by Jeff Abbott
‘Maybe it’s not her.’ Nathan sounded distant, dream addled. ‘You can’t see her face quite clearly.’
Miles swallowed the bile creeping into his throat. You were supposed to help me in becoming a new person; I had no idea you were already an expert. ‘It’s her,’ she said.
‘She lied to us,’ Nathan said. ‘That bitch.’
‘Don’t talk about her that way,’ Celeste said.
‘She lied!’ Nathan gritted his teeth and Miles saw tears of fury rising in the young man’s eyes. Nathan staggered to the office door.
‘Let’s go.’ Miles closed the browser, shut off the computer, and, at the door, reset the alarm. They followed Nathan out the gallery door and Miles locked up. The lot remained empty. He hurried them into the car and drove out of the parking lot.
‘She lied,’ Nathan said, ‘and it caught up with her.’
‘There has to be a reasonable explanation,’ Celeste said.
‘People always say that,’ Miles said, ‘when they’re about to get totally screwed.’
Nathan frowned. ‘Names aside, she stuck the research on a server. Could we access it?’
‘Not without the password,’ Miles said. ‘So we talk to her husband.’
‘You’re all idiots,’ Andy said from the backseat. ‘Why don’t you all deal with your real problems? Celeste killed a man, Nathan’s a walking meltdown, and you, Miles, you’re a friend killer. Charming group. Truly.’
‘You can’t stand it,’ Miles whispered, ‘when you think I might win.’
‘Excuse me?’ Celeste said, and Nathan said, ‘What?’
‘I’m talking to myself. Not you all. Sorry.’
‘Your friend?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus, you talk to him?’ Nathan said.
Andy laughed. Awkward silence and Miles thought, I’m the one who didn’t get Frost, they think I’m crazier than they are. He steered into Blaine’s driveway.
‘So that’s why you used two names,’ Nathan said. ‘Multiple personalities. Hey, how many voices you got inside your head?’
Miles ignored him as he helped Celeste hurry back inside Blaine’s house. ‘Shut up and let me think.’
‘Were you speaking to me?’ Nathan said. ‘I can’t listen to this crazy bastard carry on a conversation with an imaginary friend.’
Miles closed the door behind them. ‘Shut up and realize what we’re facing. Allison went to enormous trouble to set up her life in Santa Fe. That wedding announcement said she went to Oregon for her degrees. The degrees on Allison’s wall were from Rice and Stanford and UCLA. She had to create a new history for herself, and you can’t easily fake a medical-school transcript, a medical license, a new Social Security number, a past spun of nothing. It takes resources and time, trust me. She didn’t do it on her own.’
‘So who helped her?’
‘Someone with money and serious motivation. Why fake an identity? Why couldn’t she be in Santa Fe as Renee Wallace? She didn’t do this alone. She had to be working for someone.’
Nathan shook his head. ‘Man, this just got to be a bigger can of worms than I want to deal with. You all should just hide. Or go to the cops. We’re done.’
‘We need to drive to California,’ Miles said. ‘Find her husband.’
‘Drive to California.’ Celeste’s voice cracked. ‘You want me to ride in a car for… Several. Hours.’ She turned and ran to the back of the house and Miles heard Blaine’s studio door slam.
Miles – slowing down for considered thought – realized a car drive of hundreds of miles would be horribly frightening to her. He went to her purse, cracked open the bottle of antidepressants. Four were left. All the meds they had, and God only knew what kind of megadose Nathan needed to keep him calm. Not enough pills for all three of them. He slid the pills back into the bottle.
‘I know how to get her moving.’ Nathan flicked his fingers, made a whooshing noise.
‘Let me talk with her.’ Miles went through the house, to the studio door. Closed. He knocked. No answer. He opened the door.
Groote sat on a paint-splattered stool, one gun aimed at Celeste’s head, another aimed at Miles. Celeste stood, lip trembling, not looking at the gun aimed at her.
‘Tag,’ Groote said. ‘You’re it.’ His face was battered, his nose was taped, and his smile was cold and thin.
Miles shut the door behind him. How the hell? he thought. It didn’t matter. He had to get Celeste away from this man.
‘No. Call Nathan back here. Calmly. I want to talk with him too.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Frost.’
‘We don’t have it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t lie to me. You were in league with Allison, both you and Mrs. Brent here.’
‘No.’
‘I just asked you not to lie to me. What part of that don’t you understand?’
‘Let her go, and I’ll give it to you,’ Miles said. Celeste looked up at him.
Nathan opened the door and boogied into the room. ‘Problem solved. I lit a fire under you, Celeste, to get you going. Actually, under the curtains and-’ He stopped and, frozen with fear, stared with shocked horror at Groote.
‘Hey, Tin Soldier, how you doing?’ Groote started, but then he saw what Celeste did, framed in the open door.
‘Fire,’ Celeste said in a whisper, pointing down the hall. ‘Fire… he set a fire.’
Then the smell of smoke, sweet and awful and rising.
‘You crazy bastard!’ Groote yelled, standing up.
‘You want Frost? It’s upstairs,’ Miles lied.
Groote put the gun’s barrel on Miles’s forehead. ‘Show me.’
‘Let them go.’
Groote hesitated. ‘Out. Both of you. Just go outside. You run, he’s dead.’
Nathan grabbed Celeste, steered her toward the back door. She started to scream as he pushed her into the yard.
Groote turned Miles, dug the gun hard into the back of Miles’s head. ‘Give me Frost. Now.’ He strong-armed Miles past the hallway and up the stairs. In the kitchen, the curtains above the sink blazed. In the den, heavy draperies, a large cotton rug, the entire couch, burned brightly.
He’ll kill me when he figures I don’t have Frost, Miles thought. He fell as Groote pushed him on the stairs.
‘Faster, crazy.’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ Miles pleaded, and at the same time braced himself against the stair and dealt a savage backward kick. His foot caught Groote in the groin. Miles kicked again, aiming for the broken nose but catching the chin. Groote staggered, lost his footing, and tumbled down the stairs, landing in a heap on the tiles.
Miles grabbed the gun away from his hand, finding its fellow in Groote’s jacket pocket.
Leave him. Run.
But the fire was spreading fast. He couldn’t abandon anyone, not even a bastard like Groote, to die. He dragged Groote into the backyard, dumped him into the cold water of a stone fountain. Groote gasped.
Miles put one of the guns to Groote’s head. He dumped the clip from the other, put the clip in his pocket, tossed the second gun into the water. ‘We’re leaving now. Don’t follow us. I lied to you. I don’t have Frost. I don’t know where it is. We’re not a threat to you. We’re just going away where no one will bother us and we won’t bother anyone. Tell Quantrill. You understand?’
‘I understand you’re a liar.’ Groote glared at him with hate.
‘Stay in that fountain or I’ll shoot you.’ Miles backed away and ran. He jumped over a low-lying fence, headed for the front yard.
Nathan was coaxing Celeste once again into the car. Miles got into the front. He spun into the street and powered the car away from the burning house.
Groote was at the driver’s window, trying to grab the wheel from him, and Miles floored it, broke free, roared down the street, and wheeled hard onto Old Santa Fe Trail.
‘What – what
do we do?’ Nathan said.
‘We don’t stay here. We can’t. We run.’ He looked for Groote in the rearview, saw nothing. ‘We go where Allison hid the files. California.’
Celeste started to moan.
Groote staggered down the street to his car. A couple of neighbors stood in the road and watched the flames popping from the windows, cell phones clutched to their ears. They stared at him and he ran down the road to where he’d left his car. Still with Hurley and Pitts dead in the trunk.
Think. Where would they go? Where would they hide? He had to change tactics, flush them out, figure their next step. But best not to be here when the fire trucks and the other authorities arrived. He had bodies to bury. A plan to make.
These crazy people were ruining everything for him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Friday afternoon, Groote stopped at church on the way back from burying the bodies.
A shrine in Chimayo, north of Santa Fe, claimed that the dirt from its foundations could work miracles: smother the fire of AIDS in the blood, corral cancer cells, drive death into retreat. Groote drove past the cars lining the road that led to the old church, steering slowly past the camera-necklaced tourists, past an old woman in a wheelchair, past a kid about Nathan Ruiz’s age with a fresh burr, crutches, and an empty camouflaged-pant leg, huffing himself toward the church as though he were competing in a race.
Groote parked and watched the kid and wondered if a dash of that Jesus dust would help Amanda. After all, salvation might be close at hand. Frost – in a form to fix his girl – still seemed miles beyond his reach.
All that, he decided, was about to change.
He got out of the car and walked along the outside of the church, toward the building’s back.
Quantrill was waiting for him.
‘My God, you’re a horror,’ Quantrill said, inspecting Groote’s nose brace, the battered jaw.
‘Thanks. How was your flight?’
Quantrill lit a cigarette. ‘The peanuts were stale.’ Ice in his voice. ‘I’m not happy with the services you’ve provided so far.’
‘I’m not happy with being lied to.’
‘How have I lied to you, Dennis?’
‘Tell me the truth about what Sorenson said – is there a second auction of Frost being set up?’
Quantrill blew out a frustrated sigh. ‘Yes. I’ve heard about it from two of my contacts. Very unfortunate.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘I didn’t want you distracted. Two of my contacts said they’ve been contacted by a guy willing to sell them the research – at half my asking price.’
He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Quantrill’s money. ‘I don’t think Sorenson is behind the auction. I think it’s Miles Kendrick.’
‘Who?’
Groote explained what he’d learned about Miles’s background. He left out that he’d let Miles and company escape; he wasn’t about to admit his own underestimation of Miles Kendrick.
Quantrill considered. ‘Then it’s just a sick coincidence. The mobsters want him dead, they kill Allison, it has nothing to do with Frost.’
‘That’s what the feds are supposed to believe. But not us. Miles Kendrick had to know that when his shrink died in a bomb blast, his past might come to light and he’d be blamed for her murder. It covers up that he stole Frost, because he must have known we wouldn’t run to the cops. I almost admire the guy; he built a brilliant plan.’
Quantrill nodded. ‘You have to stop this second auction…’
‘Do I? I want my kid to have the medicine. A drug company buys the research cheap, they produce it faster. You’re screwed, true, but I’m not.’
Quantrill didn’t blink. ‘But what if it’s not Miles Kendrick running the second auction? What if it’s Sorenson?’
Groote said, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘And you say you admire clear thinking.’ Quantrill tossed his cigarette an inch from Groote’s toe. ‘I think you actually hate Miles Kendrick, for a reason you’re not telling me.’
‘He’s a goddamned mobster. I used to put people like him in prison.’
‘And now you put them in graves.’
‘A few might be in urns.’
Quantrill shook his head. ‘Revenge won’t make Amanda healthy. But Frost will, Dennis. Think, with a clear head, what we’re facing. His threat is not that he’ll sell Frost to someone. Consider what he’s done and what that fed told you – Kendrick wants to bring whoever killed her to justice. He’s killed Hurley, he’s broken into the hospital. But the end result, each time, is to rescue a patient who was being tested with Frost. He doesn’t want to sell it. He wants to expose it. What do you think will happen if Kendrick and his psycho buddies go public about Frost? Illegal testing of a drug on the traumatized, including veterans? No pharmaceutical will ever come near us, no matter the drug’s efficacy. Even a worthy drug might be buried for years until the pharmas don’t have to worry about lawsuits or bad publicity.’ Quantrill lit a cigarette. ‘I can derail the auction – doesn’t matter if it’s Kendrick or Sorenson. There are very few willing buyers to touch hot research. A few well-placed phone calls, a suggestion that the stolen research isn’t complete, or if the second auction takes place I threaten to cut a plea bargain and name names for the FDA. It would be enough to stop the auction in its tracks. But if Miles Kendrick is intent on exposing us because he wants to avenge his doctor, then we’re dead in the water.’
‘He hasn’t exposed us yet.’
‘You have to stop him before he does.’
‘All right.’
Quantrill jerked his head at the crowds heading toward the church. ‘You see these people? Flocking toward dirt that, if you buy the freaking hype, cures every ill. Faith and hope are just commodities, and everyone buys them. And they’ll buy Frost if you and I can silence Kendrick and his friends. We’ll have a world where trauma never leaves its footprints.’
‘You’re wrong about faith,’ Groote said.
‘I’m not.’
‘Everyone needs faith. In people if not God.’
‘Profound talk from a killer.’ Quantrill couldn’t hide his smirk.
‘You’re not better than me, Oliver. I do what you’re not willing to, what you’re afraid to do. So don’t talk down to me.’
‘I won’t.’ The smirk tried to evolve into a steel-eyed stare, but Quantrill couldn’t make it work.
‘Here’s what you need to do,’ Groote said. ‘Change medical records to show that Nathan Ruiz was released from the hospital by Doctor Hurley the day before Allison died. Then go back to California and put the brakes on the new auction.’
‘All right,’ Quantrill said. ‘I’ll have to report Hurley missing when he doesn’t show for work on Monday. Hopefully drag it out until Tuesday. Plant an idea with the cops that Hurley was distraught over Allison’s death – he fits the part of the heartbroken loner – and left town. You’re sure they’ll never find his body?’
‘They won’t.’
Quantrill crossed his arms. ‘Good. So now for our other problem. Kendrick’s got two loony tunes under his wing. He probably can’t get far. He may even still be in town. Draw him out. Use Ruiz’s family. They might be the first people Ruiz contacts.’
‘When this is all said and done,’ Groote said, ‘my daughter gets Frost. First.’
‘Of course, Dennis,’ Quantrill said, ‘but I can’t do that, can I, if Kendrick stays a problem.’
‘He won’t. We done?’
Quantrill nodded.
Groote walked back to his car. He drove toward Santa Fe, starved for sleep – which he didn’t see in his immediate future – for food, for a clear head. He had reserved a hotel room near the Plaza.
His cell phone rang. It was the computer technician at the hospital, who was examining Celeste’s computer. ‘I found evidence that files large enough to be the Frost research files were uploaded to a remote server via Celeste Brent’s computer.’
‘Where’s the se
rver?’
‘I traced it to a location in Fish Camp, California, a server belonging to a man named Edward Wallace.’
The name meant nothing.
‘Compare the files with Hurley’s files. See if they’re the same name, the same size.’
‘I did already. She uploaded one extra file Hurley didn’t have in his Frost database.’
‘What’s the other one?’
‘It’s a simple text file… it’s called BuyList.’
BuyList. Buyers’ list? Allison had gotten a list of the people lining up to buy from Quantrill, the under-the-table consultants who could filter Frost into a research department.
But why would that be in the research files? The buyers were Quantrill’s business – not Hurley’s.
‘Get me an address for Edward Wallace.’ He hung up. He dialed Quantrill.
‘Before you run back to California,’ Groote said, ‘did Hurley have your list of contacts for your sale?’
‘No, of course not. Why?’
Either Quantrill was lying or Hurley had the list and Quantrill didn’t know it, or, scariest possibility, Allison had gotten the list from somewhere else. Someone else.
‘Groote?’ Quantrill asked.
‘Nothing. Just curious.’ He hung up.
So she had uploaded the stolen data. Why? Why not simply hand it to Kendrick if he was her partner?
Because Allison was hiding the data from Kendrick. As insurance. She had good reason.
The second auction. She’d gotten the names of the buyers for the second auction, somehow, from Quantrill. How and why?
And his confusion over this angle brought forward a question that had nagged him through the night: Why would Sorenson even mention the second auction to him? Why risk alerting him?
