, Sean’s team. A number of other Washington Redskin paraphernalia adorned the desk below the cap that was proudly displayed on the wall. Why, of all teams, would the boy support the Redskins? The team Sean had spent his childhood watching with his father. Sean began to wonder if he really was suffering from post-traumatic stress. The boy looked like him, the dead Sean was his double and he had to admit if he were ever going to settle down and get married, Katie Fox pretty much fit the bill. Perhaps he really had lost his mind.
“Sean!”
Sean heard Katie’s desperate shout and snapped back to reality. There had been another Sean Fox. He wasn’t going mad and hadn’t lost his mind but it did mean there was one more action point beyond getting the boy — finding out just who the other Sean Fox had been.
Sean got up and joined Katie in the hallway, extremely agitated and gesticulating wildly towards the front of the house. “The Mexicans,” she struggled to get the words out, tears were flowing again. “A truck just pulled up outside!”
As the front door crashed open, Sean grabbed his Glock only to realize he’d left it downstairs.
“Shit!”
Chapter 22
As Vincent relayed the IMEI and SIM numbers to one of his duty managers, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sean’s last words.
Vincent had looked into every detail of Sean’s Fox life from the day he had walked out on the NCS. Rumors were abound that he was working in Afghanistan, he was in Iraq, he was body-guarding a Saudi Prince. Only after his death did they find the truth, or at least what they thought was the truth. He was working as a gun for hire for one of America’s largest drug smugglers.