I swear I saw him flinch, but I could have been mistaken. He hid it fast and rounded on me.
“So how did they explain you getting your throat half cut?” he bit back. “Did that not count against them, or was it just dismissed as part of some bizarre sexual game?”
Scorched and wounded, we were just aiming to score points. It was the way I’d feared it might go when I’d walked through the possibilities of coming clean with Sean, of telling him everything. It was precisely why I’d never had the courage to do so.
My temper subsided, leaving me hollow and shaky in its wake. “They didn’t cut me,” I said, weary myself now. “That happened last winter. Somebody tried for a repeat performance.”
“What happened?” Sean said. There was an odd note in his voice, as though he’d realised what we’d been doing, too. I glanced at him, but could read nothing in his face.
“They didn’t succeed,” I said, my voice flat.
“So this is the final version of this story is it, Charlie?” he said softly. “No more nasty little surprises in store?”
“No. No more surprises,” I said, bitter. “What is it, Sean? You think I let them do that to me. You think I—”
“You were good enough to have stopped them, Charlie,” he said, close to vehement. He was staring out across the Manor grounds to the far tree-line, avoiding my gaze. “I know you were. You know you were. You were the best.”
It sounded like a recommendation, but underneath it his ultimate lack of trust burned like a needle in my arm. I shook my head. “Not when it mattered I wasn’t. I froze up. I panicked, OK? And you forget – they knew exactly the same moves I did. Exactly the same counters. They were one step ahead of me all the way.”
“I’ve seen you in action. You didn’t freeze up then.”
“No, I didn’t,” I agreed, “but there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then.” I paused, then offered quietly, “Maybe knowing exactly what the penalties are for failing makes it easier to be brave.”
He turned so abruptly it almost made me start, moved in close. He put his hands on my shoulders tentatively, as though afraid I’d break. “I’m just so sorry that I wasn’t there for you, Charlie,” he said, and I realised that all his anger and revulsion had been directed inwards.
The unexpected relief caught me off guard, crumbled me. Tears sprang into my eyes, rolled down my face. Sean took one look at them, gave a sound that might have been a sigh, and gathered me into his arms.
Just briefly, I struggled against him, but he tightened his grip, almost crushing me. In the end I gave in and simply clung to him, my cheek pressing wetly against his shoulder.
He held me so tight I could hardly breathe, but I didn’t care. We stood like that for what seemed like a long time, not speaking. The whole school and Gregor Venko’s private army could have descended on us, and still I doubt we would have broken apart.
Eventually I felt Sean’s head lift, felt his chin graze against my hair.
“I am. So. Damned. Sorry,” he said, and I heard the anguish ripping through his voice as I registered that he’d been masking his own overspill of emotion as much as my own.
He let me go then, stepped back from me, letting his hands drop away as though he couldn’t bear to touch me any more. “And it’s not enough, is it? Not nearly enough to even begin to heal what you went through because of me.”
A cold dismay clutched at me. Sean’s anger I could deal with, anything else terrified me. I reached forwards and grabbed his arm, spinning him to face me.
“Either you take me as I am today Sean, or you get out of my life and you leave me alone,” I said, my voice low with feeling, close to breaking altogether. “Make a choice, because I won’t have half measures from you.”
And with that I turned my back and stalked away from him, not knowing if I’d just opened up the future for us, or cut it off at the knees before it could even begin.
***
I found I was heading for the back of the Manor and having started in that direction, I kept going. There were the customary gaggle of smokers on the terrace, stamping their feet as they cupped their cold hands around their cigarettes. A grabbed opportunity to feed their addiction before the next lesson.
As usual, Elsa was among them, even though I’d never actually noticed her light up. I saw her head lift as soon as I rounded the corner of the house and she watched my progress from there intently, hurrying to intercept me as I climbed the terrace steps. Her eyes darted over my face.
“So, Charlie, what is this between you and Mr Meyer?” she asked right away. Loudly.
I cursed inwardly even as I forced a smile between stiff lips.
“What do you mean?” I asked, playing for time so I could move closer, force her to lower her voice a little. Even so, it was clear we had the full attention of everyone present. Romundstad and Craddock had edged nearer with barely disguised curiosity.
“Oh come on, Charlie,” Elsa said, recognising my stall for what it was and giving me an old-fashioned look from behind the tinted lenses of her glasses. One that said, clearly, you’re going to have to do better than that.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said, shrugging. “I did a course he was instructing on once, in the army. From what I can remember he was a right bastard back then, too.”
“But apart from that, you don’t know him?” she insisted.
I could feel the jaws of the trap opening on either side of me, but she was leaving me nowhere to go but straight in between them. “Not especially, no. Why?”
Elsa smiled, almost gently. “Hofmann has just seen the two of you having what would seem to be a very personal argument,” she said.
Ah. OK, Fox, now get out of that. It wasn’t going to be an easy escape, either. Even the non-smokers had come out onto the terrace now, on their way to the range. They were instantly aware that they’d walked into an atmosphere you needed a chainsaw to cut through. Although they hadn’t been in at the start of this encounter, they certainly seemed set to stay around for its climax.
I glanced around at the avid faces long enough to discomfort them, for their eyes to shift away, before I looked back at Elsa. “Maybe,” I said, calm, level, “I just take a very personal exception to letting anybody kick me around.”
***
Elsa stayed a studious distance during the walk down to the armoury, where Figgis had taken charge of distributing the SIGs and speed-draw holsters to the lot of us. Most probably, she would have liked to have kept away from me after that, too, but fate in the form of O’Neill had other ideas.
He led us to the outdoor range where we’d first practised our speed-draw drills, and announced that we would be working on threat-reaction exercises, and we’d be doing it in pairs. As he read off names down his list my heart dropped at the same rate.
“Charlie,” O’Neill said, inevitably, flicking his eyes briefly in my direction, “you’ll be with Elsa.”
We walked to our designated lane without making eye contact. I plonked my carry tray down onto the bench at the back and concentrated on loading the SIG’s magazine from the box of nine-mil rounds, keeping my head down. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Elsa doing the same. If the layout of the bench had allowed us to work with our backs to each other, we would have done it.
By the time we were all loaded up and ready, Major Gilby hadn’t put in an appearance. Neither had Sean. No doubt they were taking advantage of having the remaining three instructors nursemaiding us to formulate their strategy over Gregor Venko. I couldn’t suppress a pang of churlish disappointment that I hadn’t been included in that briefing. After all, it was as much my neck on the block as theirs.