Trust Me

by Abbott, Jeff

  This was a trap. The Night Road had wanted to flush out their enemy, and now they had. Luke had handed Quicksilver to Mouser-who wasn’t working alone.

  ‘Dad!’ Luke yelled. Luke saw the group headed rapidly toward the bus drop-off, borne along by the rest of the fleeing crowd. Luke struggled to catch up with them. He broke free of the main crowd and saw his father and Aubrey being shoved into the back of a van. The van was marked with a logo of a cake and read TROIS PETITS GATEAUX. Three Little Cakes.

  The doors slammed and the van peeled out onto the road. Luke cut across the grassland and ran out onto the broad, tree-lined walking trail, trying to keep the van in sight on the street.

  But suddenly the van wheeled hard and zoomed right. Along the allee, heading directly toward him. The driver was pointing at him. Coming back for him.

  Luke turned and ran, back toward the Tower. He shot a panicked glance over his shoulder and he could see the driver’s face, frowning in concentration, teeth gritted, intent on running him down.

  He had nowhere to hide. The van veered past him, a rifle butt from the window slamming him, knocking him over. The van skidded to a stop. He heard the shrill high cry of the police sirens booming across the air, through the trees, closer to the Tower, the armed guards clearing out the people, hunting for the unseen source of the shots. No more shooting; Mouser was gone. Of course. His buddies could finish the work.

  ‘Help me!’ Luke yelled. ‘Aidez-moi!’ But in the panic, no one heard him.

  One of the black-suited men jumped out of the van, raced toward Luke, gun drawn, screaming at him - in English - to get in the van. He saw in a flash Aubrey and his father, facedown on the van floor.

  Make the creep come to you, Luke realized. The thought came with shimmering clarity. The past few days had awakened a brutal, long-drowsing instinct in him, as though the bookish web-surfer who had never thought about the reality of danger had been whittled away. Seeing his father, alive, changed him, changed everything. He was not going to lose him again.

  Luke went flat on the ground. The gunman ran up to him and Luke timed it to the second, spun and scissor-kicked hard. It was awkward but forceful enough and the gunman stumbled. Luke delivered a pile-driver kick into the gunman’s groin. The guy grunted in agony and folded and Luke kicked him in the head without hesitation and wrenched the gun from him. He ran toward the van, gun raised.

  One of the gunmen inside the van leveled a pistol at him. Then he saw Aubrey launch herself from the floor, claw at the gunman’s arm. The doors slammed and he heard the sound of a shot fired inside the van.

  He fired at the van’s tires, hitting too high, nailing the bumper. Then a swarm of people fleeing ran between him and the van, and he couldn’t risk another shot. He rammed his way through the crowd, trying to get close enough to shred a tire.

  But the van revved and accelerated, knocking through the thinning crowd. They’d run out of time to execute the grab on him, with French police swarming around the grounds. The van blasted onto Avenue Charles Floquet and was gone.

  Luke tucked the stolen gun under his jacket and ran. His mind raced. Mouser. Mouser would know where they would be taken.

  The sniper fire had ended, as far as he could tell. Which meant it was too risky for Mouser to stay in place. Mouser would have to run and wouldn’t he run to the Mercedes? If he couldn’t rendezvous with the Night Road team in the van after using Luke as bait, he would have to make a fast escape in the chaos. But with the immediately snarling traffic as pedestrians and every bus in the area fled, and police shutting down roads, the sedan they’d driven to the Tower would offer a difficult solution for escape. No sniper wanted to be caught in the mother of all traffic jams.

  But the Paris subway, the Metro, was close by. He could be wrong. But Mouser would want safety more than retrieving an asset like a car; it was the terrorist way. He headed for the sign indicating the Metro.

  49

  Luke followed part of the fleeing mass of people and ran to the Champ de Mars Metro station across the street from the Tower, hurried down into the tunnel. The lines to buy a ticket were long and he jumped the turnstile, apologizing to the man in front of him. No one seemed to care about his lack of a ticket in the rush to get away from the shooting. It was a big station, different colored signs pointing to different lines, and then he caught an edge of what looked like Mouser’s burr haircut making a turn. He followed, cutting through the crowd.

  Mouser. For sure. He headed for a station with a yellow line, an RER station with the large trains that traveled the lines running parallel to the Seine. The crowd - dozens thick - pressed forward as a large double-decker train pulled into the station. Children cried, people talked in a hubbub. Panic steamed the air. No one looked at Luke, even glanced at him. He was the cause of it all and he felt as small and anonymous as an ant.

  He lost sight of Mouser. He pressed the earpiece Mouser had put in his ear but heard nothing. Mouser had killed the connection. Luke threw it on the floor. He didn’t want Mouser reactivating it and hearing him.

  Luke went on tiptoe and surveyed the dozens of faces stretching away from him in a jostling human quilt. Damn it. Then he saw Mouser. Thirty feet away and to his left, scanning the crowd himself, his head slowly turning toward Luke’s position.

  The sunglasses that helped camouflage Luke on the plane were gone, lost in the scuffles. Luke ducked, crowding a young woman who spat a volley of outraged French that questioned Luke’s basic intelligence. Her hair was a spike of black dye; her boyfriend next to her had shaved off his hair. A pair of sunglasses sat on his head.

  The roar of an approaching train sounded. The crowd eased forward bare centimeters.

  ‘Are you trying to kiss asses?’ Luke thought he heard the boyfriend say. Luke ignored the comment and stayed kneeling on the floor.

  The double-decker train stopped and the doors slid open.

  The human tide surged forward. Luke grabbed a fistful of Drummond’s dollars from his pocket, handed them to the boyfriend, and said in bad French, ‘I would like to buy,’ then continued in English, ‘your sunglasses’, pantomiming the shades.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ the boyfriend said. ‘No. I don’t want your dollars.’

  But the girlfriend laughed and pulled the shades from his head, stuck them on Luke’s face. She grabbed the money. ‘There you go. I bought them cheap for him on the street. Now I can buy a dozen more in ugly matching colors.’ Her English was good. She gave Luke a thoughtful, measuring stare, as though trying to guess his motives for the bizarre offer.

  From behind the dark lenses, Luke watched Mouser moving toward a seat on the ground car. Luke knew if he stayed on the ground car Mouser would see him, sunglasses or not. So he went up the steps, following the girlfriend and the boyfriend, his heart a piston in his throat. Mouser could get off at any station and he would lose him; he couldn’t easily monitor who got off and on the ground car. He stood near the stairs; it was his only hope. If Mouser came to the stairs and glanced up, he’d see Luke. Then Luke was dead.

  If I lose him, how will I ever find Aubrey and my dad?

  My dad. The words were like two muffled explosions in his chest. The entire past ten years of his life had been a charade. His father was alive.

  Now that he had time to think, a hard bite of anger closed on his heart. Why? Why would his father pretend to leave his wife and child - why would he abandon them to a man like Henry Shawcross? Why would he let his wife and child suffer through a devastating grief? Why would he hide behind the deaths of his friends?

  Luke had thought he didn’t know the real Henry; he clearly didn’t know his father, either. The realization felt like a punch in the stomach. He shook his head, as though physically clearing the thoughts from his mind. No. If he pondered this now emotion would drown him. Grief and bewilderment could wait.

  The train jolted forward, people crowding on the stairs.

  ‘Are you still enjoying my sunglasses, crazy man?’ the boyfrie
nd said, in serviceable English. He had apparently decided to indulge his girlfriend’s whim. ‘You want to buy a shirt next? Nice pants?’

  The girlfriend giggled.

  ‘No. But I need help,’ Luke said. ‘You heard the shooting?’

  The boyfriend rolled his eyes. ‘We walk out of the station, everyone running this way, we head back inside.’ He shrugged. ‘Crazy. The Tower will be there tomorrow for us to see.’

  ‘How do you need help?’ the girlfriend said. Luke saw she was the power in the relationship.

  ‘My girlfriend, she is a student here. She’s seeing a guy. Who’s not me.’ The train jostled them slightly as it picked up speed.

  ‘Ah.’ The girlfriend said. The boyfriend frowned.

  ‘He was going to meet her at the Tower today. She didn’t show and now I’m following him.’

  ‘Ah, the shooting was you shooting at him,’ the boyfriend joked. ‘Revenge is sweet, yes.’

  ‘Ah, no.’

  ‘And this man knows your face.’ The girlfriend guessed.

  ‘She had a picture of us on the bedside table. I’m sure he’s seen me.’ The lying was easy, because a real sense of betrayal swelled in his chest. His father had been the greatest liar of them all. ‘But he’s dangerous. A little crazy. I want to find out where he lives. But he’s below, on the ground car, and I don’t want him to see me.’

  The girlfriend raised an eyebrow in amusement. ‘And he will be convinced by a disguise of cheap sunglasses.’ She muttered in French, unzipped the boyfriend’s backpack, pulled out a knit cap. ‘Cover your hair with this.’

  ‘That’s not, what you say, hygienic,’ the boyfriend complained. He spoke in a flood of French.

  ‘Your head is clean.’ She yanked the cap onto Luke’s head, tucked his light hair under its rainbow folds. Then she pulled out a scarf to match. Both were pink and green. ‘I make these for him, he never wears them.’

  ‘He will not wear them either,’ the boyfriend said.

  ‘I will,’ Luke said. He pushed some more cash into her hand. Her kindness overwhelmed him.

  The girlfriend’s finger lingered against his palm, but she made a point of putting the hand she’d touched Luke with firmly against her boyfriend’s cheek. ‘And you, my sweet, you will get a new hat.’

  ‘A cowboy hat,’ the boyfriend said. The girlfriend laughed.

  ‘Where is the next stop?’ Luke asked, rubbing his arms. He couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Pont de l’Alma,’ the boyfriend said. ‘Les Invalides, the next one, is more of a hub for more lines.’

  People around them were chattering, mostly in French and English, about the shootings. The girlfriend kept a look locked on Luke and he thought she saw the deception beneath the surface of his smile.

  ‘You must love this girl a lot to forgive her,’ she said.

  ‘Her I love,’ Luke said. ‘Him I don’t.’ The boyfriend laughed.

  The train slowed as it approached the station. People pushed past them, eager to get down the few steps to the exit.

  ‘Are you getting off here?’ he asked them.

  They shook their heads after a shared glance.

  Luke risked a few steps down to the ground car, inching for position. He had wanted to ask them to see if they could spot if Mouser had got off the train, but too many people jammed the car. He couldn’t take the risk that they would miss him. He peered down, scanned the crowd. He could see the back of Mouser’s head. It looked like he was text-messaging on a phone, furiously. But not rising to leave.

  The train stopped and the doors hissed open. A number of people left but many stayed put. Few climbed on.

  Mouser remained in his seat, his back to Luke. The gun hidden along his side, covered by his jacket, pressed like an iron weight. The RER train pulled out of Pont de l’Alma. Mouser stood, began to move past the other seated passengers. He had a smile on his face.

  Luke retreated up the stairs. ‘He’s getting off at the next station. Thank you for your help.’

  ‘You’re welcome, thanks for the money.’ The boyfriend shook Luke’s hand, and then Luke saw that the girlfriend had noticed his gun. Her mouth narrowed and her eyes widened. They knew there had been shots fired at the Tower, and now here was a man asking for glasses and hat for an instant disguise, with a gun tucked in the side of his pants, under his jacket.

  The fear in her eyes churned his heart. She could scream. She could go to the first policeman in the next station.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m not the bad guy. I’m not.’ He didn’t know what else to say.

  She seemed unsure of what step to take next, and the boyfriend looked at her, aware of a strained communication passing between her and Luke, and misreading it. Suddenly not happy about it. He eased the girlfriend away from Luke, down the steps, toward the door. She looked at Luke with stark terror; her mouth trembled.

  ‘I’m not the bad guy,’ he mouthed again.

  Les Invalides. The train stopped. Much more of the crowd poured out for this station, but Luke tried to hang back until the last second to see if Mouser exited. And this time he did, passing within fifteen feet of Luke, hurrying. He stepped off last, Mouser a good twenty feet ahead of him, the boyfriend and girlfriend between him and Luke.

  Luke considered ducking behind the garish orange pillars but decided he had to risk staying close. He kept following the couple. The girlfriend pulled a phone from her purse and started talking into it.

  At the top of the stairs, Mouser shot a glance across the crowd behind him. His gaze raked across where Luke walked but he did not notice him, wearing dark glasses, heavy cap and an ugly scarf across his chin and mouth.

  Mouser turned back toward the front.

  Luke hurried up the stairs, half-expecting to see Mouser waiting for him but he wasn’t. Mouser stood on a long moving sidewalk, feeding past abstract art, and Mouser returned his attention to the phone, texting, eyes close to the screen. An angry expression colored his face.

  Luke realized that the girl and her boyfriend were gone. Vanished. Maybe they’d tucked into another line.

  Mouser reached the end of the moving sidewalk and stepped off without a backward glance. Then Luke looked back at the end of the conveyor belt, spotted the couple from the train.

  Talking to a policeman.

  He had to hurry. If the cops stopped him before he stopped Mouser … the panic tore through his chest. He’d put his father and Aubrey in this danger; he had to save them from it.

  He hurried toward the station’s exit and took an escalator up. Ahead of him, across a stretch of parkland, was Les Invalides, the golden-domed complex of museums and monuments to French military history. To his right was the Musee d’Orsay, the more recent jewel of Parisian museums. Around him was a stretch of grass, a playground, people walking in lazy surrender to the brightening day.

  Fifty feet ahead of him a black BMW stopped, the back door opened, and Mouser slid into the back seat. Luke pivoted; he couldn’t risk Mouser seeing him and now the car was headed toward him.

  He heard the purr of the approaching motor and the air felt sealed in his lungs as he headed back toward the escalator that led down to Les Invalides station.

  The policeman came out of the station. Looking straight at him.

  Trapped. Between the cop and Mouser in the BMW. He took the risk and stopped. The sedan shot past, not braking. Luke crossed the street in the wake of the BMW’s passage.

  In the back seat, he saw the burr of Mouser’s head. Then the driver turned full to speak to Mouser.

  Henry Shawcross. His stepfather.

  Oh, you bastard, he thought. Finally, to see the betrayal with his own eyes, Mouser and Henry together. No way he could let them escape, no way. Luke’s eyes darted everywhere; no taxi stand in sight. No way to follow them. He ran across the street now, in a full-blown sprint, toward the Musee d’Orsay.

  He glanced back. The policeman was running now, too. Chasing him. The girlfriend had sold him out.

>   He reached the taxi stand at the museum and one of the cabs cut hard to the front of the line, earning a squeal of honks from the other drivers. Luke got in the back seat.

  ‘Thank you, go. Vite. Fast. Eiffel Tower.’

  The driver, a young man about his age, nodded and roared down the street. Past the winded policeman, who had stopped running.

  ‘The Tower, very hectic, too much traffic,’ the cabbie said. ‘A shooting …’ His English was okay.

  ‘Okay,’ Luke said. He didn’t care where they went. The black BMW was gone. How was he going to find his dad or Aubrey, now? ‘Then - the police station.’

  The cabbie kept watching him in the mirror. ‘You run from a policeman and now you want to go to the police.’

  ‘He mistook me for someone else.’

  The cabbie did not seem to understand.

  ‘Wait.’ Drummond had said that he and Henry and his dad had all worked for the State Department. If Quicksilver was the replacement for the Book Club, then he should turn to State for help. ‘Take me to the American Embassy, please.’

  ‘I must call for address.’ He flipped open a phone, spoke a flurry of what sounded like Russian into it.

  Luke fell against the back of the seat. The cabbie made turn after turn, speaking into the phone. He reached for a radio and turned it off.

  ‘How far to the embassy?’

  The cabbie clicked off the phone and took a hard turn into a quiet street. He slammed on the brakes and twisted in the seat. He raised a small gun from the seat and aimed it at Luke. A pop sound, and Luke felt a thump hit the crocheted wool of the ugly scarf and a slight weight lodge in the fabric. He grabbed at the gun, his head scraping the ceiling. He turned the little gun back toward the cabbie and it fired again.