The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

  “Promise me,” she said, lying curled next to me. “Promise me we’ll get our kids back.”

  “I promise,” I said. What else could I say?

  I just had to make it true. That promise bound us together. That promise would change everything.

  39

  Hotel Esper, Williamsburg

  WE SLEPT LATE, longer than we should have. Normally I can’t sleep late in New York because the rising noise of the traffic is an automatic alarm clock. When I woke up Leonie was showered and dressed and tapping at her laptop. “No intrusions at the building other than those at the security guard’s regularly appointed rounds.” She looked up at me and gave me a wan smile.

  What did I do? Kiss her, nuzzle her, pretend last night didn’t happen? My marriage with Lucy—full of deception and lies and my own blindness—convinced me that I suck at relationships and it wasn’t like we were going to have a long-term run. We would get our kids and part ways and never see each other again, except in our memories about the worst few days of our lives.

  The newspaper websites in New York and New Jersey carried no mention of two bodies discovered at the abandoned Associated Languages School in Morris County.

  “I’ll go get us some breakfast,” I said. Leonie made the noise one makes when one is absorbed in a computer screen. Again, like Lucy.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I thought about what you said last night,” she said. “I’m going to find out who that driver was.”

  “He doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “You’re not working alone,” she said. “Why presume that he is? We don’t know how much of a head start we have on finding Jack. We may have none. And I’m not going to sit here and fret and wait and do nothing while waiting for Jack to show up.”

  I walked to a diner on the corner and got breakfast for us to go: mushroom and spinach omelets, hash browns, fruit, bacon, coffee, orange juice. You eat when you can because you never know when you might get your next meal on days like today.

  When I came back we ate. I tried to make conversation.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  She seemed to measure her answer by staring into her Styrofoam coffee cup.

  “I know your real name isn’t Leonie, that you live under a false name.”

  “Trust me, it’s better you not know much about me. I am infinitely boring.”

  “I know that’s not true,” I said with a smile.

  She smiled back, just for a moment. “You, where are you from?”

  “All over. My parents worked for a relief agency. My mom’s a pediatric surgeon, my dad’s an administrator. I lived in over twenty different countries before I was eighteen.” I finished my coffee. “If I don’t make it, and you get my son back from Anna, you can take him to my parents. They live in New Orleans. Alexander and Simone Capra. They’re in the phone book.”

  “Are you close to them?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Why?”

  “My brother died and it ruined their hearts. They either want to take over my life entirely or shut me out completely. Him dying made them a little crazy.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He went to Afghanistan, to do relief work like they’d done for years, and he and his best friend from college, they got captured by the Taliban. Their throats were cut in a propaganda video.”

  “Oh, my God,” Leonie said. “I’m so sorry.” It was about the best thing she could say. Really, it’s so horrible, it shocks people. You cannot imagine what it is like to see your brother die, helplessly. To see his friend die. Then to see them discussed on every news channel, as though they are just names to learn, Danny Capra, Zalmay Qureshi, not people, just distant unfortunates, just names. “That was when I joined the CIA.”

  “But you’re not with them anymore.”

  “When your wife betrays the CIA, it kind of destroys your career path.”

  “I would think.”

  “A constant cloud of suspicion.” I stood up and shoved my Styrofoam food holder in the trash. “So we parted ways.”

  “And she had this baby while you were apart?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she like? Your wife?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m just curious. You seem too smart a guy to be easily fooled.”

  “We all have our blind spots. She was one as large as the Sahara to me.”

  “Sometimes we don’t pick wisely.”

  “No. And the price we pay is very heavy.”

  Leonie turned back to her computer.

  “Any luck with tracing the driver?”

  “No,” she said. Not looking at me.

  “Really? No track on his driver’s license or his limo plates?” She had memorized the plates during the long haul out of Manhattan and New Jersey, following him.

  “Stolen, I guess,” she said. Still not looking at me.

  I stood up and watched the Ming building with my binoculars. Two o’clock couldn’t come soon enough for me. I needed inside that building now, in between the last pass of the security guard and Jack’s (presumed) meeting with August.

  And then I thought of a way.

  40

  Hotel Esper, Williamsburg

  I LEFT LEONIE IN HER ROOM and went down to the lobby. I called Russell Ming’s property company, now owned by his wife.

  “Ming Properties,” the woman answering the phone said.

  “Hi, may I speak to,” and I looked again at the name I’d jotted down, the one under the number on the Ming Properties sign, “Beth Marley?”

  “This is she.” She sounded bright and enthusiastic, like talking to me was the highlight of her day. I’m sure it was.

  “My name is Sam Capra, and I’m interested in the building in Williamsburg.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “I own The Last Minute bar, over by Bryant Park.”

  “I know that bar!” she said.

  “Oh, that’s great. Would it be possible to see the Williamsburg property today?”

  “Today might be difficult, sir. What about tomorrow?”

  “I’m just in town for the day. In fact, I might be interested in leasing the whole building. I just happened to see it and think it’s perfect for what I need.”

  “Well. Okay, let me do a little juggling.” I could hear her flipping papers. “Sure. I could do eleven o’clock, would that work?”

  “You’re so kind. That will be great. I’ll just meet you there, okay?”

  “Thanks, Mr. Capra.”

  I hung up and went back to the hotel room. “Well, that was easy. I have an appointment.”

  Leonie, crouching over her computer, didn’t answer.

  41

  Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan

  RICARDO BRAUN WAS NOT CONCERNED with legalities as much as expediency: after he had discovered the limo driver’s body, he had Fagin and the Oliver Twists setting up electronic surveillance on every person in New York connected to Jack Ming, with careful instructions to report only to Braun, not to August Holdwine or anyone else in Special Projects. Braun preferred that Jack Ming’s identity not be known to anyone else.

  So Fagin and the Twists watched Jack Ming’s friends on his abandoned Facebook account (which were few, mostly friends from his NYU years), a few family friends, his father’s property company. The initial surveillance centered on monitoring Facebook pages and personal email accounts. The only phones to be tapped via a hack were the phone of his father’s company and the cell phones of his two closest college friends.

  The silence on Jack was deafening. There was no mention of him at all.

  Until a mid-morning phone call to Ming Properties struck Braun’s interest, not because it was about Jack Ming. No. It was about Sam Capra.

  Braun called the sisters. He hoped they could contain their crazy long enough to do the job the exact way he wanted it done. He got Lizzie on the phone. He would have preferred Meggie. She was the
more reasonable one. But you didn’t put off Lizzie. She held grudges.

  Lizzie listened to his instructions. “The two men, Ming and Capra. Can we play with them for a while?” The sisters had a cabin in upstate New York where they entertained special guests when the need took Lizzie, or when Braun needed someone interrogated, with guaranteed results.

  “If you needn’t kill them straight out, they’re yours. I would like to know what they both know. Get that out of them and report back to me.”

  “What about anyone else with them?”

  He thought of August, with regret. “You can kill anyone else if need be. If there is a woman named Mila with him, I want proof of her death.” The sisters needn’t know about the bounty. He would collect it himself, throw them a little bonus.

  Lizzie laughed. “Thanks for the work.”

  She hung up and looked at her sister. “Go get dressed. We have a lead on the job.”

  “All right, but you promised to make those phone calls about the cruise.” Her sister Meggie stood up from the couch. She had been reading a Special Projects file on Sam Capra that Braun had just emailed her. Know thine enemy.

  “Yes, yes,” Lizzie said. “I’ll get to it.”

  “Don’t put it off,” Meggie said. “They book up like a year in advance.”

  “Cruises are for old people,” Lizzie said.

  “That is completely untrue.”

  “They keep a morgue on those boats because so many old people die during cruises. I saw that on TV,” Lizzie said.

  The sisters considered this interesting tidbit.

  “You are not going to have fun on a cruise. I mean, that kind of fun,” Meggie said. “Parameters for today?”

  “Capture if we can, kill if we must. Capra’s sort of a pretty boy, don’t you think?”

  “Not really.”

  “His file says he runs parkour. That daredevil running where you jump from building to building.” Lizzie’s smile sparkled. “Do you think I’ll get to chase him? I better use a weapon that helps me catch him.”

  “No.” Meggie rolled her eyes. “He won’t get a chance to run. Let’s focus, Lizzie.”

  “Your standards are far too high,” Lizzie said. “Not every apple has to be perfect, you got to give it a big bite to see how sweet it tastes.” She glanced over at her sister’s laptop screen, at Sam Capra’s photo looking out at her. Brownish-blond hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a full mouth. “I like his face. It would take a lot of time and careful thought to ruin it, truly. Those cheekbones, probably you’d need a touch of acid for them. And that runner’s body, lovely and spare. Braun had said I could play with them if we aren’t forced to kill them outright.”

  Meggie didn’t care much for the fixated tone in her sister’s voice. This was always the way with Lizzie: an idea elbowed its way to the front of her mind and bit down in Lizzie’s brain with deep teeth, and wouldn’t let go until it was appeased. Her sister’s hungers were dark ones.

  “Guns?”

  “Naturally, but if we want to keep them for a while I don’t want to deal with gunshot wounds. Bandages are such a pain. I’m in kind of a Japanese mood today.”

  “Fine, but I don’t want you playing all week, you said you would research a cruise and book it.”

  “Fine, whatever. I’ll bring the brochures.”

  42

  Ming Properties office, Lower Manhattan

  MY LUCKY DAY, Beth Marley thought. She’d already dodged a bullet: the other two employees in the office were out today, downed with food poisoning brought on by a highly questionable chicken curry they’d eaten while lingering at an unforgivably long lunch yesterday, one that Beth hadn’t gone on because, you know, she was too busy doing all three of their jobs.

  And now this. Beth Marley tapped the stack of papers straight on her desk and thought: well, I can’t wait to tell Sandra that I might lease an entire building. Then Empress Ming’d have to get her ladder and climb down off my ass.

  Beth canceled her lunch with her best friend via her BlackBerry, apologizing profusely, and saying that she might pay her back with drinks later in celebration of a big deal. And this would show Sandra Ming she could seriously handle the work: Mrs. Ming always looked at her as though she weren’t quite sure Beth could tie her shoes much less manage properties around the city.

  She sat down at her computer, summoned up the web browser, Googled Sam Capra. She got a number of hits relating to some poor guy getting killed in Afghanistan, with a brother who had granted a couple of interviews as the family spokesman; probably not related to this client. Not a lot on him. Hmmm. She Googled The Last Minute and found the bar’s website. She’d met girlfriends there for drinks a couple of times. Well, if he was thinking of a bar in the building, it would probably be high-dollar. The Last Minute was a well-done space, clearly money had been dropped on it. She picked up the phone to call Sandra, and then decided to wait until she actually had good news. If she told Sandra she had a fish on the line but then didn’t reel it in, she’d never hear the end of it.

  She was gathering her purse and her phone to leave when the office door opened. Which was weird, because there was an electronic passkey and you couldn’t just open the door. Oh, she thought, as two women stepped inside. I must not have shut it all the way. They were both stunning. One was blond, hair pulled up into a bun, tall, with cool green eyes and cheekbones that Beth instantly coveted. The other was a brunette, with lovely chocolate eyes, her hair trimmed into a stylish short cut. Beth instantly wanted to ask: where do you get your hair done? Both women were, oddly though, dressed identically, in formfitting gray pinstripe suits, and silky black dress shirts.

  Beth couldn’t think of women who voluntarily dressed alike. She thought: missionaries?

  “Hi, may I help you?” she said.

  One of the women shut the door behind her. The other stood in front of Beth’s desk and smiled. “Yes. Are you Ms. Marley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Super.” She gave a bright smile in return. “This is what we’re going to need from you. Your cell phone, your car keys, and the keys to the building in Williamsburg. Also, the alarm access code. Is there a closet where we can lock you up?”

  Beth gave a nervous, uncertain laugh. “Is this a joke?”

  “No. We’re keeping your appointment at the building. So. Cell phone, please, and the closet would be where?”

  “Get out of here!” Beth reached for the desk phone. Security was one press of the button away.

  The brunette slammed a fist into Beth’s face. Hard. Beth had never been hit in the face in her life and the pain astonished her. Another blow to her throat cut off her scream, a third busted her nose. Faster than she would have thought, the brunette was over the desk and one hand was on her mouth, the other on her throat. Crushing against her windpipe.

  “Listen to me. I don’t wish to kill you. We have a phone tap on you, so we know you’re meeting Sam Capra. It would be really pointless for you to die over a cell phone and an appointment. Yes?”

  Beth nodded, too dazed to cry, her nose bleeding, her mouth covered by the woman’s hand. The pressure on her windpipe eased very slightly.

  “In fact, you won’t die. Instead my sister will go kill your seven-year-old daughter in Ridgewood, and I will go kill your father in Queens. I often find people care about the lives of loved ones more than their own.” She gave a little shrug. “Aren’t people funny?”

  Terror flooded Beth.

  “Will you play nice nice?”

  Beth nodded. Very eagerly.

  “Now don’t you get blood on my suit, I will be most unhappy,” the brunette said, as though Beth could stop the blood oozing from her nose.

  They shoved her into the small kitchen that doubled as an office supplies storage area. They handcuffed her to the sink pipe.

  “Now. The access code. If you lie to me your family’s dead. But we’ll come back here first and shoot off bits and pieces.”

  Beth did not lie. Sh
e gave them the code. The pain in her face was now agony. She tried to fight back the tears.

  “Very good.” The brunette pulled Beth’s cell phone from her purse. “Where are the property keys?”

  “My desk drawer. Tagged as Williamsburg.” Her voice trembled.

  The blonde vanished, returned in a moment, the keys dangling.

  “Please don’t hurt my family, please…”

  “Beth, chillax, we’re all cool. You’re just going to tell whoever finds you that you were mugged. By two big Chinese guys. Just provide a couple of pointless yet specific details. They wore red shirts. They had body odor. Two details, no other. You’ll be very convincing. You never saw us. You will never speak of us. If you deviate from that story, your daughter and your father will die, guaranteed, no matter how long it takes. Because the threat against your family stands as long as you live. It doesn’t have an expiration date. But if you talk, then your family has an expiration date. They will die and the white lilies at their funerals will be from me and my sister. Are we clear?”

  Beth nodded, tears brimming her eyes. They stuffed a washcloth from the kitchen drawer in her mouth, bound her lips with tape.

  “Have a nice day,” the brunette said, and they left her.

  43

  Hotel Esper, Williamsburg

  I DECIDED TO SUIT UP for the meeting. I wanted to look like a legitimate business owner for the property management company, and I thought, given that I had a black eye, I needed every ounce of respectability I could muster. And I didn’t want Jack Ming, if he was hiding in the building, to see me as a soldier. I wanted to look like the other side of my life, the owner of a really nice bar. When I worked undercover for Special Projects I quickly learned that most high-level criminal groups adopt a stylish look. I would prefer myself to always be in T-shirt and jeans but life demands more. So I figured out, like a personal shopper to an assassin would, what suits worked for my build as well as what I could wear if I had to fight while dressed to the nines.