by Jeff Abbott
He climbs into the passenger section, Mike behind him. Two columns of plush leather seats, on either side of the plane; halfway down, a large table.
He sees a woman step out from the back of the plane. Long hair, pretty, soft eyes, nice smile. Dressed nicely. It’s not Mom.
“Where is she?” Grant says.
“Back there is a really small bedroom. She’s resting back there.”
The woman tries to say something to Grant, but he ignores her. He pushes past her and hurries into the bedroom. It’s empty.
He turns back and Peter has followed him into the small room.
Mike fills the door, tears in his eyes, gesturing gently with his big hands.
“Where is my mother?” Grant asks.
“I need you to listen to me, Sasha.”
For a moment the name, unexpected, freezes him. “That’s not my name.”
“It has always been your name. Your true name.”
“Sasha,” Peter says, as though testing the word.
“Mike, where is my mother?” Now his voice is quavering.
“Her name was Anya. Once I loved her very much,” Mike says.
“What? Mike?”
“I am your father,” Mike says, and he tries to smile again at Grant.
70
Iris and Grant
Iris pulls her car onto a side road that leads to cargo and private jet operations. She’s never been here before and she’s trying to remember the times Mike mentioned this plane—he mentioned it as a friend’s, but one where “he had access.” During massive Austin events like the music and film festivals, there would be dozens of private planes arriving and departing, and Mike once joked about his friend charging business associates in Canada high fees for the private jet. She drives along the access road and then she sees Mike’s car. Parked, and between the buildings, near the access runway for private jets, she sees a jet. Parked. Just the one at the moment.
She screeches to a stop behind Mike’s car. Nothing matters right now except finding her child.
She still has the gun, now tucked into the back of her jeans. She hopes the Butlers haven’t broken down the door and called him. The plane is still on the ground. She runs up the access stairs and enters the cabin.
There’s a woman there, with an open medical bag. She stares at Iris.
“Where is he? My son?”
The woman doesn’t answer, and then the door opens and she sees Mike.
“Where is Grant?” she yells.
“Mom!” she hears Grant call behind Mike. He’s in the back room or hold or whatever it is. Mike slams the room’s door shut behind him.
“Grant?”
“Aren’t you looking for Anya?” Mike says.
Her name, spoken by him, staggers her. “Where is Anya?”
“She’s dead. Of course, you knew that already.” A coldness in Mike’s tone, none of the hearty warmth she’s always known from him. But of course everything about him is a lie. Everything. The past two years of friendship were all a falsehood. She can hardly wrap her head around it.
“No…Anya was in touch with Danielle. And with Marland, that drug dealer. Where is she?”
“Dead, where you left her. Where I found her, when I went looking.”
Iris hears Grant screaming in the room, pounding on the door.
* * *
Peter pulls Grant away from the door. Peter’s tall and rangy but not athletic, and Grant dodges away from him.
“Are y’all crazy? He’s not my dad. I talked to my Russian dad.”
“You talked to Boris Stepurin. He’s an old friend of our mama’s. Mama told him he was the father and he believed her. She needed someone else’s name on the birth certificate so Papa wouldn’t know.”
For a moment the phrase doesn’t register with him. Our mama.
“What…?”
Peter smiles. “Mama gave me up, too, for a little while, till Papa found me. I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re going to sit down on that bed. The nurse will give you a shot if you feel anxious. We won’t be in Canada long. Then we’ll fly home.”
Home. Grant stares at him. Then he drops to one knee, as if shuddering in shock and dismay, his fingers searching for the knife he tucked in his sock.
* * *
Iris pulls the gun from her waistband and aims it at Mike.
“Are you going to shoot me, Iris? The way you did Anya, when all she wanted was her child back?”
“It wasn’t like that… She was going to kill us…”
“Well, you were taking her child from her. You were in the way. No jury would have convicted her.”
“He was ours! She gave him up!”
“Could you ever give up Grant? If it was what was best for him?”
She stares at him.
“Your husband killed Danielle. Your daughter killed Marland. It’s likely that you personally concealed evidence in both cases—in fact, that will be found to be so, very soon. You’re felons, all of you. What future does Sasha have with such a family? None. None at all. I’m his father, and I’m taking him home.”
“Who are you?”
“My name would be meaningful to you if you followed Russian politics, but I don’t expect that of a woman who writes forgettable pop songs. I’m a man with some means. A man who was betrayed by Anya, a young woman he loved. A man who was spied on by Anya for your friend Danielle, and so Anya left me and hid and found out she was pregnant with my child and gave up the baby. Then she changed her mind. I never knew until I went looking for her. And found her.”
“The village.”
“I’d bought Bukharin, you see. The whole village was to be cut down so I could build my estate on it. She went there because she felt safe; she could hide and wait for me there. No one would look for her there. And there she would be, with my child. A bargaining chip to ask my forgiveness for betraying me to the CIA.”
She remembered what Danielle had said: these places get bought by oligarchs and millionaires and torn down for estates. More than an idle speculation, a statement of fact.
“Danielle and Anya spied on you.”
“Danielle was a CIA courier. Perfect cover, right? She goes to Russia often on business. Material could be given to her that she could take out of the country. Documents you would not want transmitted through the internet. Or photos. She picked up material from agents the CIA had recruited. Anya was my girlfriend, and the CIA turned her against me with lies and deceptions. She stopped when she realized she was pregnant. But she made the mistake of telling Danielle, her handler. And Danielle talked her into giving up the baby. She’d done it once before. I didn’t even know she was pregnant, but I had told her, no babies. Back then I didn’t want kids. Anya was afraid of angering me, so she left me; she went off to model, she said, as she’d done before. And she had Sasha. But Danielle had told her CIA bosses about my baby, and they decided that baby was valuable. That baby was leverage to be used against me, my own blood, safely adopted by an American family and held out as a carrot to me to get me to give them what they wanted on the Russian president, his inner circle, the most powerful men and women in Russia.
“But after you all killed Anya, they abandoned that plan. No one wanted to have to explain where Anya was when the question would come up. Danielle told the Agency that Anya had died, killed by you and your husband, and the CIA decided not to use my child as leverage against me. And once Russia stopped allowing adoptions, Danielle became less useful to them.”
The people following Danielle in Moscow—the men in the fancy cars. Conduits to Anya, or other informants. “The woman who warned me off adopting Grant…”
“The CIA division that Danielle worked for was torn. One side felt it was wrong to use a child as a tool—or that it was too risky, that I could simply go to the Russian press and say the CIA helped get my child adopted by an American family and I never knew. They did not want you to adopt Sasha. They wanted Anya to return to spying on me, and with a child in her ar
ms, she and I would be even closer, they thought. She had been a steady source of important information.” His voice was bitter.
The warning woman, Iris thinks. The bribe. The CIA would pay that much to keep an informant close to one of the most powerful men in Russia. It was a pittance to them.
“The other side wanted the adoption to go through—so Sasha could be leverage if ever needed, kept close to a family near Danielle. But they abandoned that, of course, after Anya vanished.” Mike shrugs. “Does it matter? You and Kyle and Danielle killed my woman and took my child.”
“Why would Danielle help you now?”
“Do you think I gave her a choice? If my child was going to be leverage used against me, he could be used against her. Danielle didn’t want to be exposed as complicit in a murder. It wrecked her work for the CIA, having been involved in the death of an asset. They terminated her employment, disavowed her. And linking her to the CIA would destroy her adoption work, China would never let her in again or let her agency work in the country. When I came to Lakehaven, she knew who I was and she knew what would happen to her and her son if she didn’t play along. I bugged her house. I routinely hacked her phones. She had no way out from under my watch. If she talked about our arrangement to anyone, her son would be dead. I guaranteed that. Even if I was caught, arrested, and she and Ned were put into witness protection, her son would be dead. I have many friends in Russia who owe me many favors.” Now he smiles, shrugs. “Plus, I think she felt just a little guilty. I told her I only wanted a chance to know my boy. Like any good papa.”
Iris thinks: She pretended to be your girlfriend, so you’d be more readily accepted. Living in an endless trap, to protect herself and her son, so mine could be stolen. She tried to imagine Danielle’s terror. Her fear. She’d given a phone to Kyle not for an affair…but maybe as a first step of escape or warning. Even then she’d been too terrified to tell Kyle the truth, unwilling to risk her son’s life.
“Mike…”
“Mike was a deep cover identity I used in my intelligence career, long before I made my billions working for our president and his friends. I just stepped back into Mike’s shoes. Back in Russia they think I’m a recluse in my estate, or off on a yacht in Monaco, or whatever. You can run your business from wherever you are.”
A former intelligence agent. A billionaire. An oligarch. “You did this to our family. You coerced Danielle into helping you. You killed her, then framed my husband for it, killed Marland and framed my daughter.”
The slightest smile. “Your family is clearly unfit for the boy. He sees what you all truly are.”
“He’ll never love you. He’ll never accept you. He’ll never forget about us.”
“I can give him everything he needs and anything he wants. You can give him visiting hours at the local prison.” His contempt is thick.
“This is kidnapping.”
Mike smiles, and it is, to her horror, the same crooked grin that Grant has. It is the one resemblance between them. “That’s the thing about truth these days—we all get to define it. I’m one of the most powerful men in Russia, when I’m home. The Russian press will take my side—that my son was wrongly stolen from me years ago, that you bribed the judge, then murdered his poor mother, that I have simply taken back my son rightfully. Sasha and I will issue a statement saying that he came willingly because of what you and your murdering husband did. The Russian government will never send him back to you.”
“He’ll be an adult in four years. He won’t stay.”
“Perhaps. Of course, you may all still be in prison, and he may have gotten used to the lifestyle my son is entitled to enjoy. I can give him a life of comfort and luxury you can scarcely imagine. You can give him nothing.”
“You launched a war against us. Against my family.”
“More like an intelligence operation. To show Sasha what you really are. Murderers.” The smile vanishes. “Am I wrong? Did you not leave Anya dead?”
Her voice quivers. “Punish me and Kyle, fine. But my daughter did nothing to you.”
“Sasha doesn’t need any ties here. Plus, you took my child. Do you understand that? You are nothing, and you took something that belonged to me.” Mike pats his own chest. “So, it’s important to me that you understand what kind of special hell that is, Iris.” The flicker again, of the smile. “That is the hell I have made for you.”
“Grant!” she screams. “Mom is here, baby!”
“Mom!” Grant screams on the other side of the door.
“Pilot! Take off now!” Mike yells. “Peter! Tell Sasha it will be all right.”
Both of them hear Peter scream.
And then Iris aims the gun right toward Mike.
Mike shakes his head. “How many people are you going to kill for your son, Iris? Do you think this will make him love you? Or will it just make him afraid of you?”
Iris stares at him.
“Danielle told me how you always insisted she had killed Anya. But she said it was you. You turning the gun close to Anya’s heart, you pulling the trigger.” He looks at the gun, unafraid of it in her shaking hand. “Are you going to kill both of Sasha’s parents?”
“Danielle was lying.”
“Danielle is dead. Take off!” he yells at the pilot. And she hasn’t even noticed the pilot in the cockpit, presumably going through some preflight configurations or whatever they do.
She lowers the gun.
“Now, that’s reasonable,” Mike says. “I’m going to tell you how this works, because you’ve inspired me. We’re flying to London for refueling. You and Sasha don’t get off the plane in Britain. We fly to Saint Petersburg, and you will be my guest at the estate I’ve built where you killed Anya. Guessing you don’t have your passport with you, but that’s fine; the Russian government will welcome you temporarily. You will help my son transition. If you provide me that help, and behave yourself, evidence will be produced by my people here that clears Kyle and Julia of their crimes. You go home then, and you get your family back, Iris.” His smile is an awful thing, a final twist of the knife.
“But my son…”
He pauses, watching her, and she realizes he has waited nearly two years to savor this moment. “Not all your family. Not the one you stole from me. Not the one you murdered a young woman to get. Sasha was never truly yours. He never could be.”
“Mom, Mom!” Iris hears Grant on the other side of the door, his voice fading.
“The nurse here will give him a sedative. You will tell him that it’s all going to be OK. Or your husband and daughter…”
“It’s going to be all right, Grant,” she says. Mom voice on, like a switch has been flicked. Reassuring, calm.
“Sasha. You will call him Sasha from now on. That’s his name.”
“It’s going to be all right—Grant,” and then Iris turns and fires two bullets wild into the cockpit, hitting random instrumentation, and there are sparks, then screams from the pilot and the nurse. Iris feels Mike lumber into her, wrapping his arm around her throat from behind and tackling her. They crash into the airplane’s deck, Mike screaming in rage and Iris closing both her hands around the gun so he can’t pull it away from her. Not making the mistake Anya made.
“Grant!” she screams. “Run!” The door to the plane is still open.
Mike lifts and slams Iris into the plane’s deck again. She feels the carpet scrape her face. Yelling behind her, Grant’s voice loud again. Mike slams her into the deck again. She feels her nose break.
“Run!” she screams.
Grant, screaming, now atop Mike, somehow with a bloodied steak knife in his hand, slashing at Mike’s shoulder. Mike shrugs him off. “Sasha, no!”
Then Grant, kneeling before them both, dropping the knife, pulling the gun from his mother’s hands, raising it toward his father’s face, fumbling for a grip on it. “Let my mom go! Now!”
“Grant,” she screams. “Don’t! Don’t!”
“Sasha…” Mike begins.
The gun fires.
71
Afterword of A Death in Winding Creek by Elena Garcia
A journalist should never be part of the story, but when I spotted a frantic Iris Pollitt coming out of the Butler home and roaring off in her car, I followed. She drove like a maniac and so did I. Sometimes you have the sense of when a story is drawing to a close, and yet with this unusual American family, one could feel, even after everything they survived, that their story was just beginning.
I was the first person to call the police after the gunshots rang out in the private jet that Iris boarded, and I was there when Iris Pollitt and her son, Grant, and the others aboard the plane were brought out by airport officers and Austin police. And even not knowing fully what the story was at that point, I remembered thinking: This man went to war with the wrong family.
What makes a family in our modern world where people can feel hyper-connected and yet so alone? It is more than the connection of blood and DNA.
Is it sacrifice, like Kyle Pollitt was willing to do to protect those he loved? Could you face life in prison to shield another person?
Is it determination, like Julia Pollitt, a teenager who took on a dangerous and vicious criminal—and got in entirely over her head, yet did not flinch?
Is it transcendent love, like Iris Pollitt showed to her son, charging into a life-threatening situation without knowing what she would face and taking a life to save her child?
Or is it simply choice? Grant Pollitt was given a choice and he chose his family. His real family: the mother, father, and sister who had given him love and loyalty.
We choose to love. We choose to stand together as a family. In the case of the Pollitts, I believe that is what defines a family. And you don’t want to go to war with a family like that.
72
