"C'mon, Chief. Catherine won't kill you."
Richard looked at him and Dwayne's expression turned pensive.
"Well." He amended himself. "Not while Aimèe likes you."
Richard snorted. "Aimèe is not even a year old yet. She likes anyone that offers her something shiny enough."
He hadn't felt this uncomfortable in a while. He had drifted around the perimeter awkwardly, moving on each time someone glanced at him for a moment too long and did a double-take, on the verge of recognising him.
Maybe he shouldn't have pushed his luck by putting on a tie.
"Attention!" Catherine called to her assembled peons. "The car is pulling up! Places!"
And somehow he managed to end up near Dwayne and Camille. Stuck where he was Richard had no choice but to accept the fruity but rater poisonous-looking cocktail Dwayne pushed onto him. He stared down into the glass doubtfully.
"Oh, don't look like that, Chief. You'll enjoy it."
"I'm sure."
"Yes, it's one of Maman's signature cocktails." Camille said, juggling Aimèe, who currently seemed rather determined to climb to the top of her mother's head. "It's the Mooney. It's colourful and eccentric on the outside, but the taste is smooth and cool and classic."
Richard blinked at the name, and a moment later it occurred to him. "Oh!"
"Or we could get you a Dirty Humphrey." She quirked her eyebrows.
"Excuse me if I pass." Richard said dryly.
"Ooh, here's the car. Ready?" Catherine called.
"Oh, honestly, what does she expect us to do?" Richard hissed. "All jump out at the man? We'll give him a heart attack!"
Camille gave an aborted laugh. "Quiet."
And so, standing among this odd company, he watched as Catherine led Patterson into the bar, the Commissioner feigning surprise as the townsfolk mobbed him with hugs and hearty handshakes and joyful cries of welcome. Selwyn Patterson had become part of the very fabric of the island, and to do without him was unthinkable. For a moment Richard thought he may get out of this unscathed when the Commissioner excused himself from the throng of excited well-wishers to approach Richard's corner.
Richard swallowed. Patterson had been a cop long enough that he wasn't likely to expose an undercover officer unintentionally, but intentionally? After all, Richard never really knew where he stood with the man.
The Commissioner stopped in front of him, not quite back to the bombastic towering figure of before but a far cry from the beaten old man Richard had spoken to in prison. Patterson eyed him up coolly, seemingly content with the discontent he caused, when he smiled.
Richard didn't know whether he should be worried or not.
"Monsieur Palou." Patterson said finally. "I hear you were instrumental in my return." He cocked his head slightly to the side, with that ruddy annoyingly knowing half-smile that always drove Richard up the wall. "I may have to retain your services further in the future."
"I'll have to check my schedule." Richard said. "But in the light of recent events, I am considering my continued placement at the firm."
Patterson's brows rose. "Truly?" He said mildly. "Well. I suppose we will have to come up with a way to persuade you to come on board with us."
No way in hell. Richard smiled coolly. The one thing he didn't miss in the slightest was Selwyn Patterson's near constant interference in his life. "We'll see."
"We shall." Patterson said with a note of promise before he was whisked away by Catherine.
"Sounds like the Commissioner is going to try and keep you." Camille said playfully.
Like a bug in a jar. "Aren't I delighted." Richard said flatly. He stared down suspiciously into the fruity cocktail he was still holding before pushing it aside. "Right now I honestly can't wait to get off this sodding island."
"Aw, Chief, you say that every time." Dwayne pointed out. "But you keep coming back."
Richard sighed. "I must have masochistic tendencies."
"That could be worth exploring," Camille teased, and he blushed.
"Don't be inappropriate. And not in front of the child!" He lectured, and her smirk widened. After all this time, she could still get under his skin.
"We're at a party, Monsieur Palou." She said, with a quirk of her brow. "If that's not a place to be inappropriate, I don't know where is."
Richard shook his head. "Between you and your mother, Aimèe doesn't stand a chance."
Hearing her own name, the baby looked up from where she was determinedly fiddling with Richard's briefcase. Camille fluffed her hair and Aimèe grinned, a ribbon of drool splashing onto the leather. He winced.
"The world doesn't stand a chance." She corrected. And honestly, three Bordey women unleashed on the world at the same time? Watch out.
"I'll drink to that." Dwayne said.
"You'll drink to anything." Richard argued. Grinning, Dwayne gazed at him pensively until Richard actually started to feel a little uncomfortable.
"You know, I really did miss you, Chief." He said finally, with an odd sort of wistfulness. "Even if you are, you know, a bit of a square that goes about shoulder-throwing people."
Richard was affronted. "You snuck up on me! What did you think was going to happen?"
"Well, probably not to end up in a ditch." Dwayne said philosophically.
"What?" Camille blinked. "You were shoulder-throwing people?"
"I'll have you know that I have to pass a yearly physical aptitude test, the same as you!"
She cocked an eyebrow. "Uh huh."
Richard pried his briefcase away from Aimèe, who had a surprisingly firm grip for someone who was barely a person yet. The baby didn't cry, thank God, but pouted at him in a familiar way as he held the briefcase to his chest before wobbling off to presumably cause chaos elsewhere.
"Well." He said. "Veni, vidi, vici."
Dwayne looked confused at the sudden divert into Latin, but Camille rolled her eyes. "Run, coward."
"I spoke to the Commissioner. I waved to your mother." He said pointedly, straightening his tie. "I believe I've fulfilled the requirements of this soiree."
"Oh, the sacrifices you have made." She replied sarcastically.
His eyes narrowed, but that was when there was the tiniest tug at his trouser leg. Startled, he darted a look down, half expecting some infernal Caribbean rodent only to find himself staring into a pair of bright inquisitive eyes. Instead of completely scooting off, Aimèe had circled around him. Now she had his attention, the baby tugged a little more insistently at his trousers, arms raised in a universal signal for up.
"Char." Aimèe said firmly, and Richard blinked.
"Aw, she said your name, Chief." Dwayne grinned.
"She did not." Richard snorted. "She said a random syllable that is coincidentally contained in my name. The human brain is primed to find patterns. You listen to a string of sounds long enough and you'll end up hearing words."
Camille knelt down on the floor beside her daughter, Aimèe's bottom lip wobbling. "Don't listen to le trouble-fête, chérie. That is our Char."
Dwayne laughed.
Emboldened by her mother's encouragement, Aimèe dug insistent little fingers into his leg. Richard was hyper aware of Camille waiting for his next move and judging him for it when he finally bent to scoop her up. While not as awkward as the first time he had held the child, a dark little voice in the back of his mind still whispered that he was undoubtedly going to drop her.
"Are you really gonna split?" Dwayne asked, grin in his voice, and Richard ignored him.
Aimèe pressed her hands to either side of his face, making sure that Richard was looking at her, babbling something with a serious face.
"Oh, of course." After all, he wasn't entirely made of stone. "I couldn't have said it better myself, Ms Bordey."
The baby grinned gummily at him, seemingly validated, and for whatever bloody reason some of the tension of the day seemed to roll off his shoulders. She flopped against his chest, content, and Richard's stupid sodding heart skipped a beat.
"I told you she likes you, Chief." Dwayne said.
"Heaven knows why." Richard murmured. After a moment he peeled the limpet off his chest and handed her back to her mother, Aimèe murmuring disapprovingly and repeating his name. And the Caribbean sun must be truly starting to affect his brain because this time Richard felt vaguely reluctant to give her up. Camille didn't say anything as she watched the miniscule changes in his face.
Leaving Saint Marie this time was going to kill him.
Richard cleared his throat, smoothing his blazer, aware that his cheeks were flaming.
"Well, I feel that if I remain for too much longer, I'm going to entirely bring the mood down." He said with an attempted mock cheeriness.
"D'you want a ride?" Dwayne offered.
"No, no. I'll be fine." He said. "Er, not that there will be any traffic since it appears that everyone in Honoré is seemingly here." Richard tried to muster a passable smile, but knew he failed miserably. "I'll… I'll see you all tomorrow."
Camille immediately went rigid, and a second later Richard could have kicked himself as he remembered that those were the last words he had ever said to her as he walked out of the station all those years ago, hot and grumpy and irritated and with the feeling that everything was going to come crashing down as he picked up the damned book that was going to make or break everything, wondering if maybe he was just overthinking things and Sasha was just caught in the midst of her own mid-life crisis. After all, he was well-aware that the only time he was a genuine cause of cheer was when he left a room.
I'll see you tomorrow.
He never did.
Before he was swallowed by the tidal wave of shame, Richard escaped.
It looked like a fruit massacre had taken place in the kitchenette, and as Richard stared at the countertop in dismay, bloody Harry poked his stupid little green head out of the skin of a banana in a way rather reminiscent of a scene from Alien, looking up at him as if boldly saying wot, copper?
"You disgusting reptile." His lip curled. "This is why you're not coming to London."
Harry's tongue flicked in and out before his head disappeared back into the skin to continue disembowelling the fruit, with all the disdainful indifference of a teenager. Grumbling to himself Richard flung his briefcase onto the bench, sitting at the countertop with his head in his hands.
Everything was silent but for the sounds of music and laughter coming through the walls. Richard sighed, dropping his arms. "All right, you twit, there's no time to feel sorry for yourself." From his briefcase, Richard pulled out the copy of the Snow Ball invitation. Smoothing the crumpled sheet of paper, he stared at it.
There was something here he was missing. That they were all missing. Dooley had planted the evidence that pointed to Canducci and Lily on a floppy disk, yet he was found with a USB drive in his stomach. If Richard himself hadn't wondered about the package the Superintendent sent to himself, a whole part of the puzzle would have been missing.
More importantly, why bother with the floppy if he was going to swallow the USB?
Richard flashed back to the office in Government House, how Max Dooley had piled all the Commissioner's possessions into boxes and had spent the time outfitting the office to his rather gaudy tastes. He'd thought he had everything in place. He had thought his position was immovable, that he was untouchable. While one action rather implied that he knew death was coming, the other just as strongly suggested that he intended to live to see the network burned to the ground.
The man knew that danger was coming, but he hadn't expected to die. And it had been bothering Richard from the beginning.
You are cordially invited to the annual Snow Ball, the invite read in flowery script, RSVP to Griselda.
Richard's eyes narrowed. If Max Dooley had created this invitation specifically, surely he wouldn't bother to put useless information on his clue. He tapped RSVP to Griselda with a finger, before pulling his briefcase toward him, pulling out his work laptop. Something rattled against the lid and he frowned.
"What-"
Richard reached into the briefcase and withdrew a plastic penguin.
He squeezed his eyes closed briefly before opening them again. Yes, he really wasn't hallucinating, it was still a penguin. Richard studied it for a long moment before the light caught in its eyes, causing a reflection that he recognised and he was instantly a little less confused.
For young Aimèe, using the inbuilt cunning her family naturally possessed, had literally bugged him - slipping her baby monitor into his briefcase.
With a slight smile, Richard set the little penguin on the counter. He would take it back to Camille tomorrow. And maybe bring some pastries for morning tea. And drinks. Maybe some ice cream for Aimèe. Smiling faintly at the penguin, Richard opened his laptop, eyes flashing up to the screen, idly opening up a search engine, typing.
Something in the screen's reflection behind him moved. Richard's eyes widened and he slipped forward, pushing the barstool backwards into the shins of the person that had been advancing on him. There was a slight 'oof' as he whirled around and kicked the stool further into the hooded figure's chest. Prepared this time, the intruder caught the stool before calmly placing it back on the floor. Richard pressed his back against the counter, his hand dipping below the lip to the holster he'd taped there-
There was a click behind him as a round was chambered.
"Hands above the table, if you please." Lily Thompson said pleasantly.
He shouldn't have been surprised, really. Phillip Canducci possessed the level of intelligence to make it look like he had arrived on the island far later than he actually did, so logic dictated that he would also have been able to make it look like they had fled Saint Marie when in actuality they had never gone anywhere at all.
Richard's eyes darted over his shoulder to Sergeant Lily Thompson, before flashing forward to stare at a winded Phillip Canducci, the modern Bonnie & Clyde themselves.
"I have to say, you've got more spice than I thought." Lily said casually. "But I suppose we did only know each other for a few days in the end."
"Believe me, it was more than enough time." Richard said. "Tell me, why aren't you halfway around the world by now?"
She shrugged a shoulder. "I've made my living by doing what people don't expect." She said. "I wanted to thank you personally before I left. Going to prison was the best thing that could have happened for the business."
"I'm glad I did my part in diversifying crime in the Caribbean." He couldn't help the sarcastic remark, his eyes narrowed. "You really could have left prison at any time, couldn't you?"
She shrugged. "Not at first. I had to make a few business contacts, sacrifice some capital."
Three lives lost being casually passed off as a wise business decision rankled with Richard.
"Those three women. Did they know you were paying them to die?"
"Please." Lily rolled her eyes. "They were paid to drive."
"Honey." Canducci said warningly, and Lily seemed to blink back to herself. She smiled.
"Mon Dieu, only you. About to die and still interrogating." Lily shook her head. "Mon Cher, get his phone. And the computer."
"Oui, darling."
Richard's arm shot out, swiping the surface of the kitchen counter clean and sending the laptop and the smartphone crashing down to the tiles. Canducci lunged forward to try and catch the devices and Lily shouted something that in the moment Richard's mind didn't quite make out. Seconds later as she stared contemptuously at the ruined laptop Lily casually raised her handgun and -
BANG.
…pause…
BANG.
BANG.
And since the entirety of Honoré was currently in the main street celebrating Commissioner Patterson's return with music and fireworks and the suchlike, no one heard it at all.
In an instant it was like he had been repeatedly punched hard in the stomach. One, two, three. There was a moment, one brief shining moment where everything was perfectly frozen in time until a knife of red-hot pain lanced through him and bent him double. The counter dug into his back as Richard looked down at the neat red circles that had appeared in his shirt. Dazed, he raised a hand to press against his stomach, warm, dark-red blood seeping through his fingers.
Well, there were worse places to be shot, Richard supposed, 80 percent of gut shots were perfectly survivable. Of course, that statistic was assuming he made it to the hospital alive, and didn't succumb to sepsis first from his stomach acids eating through his other organs. His legs failing him, Richard sank awkwardly to the floor.
Aimèe's little penguin stared at him unblinkingly from where it had landed hard on the tiles.
"What the hell was that?" Canducci demanded. "What happened to 'timing and patience'?"
"Oh, please." Lily snorted. "If you weren't so busy showboatin', we would already be out of here!"
"Me? Showboating? Which one of us is playing with their food?"
"Just get the phone and the computer!" Lily demanded.
"They're fucking broken!"
"Doesn't matter." She said coldly. "People will pay thousands to have a chance to get the contacts on the drive and SIM."
Richard's eyes darted up to the holster taped under the bar. All he had to do was reach up and-
Canducci looked down at him, lip curled. Lily nodded at him and the man carefully crept closer, bending down to pick up the pieces of broken tech. All he needed was a window.
And that was when a surprising secret weapon struck. As Canducci bent his head, out of the cracked fruit bowl leapt Harry the Immortal. Richard could have cheered as the lizard dive-bombed Canducci's head before disappearing with a rustle down the back of the man's shirt. He shouted out in surprise and a little bit of horror as something scampered across his bare skin, concentration utterly broken as Harry scuttled down his sleeve and up the wall to safety.
Richard reached up to the holster, his abdomen screaming as he moved, and flicked the safety off before shoving the taser as hard as he could into the back of the man's knee. Canducci gave a shout of surprise, crashing to the floor as his body convulsed. His head smacked against the tile floor and he didn't move again. Even with her seeming near-indifference to the man, Lily screamed as the electricity arched through him, bringing up her gun once more.
Despite her wild eyes the muzzle didn't waver at all. Richard flashed back to Lily telling him point-blank at the prison that she had spent years fantasising about looking down on him, seeing the fear in his eyes, and pulling the trigger.
Oh well.
Harry was safe, that impossible little infernal hell dragon. Patterson was back where he was supposed to be. Catherine still didn't like him, but that in itself wasn't surprising. His team was together again. Maybe this was the way it was always going to go. All in all, Richard had a good run of it.
He closed his eyes, accepting his fate.
…earlier…
Camille certainly wasn't surprised that he made his excuses to leave the party as soon as it was socially acceptable to, after all, the man wouldn't have been Richard Poole if he had put in more than the nominal amount of effort. But she couldn't say that she wasn't kind of hurt, considering that this could have been their last day together.
The afternoon was slowly turning into evening. The Commissioner, having finally tired of Catherine dragging him from place to place, had set up court in the lounge while the rest of the bar had just collapsed into a general party and loud music.
"I think I'm going to head home, Maman."
Disappointment immediately flicked across Catherine's face. "Aimèe doesn't need to be put down for another hour."
"I think you've forgotten exactly how much preparation is involved in settling a baby down."
Her mother kissed her forehead. "I could never forget."
Aimèe was repeatedly attempting to flick off her earmuffs as Camille started gathering her things from the portable playpen, packing away the hoard of toys that just seemed to appear wherever her daughter was. After a moment she frowned.
"Now what did you do with Pingu?"
Aimèe, already getting in practise for when she became a teenager, made a point of ignoring her. Camille's eyes narrowed, but couldn't seem to find the little plastic penguin among the toys or blankets. Her daughter had regarded it with suspicion ever since the penguin had appeared at the end of her cot and had apparently followed through on her determination to be rid of it. "You are a terror, my girl."
Her mobile phone buzzed in her back pocket as she was getting the baby capsule ready, and Camille pulled it out to see the notification.
"Ha! Looks like Pingu is trying to come home,"
And even though her daughter had barely harnessed the recognition of particular words, Aimèe pulled a face, clearly not looking forward to the return of Pingu the Penguin. Camille flicked out the video notification. For a moment the screen was dark, and then Pingu was being lifted into the light and she smiled.
Aimèe had palmed off the disagreeable penguin onto Inspector Poole.
He stared at Pingu for a long moment, that little furrow between his brows. As understanding struck him a moment later, he smiled, a slow and genuine smile, and something in Camille eased. Maybe he wasn't just going to disappear again. Maybe this time he was going to stay.
He set the penguin aside, opening up his laptop, apparently unaware that he was being filmed. Camille watched him for a moment longer before sighing and slipping her phone back into her pocket.
"You are leaving us?"
Commissioner Patterson was watching her, a kindly look on his face.
Camille straightened. "Aimèe needs to be put down for the night."
He sipped the rum he was holding. "That's not exactly what I was asking."
She met his look squarely.
"I know."
He hummed a little. She expected him to indirectly steer around the subject like he always did, and was a little surprised when Patterson addressed it directly.
"What would it take for you to stay?"
Camille blinked. "Quoi?"
Patterson gave a small smile in her direction before repeating himself. "What would it take to get you back?"
Camille's eyes narrowed. She had been aware for a long time that Neville was really teetering hard on whether he should stay or not, and the Dooley incident may have pushed him over the edge. "If you want to keep their funding, the English are not going to let you have someone who's not one of them as Chief of Police."
His eyebrows rose. "Let me consider that, Inspector Bordey."
She cocked her head to the side. "Bending the rules is what led to your arrest, Selwyn."
Patterson chuckled. "Bending the rules was why you were never disciplined for insubordination."
"Insubordination?" She blinked in surprise. "I know he threatened to write me up, but-"
"Inspector Poole wanted you reassigned, or at the very least, officially reprimanded and sent away for retraining."
At that, an old indignation that Camille hadn't felt in years roared to life inside her. "That stinking rat! I ought to stab him again!"
"To be fair, it was the first month you worked together. He stopped asking eventually."
She huffed to herself a little. "I'm going to kill him."
Selwyn just smiled, and Aimèe grinned, happy that she had been temporarily forgotten about.
The phone buzzed in her pocket again, and Camille almost put it through the wall. She brought it up to see that Pingu was paging her again. Not just paging.
The monitor was flagging an urgent alert.
She blinked, temporary bout of irrational anger dissipating, and although she knew Aimèe was right beside her, Camille reached out for her curly head to assure herself that her daughter was safe as she thumbed open the monitor.
A bolt of ice shot down her spine.
"Camille?"
Camille handed off the nappy bag and the toys to Selwyn. "Watch Aimèe."
Selwyn glanced down at the child, looking startled and maybe a little bit scared. "Inspector Bordey-"
But Camille was gone.
She pushed through the crowd, searching for one person. It felt like hours but was probably only seconds when she saw him standing with Fidel and Dwayne. Looking back it probably wasn't the brightest idea to grab a MI5 agent from behind when DC Bell almost put her through a wall before he caught himself, looking horrified when he realised who it was.
"DI Bordey! I'm sorry, you caught me by surprise-"
Camille was an old hand at hand-to-hand combat by now, and had managed to keep herself balanced. But instead of bothering to pander to the awkward gawky Englishman's stumbling apologies, she cut right over him.
"Where is Richard Poole's hotel room?"
"Awright, Sarge?" Dwayne asked.
"Is there a problem, Camille?" Fidel frowned.
Two faint spots of colour appeared in his pale cheeks. She understood the position she was putting him in, the kid was barely thirty and just starting in his career as a detective. "Inspector Bordey, I don't have the clearance to just tell-"
"Lily Thompson and Phillip Canducci are in his room." Camille said. "They're armed and we need to move right now. I don't care about clearance."
Bell sat his bottle down on the nearest surface. "Let's go."
There was a vicious yank on his hair and Richard's eyes snapped open to see Lily crouched over him. He had seen flashes of this woman when he'd visited her in prison, wild, feral, reduced to a creature of savage instinct after a decade in the prison system.
"Look at me!" Still gripping his hair tight, Lily ground the muzzle of the gun into his wounded abdomen. Unable to help himself, Richard screamed. "You look at me as I kill you!"
"You are psychotic!" Richard spat, his blood speckling her face.
She laughed. "If I am, it's because of you."
"No, it's you. You and your ego. It's why this whole thing started in the first place, isn't it?" Richard's voice was starting to snap and crackle. "You couldn't just accept the fact that you weren't good enough."
"Shut up."
"That's why you never got the promotion. You weren't enough."
"Stop."
"And you were never going to be!"
"Shut up!"
He should have expected the pistol-whip to the face, but somehow didn't. He really was getting slow. As the ringing in his ears slowly faded, Richard came to the realisation that the sirens he was hearing weren't just in his empty head and Lily snapped to attention, for the first time actually looking surprised.
She turned on him once more, fire in her eyes. "What did you do?" She demanded. She jammed the bloody muzzle against his temple so hard that he temporarily saw stars. Richard was sure it would bruise, not that it would matter. "What did you do?!"
He carefully inclined his head to the little penguin lying forlornly on the tile floor, sure his bloody lopsided smile was moderately horrific. "You're on candid camera."
Confused, she glanced over at the little plastic toy on the floor. "What-" She briefly examined the penguin before she too recognised the lenses in its eyes, but not before the camera got a good look at her face.
"Oh, you bastard."
That was when the door absolutely burst open, splintering around the handle. As it slammed back into the wall, all Richard could stupidly think was that the landlord was going to be pissed.
"Gun on the floor, now!" Fidel Best roared, his own weapon levelled at Lily, and Richard had to remind himself that Fidel was an officer still associated with the St Lucia police force, and the St Lucia police were terribly French and armed.
"Fidel." Lily cracked a smile. "Well, look at you, all grown up!"
He ignored the friendly tone. "You are now in the custody of the Saint Marie Police Force. Surrender your weapon or you will be fired upon."
Lily ran the muzzle up and down the side of Richard's face, and he couldn't help but shiver in revulsion at the feeling his own blood being smeared across his skin. Fidel's face twitched.
"Is that so? Shoot me? But what if in the death throws my hand just spasms, and just happens to blow the Inspector's head off?"
"Lily. We were all friends once, weren't we?"
"Trying to appeal to morals that aren't there?" She laughed, and ugly, croaking sound.
"Please don't make me shoot you." He said softly.
"Oh, Fidel, like you could ever have the balls."
"Probably not." Fidel said. "But she does."
Lily frowned briefly. "Wh-"
"Bonjour." And that was when Camille leaned over the top of the counter, her own pistol at the ready, fist balled over her other hand, aim unwavering. "Please. Give me an excuse to blow your head off."
She had never really met Sergeant Thompson formally before, but decided she didn't really miss anything as Thompson's gun swung towards her, the woman's face shot through with rage.
"Put the weapon down."
There was the tiniest shake of her head. "Don't think so, sorry."
"You aren't going to be walking away from this."
And as the woman smiled, Camille realised that Thompson had assessed the odds and had made the decision that after all this time and effort, surrender was no longer an option. She would shoot. And Camille and Fidel would fire back. And it would all be over.
"Then you can come with me, Bordey." She said, finger tightening on the trigger-
There was the sudden loud sound of shattering glass, and everyone's eyes immediately flicked to the rock that slowly rolled to a stop in the centre of the floor and despite herself, Camille smiled.
Dwayne.
In the moment of confusion created by her friend's distraction she took a step forward, latching onto Lily Thompson's wrist and forcing her gun hand toward the ground, forcing the trigger down and discharging the weapon into the floor until there was the repeated click of dry firing. With her free hand the woman hit and scratched, and Camille felt her nails cut through her cheek before Fidel leapt forward to grab at her flailing arm, forcing her onto her front on the ground as the sounds of sirens slowly drowned out the music.
Glass crunched under her feet. Too late, she was always too late. Why was she always too late? A wave of panic threatened to drown her as Camille knelt on the floor. Richard had sank into semi-consciousness by now while they had been grappling with Thompson, and she grabbed his jacket, pressing it hard against his stomach to try and stem the bleeding.
"Richard. Richard!" She called, but there was no real response. "Inspector Poole, look sharp!" Nothing. "Sir, Dwayne's playing with chemicals again!"
Camille had really thought she would have got a reaction out of that one, but there was nothing. Briefly hating herself, she flexed her fingers sharply against his wounded abdomen, and Richard snapped back to full consciousness, accusatory eyes rolling towards her.
"Ow! Heinous bitch." He grumbled, and part of her wanted to giggle over the fact that Inspector Poole had said bitch.
"Odious bastard." Camille shot back. If she kept up her vein of anger, she wouldn't succumb to fear. His blood was warm and sticky on her hands. "You listen to me, you self-important, abhorrent, loathsome little man. You do not get to die on me again, I swear I will drag you back all the way from Hell if I need to. Do you hear me?"
He dragged his eyes open just a touch, and Camille could have sworn that there was a faint touch of amusement there.
"Sure you would."
There were hands on her arms, and suddenly she was being manhandled out of the way by the paramedics.
"Absolutely." She whispered.
le trouble-fête - the spoilsport
veni, vidi, vici - i came, i saw, i conquered