by Jeff Abbott
Aubrey huddled close to him and shivered. ‘I might be sick.’
Awkwardly he put a calming hand on her back. She breathed hard. ‘Oh God. Oh God. He did it to save us.’
‘To save you. He was definitely not trying to save me. He painted a goddamn target on my back.’
She looked up at him; her eyes were wet but she blinked hard as though unwilling to risk a trickle of tears. He saw the strength in her face. ‘He was wrong to do that.’
Luke watched the train speed past the lit buildings, a mist starting to fall, the light smeared and dreamy.
This money was the key, to stopping the Night Road and perhaps finding out who Jane was – the architect of his destruction. They had to find where Eric had hidden it.
‘Where’s Eric’s apartment?’
‘Near downtown, River West area.’
The train huffed into the station. People shuffled on and off. A trio of homeless men boarded, along with an elderly man in a neat suit, with a frown on his face and a newspaper tucked under his arm.
‘How many more stations?’ Luke did not like sitting still, where someone could study and remember his face from television. ‘Where should we get off?’
The homeless men laughed at a private joke among themselves. The elderly man sitting across from Luke and Aubrey inspected them as though measuring them on a finely tuned secret balance. He opened and began to read a newspaper.
Luke saw his own face – the image captured on the ATM camera – on the front page. A headline read SUSPECT IN BIZARRE KILLING MARKED BY TRAGEDY. Probably an account of his father’s death in a bizarre plane crash and his mother’s death in a car crash. The twin blots of sorrow in his life.
Aubrey saw the headline and touched Luke’s hand. She pulled on his sleeve and he stood, getting away from the newspaper, following her toward the homeless guys, who had staked out the center of the car as a temporary turf. The rest of the passengers gave the trio plenty of space.
Luke and Aubrey stood near the door. Luke kept his face toward the window. The great city lay beyond the glass. He wished he could enjoy the view.
He glanced back at the man.
The elderly man had turned to the first page of the paper. It lay folded on his lap, Luke’s picture above the crease.
24
Mouser watched the train arrive to sweep them away – no way he could reach them in time. So he stopped running.
Eric had lied. He was sure they’d been the ones to lock him out of the basement. Which meant Eric died shielding them. So they must know where the money is. It was the only reasonable explanation.
He turned and headed back to his car, parked at a pay slot. A slow heat warmed his skin. His phone rang as soon as he reached the car.
‘Did you get them?’ Snow sounded tired.
‘Not all. Just Eric. Luke is with Eric’s woman. I think Eric’s told them where the money is. He wanted to save that girl something fierce.’
‘I can help. Where are you going now?’
‘Don’t you worry. I’ll be back at the motel soon. It’s going to be okay.’
‘I can meet you. I have a car.’
‘You have a car.’
‘I did not like that doctor. I borrowed her car when she came over to check on me.’ Then a hint of crossness in her voice. ‘She shouldn’t have tried to stop me.’
‘What did you do?’
‘It’s not like she was a real doctor.’
He did not feel a shudder or coldness to her announcement of murder; just a disappointment. ‘You don’t treat assets that way.’
‘She’d seen our faces.’
He didn’t want to argue with her. ‘Just find a motel. Check in. Rest. Call me later. Do not hurt anyone else.’
‘We got to stick together.’
‘Help me by doing what I’m asking. I will find them.’
‘Please, meet me somewhere.’
He couldn’t have her wandering Chicago so he told her to meet him at Navy Pier, on Lake Michigan; it was an easy landmark for her to find, with its giant Ferris wheel. He hung up. He was annoyed and it did not occur to him that being wounded, she might be frightened and afraid of being alone. He thought only of the mission. The phone rang again. It was Henry.
‘How is Snow?’
‘She’ll be okay. Eric’s dead. Luke got away. I am going to put some hurt on him. Don’t tell me not to. He deserves it. You know it, I know it.’
Henry heaved a long, broken sigh. ‘Do you have the money?’
‘No.’
‘What about Eric’s girlfriend?’
‘She’s with Luke. I believe they might have the information on where the money’s hidden.’ A misery crept into his flesh, his mouth.
‘Odd Eric would offer help, since he kidnapped Luke.’
‘They must have made an alliance.’
‘Mouser, tell me why I shouldn’t unleash the Night Road against you for failing. I have a long list here of people who might do a better job than you in finding our funds.’
‘Because admitting failure shows you don’t have control of this situation. Of their money. Which might make them all quite nervous about you running the show. You could be replaced.’ He knew from the silence that he’d scored a hit. ‘Let me and Snow finish. They have to still be in Chicago.’
The only sound Mouser could hear through the phone was a ticking of clocks.
Henry said, ‘You aren’t just failing me, but failing the entire Night Road.’
Mouser didn’t care much about what other people wanted, but the rest of the Night Road could be useful to him. ‘If they will help me – I won’t fail them.’ He decided this was the most diplomatic thing he could say.
‘Then the Night Road will help you. As long as we don’t give them details on the current difficulties. I don’t want the rest of the network to panic or to decide to leave us.’ Henry was offering a truce between them; they would not alert the rest of the network to the problems they faced.
‘I agree,’ Mouser said. ‘The first step is to find a way to track Aubrey Perrault. Maybe her car has GPS. They took off on the train but she must have a car. And we need an eye inside Eric’s bank. Trace where he moved the money, because he had to have stashed it where he could get it quickly.’
A pause. ‘Luke. He was all right?’
‘I saw him running. He appeared fine.’ He shot Snow, he wanted to say, who cares how he is?
‘You didn’t hurt him.’
‘No.’ Only because I didn’t get the chance, he thought. Henry’s concern for Luke enraged him. The mission, the mission, one could not be distracted from the mission. Henry was becoming a liability. But he remained silent.
‘Oh, how was that doctor for Snow?’ Henry asked.
‘Fine. Just fine,’ Mouser said.
The elderly man stared right at Luke. Luke glanced at the grime on the window. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the old man unfold a cell phone from a pocket, dial it, and speak into it. His calm – his certainty – was somehow more frightening than if he had produced a gun or a knife.
‘We’re almost to the next station,’ Aubrey whispered in Luke’s ear. He kept his face neutral, calm, seemingly uninterested in what the elderly man was doing.
‘He’s the kid in the paper,’ the man announced to the train. He closed the cell phone. ‘The Houston kid who killed the homeless guy.’ He tapped the paper.
‘You’re nuts,’ Aubrey said. ‘Leave my brother alone.’ She was a quick liar.
‘I called the police.’ A smugness filled his voice. ‘Killed a homeless guy,’ he said to the trio of street guys.
One of the homeless men – gaunt, fortyish – reached out and grabbed Luke’s arm.
Aubrey pulled the homeless man’s arm from Luke. ‘I said to leave him alone.’
‘Don’t let them get away.’ The elderly man raised the folded paper like an accusing finger.
They all swayed as the train braked to a stop and suddenly two of the homeless
men hammered Luke into the wall. They smelled of wine and of sweat fermenting too long in wool and, as the doors whooshed open, Aubrey and Luke fell out onto the platform in a tackle of legs and arms. Luke threw a hard punch, drove into the matted beard of one of the men. His fist scraped dirty teeth and rubbery lip.
Aubrey grabbed the other man’s greasy hair with a twisting yank, started to scream for help.
The other men grabbed Luke’s arms, hauled him and slammed him into a concrete column.
‘Stop it!’ Aubrey yelled.
And now the crowd moved, three young men rallying to their defense, grabbing at the ragtag accusers. Aubrey seized Luke and they ran. They stopped running at the bottom of the stairs as a policeman hurried past them.
They vanished into the mist.
25
‘Where would he have hidden the money?’ Luke and Aubrey walked the streets of a quiet neighborhood, north of downtown. Aubrey kept glancing over her shoulder. Keep moving, Luke thought. ‘He worked for a bank… wherever he put the money, he was willing to die to keep it a secret.’
‘Which means he could have hidden it anywhere,’ she said. ‘But I’m guessing he stashed it in another account, probably another bank, that wouldn’t be so obviously tied to him.’ Her voice broke. And he could sense her drawing away from him.
‘I know you cared about him. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’
‘Are you?’ She studied the sidewalk. ‘He’s the reason you’re in this mess.’
‘No. He was a pawn, just like me, just like you. Even the people chasing us aren’t much more than pawns. The king on the chessboard is my stepfather. The queen is this Jane bitch. She has to be crazy, trying to extort money from terrorists.’
‘I don’t like chess and I don’t like being a pawn.’ She raised her head, looked at him with a mix of defiance and grief. ‘It makes me mad.’
‘Mad is good. Mad might help us stay alive.’
She started to walk again and he fell in step with her. ‘I can’t believe he’s dead. He was just so desperate to convince me he was on the side of right. He just kept talking about all he’d done for me, risked for me…’
‘He was leveraging your kidnapping to bring you back to him.’
She nodded in shame. ‘It sounds horrible. But he wanted us back together.’ She glanced over her shoulder again. ‘I’m really not so special. I don’t know why he couldn’t let me go.’
Luke thought of her calm, her brave pleading with Eric not to leave Luke chained to the bed, her resourcefulness in the elevated train in fending off the mob. He knew exactly why Eric would not let a woman like her go easily.
‘How did you meet him?’
‘At his bank. I set up my company accounts there, he handled them.’
He remembered Aubrey’s export/import business now, from her friend’s blog.
‘I bought an import company a few months back. From a friend. Pottery from South America, African decor and jewelry, crafts and furniture from Mexico and eastern Europe, not expensive stuff. But you have to watch your expenditure, deal with making payments overseas, receiving payments from overseas, it’s a hassle. Eric helped me sort it all out. Then he asked me out to dinner… I thought he was a good guy. I don’t often choose well.’
‘Did he have a chance to win you back after he saved you?’
‘I don’t know. I was furious with him and grateful all at once. But once I saw the footage on TV – I recognized you – I knew he was involved in killing that man. To save me. It was going to bind me to him forever and I was very afraid. Whoever’s after him isn’t going to give up.’
They passed a nearly empty diner and she glanced at the menu in the window.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. He realized he was starving but suggesting dinner seemed bizarre.
‘We never got to eat our pizza.’ Aubrey rubbed her temples. ‘I’m horrible to even think of food right now.’ Her stomach growled.
‘It’s okay. We’re in survival mode.’
‘Weird. And everything else seems so ordinary.’ She crossed her arms. ‘We’re different, the world isn’t.’
She was right; warm light filled the diner and the few customers laughed over coffee and sandwiches and daily specials. They went inside, Luke’s skin prickling at the thought of sitting still in public. They took turns going to the bathroom and washing faces and hands and Luke thought she might bolt, but when he came back to the booth she sat waiting. They ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and hot coffee, which sent a welcome jolt of heat through their bodies. She stared at the mug. ‘I should be a mess. But it’s a luxury, isn’t it, to be a mess. In the worst of times you just have to forge ahead.’
She was right. They had to keep moving, and they had to find the money quickly. ‘The luxury we don’t have is time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘These people expect this money soon. It’s tied to a bigger attack – even bigger than the bombing in Texas. Mouser referred to it as Hellfire. We have to find out what it is, and I’m guessing from Mouser’s tone that the attack is very soon. Within a couple of days.’
Aubrey said nothing for thirty seconds, frowning in thought. She waited for the waitress to refill their coffees and to leave their corner. ‘It won’t take the police long to find Eric.’
‘No.’
‘And they’ll look for me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And whoever this Mouser man works for, they’ll be looking for me, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘If the police find me, then Mouser finds me.’
‘Well…’
‘They killed the power, Luke. They’re more capable than I ever imagined.’
He sipped coffee. ‘If you talk to the police, you can clear my name.’
‘What will clear your name is finding this money. Prove the motive Eric had to kidnap you. Then you give the money and all the information on the Night Road to the FBI.’
Give it all to the FBI. The fifty million. And his traitorous step-father. He didn’t want Henry in jail. He realized, with shameful anger, that he wanted Henry dead for the hell he’d created for Luke. No. He put his face in his hands, let the wave of hate pass. ‘You don’t have any idea what you’re signing up for, Aubrey.’
‘I can’t tell the police anything more than I told you. I think we should stick together.’
The sense of responsibility weighed on him. He had barely survived his encounters with the Night Road; she had no idea of the brutality they would face. But he saw the resolution in her face and he decided not to argue with her. She wanted to hide, he didn’t blame her. She wanted to help him, for Eric’s sake. ‘So the two kidnapping victims are stuck with each other.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how to fight, I don’t know how to run, but I’m not going to let these people get away with what they’ve done, to me or to Eric or to you.’
Her resolve strengthened him. ‘What I don’t understand is – why didn’t Eric just hide with the money? Why not go to Thailand, take the money, run with it?’ he asked.
‘He said tonight, that he had made a deal that would save us. Right before you got there. We were having a glass of wine to celebrate but he hadn’t told me the details yet.’
‘A deal.’
‘A deal where someone powerful would protect us – just like that Mouser man said before he shot Eric.’ She cleared her throat, rubbed at her eyes. ‘I was furious with Eric for getting me involved in this mess. I wanted out and he was trying to convince me I didn’t have a way out except through him.’
‘Who was going to protect him? Maybe they could protect us.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But he called it a deal. He had to be giving something in exchange.’
‘The fifty million,’ Luke said.
He remembered the pages he’d pulled from Eric’s jacket when he’d gone for the gun. He removed the papers from his back pocket and smoothed them out on the table.
‘Wha
t is that?’ Aubrey asked.
‘Papers Eric had in his pocket.’ Each separate page was a printout confirming the opening of an account at a bank. The banks were scattered across America: Tennessee, New York, California, two in Texas, Minnesota, Washington state, Missouri. He didn’t recognize the bank names: they all appeared to be regional banks, not large chains. ‘These must be the accounts he set up for the Night Road.’
‘How would we check to see if they’re empty or not?’
He looked up at her. ‘You think he stashed the money in them?’
‘It would make sense. Maybe he opens the accounts, deposits the money, but he hasn’t given the account information yet to the Night Road. That way, he can still reach the money, even if they can’t.’
‘We can’t go to them; they’re all over the country,’ he said. ‘You have to have a password to access information online or over the phone.’
‘Then step one is finding where Eric hid those passwords,’ she said.
‘Might’ve just been in his head.’
‘That many accounts? No. He was the kind of guy who wrote everything down.’
Two policemen walked into the diner. The two officers gave the restaurant a cursory glance; Luke had his back to them. He sensed the momentary weight of their stare. Aubrey and Luke studied their coffee cups, waiting for the policemen to slide into a booth on the opposite side of the diner and to lose themselves in the study of the menu.
‘We need to go. Now,’ Luke said. Sweat coated his back.
He unfolded money for the bill and they got up and left. Aubrey leaned on him hard, rubbing his back, her pretended affection camouflage. He didn’t look like a cop killer on the solitary run. Luke was careful not to look toward the officers.
When they were out of the diner, she stepped away from him, crossing her arms. They walked for three blocks, found a bus stop, figured out the route to get back to Lincoln Park, where Aubrey’s car sat parked on a side street. The car was a late-model Volvo, and he checked its underside.
