False Move, page 26
Hayden groaned, and with little strength to his fingers, he touched the sore spots on his skull. He swore and moaned again, and finally lifted his head high enough to peer up at his vanquisher. ‘Y’know,’ he said, his voice desultory, ‘I once told Megan I’d hire you in an instant. You’ve got skills, Villere, better than any of my team. I could use you, man, if—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Po warned. ‘You were set to execute us all back there, and it’s not somethin’ I’ll ever forget. There’s no amount of money buys me after you threatened my girl. Get it into your soft head; you’re not gettin’ away with any of this.’
Hayden wasn’t surprised. ‘You can’t blame me for trying.’
He scooped broken shards of tiles from the floor and flung them in Po’s face.
Po reeled away, shielding his eyes with his arms, feeling the bite of razor-sharp porcelain slicing into his forearms. Before he could swat away the stinging shrapnel, Hayden dragged himself up with the aid of the counter, and he snapped up the bar he’d thrown aside earlier. Without pause, he charged across the kitchen, clubbing Po. Po’s arms took the impacts, and after the first he knew that his left ulnar was broken. He kicked blindly at Hayden, but the man was remorseless in his need to finish Po off. The bar struck at him repeatedly, and Po sacrificed his arms for his skull, but he was weakened and in agony, and fell back against the opposite counter. Po clutched at any lifeline, found his leather jacket and whipped it around the bar. He yanked down, and Hayden fell against him. They grappled close, Po’s teeth set in rictus, his turquoise eyes blazing.
‘You sumbitch,’ he snarled, ‘I’d’a let things go at that. But you just made a false move, pal, and that changes the rules.’
Po smashed his forehead into Hayden’s face, flattening his nose. The ex-soldier was tough and resilient though, and was hard-wired to keep on fighting even when a lesser man would have folded. He tried to spear the butt end of the bar in Po’s eyes, despite it being encumbered by the leather jacket. Po jerked aside, but his ear was slashed, and he felt blood pour down his neck. He broke away to one side, hanging on to the jacket with his weakened left hand, but Hayden yanked the other direction and freed the bar. He flung back his arm, ready to hurl it directly through Po’s chest.
From the doorway, Tess shot Hayden three times in rapid succession. The bar fell from his nerveless fingers, and Hayden James keeled over dead.
Po blinked tears and blood from his eyes, looked down at the corpse, then up at Tess. He was a mass of bruises and cuts and he cupped his broken arm in his other hand. He still managed a sheepish smile through his pain.
‘I coulda taken him,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she reassured him, ‘but I wanted payback too.’
‘How’s Lacey doing?’
She shook her head, and he watched the workings of her throat as she struggled against emotion.
‘Come here,’ he said, an offer not an instruction.
She moved into his one-armed embrace and held on to him.
‘Can I ask you to do somethin’ for me, Tess?’
She blinked tears away as she peered up at him.
‘My arm’s broken, and maybe that’s not all; I’m gonna need some help around the house …’
‘Yes,’ she said without pause.
‘You will move in?’
She held his gaze. ‘Yes. But not as your housekeeper. There’s something I need from you too.’
‘D’you want to ride pillion on my new Harley Davidson?’ His eyes twinkled in humour, and she reached up and kissed him, because it was as good as a marriage proposal from him.
FORTY-EIGHT
Without exception, everyone found alive at the construction site was taken into police custody until some sense could be made of the mess, where immediately Ben Holbrook attempted to pull on favors from certain senior officers he kept in his back pocket. For a worrying period of time, it looked as if both he and Clarissa Glenn were going to be released on their own reconnaissance until Emma Clancy, with the weight of the Portland District Attorney’s Office behind her, interceded, and their opportunity to flee proper justice was snatched from them. As soon as the package sent as a priority delivery from Tess arrived in her office, she got her best technical analysts on the case, and they circumvented the malware program installed by Si Turpin, and found the horrifying truth in the files. Tess used her telephone call to contact Emma and informed her that she, along with Po, Pinky and Stella Dewildt, had been arrested, and immediately Emma got the ball rolling with the local FBI office. Because the crimes perpetrated by Hayden James’s team, under the direction of Holbrook and Glenn, had occurred across various state borders, the FBI took jurisdiction over the case, and those police officers beholden to Holbrook were ostracized from the proceedings, some of them pending further investigation, and it was then that the genuine victims of the case were shown leniency and a hefty amount of professional courtesy. Po, who’d previously been under armed guard in hospital while his injuries were tended to, walked free on bail, shackled now only by a cast on his broken arm.
Her husband, Paul, summoned to Boston in the aftermath of her rescue, collected Stella Dewildt. He was accompanied by a flock of journalists and TV cameras, and he strongly objected to the treatment his grieving wife had endured by unsympathetic law enforcement officers who’d taken the word of liars, blackmailers and would-be executioners over an innocent victim. Public opinion was initially divided over the rights and wrongs of the gunfight, because on balance a number of lawfully licensed close-protection operatives had died under the guns of people with obvious ties to the criminal underworld, whereas only Aaron Lacey had perished among the ‘supposed’ good guys. Briefly the identification of Pinky’s allies had been a sticking point in the matter, and his reticence to say other than that they were ‘anonymous but concerned members of the public’ didn’t help his case. However, when it came to light that he’d almost been murdered in defense of Stella Dewildt during her abduction from New York, not too many people objected to his subsequent actions in attempting to free her. He too was bailed pending further investigation, but Emma Clancy was confident that once the full details of the case were released he’d avoid prosecution, as would Tess, who’d shot and killed Hayden James, who was in the act of trying to kill her unarmed partner at the time.
The news of Jon Cutter’s arrest for the murder of his sister Carly sent a seismic shockwave throughout the world, and it took most of the attention off Tess and her friends’ shoulders, and they were given some space to grieve and to heal. With the shocking revelation that Hollywood’s brightest star was in fact a murderous rapist, and that he’d been assisted in covering up his terrible crime by his security detail, the sudden shift in public opinion became a landslide of support for Stella Dewildt, who’d almost become his next proxy victim. Her deceased father’s attempts at first blowing the lid off the cover up, and then giving his own life in defense of his child, became the stuff of heroism. Harris Collins and even Si Turpin – whose actions were somewhat questionable in reality – were subsequently lauded as supporting players in Lacey’s heroic endeavours. So was – albeit posthumously – the retired Doctor Herbert Grover, who’d striven to keep Lacey healthy enough to continue his quest and who was brutally murdered by the psychotic Megan Stein, whose murderous nature had also initiated the gun battle at the construction site, leading to the deaths of all but one of her team. Vera Seung, sole survivor of the troubleshooters was in holding pending trial, and would go to prison for her part in the abduction of Stella Dewildt, but compared to her bosses, she’d probably get off lightly. Holbrook and Glenn were facing life imprisonment alongside Jon Cutter, whose shining star was totally eclipsed by the awful truth.
Barbara Grey attended Aaron Lacey’s funeral alongside her daughter. It was a show of respect to an old family friend, and an attempt at sealing the widening rift in their mother–daughter relationship. Po originally offered to drive them, but Tess argued that he was in no fit shape for the more than six hundred and fifty miles round trip, and he’d acquiesced to her better sense, albeit because he wasn’t too comfortable about taking the flights: he was as brave as a lion when it came to a fight, but suffered crippling nerves when flying. However, he tamped down the anxiety, and spent the flight seated next to Pinky, his mind kept off crashing and burning by his effervescent friend’s good humor. It allowed Tess and her mother to sit together, and talk things over in private, and for Tess to make her humble apologies for ever doubting her mom’s commitment to her dad after she explained how she knew the location of Aaron Lacey’s second home.
‘I told you once before that I disapproved of Aaron and Rachel’s open marriage, but that didn’t mean I held them in contempt. They were our friends, and if they were in trouble they turned to us. Sometimes you can get caught up in matters you’d prefer not to, but you get involved any way, right?’
‘Definitely.’ Tess nodded at the irony. ‘It’s the story of my life.’
‘Well, the thing was,’ Barbara went on, ‘Rachel wasn’t as open to the idea of extramarital sex as perhaps her husband was, and she was regularly tormented by jealousy. Her rules about their relationship included not knowing anything about his mistresses, and Aaron upheld his side of the bargain, but unfortunately Rachel couldn’t stick to it. There were times when she would allow envy to get a hold of her, and she’d dwell on where Aaron was and whom he was with. Your father received a call from Aaron asking us to go and collect Rachel from his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen after she turned up blind drunk and made a hell of a scene. She wasn’t happy, no way, no how, and tried to break down his door when he refused to open it. Being NYPD the last he wanted was for a patrol to turn up, so he asked your dad to come and take her away before she embarrassed them both. We collected Rachel, and had a time of it trying to calm her down before she sobered up. It was a horrible, uncomfortable situation to get caught up in, but we couldn’t refuse to help our mutual friends, could we?’ Barbara turned and fixed her with an earnest stare. ‘I swear to you, Teresa, that was the one and only time I ever visited Aaron’s second home, and I had no wish to return. In fact, I’d forgotten about the incident until you mentioned where you were looking for him in Manhattan.’
Tess accepted her mom’s word on the matter, whereas before she might still have questioned it as she’d already done some further sleuthing. After they were released from custody in Boston, and Po collected his abandoned Mustang from the burying ground on Hull Street, she’d discovered on the back seat her shirt used by Lacey to stem his blood, and she couldn’t resist the urge to clear things up. Using her genealogical connections she’d sent the shirt, along with a sample of her own DNA to a lab for testing. Aaron Lacey’s DNA had not been a paternal match. On reading the test results, she’d experienced a moment of disappointment, because Aaron Lacey hadn’t proven to be the worst father ever when it came to his love of Stella. The sensation was fleeting, swiftly replaced by relief, then joy. She’d only shared the results with Po, the only person other than her mom who knew about her misgivings about her parentage. Typically Po, he’d merely shrugged and said, ‘Told ya that you’d nothin’ to worry about.’
But Tess didn’t like loose ends.
There was still the matter of the photograph of Barbara and Tess that Lacey had kept on display in his motel room, but Tess hadn’t broached it on the flight down: she could only assume that Lacey had been fond of her mom, though his feelings were never reciprocated, or perhaps he’d held on to the old photo as a reminder of Tess herself. She’d been the apple of her granddad’s eye, and maybe Lacey had kept her image close, as a reminder of how he’d failed to save Mikey Grey’s life when they’d walked in on the convenience store robbery. Whatever the meaning of the photo, it would have to remain a mystery, because when others scattered rose petals and consecrated dust on Aaron Lacey’s coffin, she deposited the photograph in the grave, and never mentioned it again.
During the flight home to Portland, mother and daughter sat comfortably together, and it was some time until Barbara noticed the sparkling new band on Tess’s third finger. To Tess’s pleasant surprise, Barbara was overjoyed that, for once at least, Tess had done something her mom agreed with. They laughed, and then wept together with a sense of sad maudlin, at how proud her father, Michael, would have been to walk her down the aisle. Spotting their tears, Pinky lightened their mood by lamenting: ‘You’re marrying this brute! Is there no hope for me now, Pretty Tess?’
‘There’s always space for you in my affections, Pinky,’ she assured him.
‘And at my side, brother,’ Po added. ‘Oh, by the way, did I ask you to be my best man yet?’
Pinky shrieked in delight, and the other passengers on the airplane broke into impromptu cheers and a round of applause.
They waited until the visible bruising on Po’s face subsided before making their engagement official – in truth allowing some respectful time to pass between Lacey’s internment and their cause for celebration – at a gathering of close friends and family at Bar-Lesque, Po’s retro bar-diner. Barbara attended. Pinky too. Stella and her husband, Paul, made the trip up, as did Po’s sister Emilia, who’d come all the way from Louisiana for the festivities. Tess’s brother Alex accompanied Emma Clancy, and her eldest brother, Michael Jnr, and his wife, Penny, had flown in from Ohio, to complete the family reunion. Charley, the head mechanic from Po’s auto shop was there. Jasmine Reed and Chris Mitchell, Bar-Lesque’s management team, had been given the night off, as they were more than employees to Po and Tess, both of them now their firm friends. Before joining the guest list they’d gotten the place ready for the private party, except for one item on the agenda: Po had personally organized the live entertainment, and it was to Tess’s satisfaction. Neither of them had felt good about their last skip-tracing job, so Po made reparation for their lost gig by hiring the Moondog Trio to liven the party.
‘Can I have this dance?’ Po asked her.
‘Can you manage with a broken arm?’
‘I’ve still got two good feet for jiving, and the stamina of a guy half my age, Tess.’ With a wink at their private joke, Po pulled her on to the dance floor, just as Thomas Becker launched into the song Po had requested to open the show, a raucous version of the classic road trip song ‘Route 66’.
THANKS
Writing can be a lonely business, but the end result is never the product of a single person. There are others who help me along the way, and without their invaluable support and guidance this book wouldn’t now be in your hands. I’d like to extend my gratitude and thanks to my agent Luigi Bonomi and the team at LBA; to all the team at Severn House Publishers; to my wife Denise; to my family, friends and peers; to the booksellers, librarians, bloggers and reviewers; and lastly, but most importantly, to you, the reader. I write the words, but it is all of you that make this a book.
Matt Hilton, False Move
