Work.
I’d spent a lot of time thinking about work-about my job — since I’d laid there and listened to Sean and my father discussing me so coldbloodedly In the absence of anything better to occupy my mind, I’d picked apart every sentence, second-guessed every nuance, and come to a couple of conclusions that were more painful to contemplate than any physical injury I might have suffered.
As soon as you begin to doubt yourself-or others begin to doubt you-you’re finished.
Those words, more than any others, haunted me. What was the point of coming back, if there was nothing to come back to?
It had nothing to do with me having let my emotions dictate my actions out there in the forest. I’d tried over and over to analyze those final few minutes, but however I looked at it, I couldn’t have justified shooting Lucas as he stood there holding Ella. Whichever way I dissected the facts, he hadn’t been threatening her life-he’d merely been trying to save his own.
If I’d taken the shot, I wouldn’t just have traumatized the child, I would have been guilty of murder. If it had been the first time I’d used lethal force, a good legal team might have swung some kind of a plea.
But it wasn’t.
I tried to work out how many lives I’d taken and found, to my horror, that I couldn’t precisely remember. And that made it so much worse.
Or others begin to doubt you….
What if Sean had lost his faith in me? And who could blame him? I’d failed to protect a principal. Not only that, but I’d allowed a principal to be killed, not by a lone assassin or a known threat, but by the very people who should have been coming to our aid.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as far as Sean was concerned-as far as the reputation of his company was concerned- it was a disaster. I knew that if it got out that he and I had anything other than a professional relationship, that would make things ten times worse. Sean was known to be a highflier. His staff were well paid because they were the best, and proud of it. But in truth that also meant there were plenty out there just waiting for him to crash and burn. Above all else, I hated the idea that I might be the cause of his downfall.
Suddenly it was like being back in the army, just after my attack. I wasn’t just physically at a low ebb but mentally bruised and emotionally battered as well. I needed Sean more now than I’d ever done, but I knew I could not-would not-drag him down again.
W
hen Sean walked in that afternoon, my unsettled thoughts must have made my greeting wary in some way. He studied me for a moment before responding, as though he could read my mind. No surprises there. He’d always been too sharp for comfort.
They’d propped me more upright in the bed, so I was able to watch the easy way he moved round the room. He didn’t take the chair next to the bed, choosing instead to lean on the wall near the window, tilting his shoulder against it and folding his arms. I desperately wanted him to touch me but knew I’d chew my own tongue off rather than ask.
“The nurse said they got you up today,” he said.
“I went for a stroll along the corridor,” I agreed lightly.
He nodded. “I wondered how long you were going to just lie there and loaf.”
That was all it took. My eyes started to burn, the lower lids filling so that I daren’t blink or he would have seen the tears. He saw them anyway.
Now he approached me, stroked gentle fingers down my cheek, thumbed away the wetness. Damn, and I was going to play it so cool….
“Hey, come on, Charlie,” he said softly “Fight it, or it will ride you all the way to the bottom.”
“Fight it?” I said, almost a snort. “At the moment I can’t fight sleep. I let you down-I’m a total, utter waste of space!”
He sighed and gathered me up close, careful where he put his hands. I laid my head against his shoulder and let him rock me. We stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, until the crying had worn itself out and left me. Then he eased back and looked down and there was no softness to his gaze.
“So, you were awake,” he said.
I could only nod silently. He sighed again.
“I won’t lie to you, Charlie,” he said. “Losing a client the way we lost Simone is always bad.”
“The company’s going to suffer,” I said dully. “Your reputation, everything you’ve worked for- “
“No, it won’t- not if I can help it,” he cut in. “And that means finding out what the hell went on out there. It’s worth the cost of staying out here a little longer. We need to know what made Simone try and kill you. The good new is that Simone’s banker has just retained us to look into his client’s safety.”
“Who-Simone?” I said roughly. “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”
He shook his head. “Ella,” he said. “With Simone gone, Harrington’s just acquired his youngest client.” He let that one penetrate for a moment, then added, more briskly, “Plus, Parker Armstrong’s prepared to chip in to find out what really happened to Jakes. Right now the explanation the police have given us is just too convenient.” He moved back a little farther, giving me space. “Where did Simone get her hands on the gun, for a start?”
“Out of Lucas’s storeroom, probably,” I said. “The lock was off and the door was open when I got down there.”
“Why, though? Why would he give her a gun? Had Simone ever expressed an interest?”
“No,” I said, swallowing, trying to focus on being matter-of-fact. “If anything she was very anti about them. Definitely didn’t like them around Ella.”
“Right, so how did she end up with one? And if she was so anti that she’d never fired one before, how did she manage to shoot you so accurately-twice, in the dark?”
“She could have been aiming for Lucas and missed, but I can’t believe she would have risked hitting Ella,” I said. I shook my head. “I didn’t see her coming at me. Didn’t hear her, either, for that matter, until afterwards. Maybe she wasn’t aiming for me at all. Maybe she just let off a couple of wild shots and I got in the way. She could have been aiming for anything.”
Another brief freeze-frame of memory flipped out in front of me. The way Simone had appeared over the edge of that ditch with the gun held rigidly out in front of her. And I remembered, too, the anger in her eyes, anger that I could have sworn had turned to shock when she’d seen me lying there….
“So you think it might have been unintentional?” Sean asked, as though he’d read my mind.
“I don’t know,” I said. I scrubbed at my eyes with my left hand, forgetting that although they’d unplugged my IV line, they’d left in the butterfly I nearly took my eye out in the process.
“You’re using it more,” Sean said.
I looked down and found I’d been absently smoothing down the tape holding the butterfly in place into a vein in the back of my left hand, using the fingers of my right. For a moment I just stared at them. The nerves were still fizzing and every hair on my forearm felt wired to the mains, but at least the arm seemed prepared to be part of my body again, however distant, rather than some disengaged piece of meat.
“YOU can get past this, Charlie,” he said with quiet vehemence, and I knew he wasn’t just talking physically. “It will get better.”
“Yeah, well, it better had,” I said, dragging up a smile from somewhere. “The loafing in this place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He might have said more, but we both heard the footsteps in the corridor outside my room, and when a tall thin figure in a somber three-piece pinstripe suit appeared in the doorway, he didn’t take me by surprise.
“Miss Fox,” Rupert Harrington greeted me gravely. “How are you feeling?”