The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

  “Sam, stop it,” Leonie said, her voice a razor wire.

  I shrugged. He smiled.

  There are two kinds of killers. Those that don’t kill unless they believe they absolutely must, and those who kill with a greater ease. The driver was the second type. He liked the power. He liked the control. He was a small man on the inside, and killing made him feel big. I had made him feel small, seen the truth of who he was. It’s not complicated. The reaction tells you whether or not you can kill them without hesitation. I believe in do unto others, you know.

  “You throw her away easily,” he said to me. He looked down at Leonie, as though considering what a waste that would be. She stared right back up into his eyes, the gun pressed now against her forehead, and ten feet away I could feel the fury radiating off her, the fire of inchoate anger and frustration.

  “Same as your boss is doing to you. Throwing you away.”

  Later, replaying it in my head, I think that phrase did it. An accidental tripwire inside Leonie’s head. The idea of someone being thrown away. I didn’t know until much later how much of a nerve I struck with her, and at the time I thought she was thinking of Daniel and her daughter. I didn’t intend for her to fight the battle.

  I just wanted him consumed with doubt, with greed, and if I got him close to me, to talk, then I could take him. That was when Leonie attacked. She timed it right. She did her best. Now, a person bound to a chair, it’s not really much of an attack—more of a low-aiming shove. She took advantage of the fact that he was standing right next to her and she slammed her weight, chair and all, into him, fueled by an incoherent rage.

  Because he was going to interfere, and he would cause her child to die, to be thrown away.

  Leonie knocked into the driver like a knee-hugging tackle, her feet kept propelling into him, and he staggered to the side, crashing into Sandra Ming, who obligingly screamed.

  I ran forward.

  Time didn’t slow. It always slows in the movies but in this dirty, abandoned old house it seemed to speed up, to accelerate beyond my control. The driver’s gun spoke, twice spitting, and I heard a scream, close as my ear as I dived toward them. The driver threw Leonie off him—picked her up, chair and ropes, and threw her at me—he was counting on me being kind and catching her. I didn’t. I ducked and the legs of the chair brushed my back. She slammed into the wall behind me, high up, falling to the gritty wooden floor. But throwing her off him meant he was off-balance, both hands employed in tossing her, and I charged at him. I pile-drove him hard into the wall, jamming forearm against windpipe, looking to crush it. But I hit him a fraction too high and I caught more jawline than throat.

  We snapped back into the wall and he hooked a leg behind me. I fell and then I saw the gun, firm in his hand, and his wrist pivoted toward me. I caught the gun’s barrel and pushed it away. He lay atop me, in the stronger position, and I kept the gun at bay with my right hand. My left hand I used to make short, hard chops in every vulnerable spot: throat, solar plexus, testicles. Three fast brutal ones. He hissed out bad breath in sharp pain and I got a better grip and broke his wrist. The crack was loud. I slammed elbow into throat and he coughed and spat blood.

  Money versus child. You tell me who fights harder.

  Leonie landed on us. Her chair splintering had unbound her from the ropes. She pulled the gun away from him. He tried to lever an elbow back in her face and he missed.

  She got the gun. But instead of shooting him she ran, simply trying to get the weapon out of his reach. She fired a round into Mrs. Ming’s handcuff, anchored to the top rung of the chair, and pulled the older woman out of the room. Leaving me to fight the driver.

  He slammed a roundhouse into my face with his good hand and I fell back against Mrs. Ming’s damaged wooden chair. It was ladder-backed, no arms, worn with age. A weapon at hand. I grabbed the chair with one hand and swung its weight into him. Then again. Then again, each time dodging the blows he tried to connect against me. He screamed, in pain and frustration.

  I had a good grip now and I swung for all I was worth. One of the legs cracked, separated from its weak nails, and I flung it aside. He rolled and I smashed the chair into the floor, missing him, and the seat, torn from the chair, skittered across the floor. I was conscious of blood masking his face and coating my hands. He snarled; he was coming apart, same as the chair. He knew I was going to beat him to death.

  He scrambled backward now, fleeing me, retreating back toward a window.

  “Tell me who your boss is and I’ll let you live,” I said.

  He made a noise and then he went backward, through the window, arms up to protect his battered body, flinging himself out onto the grassy hillside. It was only about a five-foot drop but he fell and rolled like he’d plunged from a great height.

  The last big fragment of the chair still in my hand was a length of the ladder-back, with bits of wood dangling off it. I stripped them free; now all that was left of the chair in my grip was a two-foot length of tough oak, its top splintered into a sharp spear.

  I jumped out the window after him.

  He staggered through the trees, survival instinct fueling his run. But I’d broken him—maybe ribs along with the wrist—and his speed wasn’t top. Today had spun out of his control and he was bent by the reversal of fortune. He dodged me through the shade of the oaks and as we ran downhill he stumbled over a white outcrop of rock and he took a cruel fall.

  I landed on top of him, knees digging in, the sharp wood raised above my head. “Talk,” I said.

  He spat at me.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “You are so dead. You don’t even know who you’ve pissed off.”

  “Tell me.”

  He smiled through a bloody gash across his mouth. “No.”

  I showed him the makeshift spear and said, “I will run this between your ribs and then stir.”

  “I was told to come get the Ming woman and her son if he was here. Bring them here. See what evidence the Ming kid has.”

  “And to hold us.”

  “Yes. For questioning.”

  “But you know about Mila.”

  “My boss does. He knew you were connected to her. I never heard of her until tonight.”

  “Who do you work for?”

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

  “You’re lying. He has to have a name.”

  “Do you think he’s ever told me his real name?”

  “How does he give you work?”

  “I get a phone call. I do what he asks, and a lot of money appears for me in a Caymans account.”

  “You’re ex-what?”

  “I used to be Latvian intelligence,” he said.

  Very small spy agency. “Didn’t it pay well?”

  “No. Money is better doing freelance work. I drive limo here, I do what my boss asks me. He knew my background before he ever called me. Please.” He could see that if I hammered the spear into him it would slide deep into his windpipe. “Let me go,” the driver said. “Please.”

  I knew he would not have shown any mercy to me or Leonie.

  “Get up,” I said. “Give me your wallet, your car keys.”

  He obeyed. He wheezed; I’d broken ribs with the chair. His face was a bloodied wreck and his shirt and pants were torn. He wouldn’t look at my eyes. “You can’t leave me behind here, he’ll kill me. I know he’ll kill me.”

  The wooden, pseudo-spear felt heavy in my hand. But I couldn’t kill him in cold blood. “Start walking. You can stop when you cross into Pennsylvania. If I see you again I’ll kill you without hesitation.”

  He nodded. He stumbled, fell to the ground.

  “Get up,” I said.

  He nodded again, agreeing with me that getting up was a capital idea, and I leaned down to yank him to his feet.

  The rock crashed into the side of my head and I went down to my knees, eyes thrumming with pain. He scrabbled across me, trying to seize the improvised spear and shoving my arm
into the mud. Then he raised the rock again, slammed it into my face. I twisted my head so he missed my nose but hit my shuttered right eye. It hurt like hell.

  I felt the butt of the spear grind into the mud and so I pushed him up. His feet scrabbled in the muck, obliging me, and then I drove the spear into him. It hurt him, he howled, but it didn’t pierce his side. He writhed away and then I was on top of him and I drove it, point down, hard into his belly.

  I walked back up to the house, bleary with pain and my mouth tasting of puke. My eye was swollen nearly shut. It hurt but it wasn’t anything more than a black eye, I thought, not a broken socket. I stumbled and kept my feet moving.

  Leonie stood in the door, shivering. With my good eye I could see her clutching at her elbows.

  “Mrs. Ming…” she said. “Hurry, in here. Where’s the driver?”

  “Dead.” I didn’t add it hadn’t been a good death to see.

  “You killed him?”

  “That’s usually what dead means. Thanks for the help. Thanks for shooting him once you got the gun and everything. Really appreciate it.”

  “I had to try and help Mrs. Ming…” she moaned, and then I ran into the house.

  The driver’s stray bullet had punctured her chest. Her skin was pale and gray as a clouded sky, blood easing from her mouth, her nose. Leonie had tried to staunch the bleeding. I knelt by her.

  “Mrs. Ming.”

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Mrs. Ming. Where has Jack gone?”

  Her bloodied lip thinned. “Won’t tell you… You people want to kill him.”

  “Is he going to go to his father’s building in Brooklyn? He took the keys from your house, I think.”

  “Tell you nothing… You want to hurt my son.”

  “I can help protect your son,” I said.

  “Liar.”

  Oh, God, please, I thought, please help her talk to me. “Mrs. Ming. I worked for the CIA. I don’t want to hurt your son. Look at me.” Her face focused on my bruises. “I just killed the man who kidnapped you. I’m trying to help you. I lied to that man. So I’m Jack’s only hope. The CIA is looking for him.”

  “The CIA called me…” she said. “Liars. All liars.” Her eyelids fluttered.

  Her words hit me hard as a punch. “Who in the CIA called you? Who?”

  Her lips moved, and her breath gave what sounded like a final hush. “They wanted a deal… protect Jack, protect me… if you came I was to keep you at the house until they got there…”

  “Who in the CIA did you talk to, Mrs. Ming?”

  But she didn’t want to talk about that, not with fewer breaths than fingers left. Mrs. Ming said, “My son… help my son, please.”

  What was I supposed to promise her? I was supposed to kill her son to save mine. I took her hand. “Jack will be all right,” I said. “I promise you. I promise you.”

  “I loved him,” she said. “Forgave him…” And the words, the breath, faltered and with a bubble of blood at her lips she was gone.

  “Oh, my God,” Leonie said.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. She stared at the dead woman. She pressed fingers against her throat, so as to be sure there was nothing to be done. “What do we do? His boss is coming…”

  “I know. These are our choices. I know where Jack Ming is hiding. He might be there if we go there now. Or we can wait and see if the driver’s boss shows up, learn who we’re up against. We can’t do both.”

  “Jack Ming,” she said. “No question.”

  32

  Manhattan

  LEONIE DROVE, I sat hunched in the seat. She smoked a cigarette, blowing out the cracked window. I told her she wasn’t supposed to smoke in the rental car and she’d given me an incredulous stare and then laughed and kept smoking.

  The phone call came as we were driving silently back into Manhattan. I answered.

  “Yes?” I said.

  Anna. “We have a confirmation that Jack Ming is going to meet his CIA contact tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow. What time?”

  “He has told the contact he’ll call him at noon with instructions.”

  So Anna had someone inside the CIA.

  “I know where Jack wants to meet them. So your worries are nearly at an end, Anna.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “I said tell me.”

  “We ran into a problem. I think you might have a leak on your side.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Jack Ming’s mother is kidnapped and now dead, and so is her kidnapper. If you don’t have a leak, then a third party is interfering in our work.”

  A chastised silence. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’ll talk to you after Jack Ming is dead.”

  She hung up.

  “You can’t cross her,” Leonie said. “She holds all the cards.”

  “No,” I said. “She only thinks she does.”

  “So who’s trying to screw us? Is it the CIA?”

  “Anyone could say that they’re CIA,” I said. “I don’t know. But as long as we find Jack Ming first, it won’t matter.”

  “Who is this Mila?”

  How do you explain Mila? “A friend.”

  “Who has a price on her head.” Her voice was steady.

  “An interesting friend.”

  “You were just trying to panic the driver.”

  “I wasn’t going to sell out anyone, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Thank you. You got us out of that alive.”

  “We’re in this together.”

  “Yes,” she said, but now we believed it in a way we hadn’t before. She fell silent. I thought about how Special Projects might have identified their informant as Jack Ming in the past few hours. I thought about Fagin. I thought about him talking to his bosses at Special Projects and whether anyone there would hire an ex-Latvian spy and current limo driver to do their dirty work.

  We drove to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the address of Russell Ming’s property, the one for which Jack had presumably taken the keys. All the windows were darkened. It was a squat, four-story building—it wore the look of having once been a small factory. It had not been redone into shops or studios or apartments for the throngs of young, hip professionals and former Manhattanites crowding into Williamsburg. The windows were boarded. A sign on the side read MING PROPERTIES.

  “Do we break in?” she asked. Her voice was strained.

  “Yes. He could be inside right now.”

  I picked the locks and we went inside.

  An alarm sounded.

  “Hell,” I said. We bolted back to the car. From a side street we watched. First a private security car responded. The guard went inside, stayed inside, turned off the alarm.

  “I don’t think Jack Ming is there,” Leonie said.

  After a few minutes the guard came back out, locked the door, did a final walkthrough around the building, and then left.

  “No Jack,” she said.

  But he’d taken these keys for some reason. If he wasn’t here now, he soon would be. I refused to consider the possibility that I was utterly wrong.

  “Do we wait here? Wait here for him to come?” she said.

  The pain in my head throbbed. My eye was nearly swollen shut; I was going to have a shiner and I didn’t want a shiner. Black eyes are memorable. I needed to be invisible.

  “We need a vantage point,” I said. “We need to be able to watch the building, know how often the private security comes and goes.”

  We drove past the building again and our headlights danced on the sign. Security by Proxima Systems. She looked them up on her iPhone. Then she pulled Mrs. Ming’s phone from her pocket, listened to her voicemail and dialed the number.

  “Proxima New York.”

  “Yes, this is Sandra Ming of Ming Properties. I own a building in Williamsburg for which you provide security.” Leonie made her voice brisk, slightly deeper.

  “Yes, ma’
am, and may I have your account passcode.”

  She hesitated about five seconds. “Jack.”

  We could hear typing and then “Thank you, ma’am, how can I help you?”

  I stared at her. How had she known?

  “I need to confirm the security check schedule for that building. I’ve heard from other property owners that there might be a crime increase going on in the neighborhood and I just got a phone call that there had been a breach.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Typing noises. “The guard comes by at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m., then again at noon, with up to a ten-minute variant. If he will be later than that we contact you. Do you want to increase your patrol profile?”

  “Not now. Thank you,” Leonie said. She hung up.

  “You should have canceled the service,” I said dryly.

  “Generally that requires a face-to-face meeting, or a separate confirmation password,” Leonie said. “I didn’t want to arouse attention. We know our time windows now.”

  “How did you know the password?”

  “Because I’m a mom. Moms use their kids’ or pets’ names, or a variant as passwords, like eighty percent of the time. It was worth a try.”

  “So we know when the guard comes. Yes, and there’s a long gap when Jack and August can meet.” I considered. “And I don’t think Jack is going to camp out inside the building. He risks being caught by a security guard as well, or being noticed. But we need to find a place to watch from, to be sure.” I scanned the buildings. “There. Two away. That’s a hotel.”

  33

  Hotel Esper, Williamsburg/The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan

  LEONIE GOT THE ROOM at the Williamsburg hotel, a trendy, high-end spot with the meaningless name of Hotel Esper (was it short for esperanza, hope? Or did it imply you could read minds while a guest there? I wondered); just one room, with a window facing the Ming building. We were going to be awake in shifts and if anyone else—say a rogue element in the CIA—was looking for us, they’d be looking maybe for a man and a woman checking in together but in separate rooms. I drove back to our Manhattan hotel and washed my face clean of dirt and blood. I looked okay except for the black eye. It wasn’t so bad. I gathered all Leonie’s notes and papers and stuffed them into her small suitcase. I put on fresh, untorn clothes and collected our bags and checked out for us both.