The Winner

by David Baldacci

  In the shrubs bordering the edge of the expansive lawn by the garage side of the house, Jackson knelt in the mulch and smiled to himself. He lowered the small piece of equipment he was holding in his hand. On its digital face were the six numbers constituting LuAnn’s pass code for the home’s alarm system. The scanner had picked up the electrical impulses thrown off when LuAnn inputted her pass code and then it had unscrambled them. With the pass code Jackson could come and go freely.

  When he got back to his rental car, his cell phone buzzed. He spoke for a few minutes and then hung up. Charlie and Lisa were at a motel outside of Gettysburg. They would probably be on the move again soon. LuAnn had tried to get them away from him, or rather Lisa away from him. Charlie could take care of himself, Jackson well knew. If it came to it, Lisa was the Achilles’ heel of her mother.

  LuAnn had watched out the window as the figure made its way down the tree line toward the main road. The steps had been animal-like in their stealth and precision, much as hers would have been. She didn’t know what had drawn her to the window at that precise instant. She felt no fear or even apprehension as she watched Jackson move down the hillside. She had expected him to be there. For what specific reason or for how long Jackson had been watching the house, she wasn’t sure; but it was completely logical that he should be. She was now his main focus, she knew. And to be the main focus of the man was akin to treading on the very edge of the grave. She drew the curtains shut and sat on her bed. The enormous house felt cold and threatening, as though she were all alone in a mausoleum of immense proportion, just waiting for something unspeakably horrible to happen to her.

  Was Lisa truly safe, beyond the reach of the man? The answer to that question was so obvious that it hit her like a hard slap in the face.

  I can do anything, LuAnn.

  The mocking words came back to her after all these years and sent a shiver through her. Riggs was right, she couldn’t get through this alone. He had offered help, and this time she needed it. Whether she was making the right decision or not, she didn’t care. Right now, she just needed to do something. She jumped up, grabbed her car keys, unlocked a box in her closet, and placed the loaded nickel-plated .44 Magnum in her purse. She ran down the stairs and into the garage. A minute later the BMW was flying down the road.

  Riggs was in the room over his barn when he heard the car drive up and park next to the garage. He watched out the window as LuAnn came into view. She started toward the house but then, as if sensing his presence, she turned to stare at him. Their eyes stayed locked for a long moment as each silently probed the other. A minute later she was sitting across from him, warming her hands from the heat of the stove.

  This time Riggs felt no compunction to mince words.

  “The lottery was fixed, wasn’t it? You knew you were going to win, didn’t you?”

  LuAnn jolted upright for an instant, but then let out an almost simultaneous breath of relief.

  “Yes.” With that one word she felt as though the last ten years of her life had suddenly evaporated. It was a cleansing feeling. “How’d you figure it out?”

  “I had some help.”

  LuAnn tensed and slowly rose. Had she just made the biggest mistake of her life?

  Riggs sensed her sudden change and put up a hand. As calmly as he could, he said, “Nobody else knows right now. I pulled some pieces of information from different sources and then took a wild stab.” He hesitated and then added, “I also bugged your car. I heard your entire conversation with Donovan.”

  “Who the hell are you?” LuAnn hissed, her hand feeling for her purse catch and the gun inside even as she stared at him.

  Riggs just sat there and stared back at her. “I’m someone very much like you,” was his surprising reply. Those words stopped her cold. Riggs stood and put his hands in his pockets, leaned up against the bookcase, and eyed the gently swaying trees through the window. “My past is a secret, my present is all made up.” He looked over at her. “A lie. But for a good reason.” He raised his eyebrows. “Like you.”

  LuAnn trembled for an instant. Her legs felt weak and she abruptly sat down on the floor. Riggs swiftly knelt beside her, taking her hand in his. “We don’t have a lot of time so I’m not going to sugarcoat things. I made some inquiries about you. I did it discreetly, but it’s going to have ripple effects nonetheless.” He looked at her intently. “Are you ready to hear this?”

  LuAnn swallowed hard and nodded; the fear passed from her eyes and was replaced with an inexplicable calmness.

  “The FBI has been interested in you ever since you fled the country. The case has been dormant for a while, but that’s not going to last. They know something is up with you, and maybe with how you won the money, but they don’t know what, and they haven’t been able to prove anything.”

  “If you bugged the car, you know how Donovan got onto it.”

  Riggs nodded and helped her up. They both sat on the couch. “Bankruptcy. Pretty clever. I know the Feds haven’t latched on to that angle yet. Do you know how it was rigged?”

  LuAnn shook her head.

  “Is it a group, an organization behind it? Donovan thought it was the government. Please don’t tell me it is. That gets way too complicated.”

  “It’s not.” LuAnn was speaking clearly now, although traces of fear, the effect of the sudden exposure of long-held secrets, flitted over her features. “It’s one person, as far as I know.”

  Riggs sat back with an amazed look. “One person. That isn’t possible.”

  “He had some people working for him, at least two that I know of, but I’m pretty sure he was the boss.” That was an understatement. LuAnn could not imagine Jackson taking orders from anyone.

  “Was Charlie one of those people?”

  LuAnn started again. “What makes you say that?”

  Riggs shrugged. “The uncle story was a little lame. And you two seemed to be sharing a secret. There wasn’t any mention in all my research about you of any uncle, so I assumed he came into the picture after the lottery scam.”

  “I’m not going to answer that.” The last thing she was going to do was incriminate Charlie.

  “Fair enough. What about this person behind it? What can you tell me about him?”

  “He calls himself Jackson.” LuAnn stopped suddenly, astonished that she was telling anyone this. As the name passed over her lips, she closed her eyes and imagined for an instant what Jackson would do to her, to all of them, if he had any idea what she was revealing. She instinctively looked over her shoulder.

  Riggs gripped her arm. “LuAnn, you’re not alone anymore. He can’t hurt you now.”

  She almost laughed out loud. “Matthew, if we’re the luckiest people in the world, he’ll kill us quick instead of making us suffer.”

  Riggs felt her arm shaking. As strong and resourceful as he knew her to be, she was clearly afraid.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I’ve dealt with some pretty bad people in my time, and I’m still here. Everyone has weaknesses.”

  “Sure, right.” LuAnn’s voice was hushed, her words lifeless.

  Riggs’s tone was harsh. “Well, if you want to roll over for him and play dead, go ahead. I don’t see how that’s going to help Lisa, though. If this guy’s as scary as you say, you think he’s going to let her walk?”

  “I haven’t told her about any of this.”

  “Jackson’s not going to assume that. He’s going to assume that she knows everything, and that she’s going to have to be eliminated if things turn against him.”

  “I know,” she finally said. She rubbed her face and glanced wearily at him. “I don’t understand. Why do you want to help me? You don’t even know me. And I just told you I did something illegal.”

  “Like I said, I checked you out. I know your background. Jackson took advantage of you. Hell, if it had been me in your same position, I would’ve jumped at the chance to be rich too.”

  “That’s just it, I didn’t. I
had decided not to go along, but then I walked into Duane’s drug deal, and the next thing I know two men are dead and I’m running as fast as I can with a baby in my arms. I . . . I didn’t think I had any choice left. I just wanted to get away.”

  “I can understand that, LuAnn. I really can.”

  “I’ve been running ever since, scared of my shadow, afraid somebody would find everything out. It’s been ten years, but it’s felt like a hundred.” She shook her head and gripped her hands together.

  “So I take it Jackson’s in the area.”

  “He was in my garden about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure what he was up to, but I’m assuming he’s laying the groundwork for whatever plan he’s about to implement.”

  “What sort of plan?”

  “He’s going to kill Donovan for starters.”

  “So I heard you tell Donovan.”

  “And then Jackson will probably come after us.” LuAnn put her face in her hands.

  “Well, you won’t be seeing him again.”

  “You’re wrong there, Matthew. I have to meet with him. And very soon.”

  He looked at her in absolute shock. “Are you crazy?”

  “Jackson suddenly appeared in my bedroom last night. We had quite a lengthy discussion. I told him I was going to get to know you better. I don’t think he had sex in mind, it just worked out that way.”

  “LuAnn, you don’t—”

  “He was going to kill you. In the cottage last night. I guess you went back for your truck. He said he was two feet from you. You’re lucky to be alive. Very lucky.”

  Riggs sat back. His instincts had been right. That was a little heartening, despite the close call he had unwittingly experienced.

  “He was going to check you out. He was concerned about your background, it was fuzzy. He was going to look into your background, and if he found anything worrisome, he was going to kill you.”

  “But?”

  “But I told him I’d check you out instead.”

  “You took a risk there.”

  “Not as many as you’ve taken for me. I owed you. And I didn’t want anything to happen to you. Not because of me.”

  Riggs spread his hands wide. “So why? Why the lottery fix? Did you give him some of your winnings?”

  “All of it.” Riggs looked blankly at her. LuAnn said, “He had control of the money for ten years; that period just ended. He invested the money and paid me some of the income from those investments.”

  “He had a hundred million to invest. How much did you earn each year?”

  “Around forty million on the initial principal. He also invested any amounts I didn’t spend. I earned tens of millions more on that each year.”

  Riggs gaped at her. “That’s a forty percent return on your lottery money alone.”

  “I know. And Jackson made a lot more than that, I’m certain. He wasn’t in this out of the goodness of his heart. It was a business transaction, plain and simple.”

  “So if you made forty percent, he probably made at least that and maybe more. That’s a minimum of eighty percent return on your money. He could only have done that through illegal channels.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “And at the end of ten years?”

  “I got the hundred million back.”

  Riggs rubbed at his brow. “And if there were twelve of you at, say, an average of seventy million dollars each, this guy had almost one billion dollars to invest.”

  “He’s got a lot more than that now, I’m sure.” She looked at him, saw the worry lines. “What, what are you thinking?”

  He looked at her steadily. “Another thing that’s had the FBI’s dander up.” She looked puzzled. Riggs started to explain. “I know for a fact that for years now the FBI, Interpol, and a few other foreign law enforcement agencies have been aware of something: Tremendous amounts of money have been funneled into lots of activities across the globe, some legit, others not. At first the Feds thought it was drug cartel money, either from South America or Asia, partly to launder it. That didn’t turn out to be the case. They picked up threads here and there, but the leads always fizzled. Someone with that much money can cover himself really well. Maybe that someone is Jackson.” Riggs fell silent.

  “You’re sure the Feds don’t know about the lottery?”

  Riggs looked uneasy. “I can tell you, if they do, they didn’t learn it from me. But they do know of my inquiries about you. There was no getting around that.”

  “And if they’ve figured it out for themselves? Then we have Jackson and the federal government coming for us. Right?”

  Riggs looked away for a moment and then stared her directly in the eye. “Right.”

  “And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure which one frightens me more.”

  They looked at each other, similar thoughts running through their minds. Two people against all of this.

  “I need to go now,” LuAnn said.

  “Go where?”

  “I’m pretty certain that Jackson’s been following my movements closely. He’ll know we’ve seen each other several times. He may know I’ve met with Donovan. If I don’t report back to him right away” — here she took a painful swallow — “well, it won’t be pretty.”

  Riggs gripped her shoulders tightly. “LuAnn, this guy is a psycho, but he must be brilliant as well. That makes him even more dangerous. You walk in there, the guy gets the least bit suspicious . . .”

  She gently rubbed his arms with her hands. “Well, I just have to make sure he doesn’t get suspicious.”

  “How in the hell are you going to do that? He already must be. I say we bring in the troops, set the guy up and take him.”

  “And me, what about me?”

  Riggs stared at her. “I’m sure you could probably work a deal with the authorities,” he said lamely.

  “And the folks down in Georgia? You heard Donovan, they want to lynch me.”

  “The Feds could talk to them, they . . .” Riggs broke off as he realized absolutely none of what he was saying could be guaranteed.

  “And maybe I work a deal with all of them. I give back the money. It might surprise you, but I really don’t care about that. And then maybe I get a sympathetic judge, or judges, and they give me a break. Cumulatively what could I be looking at? Twenty years?”

  “Maybe not that much.”

  “How much then?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know.”

  “I’d make a real sympathetic defendant, wouldn’t I? I can see the headlines now: Drug dealer-turned-murderess-turned-dream-stealer-turned-fugitive LuAnn Tyler living like a queen while people blow their Social Security checks on the lottery. Maybe they’d give me a prize instead of throwing away the key. What do you think?”

  Riggs didn’t answer and he couldn’t manage to look at her either.

  “And let’s say we set Jackson up. What if we miss and he gets away? Or what if we nail him? Do you think with all his money, all his power, he might beat the rap? Or maybe he just might pay someone to carry out his revenge for him. Given that, what do you think my life is worth? And my daughter’s life?”

  Riggs did answer this time. “Nothing. Okay, I hear where you’re coming from. But listen, why can’t you report back to the guy over the phone? You don’t need to see him in person.”

  LuAnn considered this for a minute. “I’ll try,” was all she could promise.

  LuAnn stood up to her full height and gazed down at him. She looked twenty again, strong, rangy, confident. “Despite having zillions of dollars and traveling all over the world, I’m not the FBI. I’m still just a dumb girl from Georgia, but you might be a little surprised at what I can do when I set my mind to it.” Lisa’s face was conjured up in her thoughts. “And I’ve got a lot to lose. Too much.” Her eyes seemed to look right through his, seeing something far, far down the road. When she spoke, her voice carried the full measure of her de
ep Southern roots. “So I’m not going to lose.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR