Second Shot полностью

“I didn’t,” I said, swaying as the shock buffeted me. “We’d disarmed her, tied her up. Why the hell would I kill her?”

“Because she’s the one who shot you?” Neagley said calmly. Sean’s head snapped towards her and she shrugged. “Matt told me.”

“I didn’t,” I said again, like sheer repetition was going to make them believe me. I had to swallow back the tears. “I — “

“Wait!” Sean said. He spoke quietly but it was still enough to cut me off. I followed his gaze and saw nothing but the Lucases’ Range Rover, parked where Rosalind had left it. It took a moment for me to realize that the interior light was on.

Sean nodded to Neagley, who pulled the short-barreled little Smith amp; Wesson out of her jacket pocket. The two of them circled round behind the vehicle, leaving me to flounder along behind them, moving dreadfully slowly over the frozen ruts of snow underfoot.

By the time I reached the Range Rover they had both front doors open and Neagley was pointing her gun firmly at the figure of Lucas, who was sitting slumped in the passenger seat with his head in his hands. Sean had used a discarded glove to lift Lucas’s S amp;W revolver out of his hands by the barrel, being very careful not to disturb any prints.

“What happened?” Sean said, his voice gentle.

Lucas lifted his head blindly, tears streaming from his eyes. “I loved her,” he said. “It broke my heart to leave her behind.”

For a moment I couldn’t work out who he meant. Then it clicked in that he was talking about Simone, rather than his oh so recently dead wife. Simone as a child after she’d watched him kill the man she’d believed was her father.

“I gave up everything,” Lucas went on, sobbing now. “Everything I had, everything I was, to become him.” For the first time the disgust and the self-loathing tore through the veneer of the life he’d created for himself. In the distance came the first yelp of sirens thrashing through the night air towards us, but he didn’t seem to hear them.

I glanced at Sean. He shook his head.

‘And it was never enough,” Lucas went on bitterly, staring out through the dirty windscreen at his wife’s body “She took everything I had to give and wanted more. I tried so hard to be what she wanted. But it was never enough….”

It had started to snow again, big fat flakes that floated down and laid themselves almost graciously on whatever they Youched. They had already covered Rosalind’s head and shoulders like a white lace shroud.

“Lucas —,” Sean began, but the other man shook his head vigorously.

“No,” he said. “Don’t call me that anymore. I spent God knows how many years trying to be Greg Lucas, trying to be the kind of husband Rosalind wanted. And then she took away the last thing that meant anything to me and tonight I realized, she never really wanted me at all, did she?”

He pulled back his focus and looked at me directly. “I found her out here and took that tape off her mouth and do you know what her first words to me were?”

I didn’t answer and his gaze swept me up and down. “She said that you were half-dead and a woman and you were still twice the man I’d ever be.” His face crumpled, consumed by bitterness and anger and regret. “So I finally decided to become exactly the kind of cold, hard, ruthless bastard she wanted me to be,” he said, “and I shot her.”

Three months after I was shot, Sean and I walked through an unfurnished apartment on the Upper East Side in New York City, listening to the echo of our own footsteps on the polished plank floors.

I no longer had to use a crutch, but I still favored my left leg a little, especially if I was tired. Intensive physiotherapy and spending just about every morning in the gym meant I was approaching something like my former level of fitness, but it was-as the physio at CMMC had predicted-a long road back.

“What do you think?” Sean asked as I moved over to one of the tall windows. If you stood on a chair and squinted sideways, you could just about see Central Park from the spacious living room. That fact alone should have added at least another thousand dollars a month onto the rent.

“It’s fabulous,” I said. “But are you sure about this?”

He shrugged. He had on the same dark suit he’d worn when we’d met Harrington the banker and Simone, that day in London. It was June and the temperature outside was in the nineties, but Sean still managed to look crisp and unflustered. He put his hands on my upper arms and turned me to face him.

“Are you sure about it?” he asked softly. “This partnership offer from Parker Armstrong is too good to turn down, but I will turn it down without a second thought if you can’t face the thought of coming with me. Of living over here. I couldn’t do it without you, Charlie. I wouldn’t want to.”

I didn’t answer immediately, but pulled away from him and turned back to the window. I still hadn’t gained enough distance from the Lucas job to find true perspective. As far as the law was concerned, I was in the clear. Parker Armstrong’s formidable legal team had seen to that.