by Chris Mooney
“Day before Frank died,” Ron said, “you know what he said to me? He said when this was over, he was going to cash out, go to some island and drink, eat, and screw his brains out from sunrise to sunset, and hope he went out in the saddle.”
Sebastian couldn’t picture Frank saying those words, let alone living them. “Didn’t know you guys were that tight.”
“We were,” Ron said. “We were,” he said again, the loss finding his voice this time. “We talked about a lot of shit. Especially books.”
“Books?”
“Yeah, he was always giving them to me, encouraging me to read and, you know, broaden my mind.” His eyes filled and he sucked air sharply, blinking. “You’ve been real good to me, Sebastian. Made me a lot of money, more than I can spend in a lifetime. Hell, three lifetimes.”
Sebastian froze. “Are you bailing on me?”
Ron cleared his throat. “Sebastian,” he began.
“Stay with me on this. Until we find my daughter. Once we do that, we can go on and live our new lives.”
Ron picked up his glass and looked away.
CHAPTER 39
SEBASTIAN HAD NO memory of falling asleep. He was jolted awake by someone shaking his shoulder, saw Ron, and bolted upright in the chair.
“Paul make contact?”
“Two minutes ago,” Ron said. “He sent a picture, and a phone number.”
Sebastian didn’t get a chance to ask any questions; Ron had moved out of the living room and darted upstairs, to Sebastian’s home office. Sebastian could hear footsteps above him, Ron and his men talking, as he looked around for his phone. There, on the coffee table.
Sebastian checked his watch. Three thirty-five a.m.
The email’s subject line read, “Proof of Life?” The body of the email contained no text, just an attachment. Sebastian tapped a finger against the screen, and as the attachment opened, he prayed to God that she was alive—Please let her be alive.
The attachment was a headshot of Grace.
The first thing he noticed was the left side of her face. Her cheek and jawline were scraped raw, the skin slightly swollen, like she had been in a minor car accident. Her eyes were closed, her features slack from sleep.
Yes, sleep, he told himself. Grace was sleeping, not dead. There was color in her face.
Sebastian scrolled to the bottom, found a phone number written in black on a piece of paper beneath her chin.
Ron came halfway down the steps. Sebastian was already on his feet, moving. He was wide-awake. His blood was caffeine.
“We’re ready to trace the call,” Ron said. “Keep him on as long as you can.”
“Your people?”
“We’re ready.”
“Email?”
“Working on it now.”
As Sebastian dialed the number, Ron’s words from last night about Paul flashed through his mind: Now that he’s discovered your Achilles’ heel, he can torture you . . . indefinitely. You really think he’s going to give you her?
He’s wrong, Sebastian told himself as he dialed the number. Ron didn’t know Paul. Sebastian did. Sebastian knew what Paul wanted, what fed him.
The phone on the other end of the line was picked up.
Silence.
Sebastian broke it. “I have your money.”
Silence.
Wait, Sebastian told himself. Make him come to you.
Sebastian waited, pacing, watching the second hand on his clock.
Twenty-two seconds passed.
“What else do you have for me?” Paul asked.
“My donors. All of them.”
Paul chuckled. “I don’t believe you.”
“You should. Let’s arrange a trade. Where and when do you want to meet?”
“You sound anxious, Sebastian. Nervous. Is it because I have the daughter of your childhood sweetheart? You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”
“We need to discuss your product.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I found out? Aren’t you dying to know?”
Sebastian looked at his watch. Fifty-three seconds.
“Stop looking at your watch,” Paul said. “Ron and his people aren’t going to be able to trace this call.”
How did Paul know he was looking at his—?
Sebastian turned around, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck when he faced the windows at the front of the house.
“That’s right—I’m watching you right now,” Paul said. “Through a sniper scope.”
Not Paul, Sebastian thought. Guidry. Guidry was the sniper. But a round wouldn’t penetrate the windows. The original glass in all the windows had been replaced with a flexible polycarbonate designed to stop even high-caliber rounds.
Or maybe Paul was simply messing with him. Maybe Paul had installed his own cameras in here, in the house, way back when, before the summer, before everything turned to shit. Maybe Paul had been listening in for months, collecting intel.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the ceiling. Ron’s people, Sebastian knew, had binoculars equipped with thermal-imaging technology that could the detect heat signatures of people crouched behind cars, even walls. They were no doubt rushing to the windows to search the area. Sebastian heard muted conversations, Ron talking to the men positioned outside, in and around the neighborhood. They had sniper and combat scopes equipped with thermal imaging and night vision and—
“I’ve changed my mind,” Paul said.
“About what?”
“Everything,” Paul replied, suppressing a yawn. “Frank inspired me. Frank’s death. I kept thinking about the look on your face when I blew Frank’s head off his shoulders, and then I started asking myself, Why give up Ava’s little girl when I can do so many wonderfully creative things with her? Like, say, drop a finger every now and then in the mail to her mommy. Or you. Do you think Grace could hold her baby without any fingers?”
Sebastian kept the terror from reaching his face, his voice. “I’ve been running tests using Jolie’s blood. You were right. The results are remarkable. Spectacular. But it’s never going to work.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“The test subject we used died a few days after the transfusion. His blood wouldn’t clot properly—more or less turned into a hemophiliac, so he bled out.”
It was true. Maya had shown him the results the day Faye Simpson had driven him to the Wellness Center: Sixto Ferreria had hemorrhaged.
“You can see the results for yourself,” Sebastian said. “It’s all on video.”
“Speaking of which, I have something special planned for Grace tonight. Do you prefer video, or would you like me to send you pictures?”
“I know you gave Sophia Vargas a transfusion using Viramab. I don’t have to tell you that won’t deliver long-term results. You’re not going to build an empire that way. And that’s what you want—an empire. You can have mine. Pandora, the donors and infrastructure, all the money and the secret cocktail combination to—”
“But you’ve already given me what I need—something far more important,” Paul said. “I’ve hurt you. Knowing that you’re out there, suffering, in agony; knowing that you’ve become one of the walking wounded, going through your days with a noose around your neck; knowing that I can, at any time, tighten the noose—well, you can’t put a price tag on that kind of love.”
One of the front windows spiderwebbed. Intellectually, Sebastian knew the round couldn’t penetrate the bulletproof glass, but his nervous system overrode his brain, and he hit the floor. He dropped the phone and it skittered across the hardwood, his blood pounding in his ears as the adrenaline surged through his system and told him to run and seek cover. Sebastian knew the son of a bitch was laughing even before he heard it echoing from the phone’s tiny speaker.
“I’m going to pi
ck them off one by one,” Paul said. “Ron. His people. That bitch you’ve got sleeping in what used to be my bedroom. I know where everyone lives, what kind of car they drive, their wives and kids . . . I know everything, Sebastian, and I’m going to pick them all off one by one, destroy everyone and everything you love, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.”
Sebastian grabbed the phone.
Click.
Paul was gone.
CHAPTER 40
ELLIE CAME AWAKE to her phone ringing. The room was dark except for the alarm clock, with its bright green numbers. Four forty-six a.m.
Where was she? Right, the hotel room. Max was sleeping beside her.
Sebastian was calling her. She scooped up the phone and hurried off to the bathroom.
“I need you to come to the house,” Sebastian said as she eased the door shut.
“Of course.” Ellie heard the tightness in his voice. “Is everything okay?”
“There’s been a development, and I need your help.”
“Paul?”
“Just get to the house,” Sebastian said, and hung up.
She’d had a good amount of alcohol last night and had less than six hours of sleep, but she didn’t feel hungover or the slightest bit tired. Another benefit, she figured, of Pandora.
As she showered, she kept thinking about the photo of her twin brother. Ron Wolff had circulated it around Las Vegas and found nothing, but that didn’t mean he would stop digging. The man was a seasoned investigator, and he had all sorts of resources at his disposal—and computer experts. Who knew what they could turn up in some database?
Maybe Ron found something, she thought. Maybe that’s why Sebastian summoned me to his house, to confront me about it.
And then there was Roland Bauer. His entire operation was now riding on an undercover agent who had deliberately withheld information—had lied, essentially. He had the full power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation behind him. Sebastian’s people might not be able to turn anything up, but the FBI would, and then she’d have to come clean about everything. She’d have to admit she had lied about who she was when she applied to the LAPD. That in and of itself was a crime. After this operation was signed, sealed, and delivered and went to trial, Sebastian, who could easily afford to buy his own “dream team” of litigators and legal experts, would find out she had lied to the LAPD, and a judge could summarily dismiss the entire case against him.
Maybe not, she thought, shutting off the water. Before hiring her for this operation, the FBI had conducted an extensive background check on her and hadn’t found out a single thing about her brother, the aliases she’d used over the years—anything. It stood to reason that Sebastian’s people wouldn’t find out anything, either.
Still, Sebastian had the picture. Roland did, too.
I’m getting ahead of myself. She needed to focus on what was in front of her, and that was Sebastian. He would confront her at some point—she was sure of it—and she needed to have a story ready.
Ellie had thought long and hard about it last night while waiting for sleep. She thought about it again as she dressed and when she kissed Max goodbye, the way a good girlfriend did—passionate and excited, hungry for their next moment together.
* * *
* * *
When Ellie turned onto Sebastian’s street, the first thing she noticed was the home’s front window. It was a spiderweb of cracks; you couldn’t miss it.
To the untrained eye it would look like some asshole neighborhood kid had thrown a small rock at the window, but not hard enough to break through the glass. Get a little closer, though, and you could see the bullet hole frozen in the bulletproof glass.
She parked in the driveway and went into the backyard. Through the sliding glass door, she saw Sebastian sitting alone at the kitchen table. His hands were wrapped around a coffee mug, and he stared down at it blankly, looking haggard. Distraught. His dress shirt was wrinkled, like he had slept in it.
He looked up when she opened the door. His eyes were bloodshot, the skin underneath them bruised.
“Help yourself to some coffee,” Sebastian said. His voice was dry. Hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I think there are muffins over there from yesterday, some croissants.”
Ellie surveyed the surrounding rooms. Empty and quiet.
“Where is everyone?” Ellie asked.
“Tracking down an email from Paul.”
Maybe they were. Or maybe Sebastian wanted her alone so he could torture her for information on the photo.
Or just kill me. “He responsible for the window?”
“Him or Guidry.”
“Guidry?”
“Paul’s friend from the military,” he said. “The sniper.”
“The day I went with Anton to Fresno, Paul said he had a sniper keeping an eye on us. Lucky for you, your windows are made of bulletproof glass. I take it you didn’t catch either Paul or this Guidry guy last night.”
Sebastian shook his head as he sucked in air, color flaring in his cheeks.
Ellie pulled out the chair beside him. “What’s Guidry look like? You have a picture?”
Sebastian reached into his pocket, came back with a folded piece of paper, handed it to her.
It was a picture of J.C. sitting in front of a Christmas tree. The same picture she had tacked on the wall of her home and then carried in her shoe, taking it out at times when she knew she was alone, the picture always righting her when she felt nervous or scared or doubted herself.
Ellie smiled warmly and sighed—a happy sigh, as though she’d just opened a wonderful, thoughtful gift.
“I thought I’d never see this again.”
“Who’s the kid?” Sebastian’s tone was casual, but his eyes were cold, and he was very still, the way a dog was as it decided whether or not to attack.
“This,” Ellie said, “is my brother. My twin brother, actually.”
“You always carry a picture of him inside your shoe?”
Ellie shrugged. “Depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“On what I’m wearing that day. That day I was wearing a dress, no pockets, so I had to improvise.”
“Why not your purse?”
“Because someone might get nosy and decide to take a look in my purse, find this, and start asking all sorts of questions that are none of their business.” Ellie’s tone was firm but not combative. She wanted to come across as confident and calm, not angry. People caught in a lie lashed out in anger. People who had nothing to hide met questions head-on, didn’t act or speak defensively.
Ellie placed the picture on the table. She turned slightly in her chair so she could face him, her arms open as she said, “Cat’s out of the bag, so please, ask away.”
“First time I’m hearing you have a brother.”
“Had,” Ellie said.
“What happened?”
“He was a carrier, I’m told, and he was abducted shortly after I was born.” Telling part of the truth, she’d reasoned, could sometimes be the best kind of lie.
Sebastian’s gaze narrowed in thought; then his eyes widened, and his features smoothed out.
“Never knew him—never knew about him, either, until my mother was dying,” Ellie said. “She was prepared to take that secret to her grave—would have, too, if I hadn’t stumbled across this picture while gathering some stuff from her safe. Even then, she wouldn’t tell me much.”
“What’s his name?”
“I have no idea.”
“You don’t know your own brother’s name?”
“Maybe I’m not being clear. Sorry—late night. Thank you for that, by the way. The dinner, and the hotel.”
Sebastian said nothing, didn’t nod or look like he’d heard her. Ellie felt and looked relaxed as she blended fact with fiction. It’s n
ot a lie if you one hundred percent believe it, Roland had told her.
“So,” she said. “My mother. She refused to tell me my brother’s name—his real name—saying no good would come of it. That’s when I found out that my name wasn’t my real name.”
“What is it? Your real name.”
“That’s the thing. I have no idea. Seems my mother changed it not once but several times, in order to protect me—to protect us. We moved around a lot before settling in Las Vegas. As for my brother, she never reported his abduction to the police. Why? you ask. I asked her the same question. She told me it was because the people who took my brother were cops. There were four of them, she said, and they came into the house and went at her pretty bad. My mother was a fighter. Anyway, they thought she was dead. She heard two of them talking, and she told me she recognized their voices—local cops who were heavily involved in the neighborhood. That’s why she didn’t report it, why we packed up the next day and moved.”
“So that’s what this is all about, why you’re so driven.” Sebastian said it more to himself than to her, Ellie thought. “You became a stickman so you could find your brother.”
Ellie nodded. “I carry that picture—it’s like he’s a part of me—with me while I’m out looking for him.”
“But why come to LA?”
Ellie had anticipated the question. “Because this is where he was taken.”
“Where, specifically?”
“I don’t know. My hope is that you’ll help me.”
“Now I know why you were so anxious to save my life.” He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “I don’t have him, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I wasn’t. But since you brought it up—”
“I know all of my carriers,” Sebastian said. “Every single one.”
“You’ve been doing this a long time. How can you possibly know all the carriers on your blood farms?”
“I don’t like that term. It implies that I treat my carriers as livestock, which I don’t. You’d be surprised by how well they’re treated.”
