DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) by Zoe Sharp, Joel Goldman Read Free Book Online Page B

her.”
     
    It was only then I glanced at the man who was clearly Jimmy O’Day’s bodyguard. The man with the north London accent who’d been too slow on the uptake to prevent his principal putting himself in harm’s way. Up ’til then, I’d dismissed him for that reason alone. Now I finally gave him my attention.
     
    And as soon as I looked at him full on, I realised he wasn’t a stranger to me.
     
    But I wished to hell that he was.
     

Eight
     
    The last time I saw Vic Morton I’d wanted to kill the bastard. If I’d had the means, the opportunity, and the faintest chance of getting away with it, he would be an integral part of a concrete motorway bridge support by now.
     
    Even years later I still felt my fingers contract in a reflexive grip, desperate for the feel of his windpipe beneath them.
     
    There was a buzzing in my ears, a flash of adrenaline-fuelled rage coursing through my system. The SIG was suddenly an almost irresistible weight at my back. If the Beretta hadn’t been still in his hand, held loosely at his side, maybe I would have considered it.
     
    As it was, I saw him eyeing me with some apprehension and realised that he hadn’t kept his gun out by accident. He knew me all right, and was wary—maybe even scared—of my reaction.
     
    So you bloody well should be.
     
    At least he had the sense to hand off cover for Jimmy O’Day to another of the O’Days’ team. They shifted their young principal just out of my reach. He was still protesting about the treatment he’d received at my hands.
     
    “The kid’s hot-headed, what can I say?” Morton said with a smile. “Sometimes it’s easier to let him make a few easy mistakes and save him from the really stupid ones rather than nursemaid him all the time.”
     
    “He was heading straight for us,” I said. “I could have hurt him. Where the hell were you?”
     
    Morton gave a shrug. “Oh, I didn’t think you were going to do him any serious harm.”
     
    It was Sean who stepped forwards, brows down like a big dog coming in for the kill. Unutterably heartened, I put out a hand, almost said his name. I didn’t get the chance.
     
    “I know you, don’t I?” Sean said, and for the first time since we’d landed in New Orleans, there was some animation in his face, his voice. “I recognise you.”
     
    Morton braced. “That’s right,” he said, clipped. “Been a long time, Sergeant.”
     
    “Vic . . . Vic”—he clicked his fingers—“Morton, yeah?”
     
    For a moment, Morton didn’t answer, but I could hear his brain turning over, even from a metre or more away. He must have heard all about Sean’s head injury—everyone in the industry had by now. The rumours I’d come across ran the whole gamut from having him walking round with the bullet still lodged inside his skull to being a drooling vegetable on life support in some private asylum. Another reason why Parker had been so keen to have him back out in the field. Especially on such a visible assignment.
     
    “That’s right,” Morton said again now. “We trained together, you might say.”
     
    “Right,” Sean said. “Right. Good to see you again, Vic.” I knew that the warmth in his voice was not for the man, but the memory—for the fact that he remembered him at all. But even so it was a bitter blow that Sean should show such apparent pleasure to be faced with one of the men directly responsible for my ruin.
     
    One of the men who had raped me.
     
    Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.
     
    I didn’t think I’d ever forget them. I’d tried my damnedest but now fate had conspired against me.
     
    “You weren’t on the original staff list for this job,” I said, aware of the brusque note in my voice, the taste of acid in my mouth. “What happened?”
     
    Morton, buoyed by the lack of aggression in Sean’s welcome, looked almost jubilant. “Last-minute replacement,” he said. “I’m normally assigned to another member of the O’Day family, but