The crowd streamed around him, oblivious.
And then Ramon saw.
It was the fiery delivery girl. She had lost her baseball cap and was backed up against a marble wall. A tall man was towering over her. He seemed to be shouting but his voice was lost in the echoing hall.
The girl did not seem to be following him anyway. Her eyes were quite blank. Terror, thought Ramon.
He had seen enough terror to recognise it easily, even across a crowded cathedral-sized entrance hall. So had Jack. Ramon knew exactly how Jack would react to the frozen panic on the girl’s face.
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Ramon. He stuffed Jack’s briefcase under his arm and pelted after him.
Jack was tall and fit as an athlete after the last three months’ physical demands. But the girl’s opponent was built like a prize fighter with huge shoulders and a neck like a bull’s. Jack should not have been any match for him. But Jack had him in an arm lock in three short, vicious movements.
Ouch, thought Ramon who knew what Jack was capable of in one of his rare fits of fury. He speeded up.
‘That’s enough.’ Ramon grabbed Jack’s arm and hung onto it. He meant to sound authoritative but it came out like a plea.
Jack looked down at him as if he had forgotten where he was. He shook his head a little, as if to clear it. Then looked at the man in his grip.
‘Who are you?’
The man choked out something indecipherable. He put up his hands to ease the pressure on his throat. Jack relaxed his grip a little.
‘What makes you can think you can push women around?’ Jack rapped out.
The man’s chest heaved. He looked furious—and bewildered.
Beyond them, the girl straightened slowly. The black panic left her face but she still looked frighteningly young and vulnerable. A loose golden-brown plait fell forward over her shoulder.
She was panting. ‘He has no right. He’s nothing to do with me.’ Her voice was suddenly very young, too.
The man was conventionally handsome, with chiselled features and expensively styled hair. But when he turned his head to look at her, his expression was as ugly as a street-corner punk’s.
‘Oh, no? I’ve got a piece of paper that says I’m your guardian.’
She flinched. But she did not deny it.
‘Great,’ muttered Ramon. Aloud, he said soothingly, ‘Jack, these people don’t want us interfering in their private affairs…’
Jack ignored him. He looked at the girl. ‘Well?’
‘He’s married to—a relation of mine,’ she said in a hurried, uneven voice. ‘I don’t ask them for anything. I don’t want to have anything to do with them.’ Her voice rose. It was quiet enough but it had the intensity of a scream.
Ramon winced. He was not surprised that Jack did not let the man go.
The man let out a roar of frustration that at last attracted the attention of one of the security guards. He ignored Jack and Ramon. ‘You owe Donna,’ he said. ‘You know it. I know it.’
It sounded menacing, even to a stranger. The girl whitened. Her sudden pallor revealed a dusting of golden freckles across her nose.
The security guard began to stroll over. Jack was still holding the attacker in an arm lock. The girl looked past the man, straight at Jack, her hands twisting.
‘I don’t. I don’t owe anyone. I never asked…Please…’ Her voice was all over the place.
Jack said, ‘Your guardian?’
She looked at the man, though it was easy to see that she did not want to meet his eyes. ‘Brendan, please don’t do this.’ It was obviously a huge effort to speak with even an attempt at calm. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I never have. I just want to be free.’
Jack’s face was a mask.
Oh, Lord, that’s torn it, thought Ramon.
Jack said slowly, ‘How old are you?’
‘T-twenty-two.’
He looked at the big man in his grip. ‘No one has a guardian at twenty-two.’
‘You do if—’
But the girl was not waiting any longer. The security guard reached them. They all turned to him instinctively, the tight little circle round the girl widening for a moment. She saw her chance and took it. She dived between Ramon and Jack so fast that she knocked Ramon flying. In seconds, she was out through the revolving doors.
Jack’s captive swore. He would have taken off after her if Jack had not wrestled him up against the wall and held him there.
‘I think not,’ Jack said very softly.
‘But that girl is my ward.’
‘She doesn’t seem to think so.’
‘I tell you—’
‘And I tell you, ward or no ward, you will not manhandle her while I’m here to stop you.’
There was a steely note to Jack’s voice which brought the hairs up on the back of Ramon’s neck. Even the stranger seemed to recognise that this was not a man he could bully. Some of the bluster left him.
He took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Sweet little Holly done a number on you too, has she?’
Jack did not answer.
The man tried to push his restraining hand away and failed.
‘That’s a real good act she’s got,’ he sneered. ‘Can’t tell you the number of guys she took in back home in Lansing Mills. That was why she ran out—’
Jack stopped him with a gesture of disgust. ‘Enough, already.’
The security guard decided to intervene at last. He had checked Jack Armour into the committee many times and trusted him. The other man, however, was new to him. Mindful of the fat folder of guidelines under the reception desk, he asked some slow and careful questions. By the time Ramon had appointed himself interpreter and translated them from French, the girl was long gone.
Jack let go of his captive. After a brief struggle with frustration, the man came up with his answers readily enough.
‘My name is Brendan Sugrue.’ He produced a passport from his back pocket. ‘That girl is my sister-in-law. By adoption. My wife and I are her legal guardians. We are from Lansing Mills, Oklahoma. She ran away. I have been on her trail ever since.’
‘Why?’ said Jack. It was quiet enough but it had the force of a bullet.
The security guard looked up curiously from his perusal of the passport.
Brendan
