by Abbott, Jeff
He knew the awful truth: he wanted to deal with Henry himself. He wanted Henry weak and vulnerable in front of him, to be forced to admit he used and betrayed Luke. Accountable, for only a few moments, to Luke for taking Luke’s well-intentioned work and building an obscenity from it. It was a disquieting realization, and it gnawed at his heart during the trip back to the motel.
When he got back to the motel room, Aubrey had turned to another news channel. Authorities in Alaska were reporting that a trio of Seattle men had been arrested trying to sabotage an oil pipeline near Sitka. They had been caught with a few homemade bombs, devices powerful enough to have torn an expensive hole in the pipe and shut down delivery capacity for days. The men were allegedly ecological extremists; but the stock market had reacted to this late-afternoon news with a feeling of havoc narrowly averted, especially after the week’s earlier pipeline blast in Canada. Oil prices soared to new records and the rest of the market cratered for the day. Millions vanished on paper.
‘Seattle,’ Luke said. ‘I found some extremist environmentalists in Seattle that I handed over to Henry. This could be them.’
‘Or not.’
‘I can’t hear about an attack, or a political crime, and not think it’s connected to the Night Road right now. My God, I gave him so many names. Even if there were only fifty or so that were serious, that’s a million per terrorist.’
‘Life has a soft underbelly,’ Aubrey said. ‘I mean, if just a few people wanted to wreck the economy, they could, with surgical precision. Just by hitting us where we’re vulnerable. Our energy. Our food. Our communications.’ She looked at him, sadness in her eyes. ‘If they scare enough people, they will change how we live.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Look at 9/11, what a few people can do with so little. Nineteen guys. The whole operation cost a half-million. These guys could cause so much more suffering with so much more money. Not just one big attack. Maybe a whole, long series. An onslaught of terror.’
Then the next story was about Eric but they did not mention Eric’s name. The screen showed police tape cordoning off the condo building on Armitage. No witnesses, no description of a shooter, except three people - a man and a woman, pursued by another man - had run into traffic, nearly causing a major bus crash. The anchor said, ‘We’re told the power across the Lincoln Park area had failed due to a computer glitch, although no problems elsewhere in the power grid have been reported, and ComEd is investigating the situation …’
She smoothed her damp hair back from her head. ‘You sort of stink, Luke. You might want to shower.’
He hadn’t gotten clean since the cottage near the flooded river. He ducked into the bathroom, stood under the stinging spray, lathered his body with soap. A warm gratitude dawned in his chest that she was sticking with him; he didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t like putting his grimy clothes back on but he had no choice. He’d lost his knapsack with his clothes at Chris’s studio.
Aubrey lay curled under the sheets. Dozing. He moved to his own bed and doused the light. He realized he’d left the bathroom light on. He got up, switched off the light and walking in the darkness back to his own bed, he inadvertently hit his shin against her mattress.
She sat up with an abbreviated scream.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Aubrey.’
‘I’m okay. I thought - I dreamed I was back in that cabin …’
‘It’s okay.’ He sat on his bed. ‘I had a bad dream earlier.’ He could hear, in the dark, the rustling of the sheets on her bed as she eased back down on the mattress.
She said, ‘I was sure - when I was chained to that bed - no one was ever going to find me. I was going to starve to death. Or die of thirst. An ugly death alone. I don’t even like to eat lunch alone.’
He laughed, very softly, and she sighed and then she cried, for Eric, for the life he’d stolen from her.
Luke watched the moonlight that came in the room from the barely parted curtains. He looked over at Aubrey and for a moment he didn’t realize that she was holding a hand out toward him.
He took her hand.
‘Just for now,’ she said. He knew. He understood.
‘I thought I was going to die in that cabin, too,’ he said. He closed his hand around hers. His breath seemed to pause. She drew him to the bed. They nestled together, both hungry for warmth, both exhausted, hearts and minds tattered by crisis.
Then her mouth turned to his, needy, hungry, a kiss that said I’m just so thankful to be alive. He covered his mouth with hers, slowed the kiss, broke it. Her lips tasted of coffee.
‘Bad idea,’ he said.
‘I don’t care. I’ve been living a bad idea for days. I didn’t love him any more. He’s ruined my life. I can’t … I just need …’
He knew. The need to feel alive, to not be deadened by the horror. She withdrew from the kiss, almost shy, and then he touched the hem of her T-shirt, felt her lift her arms, wanting to be free from the fear. He tugged the shirt off her head and eased off her bra. He pulled off his own shirt and leaned in close to kiss her again. The silver of the Saint Michael’s medal touched her naked breasts.
‘What’s this?’ She fingered the medal, the angel’s wings.
‘Saint Michael. My dad gave it to me before he died. He’s supposed to keep me safe, he said.’ Aubrey studied the medal in the cold bar of moonlight from the window, cupping it in her palm, then she ran the medal along the silver chain and put the angel on Luke’s back.
‘It tickles me,’ she said.
‘Okay.’ She closed her eyes and Luke felt her fingertips begin to push his boxers from his hips.
The lovemaking was gentle and comforting and good and they both slipped into warm sleep. In the deep of the night Luke awoke at the sound of a door shutting down the hall. He thought he should stay awake, stay on guard in case Mouser and Snow worked more sick magic to find them but he knew they couldn’t, that he and Aubrey were safe, they were invisible. But he stayed awake for a long hour, thinking not of the woman curled in the shelter of his arms, sleeping in abject relief of momentary safety, but of Henry.
Thinking of what he would do when he saw Henry, the king of lies, the false face, the betrayer, the serpent who could say trust me and turn the words to poison.
Luke was steeling himself, he realized, for murder.
28
They both slept until late in the morning, the sunshine crafting through the windows. Luke awoke and she lay next to him, watching him.
‘Shouldn’t have,’ she said, but she offered a shy smile. He saw what he thought was regret in her eyes. She blinked it away, as if she knew it lingered, and gave him a warm kiss on the mouth, followed by a chaste kiss on the forehead. She kept her hand on his flat stomach. ‘But I’m not sorry that we did.’
‘Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I have no regrets either.’
‘You’re a good guy.’
‘So are you. Not a guy. But good.’ He had never been deft at the morning-after chatter and he saw he wasn’t improving now. He felt a pang of regret, because this was going to change or complicate an already tough situation between them. He couldn’t deal with another problem. But if he was going into battle, he wanted her: a smart and brave partner.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You?’
‘I’m sad for Eric. I can’t help but feel that way.’
He said nothing.
‘But we … we can get out of this mess,’ she said. ‘Get our lives back.’
‘If we find who he made the deal with, where he hid the money.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘We start with his cell phone.’ He opened up the phone he’d taken from Eric’s pocket, searched the call log. Aubrey leaned over his shoulder. There was only one number listed on the log. An international number.
‘I know that international code is France,’ Aubrey said. ‘Eric and I went to Paris a couple of months back. He had business and I’d never
been.’
‘Business,’ he said. ‘What kind?’
‘Banking stuff, I don’t know.’
Luke pressed the callback option under the number.
‘Um, is that smart?’
‘Let’s see,’ Luke said.
Four rings, and then: ‘Hello?’
He recognized the British woman’s voice. ‘Hello, Jane,’ Luke said.
She didn’t seem shocked at the use of her name. ‘This isn’t who I was expecting.’
‘No. Eric Lindoe’s dead.’
‘Sad. I thought he’d make it through the weekend, at least. Let me guess. Luke Dantry, running man?’
‘Why did you want me kidnapped? Why have you involved innocent people?’
‘Nothing personal, darling,’ she said.
‘Bitch, it’s personal,’ Luke said. ‘Why did you do it? What did I or Aubrey ever do to you?’
‘Nothing. Hence, not personal.’ Her voice was cool, crisp as breeze caught in linen. ‘You’re not going to find me. You can’t hurt me.’
‘I have a question for you. You knew about the fifty million. So who the hell’s giving it to the Night Road? Where’s this money coming from?’
‘Some secrets, sweetheart, go to the grave. My lips are sealed.’
‘This fifty million you want so badly? I’m going to find it before you do.’
‘That, darling, I seriously doubt.’ Then he heard a click, Jane hanging up.
He tried the number again. No response. ‘Why would a British woman in Paris be using us as pawns?’
‘Insulting her wasn’t exactly productive.’
‘Aubrey, this woman isn’t going to negotiate with us. Not until we find where he hid the money. Only then could we maybe lure her into the light.’ He shook his head. ‘I want to know where this money is coming from.’
Aubrey bit her lip. ‘I do have a thought about a potential hiding place for the money.’
‘Where?’
‘Eric’s childhood home. We stopped there on the way into Chicago after we ditched your car in Dallas. Eric was getting his stepfather’s gun. The house is empty; Eric’s stepfather died recently and he hasn’t sold it.’ She swallowed. ‘Maybe he did more than get the gun. Maybe he left something behind.’
The house was a few blocks off Cicero, not far from Midway airport; in a neighborhood that looked like its better days were more myth than memory. Narrow brick houses were jammed close together, as if sharing secrets. Some of the houses were maintained with pride and care; some were not. People idled in yards, on corners, bored, laughing, arguing. They drove past a trio of teenage boys who looked at them with a mix of calculation and studied disinterest. Luke parked in front of the old Lindoe house. The small yard needed a mow. Every window was darkened. The Lindoe house looked like the shy child on the block.
‘Eric paid off the house for his parents when he made real money,’ she said.
Luke thought if he made serious money he’d have bought his parents a nicer place but who knew the calculus of relationships in the Lindoe family. Maybe this had once been a happy home, one worth staying in for memories alone. Why would a wealthy, successful guy keep this house? Sentiment? Or maybe because he was involved in dirty dealings? After six months, had the will even been probated? The property would still be in his stepfather’s name. It was a perfect place to hide.
They used a key on Eric’s ring to get inside the house. The house smelled slightly musty.
‘He’s not here much,’ Luke said.
‘Yeah. His mom died of cancer two years back. His stepdad passed about six months ago - heart attack. Not long after we met. Eric said his stepdad didn’t want to live without Eric’s mom.’
‘Yeah. My own stepfather said the same thing after my mom died.’
‘I’m sorry, Luke. How …?’
‘Car accident. She was driving. Rainy night. They hit a skid, went through a guardrail, tumbled down an incline. She died, he lived.’
Aubrey opened her mouth and closed it. The silence grew heavy.
‘But because of what you know about your stepdad now …’
‘I wonder if it was really an accident.’ He shook his head. ‘Henry nearly died. It took him a long while to recover. I don’t know. I thought he adored my mom. But he’s the king of lies. Maybe I’ll never know.’
Aubrey took his hand, gave it a kind squeeze.
He switched on the kitchen lights.
‘He made me hot tea and told me to sit here and wait. I was still so rattled by what had happened and what we were facing, I don’t know what he did while I waited for him.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘In the back.’
They walked to the end of the hallway and found a master bedroom, the cheap furniture shrouded in plastic, as if trapping memories in a clear amber. Dust covered the plastic.
They backed up to the next bedroom. Eric’s bedroom. A flicking-on of the light showed a room little changed from when Eric had taken his scholarship money and headed off to the University of Illinois. Clippings of his achievements dotted the wall - from high school through college, and then after, a shrine of proud parental hopes. A son who’d made nothing but good choices and then made a very bad one.
Luke studied the clippings. ‘He was president of an honor society, and he ends up a killer and kidnapper and a money man for extremists.’ He ran a finger along the frames: Eric’s first letter offering him a banking job, in the operations division of a national bank; Eric in the sands of the Middle East, at a construction site, shaking hands with an older, elegant Arab businessman; in London, standing stiffly with other bankers; on a windswept beach, a borderline between desert and sea, watching the skeleton of a resort take hold.
‘He really did spend a lot of time overseas. Did he ever talk about it?’
‘No.’ She paused for a moment, looking at the smiling Eric beaming in the desert sun. ‘At my import company, I bought these really unusual pots from Papua New Guinea. There’s a face on each side, like a totem. Eric thought they were cool. Maybe he liked them because they were two-faced, just like him.’
‘He’s like Henry, in some ways. Henry loves his photos of himself at work, surrounded by powerful people. I don’t understand why Eric and Henry got involved in this. Why? Why risk it all?’
‘Some men can never have enough - money, pride, power,’ Aubrey said. ‘Name your poison and it will have an addict.’
He peered inside the closet. ‘Help me look.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘What shouldn’t be here.’
She found the laptop three minutes later, tucked behind a stack of worn paperbacks on the top shelf. An old, cheap subnotebook, paired with a power cord.
Luke plugged in the system, started it up. It presented a password prompt.
‘Any ideas?’ Luke asked.
Aubrey rubbed a finger against her lip. ‘Let me try.’ She sat and tapped words on the keyboard. ‘I’ll try words that meant something in his life.’ Luke continued searching the room. He found two guns; Glocks with ammunition. The serial numbers had been filed away. Both were hidden in a box under the bed, camouflaged by a scattering of old Hardy Boys paperbacks. And money. Five thousand in cash.
Not fifty million, which would take up a considerable amount of room.
Luke put the money and the weapons on the bed.
‘Nothing is working,’ she said.
‘Stop and think for a minute. You said he set up your bank accounts. Did he set up your passwords at first?’
‘I kept the passwords he used,’ she said. ‘They were more secure than what I would have conjured up. I would have used my name or my phone number or my first cat’s name. He came up with passwords you could remember but that were hard to break.’
‘How?’
‘Well, he always said to use words with letters you could easily replace with numbers and it would look kind of the same in your head. Like a word with Es, replace the Es with 3s. Or Ls, re
place with 1s. He said it was much more secure than the word itself, and still easy to remember.’
‘What did you choose for your passwords?’
‘Aubrey, but with a 3 replacing the E. And another one, for an account he set up for me after we got back from Paris, was Paris, but with a 5 instead of the S.’
‘Where did you go in France?’
‘Mostly around Paris. Montmartre, Saint Germain, the Louvre. All the tourist spots. We also went to Versailles and we went to Strasbourg for a couple of days.’
‘Did you go on any other trips with him?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s write down every shared interest you had, every place you went together.’
‘Just because he gave me passwords that meant something to him doesn’t mean his passwords will also tie back to me.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But you were his priority. He put everything on the line for you, Aubrey. I am willing to bet you were in the fore-front of his mind when he was hiding this money. It was a ticket for the both of you.’
He found a piece of paper and wrote down all the various neighborhoods and sites they had seen, all the common threads she could think of - their gentle rivalry of Cubs and White Sox, his obsession with Bulls basketball, his few favorite music groups and TV shows and movies, their preferred restaurants, a wine they drank on special occasions, the places they’d traveled together. Luke felt as if they were conducting an autopsy on the happier moments in Eric’s life. Then they started playing with the words, replacing letters with numbers in Eric’s style, turning Es and Bs to 3s, Ls into 1s, Gs into 8s, Ss and Ps into 5s. The list grew into dozens of permutations.
