From the hallway we heard the apartment door open and a voice call an echoing hello.
“In here,” Sean said, not taking his eyes away from my face.
Parker Armstrong ducked his head into the living room, smiling. A tall, slim man in his early forties, with artistically graying hair that seemed older than his face but not as old as his eyes. Sean’s new partner. My new boss.
“Well?” he said, advancing when he saw us. “What d’you think?”
Sean raised his eyebrow at me. I hesitated just for a second, then plunged into a decision and felt a weight lift as I did so. I turned to Parker and smiled.
“It’s perfect,” I said, and thought I saw his shoulders ease a fraction.
He grinned. “So’s the rent,” he said, wry. “What use is it having family who own property in Manhattan if you don’t abuse your connections, right?”
“Right.”
Parker held his hand out to Sean. “I guess this means we’re in business,” he said.
A slow smile spread across Sean’s face as he took it. “I guess it does.”
“Charlie,” Parker said, offering me the same. “Good to have you with us.” His grip was firm and dry without being overly macho. One of the things I’d liked about him from the outset. “Losing Jakes was a bad time for everyone. He was a good guy. I hope this will be a breath of fresh air for all of us.”
“So do I,” I said, and meant it.
“We’ll get the lease signed for this place when we get back to the office. You guys hungry? You want to go get something to eat?”
We rode south on Sixth towards TriBeCa and the Financial District, in one of the ubiquitous yellow Crown Victoria taxicabs that had the suspension of a water bed. I sat behind the driver, next to the window, watching the vibrant sun-drenched New York streets as they flashed past. Manhattan Island was small enough that it seemed so much more concentrated than London, more intense, and I wondered if I craved that noise and bustle as a means to drown out other voices.
I thought about Ella and wondered how long it would be before the memory of her faded. Her smile, and her healing kiss, and her screams.
And ultimately I thought about Reynolds and I replayed, as I’d done so many times since that night, the way he’d made his decision to try to kill me. Sean was right, to a point, because the moment Reynolds had taken the gun away from Ella’s head and started to turn it in my direction, there was only going to be one possible outcome. One of us was going to die.
But that didn’t take into account the fact I’d gone into that room with the image of Reynolds attacking me at the apartment burning fiercely in my mind. I hadn’t wanted his meek surrender. I’d wanted his blood.
So I’d gone in there ready to take him out, not face him down. I’d known he was a natural predator and he’d taken one look at me and he’d decided I was easy prey, as I’d suspected he might. But at the end of the day, it was purely luck that he’d reacted in such a way that justified my actions, fractionally after the event.
Matt had asked me why I’d removed the suppressor from the gun before we went into the stockroom and I’d told him it was purely to save those extra seven ounces, but that wasn’t the whole story. It was entirely plausible and nobody had questioned it since, but I knew if I’d gone in there and shot Reynolds with the suppressor still attached, I would have had a much harder time convincing anyone it was self-defense, rather than assassination.
So, still I ask myself the question: Did I kill him because I had no choice? Or because I made one?