Second Shot by Zoe Sharp Page B

Chicago just before my mom died, I hoped she’d tell me then, but she never did. She must have had her reasons, but she took them with her.”
    “And you’re hoping—if you do find your father—that he might be able to give you his side of it?”
    She nodded again, then gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe Matt’s right, and I should leave things as they are, but I’ve reached a stage in my life where I can’t move forwards without knowing who and what he is. And if he’s a monster, well—” She shrugged, with more bravado than nonchalance. “I’ll just have to deal with that one when I get to it. At least I’ll have you to protect me, won’t I?”
    She lifted her cup, drank absently, oblivous to the way my face must have frozen. “It’s made me decide that I won’t ever try and keep Ella away from Matt,” she went on. “Not unless he does something really awful. If I thought for a moment he’d ever try to hurt her—”
    My mobile started shrilling at that moment. I put my drink down and flipped the phone open. I hardly needed to glance at the display to know who was on the other end of the line.
    “Hi, Sean.”
    “Madeleine’s got seats reserved for Simone and Ella on tomorrow’s Virgin Atlantic flight to Boston out of Heathrow,” he said without preamble. “Whose name do you want me to give her for the third ticket?”
    I remembered the look of stark terror on Ella’s face in the kitchen and then the delicate touch of her lips on the side of my throat.
    I glanced across the room to where Simone stood now, wrapped in turmoil and memories, clutching her cup with both hands like it was
some
kind of lifeline.
    What were my own fears compared to theirs?
    “Mine,” I said.

Five
     
    T he private investigator’s dead,” Sean said. Whatever else he added to that was drowned out by the PA system above me, announcing a final boarding call for all passengers for some charter flight to Malaga.
    With scant regard for the possibility of brain tumors, I jammed my mobile phone hard up against the side of my head and stuck my finger into the other ear. It was only partially successful at damping down the outside noise.
    “What?”
    “The private investigator Simone hired to trace her father—guy called O’Halloran,” Sean explained, raising his voice beyond the tolerances of the phone’s tinny speaker, which buzzed painfully in my ear. “He died in a car accident last week.”
    “When you say ‘accident,’ I assume that’s what it was?”
    “As far as we know, yes,” Sean said. “I’ve spoken to his partner. They’re arranging for someone to collect the guy’s files and brief you. They’ll meet you when you land.”
    “Great,” I muttered, unable to shake the uneasy feeling this latest news provoked.
    It was just after nine the following morning and Simone, Ella and I were waiting at Heathrow for our flight to Boston. Madeleine was nothing if not efficient.
    We’d spent the previous night in one of the big hotels near the airport, having braved the press pack to escape from the house around lunchtime. The hotel was part of a major chain that was used to celebrity guests and took a very dim view of letting journalists and photographers harass them unduly. The hotel also employed a number of rather large door staff who wouldn’t have looked out of place outside a town center nightclub and who had a definite no-nonsense reputation.
    I’d made a point of going and chatting to them briefly once I had Si-mone and Ella safely tucked away in their room. I was polite and respectful and gave them as much information as I could about the situation.
    In return for this professional courtesy, they’d promised to be extra vigilant, and proved it by firmly repelling the first paparazzi incursion shortly afterwards. The reporters had made a few more experimental forays, then retreated to lurk sulkily in the car park. I was pleased to note the rain had hardened into sleet as the light began to