Wilson had wept and wailed and raged himself into silence — something he was not proud of now and another stick I could beat him with if I so chose. Providing he kept to his side of the bargain, I’d keep to mine.
The infinitely slow tick of those first four hours had given me time to think about where I had been with my life and where I intended to go. About right and wrong. Trust and betrayal. And justice, whatever I deemed that to be.
“Ah, looks like we have company,” Mrs Hamilton said, smiling over my shoulder.
I turned and saw the khaki-coloured Bell making a fast showy landing near the hangar where Riley picked me up on my arrival, less than a week ago.
As soon as the skids were on the tarmac the doors opened. Joe Marcus helped Dr Bertrand climb down as Hope and Lemon jumped out of the rear load bay. Riley stayed in the pilot’s seat as if to be ready for a quick exit. He gave me a nod and a salute when he saw me watching, but for once he did not smile.
“The gang’s all here,” I murmured. Parker glanced at me sharply, but he made no comment.
The R&R team greeted Mrs Hamilton with respectful enthusiasm. Even Lemon was on her most appealing best behaviour. Hope could hardly bring herself to look at me.
“I expect you are all wondering about the reason for this impromptu inspection of the forces,” Mrs Hamilton said, flicking her eyes to Parker. “I—”
“I think I can probably answer that,” I said. “Mrs Hamilton did not simply employ me as a replacement security advisor for Kyle Stephens.” I let my gaze wander across them. “She also employed me to find out how and why he died.”
Mrs Hamilton took a breath as if to contradict me. I waited, but she said nothing, frowning.
“I’m very sorry,” I told her, “but I’m afraid your trust was severely misplaced.”
She flinched and I heard Hope take in an audible breath that hitched in the back of her throat.
“Misplaced how?” Parker asked.
“Kyle Stephens, for all his record in the Rangers, was not a man to be trusted,” I said. “He stole from the dead and sold off what he couldn’t trade or barter.”
“So his death?” Mrs Hamilton queried. “It wasn’t…?”
“Deliberate?” I shrugged. “You’d asked him to look into the rumours, so he must have known he was on borrowed time. Maybe that led to him being… reckless, who knows?”
She nodded, the slight drop of her shoulders the only giveaway to her relief. “And that’s it?” she asked. “Nothing more?”
My gaze skimmed the R&R team once again, lingering on Hope. She paled, mutely pleading.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing more.”
“Thank you,” Mrs Hamilton said. “For putting my mind at rest. I mean, I knew, but even so…”
“You’re welcome.”
A man in uniform with a lot of gold braid across the breast and epaulettes arrived to claim Mrs Hamilton in some official capacity.
Parker touched my arm. “We’ve located Sean,” he murmured, his face grave. “It’s not the news we were hoping for.”
“Let’s hear it, Parker.”
“Not now. I’ll brief you on the plane. Wheels up in two hours, OK?” And with that he joined his client, giving me a brief nod that was not altogether satisfied.
As soon as they’d gone more than a few yards Hope flung herself at me and squeezed me tighter than bruising and stitches were happy to allow. Lemon skipped around the pair of us, squeaking like a puppy.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Joe Marcus said quietly over the top of Hope’s head. “We won’t forget this.”
“Neither will I,” I said.
Hope released me, only to have Lemon leap up and slosh a sloppy wet tongue across my face. I wiped my face on my scarf as the pair of them dashed for the Bell. I saw her standing on tiptoe by the pilot’s door, talking to Riley. After a moment or so he broke out a big grin.
Marcus put his hand out and I shook it without hesitation. Dr Bertrand kissed me on both cheeks then held my upper arms and stared into my face. “What kind of macho nonsense is this?” she demanded. “That you do not want to let anyone see ’ow badly you are ’urting?”
Parker’s words about Sean came back to me. “It’s not the news we were hoping for…”
“Because I’m not done yet,” I said, still watching the girl and the dog. I turned back to face them. “I know you killed Kyle Stephens. By accident or design. Please tell me it wasn’t over a few stolen gems.”
“I know Hope told you she was the one who started this but that’s not entirely true,” Marcus said. “There’s always a heap of valuable items just lying around after an event like this, like those jewels from Rojas’s store.”
“And if you didn’t pick them up, somebody else would, is that it?”
“We donate them to a good cause.”
“R&R, you mean?” I said, thinking of those dozen stones I’d seen change hands.
“No.” Marcus’s face ticked. “They don’t line our own pockets. Those stones from Peck went straight to the local relief fund.”
“Ah… but Stephens was not so altruistic and he wanted his cut,” I surmised. “Was that the price of his silence?”
Marcus nodded. “But it wasn’t why he had to die.”
“’E found out about ’Ope—’er real identity. The bastard was blackmailing ’er into ’aving sex with ’im.” Dr Bertrand said in a cool and deadly voice. The only clue to her inner rage was that her accent seemed more pronounced than usual. “It was rape, plain and simple. If ’e ’ad not taken the easy way out, I would ’ave killed ’im myself.”
“Alex wanted to surgically castrate him without an anaesthetic,” Marcus said. “I offered him a chance for redemption. He took it.”
I thought of Hope, of the way she cringed when anyone other than Marcus touched her. He’d been more generous than I would have been, I decided, given similar circumstances. “I guess we’re all of us looking for redemption one way or another.”
“That we are,” Marcus said.
And I realised that I hadn’t given Sean a chance to redeem himself. Instead, I’d thrown it down like a challenge, not realising that’s how he’d perceive it, or the lengths he might go to in order to see it through.
Whatever he did next — whatever he’d already done — was on my head. I shivered in the clarity.
Sometimes it takes the darkness before we can see the light.