“Where are you?” Rascher sounded more annoyed than worried.
“Where are you? Where was the follow unit? I was at that house for an hour. The thing exploded into a shootout, John . . .” She looked at her hand and saw that it was shaking. There were cuts on her knuckles, and her wrists were bruised from the handcuffs. Calm down. Calm down. “They shot at the security detail, John. They need to be arrested. All of them. A mother and her children were there. You need to pounce on Delaney right now. You hear me? It’s all recorded. My phone was connected to 911. It was a mother, Rascher, a mother and—”
“Easy, okay, I hear you. Give me your location, Jennifer. Do you know your location?”
“I’m at a deputy’s house. About ten miles from Stemp’s. Deputy Bostrom. I don’t know, we drove straight for about three miles, took a right, five, six miles, turned into a driveway. It’s pouring with rain. I didn’t stop to check the address on the mailbox.”
She could hear the fear in her voice, masked by sarcasm. She didn’t care. Rascher surely heard it, too.
“Why?” Rascher asked. “What the hell is the deputy doing pulling you out on his own?”
“Why do you think?”
He was silent. She realized it was sinking in. “Jen, I know this is bad. Okay? I know. I couldn’t bring the Follow Unit into it. Not right now. We’re not ready for that. We’re still building this. We take Delaney in now — what? We get him for ripping off the department, cheating on his wife, maybe murder, if any of the other cops talk, and my money says they won’t. Neither will Delaney. He’s not going to give us anything.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Get the call from 911. Just listen to what happened, John.”
Rascher sighed. She could heard the rain still coming down where he was, drumming on a metal roof. “Come on, you know how this works. Now we come get you.”
She said nothing for a moment, her heart beating a steady rhythm as she sat on the toilet seat. A runnel of rainwater made its way down her neck, slipped beneath her shirt. She was bait again. They had anticipated this explosive scene at Stemp’s farm. Maybe even hoped for it.
There was a knock on the door that made her heart jump. “You okay in there?”
“Yup,” she called out. “One second.”
“Jen,” Rascher said. His voice struck a familiar chord. Like the way he sounded when he was going to explain himself, how his bitter medicine was really for the best. “Stay put, help is on the way.”
“No.”
Silence. Then, Rascher, incredulous, “No?”
“This is what you wanted? Okay. Fine. Then I’m going to follow this where it goes. Maybe this takes us right where we want to be.” She felt like a kidnapping victim negotiating with her captors. It wasn’t exactly unfamiliar territory, but it had a fresh twist. She felt like she was going to vomit.
He was quiet again. She could almost hear him calculating the risk, considering the liabilities. “No,” he said at last. And she heard something in his voice she hadn’t expected. Or maybe wasn’t ready yet to believe. Fear. “Let Oneida County pick you up. We still don’t want to risk sticking our heads out to—”
She hung up. She slipped the phone into her pocket and then shut the water off and walked out of the bathroom. They knew, she thought.
They knew Eddie Stemp would jump out of pocket, and when he did, all the snakes would come out, like Delaney, worried old God-fearing Stemp would talk, shine the light on them. They sent me in to rile him up. Scare him. They never intended for me to get any closer to Nonsystem than that. Because of what I might find.
She knew that was the truth. The FBI was hiding something. She’d suspected it since they’d pulled her out of that building seven months before. They didn’t actually want her getting close to Nonsystem. There was something they didn’t want her to find.
Bostrom yanked her out of the bathroom a moment after she opened the door. Holding her by her arm, they passed through his kitchen, with a peeling linoleum floor, a lingering odor of burnt eggs in the air. He was holding a duffel bag in his other hand.
He shoved open the front door and the two of them headed for his truck, running through the overcast afternoon. She could hear the sirens rising in the distance. They were coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE / THURSDAY 3:27 PM
“Stop it,” Laruso gagged. “Stop it stop it, motherfucker.”
Brendan was straddling the convict. Tony Laruso’s punished eye was red with burst capillaries. There was a dark gash near his eyebrow where the skin had split, glistening with blood. He’d gotten his hands in front of his face, where the fingers shook, feebly warding off further blows.
“I didn’t want to do this,” Brendan said. His voice sounded like it was coming from someone else. He felt wetness on his face and he took his hand — trembling just as badly and wiped at his skin and then examined his fingertips. No blood. Just moisture. For God’s sake. Crying.
His other hand was suspended above Laruso’s face. The knuckles were already swelling, fine drops of blood dotting them like freckles. He tried to open his hand, but it resisted. It was someone else’s hand. He pushed himself off Laruso and backed towards the corner.
He watched, impassive, in shock, as Laruso rolled himself over, groaning. The convict got to his knees and up on his palms so that he was on all fours, his head lowered between his shoulder blades.
Brendan took an unsteady breath, exhaled, and fought to get himself under control, to return to his senses. If Laruso came at him now, it would be the end. One of them would wind up dead.
“You don’t have to go down with this place, Tony. I can keep you out of it.”
Laruso dragged himself away in the other direction, his knees shushing across the hard, bare floor, his palms slapping and pulling his large, muscular body along. He reached the corner and sat up against the wall. He kept his head lowered, brought his knees up and hung his forearms over the top of them. His tattoo-free skin was dirty and grazed.
“How?”
Brendan felt a flush of relief through his body.
“Grimm doesn’t know you’re involved; he’ll never have to.”
“I mean, how?” Head still down. “What do I have to do?”
“Just one thing. Just one thing for me and you have my word I’ll keep you out of all of it.”
Now the head came up. Laruso glared across the space with one good eye, the other already puffing up, the blood from the wound running down his face in a single rivulet, like a red tear, the eye itself filigreed with so many erupted vessels it was like a crimson ball in his head. “Motherfucker, I think you just blinded me. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Because I stopped hitting you.”
Laruso continued to stare at him, the rage mercifully draining from his features. Then he dropped his head into the palm of his hand.
“There are no cameras in this room, Tony. Nothing recorded. No one knows what’s going on in here. So I’m telling you right now, you do one thing for me, and I won’t name you. You’ll be kept out of the probe that’s going to turn this place inside out, and you’ll get out on time. Or, this thing sweeps through tomorrow and you’re going to do a long stretch. Real long.”
Silence. Laruso unmoving, his head in his hand. Surely it was throbbing as much as Brendan’s hand. That hand was held in a loose fist, the tendons reluctant to release.
“Okay,” Laruso said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR / THURSDAY, 3:48 PM
Bostrom’s pickup was fast, a V-8, fuel-injected engine combusting under a gleaming red hood that rammed through the air, but when the first Sheriff’s Department SUV came blasting through an intersection and swerved in right behind them, Jennifer was scared.
She gripped the armrest, her feet firmly planted on the floor. She glanced through the windshield at the sky.
“We’re going to draw lots of attention.” She was thinking helicopters. Police or FBI. News choppers. She was
picturing the various events over the years with people on the run, dozens or hundreds of police on their tails as the media spied from above. Good God, was she going to be one of those stories? What was she doing? How had everything gotten so turned around?
“In less than twenty-four hours, no one will be paying any attention,” Bostrom said.
She looked at the county cop in the side-view mirror. The vehicle was right on their tail. “What’s going to happen in twenty-four hours?”
Bostrom gave her a quick look, and then pinned the road with his eyes again as they headed around a steep curve.
“You’ve got to think like the military; it’s all chain of command, it’s the careers of the people involved. Someone like Argon didn’t want any of that bureaucratic bullshit hanging over him. Ever wonder why he stayed a beat cop for his entire career? He used the street to hold court.”
She kept watch on the mirror. They were out in the sticks, with nothing but cornfields, barns, and telephone poles on long flat roads, glistening like silver ribbons in the rain. The sun was buried behind the dark gray clouds, making the siren lights stand out extra brightly. They had picked up another pursuer. Not an SUV, but a fast-looking county cruiser.
“Argon was right on top of it,” Bostrom said. “And his sister was, too.”
“Philomena?” She turned away from the side-view mirror, momentarily shocked out of her fear.
“Philomena Argon was recruited by the IMF. She was repatriated here. She brought her younger brother with her. Their parents were dead and gone.”
Jennifer felt like a grenade had detonated in the reaches of her mind. Largo had told her that Argon had been in possession of damning information — data that could expose more political and corporate corruption than any recorded 911 phone call could. Now Bostrom was telling her where he’d gotten it from. Not only that, but the former head of the IMF had recently been in New York City. He’d been arrested and sent to Rikers. Now released, he’d been in there with Brendan for a time. She was sure of it.
“Mena stayed in DC for years while Seamus moved north to Westchester County,” Bostrom said, his forearms bulging as he manhandled the wheel. “But after a stroke forced her retirement, he had her move to Dobbs Ferry to keep her nearby.”
She was still reeling from the information. “What did she do? What department was she in?”
“Communications. Editorial and publications, plus internal.”
Her mind spun with the possibilities. They were coming up hard behind a smaller pickup, taking it’s time. Bostrom swung his big truck out and around the other, passing them almost as if they were standing still. The cops on their tail followed suit.
“Better grab the holy-shit bars for this one.”
Jennifer reached up and took the handle above the door as Bostrom urged the pickup to a higher and more dangerous speed. The cops receded in the mirror, but only a little. The whole frame of the truck vibrated over the rough county road. “Philomena studied macroeconomics at Oxford. When she started working for the IMF, she was under-challenged. Her mind was always working. She watched the flow of money into the Fund — the IMF — and where it was coming from, and where else it was going. She had a heart doctor in Westchester County. Gerard Healy. She didn’t just pick him at random. She’d seen his name half a dozen times working at the Fund.”
Jennifer quickly added what Bostrom was saying to her own knowledge. “Gerard Healy sat on various boards and committees with Alexander Heilshorn . . . including one called ‘The Foundation.’”
Bostrom suddenly threw on the brakes, and Jennifer lurched forward, the seatbelt strap cutting into her chest. “That’s exactly right,” Bostrom said. He spun the wheel hard left, gunned the engine, and the big truck leapt onto a side road, a dirt road. They rocketed towards a line of trees. Jennifer hung on for her life. “Opinion makers,” he said. “Heilshorn was on that committee. Advising about medical technology, about the internet, digital currency like bitcoin.”
Bitcoin, she registered. It was how she had found a credible link between Heilshorn and Nonsystem.
“Philomena was cultivating Gerard Healy, as an asset. Remember this is a woman from a military family, civic duty imbued in her. Probably would’ve been CIA if she’d been a natural-born citizen.”
“That’s how Argon came to know that Alexander Heilshorn had a daughter going to school up here,” she said, fitting it together now, staring ahead at the dense woods. They were driving towards it, full speed. “Because Gerard Healy knew?”
Bostrom nodded. “When Rebecca was murdered, Argon came up and met with all of us — myself, Stemp, and his buddy Taber. Taber kept an eye on things, but Taber was under Heilshorn’s control. Argon had essentially put Brendan Healy in place. Like a chess piece.”
Brendan Healy: Gerard Healy’s only child. In the middle of the maelstrom, just like she’d thought. Only now she knew how, and why. Because Argon and Taber had been friends. Argon had been onto XList from the beginning, and he’d sent Brendan up here because Argon had suspected how Heilshorn had trapped Assemblyman Largo.
But that meant Brendan had been manipulated. His wife and daughter had been killed to satisfy Heilshorn’s vengeance. He’d escaped attempts on his life, he’d spent half a year in prison. He was at the center of this whole thing, and it was because he’d been put there. And now he was fighting his way free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE / THURSDAY, 6:07 PM
He tried to lose himself in the rush of the streets, the cabs frenetically jockeying through the traffic, the buses with blasts of exhaust fumes as they passed, the urine stink hissing up through the subway grates. Skirting the sidewalk plane trees and pin oaks in their little squares of soil, as he walked. And the people, exhausted, leaning forward, or listing to the side, or arched back with a laugh, the chaotic patterns as they weaved over the cement. Everything individual and collective at once. Large plate glass windows to the laundries, the dry-cleaners, the electronics stores, the cheap clothing stores, the doors wedged open to sticky yellow light, every third with Freon refrigerating the overweight tourists, scratchy sarod music playing from tinny speakers. The racks on the sidewalks and the tables with sunglasses and hats and bootleg DVDs. The hot, baking air, industrial air, like the whole place was a sweatshop, but it was okay.
The mercy of being out of that prison hell. The freedom. Nothing better than freedom. Nothing on earth. Brendan really felt like he could kiss the streets. They said no matter what, you had everything if you had your health. But healthy prisoners would beg to differ.
He couldn’t sit in the hotel room. He’d tried. He’d checked in, taken a long hot shower, put on the TV, and promptly felt like an alien. There was a mini-bar in the room. He opened the door to the small fridge and crouched in front of it, staring in at the candy-colored liquors. He could taste the polish of the bourbon on his tongue, smell the sting of the vodka in his nostrils. He imaged the bitter taste of Heineken sliding down his throat, cutting through an unquenchable thirst.
He left the room, and went downstairs. He asked at the front desk if he could change rooms to one that was devoid of alcohol. The waifish, middle-aged clerk behind the counter betrayed a curious look he quickly quashed beneath cheery helpfulness. Of course he could have another room. Right away he could have another room. Let me just check and see if one is available and then maybe you’ll actually be able to go to that other room right now.
As the staff busied themselves with the room change, Brendan left the hotel. He ended up walking for two hours and made three calls from three different phone booths. From the first payphone he found, he called the 914 number he had for Sloane, the one his lawyer had given him, the number for her adoptive parents. She wasn’t in, but they promised to pass on his message. He told them where he was staying, including the original room number he’d been assigned.
He wandered, down Fifth Avenue, up Broadway as it cut over the other avenues, back down to Central Park, through it to Columbus Circle, back towards
Seventh Avenue, then on the subway south to the Village. Third Street, Sullivan, McDougal, a bar called Duffy’s, the jangle of music and clack of pool balls drifting up and out, the sylphlike shapes of the men curled around their drinks, the bright and intoxicated laughter of a woman.
He kept walking. No rhyme or reason to his direction, total autonomy, deciding he would keep moving until his legs were burning, a zigzagging path through a city grid.
At last, he noticed the two people following him.
A man and a woman. The woman he’d first noticed uptown, and then he’d seen her again in the reflection of a window back along Third Street. The man appeared as Brendan rounded Third onto Sixth Avenue and descended back down to the subway. The man came down after him, and Brendan was sure he’d sighted him, too, this time by Central Park, that same crewcut, the same gait, the same way one shoulder sagged slightly below the other. Dressed in civilian clothes which didn’t fit right. A style that didn’t match his haircut. The woman, too, with a low-cut blouse exposing her clothes-hanger collar bone, dangly earrings. Something wrong about both their appearances.
The 4 train rattled and squealed into place and he stepped on and watched as the faces flurry past, and he saw the crewcut man in the too-obvious hipster clothes and for a fraction of a second they locked eyes before the world outside the scarred subway window became black with the inside of a tunnel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX / THURSDAY, 4:12 PM
Her phone rang. It seemed like the most bizarre thing. As she stared out the windshield, as Bostrom drove down a series of trails so off-road that some of them were just two grooves in the grass, roads he clearly knew well, and as the Sheriff’s Department disappeared from their tail, the idea of her phone ringing was absurd. Phones rang when you were sitting at your desk, or walking down the street.
DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) Page 15
