“You owe your loyalty to the company that employs you,” she said, but her voice was hollow.
“Why?” Whitmarsh laughed again. “Over this last year you’ve weaselled out of paying us overtime, cut our dental and medical, treated us like crap on the sidewalk. Told us the company was going through a rough patch and how we had to suck it in. But you sure didn’t have to give up your Mercedes-Benz, now did you? And you expect loyalty for that? Wake up, Gerri! Opportunities like this one don’t come along every day.”
“So those kids at the motel?” she said quietly. “That really was you?”
Whitmarsh grinned and gave an elaborate nod, almost like he was bowing.
I glanced at her. “Who did you honestly think it was, Gerri?”
She turned her head to stare back at me. “But you’d taken the boy hostage,” she said, blankly. Her eyes shifted to skate briefly over Sean and Keith. “We – I – thought you’d taken both of them. I was trying to negotiate with you, going by the book. But Jim insisted he wanted to be the one who went and brought you in. Said he felt responsible that the Pelzners had been taken on his watch . . .”
Her voice trailed off and I thought back to the phone conversation we’d had. Amazing how things altered when you put a different slant on them. The questions she’d asked, the responses she’d made.
It was like adjusting a door that’s always been awkward to close and suddenly finding it fits seamlessly. It’s not until you look back that you realise how wrong it was before.
“I thought you were trying to set me up,” I said.
She heard the doubt in my voice and latched onto it, shaking her head almost violently. “No, no, I wasn’t,” she said. “You gotta believe me, Charlie. I had no idea what Jim was up to—”
“Well, isn’t this nice?” said a new voice at the back of us. “Have I arrived just in time for the group hug?”
I knew the voice before I started to turn but the actual sight of the man behind it still caused my system to spike nastily.
Haines.
A fast little slide show of images projected from the back of my mind. Haines when all I’d known him by was the make of his Oakley sunglasses; in his police uniform delivering Trey back to the house; at the park going for the gun under his shirt; standing in front of Henry’s place calmly explaining how he was going to kill both Trey and me.
What the hell was he doing here? And why weren’t Brown’s men shooting at him?
Haines came forwards, those trademark shades perched on top of his head. I couldn’t see his gun but it wouldn’t be far away. My eyes flicked just once to the little flowered bag down by the wall but I knew at once he would have drawn on me before I’d ever reached it.
He stopped a few strides away with a smile curling his handsome mouth, as though he recognised my dilemma and could read the utter frustration and confusion going on in my head.
Then he turned to Brown.
“Sorry I’m late, boss,” he said easily. “I came soon as I got your call.”
Dully, in the background, there came another roar from the crowd in the hall below as the girls who’d made it into the last four came out for their final parade. “There’s five hundred bucks to the winner,” screamed the commentator, as though to incite competitors and audience alike to an ever more excessive performance.
“Livingston, what the fuck is going on here?” Gerri demanded, raising her voice over the top of it. She stuck her hand into her bag and pulled out a mobile phone. “I’m calling the cops. Right now!”
Brown turned to her, his face still wearing its usual amiable, slightly-bemused-by-life expression. “Gerri,” he said with a sigh, “you’re a foul-mouthed pain in the ass and you’re starting to bore me.”
And – just as the bikini winner was announced and the crowd went into deafening overdrive – he shot her.
It was a shockingly careless gesture. Brown didn’t even bother to straighten his arm, just swung round slightly and fired from the hip. Gerri was standing less than a couple of metres away from him so he hardly had to aim.
The little Colt bucked and flared in his hand just once and a small scarlet circle appeared on the front of Gerri’s suit jacket, just below the curve of her left breast. The bright wet red of it showed up in stark contrast to the delicate lavender shade of the fabric.
She looked down at the dribble of blood that oozed out of the hole with something akin to hurt disbelief on her face.
“But—” she said.
It was as far as she got before her ruined heart simply stopped beating and she died on her feet. The mobile phone fell to the floor, shattered, then her body dropped and folded, lifeless as a long silk dress sliding off its hanger. She landed in a tumbled pile, arms and legs an inelegant sprawl.
Keith was staring transfixed at the body, murmuring, “For Chrissake. Oh for Chrissake,” over and over like a mantra.
I hadn’t realised I’d started moving until Brown swung that deadly little gun in my direction.
“She’s gone,” he said, almost kindly. “Don’t waste yourself.”
I stopped. Gerri’s chest was still. There was very little blood and her eyes were closed as if in sleep. She was way beyond anything I could do for her except make sure I didn’t add my own corpse to lie beside her.
“So it was you,” I said quietly. “Right from the start it was you.”
“Oh yes,” Brown said. “And you’ve led us a merry chase, what with one thing and another. But it’s over now. Soon as we get the boy, we’re outta here.”
“You won’t get him.”
The certainty in Sean’s voice had us all swinging round, startled. Brown recovered faster than the others.
“And what makes you so sure of that?”
“Because I know Charlie and there’s no way she would cave just because your man Whitmarsh here was threatening to kill me,” Sean said and gave me another perfect smile, one that heartened me far more than it should have done, given the circumstances. It was only then I knew I’d made the right decision.
“No,” he went on, shaking his head, “she gave Trey a run signal. I don’t know what it was but she’s certain to have had one and he’ll be long gone by now. You were waiting until she’d called him in but you played your hand too early.”
Brown twisted back to me, saw from my face that Sean had got it nailed. Just for a moment his placid facade split and the underlying rage showed through like spite. Then the fissures sealed and it was gone again.
“Well, I guess you’ll be needing my services for a little while longer, then?” Haines put in, amusement trailing through his voice as though he was enjoying the whole show.
“I guess so,” Brown agreed tightly. “I guess it’s damage limitation time.” His eyes drifted slowly across the group in front of him. “You can start by helping Mason and the boys dispose of this garbage here.”
Jim Whitmarsh can’t have been in any doubt at this point what Brown had planned for him. Not after he’d just seen the old guy kill Gerri Raybourn with such casual disregard. Lonnie and Chris had seen it too, and it was Chris whose nerve failed to hold steady.
He sprang into a crouch and brought his gun up, by the looks of it the same .38 he’d used to help his boss murder the young couple at the motel that first night Trey and I had been on the run. He began to take a bead on Brown himself.
Both Mason and the big black guy with the other Mossberg let fly at the same moment. At that range they couldn’t fail to hit their target.
Chris flailed backwards, blood spouting from his face and upper body like an industrial sprinkler. His flayed body landed at the base of the nearest wall hard enough to bounce, exposed flesh gleaming. He lay there, convulsing, and made unnerving gurgling sounds from his gaping throat.