Third Strike by Zoe Sharp Page A

for Goliath’s intervention. When it didn’t come, she checked us out again and frowned. Her tone modified a little. “Whaddya want?”
    “English guy,” I said shortly. “Came in here about half an hour ago. Where is he?”
    She heard my accent and her face grew calculating, but she didn’t try to bluff us. By the look of the bruising, she’d tried that ploy once today already and it hadn’t gone well for her.
    “Upstairs,” she said. The reluctant fear in her voice twisted in my belly, grabbed at my chest as I began to move. “Hey, I didn’t have nothing—”
    “Stow it,” Sean said.
    He was right behind me as I took the stairs to the final floor two at a time, was alongside me as we broke our way into each of the matted little rooms up there. He didn’t speak, and I’m not sure I would have heard him over the raucous clamor inside my head even if he had.
    It was the last room. It always is. We hit the door hard enough for the flimsy hardboard to rip out of the frame and sway drunkenly from one hinge before toppling to the floor.
    Inside, we found my father standing centered under the dusty bulb. He was minus his suit jacket, with the buttons of his shirt halfway open, revealing a vee of pale hairless chest beneath, and he was just in the process of sliding his tie out from under his collar.
    Or rather, the girl in front of him was taking care of that part.
    She was young—much younger than just about any of the girls we’d seen so far in that place. Well under the age of any kind of informed consent, with taut skin the color of latte and glossy long dark hair. Her back had been to the doorway, presenting us with a perfect view of a slender body not yet entirely spoiled. She spun, gasping at the violence of our arrival, to reveal classic almond-shaped eyes.
    Apart from too much makeup, she was completely naked. Just for a moment, the side of my brain responsible for lucid thought and reasoned argument totally shut down. Instinct and training took me forwards, only peripherally aware of Sean moving to check and secure the room.
    I closed in on my father, registered the absolute shock and the pure, undiluted shame that coated him like a layer of grime, moments before he covered it with a haughty mask. That was what did it. Another silent lie on top of all the others.
    Blinded, I gave a howl of utter rage and backhanded him across the face with enough force to snap his head round. I was still wearing my bike gloves, which had tough carbon fiber protectors across the backs like lightweight knuckle dusters. My father staggered a pace from the blow, but made no attempt to block me or prevent another. That was enough to bring me up cold.
    Raked with guilt and anger, I felt the blood drop out of my face so fast that my vision buckled and I nearly fell.
    “You … bastard, ” I said.
    The certainty that he was dead, and all the emotions connected to that conviction, had set vicious barbed hooks deep into every part of me. The sudden discovery that he was very much alive ripped them out all at once, leaving behind a bloody mess of tattered thoughts and raw confusion.
    He was alive, and I wanted to kill him for it.
    “Charlie.” It was Sean who spoke, gently, firmly, putting his hand onto my forearm to press it downwards. It was only then I realized I had the gun up, had been watching my father’s reaction over the top of the sights and had seen nothing wrong with the picture that presented.
    “Don’t do this,” he murmured. “I hate to resort to cliché, but he genuinely isn’t worth it.”
    I let my arm drop away, found it was trembling as badly as the rest of me.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste the round.”
    I lurched back as the adrenaline boost drained away, almost collapsed against the wall near the doorway to the corridor. My left thigh burned and I resisted the urge to grab at it. I was damned if I was going to show more weakness in front of him.
    As soon as we’d burst in,