He hoped the hospital was a small, quaint place, where Jim’s trauma would demand the attention of the entire staff, leaving him to use their phone all he wanted. But Kirkland was an upscale suburb of Seattle, which meant it was probably modern, large, and busy. After wheeling Jim away, there would be plenty of people to ask questions and call the police.
He drove on, following the GPS’s directions. When the hospital came into view, he realized no one would have had to call the police; they were already there. Two cruisers crouched near the ER entrance. A uniformed cop stood outside the doors smoking a cigarette. From Hutch’s vantage point across a parking lot, he could see another cop inside. The man was leaning over a counter, talking to a nurse.
If anyone from the motel had given the police a description of the van, these two may already have half an eye peeled for it. He found it curious they seemed so nonchalant, since the hotel was only thirty miles away. It was out of Kirkland’s jurisdiction, but how often did businesses within earshot get hit with grenades and machine-gun fire? Such pyrotechnics should have drawn cops from around the entire state. At minimum, wouldn’t these guys be chattering about it, listening to their radio for more information? Either whatever constituted law enforcement in Gold Bar had not yet responded, which didn’t make sense, or Page had something to do with keeping it quiet.
That whole area out there was Outis territory, so the idea of local public servants being on Page’s payroll wasn’t too far-fetched. According to press releases, Outis’s twelve-hundred-acre facility trained thousands of young men and women annually in all aspects of military disciplines.
News agencies continually reported on recruits being seriously injured and killed. The way Page operated, Hutch had no doubt the circumstances around those casualties were not always aboveboard. If he had learned anything during the months he’d spent investigating Page Industries, it was that power purchased silence.
He hoped that producing a gunshot victim—who was not only a civilian but also a vocal father of one of Outis’s recruits—would stir something up.
Dream on, he thought.
He swung the van around to a side parking lot and pulled into an extra-wide handicapped space. He left the engine running and climbed out. He slipped into his jacket and zipped it up. Most of this side of the building was brick. The few windows he could see were dark. He opened the side door. Jim was still breathing, but only barely. Blood had saturated the shirt Hutch had belted over the wound. He maneuvered Jim from between the seats and lifted him. He carried him to a grassy lawn between the building and the front of the van. He settled Jim into it, then reached under the man for his wallet. He verified the presence of a driver’s license—the emergency room staff or police would contact his family. He replaced the wallet.
Jim wheezed. His eyelids fluttered. He called out, “Michael!”
“Shhh,” Hutch said. He gently laid him down.
“Michael,” Jim repeated.
“It’s Hutch, Jim. It’s going to be okay.”
Jim’s eyes opened. “Hutch?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“It hurts.” But he attempted a smile. The expression was infinitely sadder than had he grimaced in pain.
Hutch squeezed the man’s shoulder. “We’re at a hospital. I have to leave you here, right outside, but I’ll tell them where to find you.”
“Those men,” Jim said. “That’s what my boy is dealing with.” He closed his eyes and began to weep.
“Jim? Just hang in there. When you’re well enough, I’ll help you any way I can, you and your son.”
When Jim didn’t respond, Hutch brushed his fingers over the man’s forehead.
He climbed in the van and backed out, trying not to look at the man he had left lying in the grass. A few blocks away, he pulled into a convenience store and called the emergency operator from an outside pay phone. He described Jim’s location and his condition, then hung up and drove away.
Several miles farther, he found another pay phone at a gas station. He used his credit card to dial Logan’s mobile phone number. A woman answered.
“Laura! What happened? Are you—”
“Who is this?”
“What . . . I . . . Laura?”
“Laura who? Who are you trying to reach?”
“Who is this?”
“Detective Mia Tierno.”
Hutch squeezed the phone. For a few moments, all he could hear was his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He said, “This . . . is my son’s phone number. Is he there? Where are you?”
“Your son’s name is Laura?”
“She had his phone. Is he there? Is she?”
“Sir, what is your name?”
“John Hutchinson. They were supposed to be at my house.” Feeling as though he was in one of Dante’s circles of hell, and this woman was his tormenter, he said, “Where is my son!”
“Sir, where are you?”
Hutch was certain she could hear his teeth grinding together. He said nothing, and she let him. Finally, his voice small, almost gone, he said, “What’s happened?”
She said, “I believe I’m at your residence. No one is here, except for four dead cops outside and a lot of blood in here.” Beat. “Not the officers’ blood.”
“No one else?” Hope sparked within him like a lighter searching for a flame. But blood . . . she’d said blood.
“None that we found. What do you know about this? John, I need you to come—”
He placed the handset into its cradle. He did not dare release his grip on the phone, however; it was the only thing keeping him upright.
Dead cops. Blood. No one there.
That spark, but no flame.
Before Page had cut off the monitor, he had seen the soldier grab Logan. Had Page’s men taken all of them? Was the blood the result of a struggle? Whose was it? Given Laura’s history, he gave the odds of the blood being a soldier’s or hers fifty-fifty.
A siren wailed in the distance. He didn’t know if pay phones transmitted their numbers. It probably didn’t matter, considering that he had just spoken to a police detective at the scene of a multiple homicide, where cops had been killed. If anyone was motivated to track him down, she was. Until he knew where the people he loved were, he did not want to be tracked down. Sixty seconds later, he was in the van, trawling for another phone.
THIRTY-FOUR
Operators answered calls to Page Industries headquarters twenty-four hours a day. Its employees—engineers, programmers, and janitors alike—were renowned for working at all hours. Business gurus relished debating the benefits and dangers of encouraging workers to spend so much time on the job. The Wall Street Journal had once praised the conglomerate for innovatively providing free gourmet coffee bars, NoDoz, and sleep chambers. A year later the publication decried the practice as being antifamily and ultimately unproductive because of the burnout factor. Through it all, Brendan Page stayed true to form, neither basking in the praise nor defending his company’s practices. He was more interested in end results than in how his people achieved them.
In turn, Page kept a staff of personal assistants around the clock. Hutch had read a Time magazine profile that claimed the man slept only four hours a day. His business was global. “Daylight’s burning somewhere,” he had told the reporter.
Hutch waited for the operator to connect him to one of these assistants now. He was at a pay phone in the customer service area of a grocery store. He thought the clerk was eavesdropping, the way he leaned on the counter without moving. Then the man’s head slumped down, and he jerked it up with a wide-eyed expression.
A female voice came through the phone. “Mr. Hutchinson?”
Hutch turned his back to the tired grocery worker. “Is this Candace?” He’d spoken to her many times, trying to get an interview.
“This is Mrs. Avery. Ms. Davis is off for the evening. How may I help you?”
“I need to speak to him.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Page isn’t available.
”
“Tell him it’s me.”
“Mr. Page is unavailable to anyone.”
“He wants to talk to me.”
“One moment, please.”
You’d think that with a billion bucks you could find somebody who could mask her disgust over the phone.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the clerk had fully succumbed to the pull of slumber.
Hutch thought about getting home. When he had made the reservations the night before, all the late-night flights had been full, or their routes to Denver had been so circuitous that it wasn’t worth trying to get back the same night. Now he would pay any price and allow a layover in London if it got him home quickly.
“Mr. Hutchinson?” Total boredom.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Page is indeed unavailable.”
“You told him it was me?”
“I spoke to him directly, sir, and I did tell him that Mr. John Hutchinson was on the phone.”
Hutch shifted the handset to the other ear. What he really wanted to do was smash it into the phone box, as though it were Page’s head. “What did he say? Exactly?”
“That he would contact you tomorrow.”
“I need to talk to him now! Do you understand?”
“Sir, I—”
Hutch slammed the phone down. It was as though nothing had changed, as though he were still just a journalist vying for a scoop with the great Mr. Page. The man had attacked him and his family and refused to take his call. He leaned his shoulder against the phone. What was Page doing? Was it his way of pounding his chest? Was he telling Hutch that he could do whatever he wanted? Through the monitor, Page had said he wanted only to frighten him. Then his men had attacked.
Hutch did not know how to reconcile Page’s words and his actions. It made him feel like he was wandering in an alien world, where the laws of physics as he understood them did not apply.
Page obviously intended to kill him. Perhaps his not taking Hutch’s call was part of that. Distancing himself. Page was good at that. Hutch had to get home as fast as possible, and he had to do it without running into Page’s men or being detained by the police.
He pulled his credit card from his back pocket and lifted the handset again. He stood like that for a few moments, thinking. If this was the way it was going to be, he had to do everything right. Even a little slip could cost him his life—and the lives of Logan, Macie, Laura, and Dillon.
He hung up. Remaining here, after calling Page, could be one of those slips. He had to think of everything, how every move would play out over the following ten steps. He had never been much of a chess player, but winning that game required the same sort of forward thinking he needed to apply now.
He had to find another phone.
Pawn to E-4.
THIRTY-FIVE
Hutch sprang out from below the window, blasting away with the handgun.
“Nice move,” Ian said.
“The guy can’t aim worth squat,” Page said.
They were watching a playback of the motel firefight. All four video feeds—one from each soldier—unspooled simultaneously on the monitors. Except, as of several minutes ago, the soldier in the third position—his video had terminated with a bone-crunching crash.
“Still,” Ian said, “the guy’s got some sharp tactical moves, like sending the other guy into the woods while he waited below the window. And later, when he gets up onto the roof. Oh, oh—” Ian hopped up, excited. He pointed at the screen where Hutch had pulled the soldier’s body over himself. He stayed under it perfectly, while the team leader unloaded his clip at him. Ian smiled. “Look at that.”
“What are you, a ten-year-old?” Page said. “Julian used to talk like that during Jet Li movies.”
They both watched the team leader lob a hand grenade, then drop down beside the toilet to reload.
“Hutch isn’t so hot,” Page said. “I want to fight him.”
Ian scowled. “He’s going to be dead by morning.”
“Maybe. Whether he is or isn’t, I want to play him in the Void. He doesn’t fight like a soldier. That’s the only thing he’s got on us. It’s an oversight in our training. Let’s figure this guy out.” Page stood. Starting to walk away, he flapped a hand at the screens. “Get Andy working on it, and make sure he uses the behavior recognition program.”
“What are you going to do?” Ian said.
Page stopped at the door. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to do what our men seem incapable of doing.”
THIRTY-SIX
Hutch cruised the streets of Kirkland, Washington. His head panned back and forth, hoping to spot a pay phone. He’d written a column a few years back documenting the plight of a couple who had sunk their life savings into the pay phone business only to see it collapse under the weight of the popularity of mobile phones. He’d learned that half of all pay phones had been taken out of service. Not finding one now, he thought that figure was way too low.
He let loose with a mental scream. Just look! He chided himself. Stop thinking about it!
But that’s the way it was: A strong wind was blowing through his mind. All the things he had to do, all the things he had to remember, whipped and swirled. He’d grab at one when another would flash by, drawing his attention. What had happened? But he knew. Wasn’t the blood the police had found in his home evidence enough? There, see, another thought to grab at: the blood. Whose was it? The faces of Logan and Macie, Laura and Dillon flashed by. The image of any one of them wounded and bleeding made his entire being go dark, as though a blanket had been thrown over his soul.
Desperate not to go there, he snatched at another thought.
But the people he loved refused to leave his mind. There they were, asking him how he’d gotten them in such a mess. Hadn’t he vowed to spend more time with his kids? Instead, he’d sicced the lawyers on Janet, demanding joint custody. Then he’d gone after Page, a pursuit that had become, as the man himself had said, an obsession.
Page. Hutch gave the guy credit in one area: he knew people. Hutch had read the stories. When Page was eight his father got sick, and he began running errands for neighbors and local businesses. He would convince potential clients of his usefulness by anticipating their needs: a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread for the banker rushing to get home; sparkling windows for the store owner worried about new competition; and—consistent with Page’s future passion—a box of cigars to the mob boss whose right-hand man just became a father. In addressing Congress to justify the huge military contracts his companies received, Page often predicted global hot zones: a South American coup, a dictator threatening U.S. interests in Africa.
Much of Page’s prescience was aided by a topflight staff of analysts and advisors, but in one interview he had said something that Hutch thought was the key to it all: “As a species, we tend to think people will do the logical thing. That doesn’t mean the best thing. Greed is logical, but not necessarily right. For example, we think a man will always protect his family and strive for a better life. How, then, do we explain his wild fling that tears the family apart, or his descent into endless bottles of booze? We’re more primal than good. We seek adventure, but often confuse chaos with adventure. Essentially, we’re crazy. Once you accept that, you’ve got the world figured out.”
The interviewer had seized on Page’s calling greed “not necessarily right”; he’d wanted to know when it was right. Hutch didn’t think that was the most telling aspect of the quote. It was that Page considered our unpredictable nature part of our predictability.
Is that what had happened? Had Page said he’d only wanted to scare Hutch, when all along he’d intended to attack him? Had he been intentionally unpredictable to throw Hutch off guard?
Okay, you’re thinking too much.
No, not too much, just dwelling on things he couldn’t know. He was wasting time and brainpower on things that didn’t matter now. What did matter was getting home, back to Colorado. He had to find Laura and the
kids. He had a ticket for the next day, leaving Seattle just after noon. That wasn’t soon enough. He had to get to the airport, exchange the ticket, leave tonight.
He looked at his watch—a little after nine. Still time, right? He wasn’t a seasoned traveler, but weren’t there, like, red-eyes that ferried people throughout the night? Maybe between major cities, like Los Angeles and New York. But Seattle to Denver? He didn’t know.
Gotta call the airline—and there he was again, lamenting the state of the pay phone industry.
He pulled into a convenience store. No phone on the outside. He yanked open the front door.
“Pay phone?” he said to a pimply-faced teen behind the register.
“It’s broken.”
“Do you have one I can use? It’s local.”
“No can do, man. I’ll get fired.”
Hutch produced a twenty. “I’m desperate.”
The bill disappeared into the clerk’s back pocket. He brought a corded phone from under the counter and pushed it toward Hutch. “Make it fast.”
But it wasn’t. Under the clerk’s ever-increasing agitation, Hutch learned that his ticketed airline had no seats on its last few flights to Denver. He called three others before finding a seat on a plane with an 11:15 PM departure. It required a layover in Chicago, which meant he wouldn’t get to Denver until after seven in the morning. Better than the three o’clock arrival of his current ticket. The woman on the phone informed him that he’d have to check in at the airport an hour early.
He said, “I can make that.” Barely.
His credit card was declined. He’d used the last of his credit—the amount he’d been planning to use to show Laura and Dillon a good time in Denver—for the flight here. He closed his eyes. He had two other cards, all nearly maxed out. It was expensive keeping up with an ex-wife whose boyfriend had loads of money to spend on your kids.
He ran through his options. Who could help? Who did he know who—Larry. Why hadn’t he thought of him before? Laura knew Larry. If she were out there—running from people, unable to reach Hutch—she’d reach out to him, especially since he was the only other person who knew of Hutch’s sudden trip to see Page. Of course. He started dialing Larry’s number.
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