At the end of the video, the woman backed away, the hood slipping down. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes wide with desire. Miss Shirley froze the playback of the video and studied the woman’s face.
“Abbey Laurent,” she snarled. “Well, well, aren’t you the little slut.”
TWENTY-TWO
ABBEY recognized Holly d’Angelo from the photo that the Carillon tech had loaded on her phone. Peter Restak’s girlfriend looked like an Italian firecracker, tiny and explosive. Her feet pounded on the gym treadmill as if she were running a hundred-yard dash, small legs pumping, sweat glowing on her face and dripping from her hooked nose. Her eyebrows were thick and black, and her long dark hair bounced in a ponytail behind her. She wore a red tank top and formfitting shorts.
The room was loud with the metal clang of exercise equipment, but Holly seemed too deep in concentration to notice anything outside her workout. When Abbey mounted the treadmill next to her, the other woman didn’t turn her head. Abbey switched on the machine and ran beside her at a much more relaxed pace. Every couple of minutes, she glanced over with a smile, but Holly paid no attention.
Half an hour later, Holly still showed no signs of slowing her relentless run. Abbey dialed down the speed on her own machine to a walk, and after another ten minutes, she noticed Holly finally doing the same thing. Abbey climbed off the treadmill and did a series of stretching exercises as she waited for the other woman to finish. When Holly turned off the machine, her entire outfit was soaking wet, and her face was beet red. She did cooldown exercises of her own, and when she was in the midst of pelvic squats with her hands on her hips, Abbey decided to make her move.
“Excuse me.”
Holly looked up at Abbey. When she spoke, her voice had a nasal Jersey accent. “What do you want?”
“I apologize for bothering you, but you look so familiar. I knew it as soon as I saw you on the treadmill. I’m sure we’ve met somewhere.”
“We haven’t met,” Holly replied. “And if this is a pickup line, it needs work.”
Abbey laughed. “No, no, seriously, I know you. It’s Holly, isn’t it?”
The woman’s face showed surprise. “That’s right. Who are you?”
“Britney Jenks,” Abbey lied.
“I don’t remember you,” Holly said.
“Oh, I don’t suppose you would. It was at some party last year. Tribeca, maybe. All those lofts look alike. I remember you were there, because you were with your boyfriend, and I knew him from one of my social groups on Prescix. Pete Restak.”
“You have an account on Prescix?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Abbey said.
“And you remember Peter?”
“Sure. Tech guy, really smart, one of those hacker wizards, right? Dirty-blond hair, man bun.”
“That’s him,” Holly replied.
“Are you two still seeing each other?”
“Why do you want to know? Do you want to ask him out?”
“Me? Oh, no, I’ve got a boyfriend. I just noticed that Pete had dropped out of my Prescix feed. He was always good about helping me when I had computer questions. I’m pretty hopeless about that stuff. I was actually thinking about reconnecting with him, but I realized I had no way to get in touch.”
Holly took a long time to reply. She wrapped a towel around the back of her neck and held on to the ends with her hands. “Well, Peter and I broke up months ago. I dumped his ass.”
“I’m sorry. That’s too bad. This is probably a little awkward, but you wouldn’t still have contact info for him, would you? My laptop seems to have bad juju right now, and I don’t have a few hundred bucks to replace it. I thought maybe Pete could perform an exorcism or something.”
Abbey smiled. Holly didn’t. Her flushed face never moved. “Yeah, I probably have his number. My phone’s in my locker. Come on back, and I’ll get it for you.”
“Thanks, that’s great. I appreciate it.”
Holly led the way. The woman walked quickly, the same way she ran on the treadmill, and Abbey hurried to keep up with her. They pushed through doors on the other side of the studio into the changing room, where stainless steel lockers gleamed on the nearest wall. Two or three other women were inside. Abbey followed Holly along a row of wooden benches to the far end, where Holly opened the combination lock on one of the lockers. Her street clothes were inside, along with a gym bag and purse.
“My phone’s in here,” Holly said.
She dug in her purse, but then with the speed of a cobra, she twisted around and grabbed Abbey by the shoulders and threw her against the lockers. Abbey’s head banged against the steel. Holly pressed her forearm hard into Abbey’s throat, and with her other hand, she brought the tip of a miniature Swiss Army knife up to within an inch of Abbey’s eye. Holly’s face contorted with anger, and her breath was warm and sour.
“Okay, who the hell are you?”
Abbey choked as she tried to get out the words. “I already told you.”
“What you told me was a lie. Anybody who knows Peter Restak knows he doesn’t go by Pete. He’s never Pete. And Peter never had a Prescix account under his own name. No way. He told me if I wanted to stay safe, I should keep my life offline, the way he did. He said Prescix messes with your head.”
“I—I must have made a mistake.”
“A mistake? I don’t think so. Who are you, and what do you want? And how the hell did you get my name?”
“I told you … a party.”
Holly shook her head. “Me and Peter? A loft party? We’d never be caught dead in that scene.”
One of the other women in the locker room shouted from the showers. “Hey, Holl, you okay? You want me to call 911?”
Holly pushed even harder with her forearm against Abbey’s throat. The blade of the tiny knife loomed huge in front of Abbey’s pupil. “What do you think? Should I have her call 911? Because I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be very happy explaining yourself to the cops. You’ve got five seconds to decide. Start talking, or we get the NYPD over here and you can talk to them.”
Abbey tried to nod. “Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you the truth.”
Holly glanced over her shoulder and called to the other woman. “It’s all right, Steph. I’ve got it under control.”
She let Abbey go, then took her by the wrist and shoved her down roughly on the bench. Abbey rubbed her throat and inhaled loudly. Holly folded up the knife and stuffed it back in her purse, and then she sat down next to her. The dank smell of her sweat was in Abbey’s nose.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Holly asked.
“Who?”
“Peter’s group. The ones he wouldn’t talk about.”
“You mean Medusa?”
“Is that what they’re called? Peter never gave me a name. He never told me anything. But whoever they are, they’re into some serious shit.”
“I’m not part of them,” Abbey told her. “I swear.”
“Then who are you?”
Abbey sighed. Jason made covers and disguises look so easy, but it was different when you were face-to-face with a stranger. “My name’s Abbey Laurent. I’m a reporter. The fact is, I’m trying to expose that group. Right now, Peter Restak is the only contact I have that I know is Medusa. I need to find him.”
“Peter won’t tell you anything. He’s a true believer.”
“Do you know anything about what he’s doing?”
Holly shrugged. “You said it yourself. Peter’s a hacker. Sometimes he’d be up half the night on his computer, and it always seemed like something bad would go down the next day. He’d have the news on, watching some protest turn violent, and it was like he knew what was going to happen. I’d ask him about it, and he’d just say that the system was rotten and the only way to cleanse it was to get rid of the dead flesh. Pretty creepy stuff.”
“Is that why you broke up with him?”
“That, and he was cheating on me with some bitch from the group.”
&
nbsp; “Do you know who she was? Did you get a name? Or did you see them together?”
“No, I only know that she was a serious whack job. He had bite marks and bruises all over his body after she screwed him. He tried to give me some lame-ass excuse to cover for it like I was an idiot. I told him if that was what he wanted in bed, he wasn’t going to get it from me. So I kicked him to the curb.”
“When did you last see him?” Abbey asked.
“Six months ago. We broke up, but that wasn’t the end of it. About a week later, I got the crazy feeling that I was being followed. I was pretty sure somebody had been inside my apartment, too. Honestly, if you put me in a chair and made me swear, I think they still have cameras in my place. Sometimes I just get this weird feeling that I’m being watched. So when you showed up and started asking about Peter, I freaked.”
“I understand.”
“If you’re trying to expose this group, you better be careful.”
“Yeah. Believe me, I know, but I really do need to find him. Do you have any idea where he’s living?”
“He moves around a lot,” Holly told her. “He never leaves forwarding addresses. That should have been a red flag, right? After I dumped him, he moved a couple of weeks later, like he didn’t want me to be able to find him. But I didn’t like the idea of not knowing where he was. Somehow I always figured a day like this might come, when somebody would be looking to track him down. So I hung out in a park where I knew he liked to do his coding, and I spotted him. I followed him when he left. He was in a new place, an apartment on Tenth in Alphabet City. I don’t know whether he’s still there, though.”
“Thank you, Holly.”
“I have to shower and catch my train. I’ll get you the address.”
Holly scrolled through a few screens on her phone to find the exact address for Peter Restak’s apartment. As Abbey keyed the address into her own phone, Holly kicked off her sneakers, then peeled the damp red tank top off her torso and rolled off her shorts and underwear. Abbey’s eyes flicked casually across the woman’s naked body, and she couldn’t help but stop and stare when she spotted a tight round scar in the fleshy part of Holly’s shoulder above her left breast.
“I’m sorry,” Abbey said. “I don’t mean to pry, but is that a bullet wound?”
Holly looked down at her chest. “Oh, yeah. I got shot. Let me tell you, when boys compare their scars at the bar, I always win. They hate that.”
“How did it happen?”
“I was in the wrong place at the really, really wrong time. Peter’s a car buff, and he wanted to go to this antique car show. It was in a big empty lot across from the Lucky Nickel hotel in Las Vegas. November 3, 2018. That ring any bells?”
Abbey felt a wave of nausea and had to sit down on the bench. “You were there when Charles Hackman killed all those people.”
Holly rubbed the scar like it was some kind of charm. “Yeah. I was there. Believe me, I try to forget, but it’s tattooed on my brain. If that bullet had gone in another three inches lower, Hackman would have killed me, too.”
TWENTY-THREE
“HACKMAN?” Bourne asked Abbey when they met up at an outdoor table across from the Flatiron Building. “Holly d’Angelo was one of the people who got shot by Charles Hackman in Las Vegas?”
“Yes. And here’s the thing. Peter Restak was in the crowd, too. Holly said it was his idea to go to the car show.”
Jason closed his eyes. He was back there again, lost in the chaos, hearing the cracks of the rifle and seeing people fall. “Restak knew the shooting was about to go down. All this time, I’ve thought Nova was killed by my agency, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe Medusa killed Nova. But why? And damn it, I saw one of my own people carrying away her body!”
“Jason, I know you said it wasn’t safe to tell me the name of your agency, but I want to know anyway. Please.”
Bourne stared at the young woman in front of him. A woman he liked. A woman he was attracted to. He thought about the women he’d loved in his past lives. Marie. Nova. They’d died because of him. It was an inevitable cycle, repeated over and over. He got close to a woman, he pulled her into his world, and she paid the price. They were the sacrifices for his sins. He didn’t want that fate for Abbey Laurent.
“It’s my choice, Jason,” she went on, as if she could feel his reluctance. “I know the risks.”
He felt as if he were signing her death warrant by saying the word. “Treadstone.”
“You worked for them?”
“They trained me. They made me who I am. They made all of us that way, custom-designed to be killers. For a long time, I believed in them, even when everyone in Washington was trying to shut them down. I believed in what I was doing. And then they murdered Nova. Or at least, that’s what I thought happened. Now I’m not sure. I need to get to Peter Restak and find out what he knows. If he was in Las Vegas during the shooting, he has the answers.”
“I’m coming with you,” Abbey said.
“That’s not a good idea. I should go alone.”
“Jason, I told you, I’m in.”
He wanted to argue with her. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t safe. He also knew that if he found Restak, he would have to break the man to get him to talk. Torture worked faster on some people than others, but with a Medusa operative, Bourne was certain he’d have to inflict excruciating pain before the man cracked.
He didn’t want Abbey to see that. He didn’t want her to see that he was capable of those things, but she already knew who he was.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find him.”
They crossed the sidewalk park to Fifth Avenue and hailed a cab, and Abbey gave the driver the address in Alphabet City for Peter Restak. The early evening traffic crawled as they headed east across town. Horns blared around them as backed-up vehicles stalled at the lights, and pedestrians streamed around the cars across the intersections. When they reached Second Avenue, they made faster progress until they got to the East Village. There, only a few blocks from Restak’s apartment, traffic ground to a standstill. The taxi driver threw up his arms in disgust.
Not far away, Jason heard sirens, and he made a snap decision.
“We’re getting out here,” he told the driver suddenly, pushing cash through the slot. He took Abbey’s arm and dragged her onto the sidewalk. They were near the playgrounds and basketball courts of Tompkins Square Park.
“What’s going on?” Abbey asked. “Why get out here?”
“Don’t you smell it?”
Abbey turned her face up, inhaling the air. Her mouth bent into a frown. “Smoke.”
“There’s a fire close by,” he said.
“That could be a coincidence.”
Bourne shook his head. “It’s not.”
He took Abbey’s hand as they hurried down the next long block, past a lineup of cars and frustrated drivers. A few winter trees on the sidewalks interrupted the concrete. As they got closer to the address where Restak lived, the smell of smoke intensified, and they could see a crowd of gawkers gathered at the intersection. Three fire trucks blocked the traffic, and torrents of water streamed from fire hoses. Over the heads of the people on the street, Jason could see black smoke billowing from a top-floor window in a redbrick building on the corner.
He checked the street number on the nearest doorway. “The fire is in Restak’s building. I’m willing to bet it’s his apartment. They’re erasing the evidence.”
“With him in it?” Abbey asked.
“Good question.”
They pushed through the crowd. When they got to the front, they could see that the firefighters hadn’t been able to get the blaze under control. Flames shot through a broken window on the other wall of the building. Anything that Peter Restak had left behind was already incinerated.
Medusa was still one step ahead of them.
Abbey shook her head in frustration. “Are we done? Do we leave?”
“Not yet.” Jason’s stare went from face to face, studyi
ng the people watching the fire on the three corners surrounding the building. “Sometimes an arsonist likes to stay behind to make sure everything goes as planned.”
He saw no one suspicious in the crowd. Even so, his senses told him to linger.
Always trust what your instincts tell you. Your brain sees clues that you don’t.
Treadstone.
He led Abbey across the street behind the fire trucks. They could feel the heat of the fire blowing on their skin. More sirens whined in the distance, and overlapping emergency radios squawked around them. Police officers kept the crowd squeezed behind a makeshift barrier. Jason’s eyes tried to penetrate the sea of people, all of them moving, talking, blocking each other, making it nearly impossible to spot one single individual among all the others.
He saw something. But what?
There!
Halfway down the block, a cloud of vapor puffed from the recessed frame of a garage entrance, indicating that someone was hiding there, observing the fire. As Jason watched, the man stepped out far enough to offer a fleeting glimpse of his profile.
A long nose. A blond beard spreading over his neck and cheek like a weed.
“Restak,” Jason said. Then, as he observed the doorway, the Medusa operative stepped out of the recess, and Jason could see his head swinging their way. “Turn around,” he hissed to Abbey. “Fast!”
The two of them spun, letting the rubberneckers in the crowd fill in around them. If Restak looked, all he would see were their backs among dozens of other people on the sidewalk. Jason counted slowly in his head, giving the man time to assess his surroundings and make sure he was safe. One, two, three …
When Jason got to twenty, he twisted around and glanced down the street. Restak was walking east on Tenth, heading toward the river. He wore baggy black jeans and a blue-striped Baja poncho with the hood pulled up. Another vapor cloud trailed behind him.
“Wait here,” Jason told Abbey.
He took off after Restak. When he was past the fire, he crossed to the opposite side to make his pursuit less noticeable. Restak walked casually, seemingly unconcerned that he was being followed. The man reached Avenue D, where he was stopped by a red light. A group of kids played basketball in a fenced court near the corner, their voices loud. Bourne stopped, too, feeling exposed on a stretch of naked wall that offered no hiding place. Restak didn’t look back. He had his vape pen in his hand and looked pleased with himself.
Robert Ludlum's™ The Bourne Evolution (Jason Bourne Book 12) Page 18