by Jeff Abbott
‘Oh, man,’ Miles said. ‘Those poor kids.’
‘Yes,’ Nathan said, behind him, standing in the open doorway. ‘Those poor kids I helped kill.’
Miles stood. ‘Nathan. I meant you as one of those kids. I am so, so sorry, man.’
‘You don’t judge me,’ Nathan said. ‘I went to serve. I went to protect. I’m not a torturer like Groote. I’m not a screw-up like you, Miles.’
‘It was a genuine accident,’ Victor said. ‘They happen in war all the time.’
‘I thought you were my friends. Stupid of me,’ Nathan said. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I’m getting the hell out of here.’
‘Nathan, you have nothing to be ashamed of – we understand what you must have gone through, why you helped Dodd. Stay with us.’
‘Turn off that tape!’ Nathan kicked his boot into the monitor. ‘You sure are a spy, Miles, a much better one than me. No secret is safe from you.’ He stormed out, through the house, through the front door. Miles chased him, grabbed his arm as he stepped off the lawn into the street.
‘You can help us find Sorenson…’
He pressed a gun against Miles’s head. Miles’s gun. ‘Let go, Miles. Let me go.’
‘I won’t. You’ll have to shoot me.’
‘Miles, please! Please!’
‘You’re not running off. Let us help you.’
‘You’re so full of shit. You lectured me how we had to stick together. You’re dumping me and Celeste to go off with Groote, a fucking animal who… tortured me.’
‘Nathan-’
‘Shut up. Shut your goddamned hypocritical trap, Miles. He hurt me, Jesus, but I kept your goddamn name shut for hours because I thought it was the right thing to do. I wanted to do right. Be strong again.’ He started to sob.
‘Nathan, God, I’m sorry.’
‘I lost every friend I had in the army. All of them. I thought you would understand since you lost all your friends in Florida. I thought
… never mind what I thought.’ He shoved Miles away, leveled the gun at him. ‘You only want me to stay because you’re afraid I’ll call the cops, tell them where you and Celeste are. That I’ll be the hero again. Don’t worry. I’ll treat you better than you treated me.’ He walked backward into the quiet of the street.
‘This is crazy, you don’t have money, you don’t have a car.’
‘I’ll keep my mouth shut about you and Celeste. Unless you follow me. Then I talk till my throat’s sore, you got me?’ Lowering the gun, Nathan walked away from him.
Miles stepped into the street to follow him and the gun came back up.
Miles watched him walk into the darkness and went back inside the house.
‘I’m sorry, Miles,’ Victor said.
‘He might be back in ten minutes or ten hours when he calms down,’ Miles said. ‘He thinks I hate him. I don’t. But he doesn’t understand what trust is.’
‘How much of your plans do you think he heard?’
‘Enough to know I wanted to leave him and Celeste with you. He might have heard that in the car; we thought he was asleep.’
‘Will he go to the police?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, the only law I’ve broken is harboring fugitives, and if I haven’t had the TV on, I can’t know you were fugitives.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You and Groote might need to head out. Just to be safe.’
‘Can Celeste stay? I can’t put her in further danger. She’s been through too much as it is.’
‘You better go while she’s asleep. Otherwise she’ll fight you tooth and nail.’
The faces connected to Frost stayed frozen on the computer screens. Except for the computer on the far left: it displayed Victor’s Web site for trauma patients. He had a poll running, a purely hypothetical question, the one Sorenson had asked him a lifetime ago: If you could forget the worst moment in your life, would you?
Ninety-four percent said yes. That was the power, the promise, of Frost.
So if you find Frost, can you find Nathan again? To help him?
Miles watched Celeste sleep, lost in the heaviness of her own dreams. He took the confession from his pocket, left it propped against the lamp. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
*
‘Let’s go,’ Miles said. Groote stood from his patio chair. Miles thought it best not to mention Nathan had left; Groote would want to hunt him down. ‘Maybe we can get a late flight to Austin.’
‘Actually,’ Groote said, ‘I have an idea. Allison stole the buyers’ list from Quantrill. That’d be useful information.’
Miles saw where he was going. ‘We get details on the auction from a buyer, we might get real close to Sorenson without him knowing it.’
‘And we can get that list tonight,’ Groote said. ‘You’re not afraid of alarm systems and men with guns, are you, Mr. Spy?’
FIFTY-THREE
Nathan had a dollar fifty in quarters he’d stolen from the blind soldier’s room and he fed a few into the pay phone at the gas station. Stealing from a blind guy, God, he was classy. He wiped the tears and snot from his face with his sleeve. He had a wallet with five hundred dollars in cash and a photo ID Dodd had slipped him back in Yosemite, a ticket to reenter society after his mission at Sangre de Cristo. But he had had no change to operate the phone, and five hundred dollars might not be enough money to do what he knew he must do. His legs hurt, his back ached from the beating Groote had given him back in Santa Fe, and he didn’t want to be alone. But he would be, until he finished his duty.
His mother answered on the third ring.
‘Mama? I’m out of the hospital. I’m all fixed.’
‘Sweetheart? Oh, thank God,’ then a torrent of Spanish. He waited for her words to subside and he tried to laugh so she would believe he was happy.
‘I need a favor, Mama. I’m not in Santa Fe. They moved me to a different hospital near Los Angeles to finish the treatments.’
‘I don’t understand…’ and she started in with the questions, rat-a-tat, and he closed his eyes.
‘Mama,’ he interrupted her, ‘I got to have money. To eat, to get home.’ But he wasn’t going home. No. He had to finish being a hero first.
FIFTY-FOUR
Miles picked the kitchen door lock with a special attachment on Groote’s Mr. Screwdriver, not wanting to think about its being the weapon that had brutalized Nathan. The tumblers clicked into clear and Miles gave the door the barest push. Groote stood behind him, gun at the ready, and they listened for the hum of the alarm. None.
Quantrill hadn’t activated the system yet; he hadn’t gone to bed. Probably he was upstairs in his office, trying to persuade the buyers not to attend Sorenson’s auction, assure them that all was well, that he alone had the one and true Frost.
Miles slipped the screwdriver/pick into his back pocket and followed Groote into the house. They heard the distant roar of gunfire, then a billowing blast of artillery, the scream of a jet. Then the rising pulse of an orchestra, music thundering along with the battle, all coming from a half-open doorway off the living room.
Guards, Groote mouthed to Miles. He gestured Miles toward the upstairs, mouthed, Office, gestured Miles to go up.
Miles went up the stairs. Groote waited, gun at the ready. If the guards stayed put in front of their blockbuster, no worries, no need to kill them.
Quantrill sat in the chair, at his empty desk, head back, a red-and-black smear on his forehead, eyes half shut.
Miles touched the dead man’s throat. Still warm.
The man’s computer was gone from the desk. Miles went into the bathroom next to the office, grabbed a hand towel, used it to slide open drawers, search the closet that doubled as a supply cabinet. No handheld computers that might have carried a backup of Frost or the buyers’ list, no CDs or DVDs, no disks – all cleared out.
Sorenson was cleaning house, eliminating every possible interference, and they had just missed
him or his hired killers.
He eased the dead man out of the chair and searched his pockets. Wallet, full of cash, untouched. He found a cell phone, folded shut. He tucked the cell phone into his pocket.
Miles came down the stairs; Groote was still in position, the movie still playing. Miles walked past him and into the media room. The two bodyguards were sprawled on the couch, a bowl of buttered popcorn between them, three bullet holes marring both faces.
‘Well,’ Groote said, ‘I guess Quantrill won’t be writing me a paycheck.’
‘We just missed him. This happened about fifteen minutes ago. Sorenson just ended the buyers’ option of sticking with Quantrill. Now he’s the only game in town.’
Groote leaned down and took a handful of popcorn. Miles tried not to puke as the man munched. ‘Assume he made efforts to contact buyers, warn them away from the auction, plead with them not to buy from a thief, or even threaten them with exposure if they didn’t boycott the auction.’
Miles held up the cell phone. ‘We might find a buyer he called. I get a cell number, I can find nearly anybody.’
‘All we need,’ Groote said around the mouthful of popcorn, ‘is one.’
They found an all-night coffee shop near the Santa Monica Pier that offered Internet access, and Miles started working. After finding that Quantrill had spent his final hours on earth calling a Chinese restaurant, his landscape crew, and two numbers that Groote believed to be those of the dead popcorn-eaters, Miles hit pay dirt on the fifth number. He found it belonged to a Greg Bradley. A Google search of the man’s name, combined with pharmaceutical, showed that Bradley owned a consulting firm based in Boston that advised Aldis-Tate, one of the largest U.S.-based drug companies.
‘That’s our boy,’ Groote said. ‘Sorenson pretended to be from Aldis-Tate when he came to the hospital.’
The call log indicated the conversation between Quantrill and Bradley had been lengthy – well over thirty minutes.
‘Long conversations,’ Miles said, ‘suggest a detailed discussion, and that means Quantrill might have been persuasive about bucking the second auction.’
Groote frowned. ‘So you think Bradley chickened out?’
‘Let’s see if he did. Give me a second.’ He dialed Bradley’s cell phone, waited.
‘Don’t screw this up,’ Groote said in a low voice.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr. Bradley?’
‘Yes?’
‘Hi, sir, this is Corey with the credit-card security firm Ironlock. I’m checking on a charge cancellation that raised a red flag in our systems. Have you canceled an airline flight recently, sir?’
‘Uh, yeah. Today.’
‘A flight to Austin, sir?’
‘Well, yeah…’ Then a long, awkward pause. ‘Who are you again?’
Miles spoke with hyperbrisk efficiency: ‘Sir, we check any cancellation that raises a red flag as we insure the credit-card companies and we pay their charge cancellation insurance. We’re investigating a couple of airlines that charge falsely, then cancel immediately so we have to pay up. But if it’s a genuine cancellation, that’s no problem, and I thank you for your time.’ He hung up. ‘I think he canceled. He got frosty when I mentioned Austin.’
‘You’re a good liar. Is there such a thing as that insurance?’
‘I have no idea.’ Miles started trying the next numbers in the call log.
He got lucky three numbers later. Quantrill had called the same number, three times in a row, the first conversation lasting forty seconds, the next two barely lasting ten seconds.
‘If it’s not a girlfriend,’ Groote said, ‘it’s someone who doesn’t want to talk to Quantrill.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re good at this.’
The man’s name was David Singhal and he was a former VP of research at a Swiss pharmaceutical, now running a research consulting firm based in Los Angeles. Miles searched his name using Google’s Images option and found a photo of Singhal from his interview in a European business journal. Fiftyish, cultured, intelligent eyes, a graying goatee. Miles tried the number.
‘Hello, Mr. Singhal?’
‘Yes?’ He had a clipped British accent.
Miles said with shotgun delivery, ‘Hi, this is James with Excelsior Credit Card Security, we work with VISA and with AmEx, and there’s a question about your account, did you recently cancel a flight reservation to Austin?’
Singhal was more cautious than Bradley: ‘I’m sorry, who are you with?’
Miles repeated, adding, ‘We’re assisting the credit-card companies with a database corruption. The discrepancy is that one version of the credit database has you making a charge for an LAX-Austin flight, the other rebuilt database has canceled that charge.’
‘It sounds like I should call my airline,’ Singhal said. ‘I’m not going to give you my credit-card number over the phone.’
‘Uh, yes, sir, very wise, you should never do that.’ He made a stab. ‘I can do the database fix so there’s no confusion about your ticket status. Was your flight on Southwest?’
Singhal hung up.
‘Great,’ Miles said. ‘He’ll be calling the airline directly and they’ll tell him all’s well.’
‘Give me the phone.’ Groote took the phone, dialed, spoke quietly, dialed another number, gave a clearance code. He hung up, got them both refills on their coffee, sat down. His phone rang and he listened, clicked the phone off. ‘David Singhal is on the GlobeWest flight tomorrow morning to Austin. I’ll get a call back if he changes his reservation.’
‘How’d you find that out?’
‘A contact at the Bureau.’
‘The government’s monitoring airline passenger lists.’
‘Not a surprise, surely.’
‘Okay,’ Miles said. ‘Now what?’
‘Sleep,’ Groote said.
They stopped at a twenty-four-hour megastore and bought clothes and necessities. Groote gathered cash from an ATM. They checked into a hotel near LAX, same room, twin beds.
Groote said good night and switched off the lamp. Miles couldn’t sleep; he was afraid if he closed his eyes, fell toward rest, Andy would come back.
‘Groote?’
‘Yeah?’
‘When we were driving down today… you never said exactly who attacked your wife and daughter.’
The silence was longer this time. ‘Punks who were threatened by Bureau attention to their ring, thought I was involved in helping decapitate their operations. Misplaced revenge.’
He wanted to ask, What ring? If it had been someone the Barradas aimed him at… but the only southern California ring he’d targeted were the Duartes… and they were all dead now. ‘Who were the punks? Drug dealers?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘So why’d you leave the Bureau?’
‘I could no longer reach my career goals.’
‘What goals?’
‘Well-placed revenge,’ Groote said. ‘I don’t want to talk anymore, Miles. Good night.’
FIFTY-FIVE
The next morning, the second flight from LAX to Austin soared into the crisp blue sky and Miles saw, across the row where an elderly gentleman scanned a Sunday newspaper, the headline that read FEDERAL OFFICER MISSING and below that a picture of DeShawn Pitts.
He couldn’t read the article from where he sat and the gentleman read slowly, every word, never scanning an article. Groote dozed in the seat next to him. Five rows ahead of him sat David Singhal, dressed in a suit, reading the Wall Street Journal.
Finally the man folded the paper, tucked it into his seat pocket.
‘Sir?’ Miles leaned over and spoke in a whisper. ‘Excuse me. Might I see your paper if you’re done?’
‘Sure.’ The gentleman handed him the pages.
Miles read the article with chills touching his skin. DeShawn Pitts, a federal marshal – the story left out that he worked for Witness Protection – had gone missing two days ago, while on unspecified duty. The FBI was asking anyone who had
information to call them.
Hurley died on Thursday. DeShawn was at the hospital that day – Miles heard him on Groote’s call to Hurley – and he went missing on Friday. The day after Groote had talked to him.
Or maybe DeShawn didn’t give up, kept questioning, kept looking for Miles – he would, if ordered, if WITSEC accepted DeShawn’s argument that Miles wasn’t capable of making a cogent decision given his disability – and he ran into Groote again. Groote was hunting Miles; so was DeShawn. Imagine they intersected. At a bad time.
Be okay, DeShawn, please be okay.
Miles scanned the rest of the article. No mention of him – WITSEC still wouldn’t compromise his new name. But a mention, at the end, of it having been a difficult week for Santa Fe police: a woman had been killed in an explosion at her office (Allison); a celebrity had vanished from her home (Celeste); four high-school kids critically injured in a car crash outside town; a doctor and a tourist had also gone missing. The hospital had reported Hurley missing. Would that news – or DeShawn’s sheer persistence – have brought DeShawn back to Sangriaville, closing in on a connection? Back to Groote?
Miles suddenly wanted to be off the plane, very badly.
He folded the paper, handed it back to its owner with a thank-you, got up, went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, tried to collect his thoughts, weighed the inferences. He returned to his seat. Groote was awake.
‘Airsick?’ Groote said in a low voice. ‘You’re pale.’
‘No,’ Miles said, ‘I’m okay.’
‘Don’t go mental,’ Groote said.
‘I said I’m fine.’
‘Good. Because we’re almost home free.’
If you killed DeShawn – I will kill you, Miles thought. ‘Yes. I hope we are.’
FIFTY-SIX
