Taking the Highway

by M. H. Mead

  “You think it was easy? Then you really are an idiot.”

  Andre made the best fists he could, considering his rapidly-swelling hand. He glared at his mother’s tax return, glowing at him from the wall in the next room. “Nobody tells me anything! First Dad, then you, now Nikhil.”

  Oliver leaned into the screen. “Nikhil?”

  He’d said it. The name was out, on his screen, on Oliver’s, and every point in between. Up to a satellite in space and down again. Clearly audible to anyone who was monitoring his calls or had put a tracer on him or had bugged his apartment, his clothes, his body.

  And he no longer cared. “Yes, Nikhil. Get him. I want to talk to that little punk.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” Oliver sank down onto the sofa and put his head in his hands. “He took off four days ago. His datapad has been deactivated and none of his friends will tell me where he is. I keep thinking, any minute now, I’m going to get a call, or an e-gram, or even a blip. Something to let me know he’s okay. When you called with the sirens . . .”

  “Aw, hell.” Andre’s hand was starting to throb with every heartbeat. He opened the freezer and took out the vodka bottle, wrapping his hand around it to numb the pain. He sat at the kitchen table and looked at the slumped form of his older brother. Suddenly, it wasn’t Oliver sitting there. It was a much older, much sadder man. Dad.

  “I think he’s been back since,” Oliver said. “He waits until I’m at work and goes through my desk.”

  “Looking for cash?”

  “I don’t use cash.”

  Andre’s heart squeezed. “Tell me you don’t keep a gun at home.”

  “He broke into my locked filing cabinet.”

  “Which contained?”

  “The city council keeps some things on hardcopy only. Paper can’t be hacked.”

  “Yeah, Madison Zuchek has quite the paper fetish.”

  Oliver finally lifted his head and looked at the screen. “I keep paper too. Something is not right in the mayor’s office.”

  Andre gripped the vodka bottle tighter, resisting the urge to throw it at the screen. What was Oliver keeping from him this time?

  “There have been these accidents. No one cared much because the people who died didn’t exactly have the city’s best interests at heart, you know what I mean?”

  “Were these ‘accidents’ investigated?”

  Oliver nodded. “Sure. Sure. Always by the same team.”

  “And you kept notes.”

  “Detailed notes.”

  Andre leaped to his feet. “I’ve got to find Nikhil.”

  “I know. There was a reason I locked up those files. If he shows them to the wrong person—”

  “Where did he go, Oliver?”

  “I told you, I don’t—”

  “Friends, associates, obscure relatives I didn’t know we had. Someone is sheltering him.”

  Oliver shrugged helplessly. “For all I know, he hitchhiked to Arizona.”

  Andre wanted to reach into the screen and shake the doll-like Oliver sitting there. “He’s here. And the longer he stays in Detroit, the worse it gets.”

  “Do you think something’s already happened to him?”

  “Nothing’s happened to him that he didn’t make happen.” Andre stood and returned the vodka to the freezer, exchanging it for the bag of frozen peas. He wrapped it around his hand like an ice pack. “It’s not Nikhil’s safety I’m worried about. If I don’t stop him, he’s going to wreck Overdrive again.”

  Oliver’s eyes darted to the floor, a look of disbelief on his face. “No. Nikhil isn’t—”

  “I hope he isn’t. But you’ve got to help me. Topher Price-Powell. I’ll start there.”

  “I tried. His house has been dark for days.”

  “Give me the coordinates anyway. I have to start somewhere.”

  Oliver nodded. “I’ll try to chase Nikhil down in the e-verse. He kept it real most of the time, but—” A pounding noise, someone knocking hard at the door, made Oliver whip his head around. He held up a finger, smiling. “That’s him.”

  “Don’t answer it!” Andre thrust his left hand at the screen, trying to stop Oliver from moving. The throbbing in his right hand was traveling up his arm, making him feel adrenalized and short of breath. It couldn’t be Nikhil. Nobody knocked on his own front door.

  Oliver’s eyes darted downward, checking the popup on the screen. “It’s a cop. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

  “I don’t have any friends. Not anymore. Don’t answer it.”

  “I’ll call you in five minutes.” Oliver hung up.

  “Damn it!” He slammed his right hand on the table. The bag of peas split open and they spilled over the table and rolled onto the floor. “Get him back!” he yelled at his comscreen. “Command: dial Oliver LaCroix.”

  No answer.

  He grabbed the garbage can from under the sink and swept the peas into it. A friend. Oliver said it was a friend. Andre commanded his phone to call Danny.

  “Yeah.” Danny answered on voice-only.

  “Where are you?”

  “Who is this, my wife?”

  “I need to know if you’re at my brother’s house.” But the sounds in the background—beer, ballgame, laughter—told him the answer.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “I’m getting that way. I’m at the Pen.” Silence, punctuated by glassware hitting glassware. “Why would I be at your brother’s house?”

  “Someone is.”

  “Do you need backup? You want me to put the brakes on the beers?”

  “I don’t even know what’s wrong.” Andre disconnected and tried Oliver again. Still no answer.

  Now what? Unless he knew exactly what was in those files, he didn’t have anything to bring to the higher-ups. But how much higher could he go? Sure, he could try an end-run around Madison Zuchek and go directly to the mayor’s office, but Mother Mad was Mayor Smith’s hands and voice, and possibly brain. How much could a city manager do without the mayor’s knowledge? He had to assume that anything that went on in Detroit went on with the full knowledge and cooperation of the mayor.

  His companel trilled for attention. Oliver. He stabbed the answer button. “Finally! I was about to—”

  He stopped and did a double-take. It wasn’t Oliver’s face on the screen. He was once again staring into the cold gray eyes of Jae Geoffrey Talic.

  “Listen,” Talic said. “Listen very carefully.”

  TALIC LOOKED OUT THE window and thought about promises given and oaths sworn. Since civilization began, warriors had made promises—to each other, to their leaders, to their people. He had sworn nothing publicly, but his oaths bound him all the same. They were steel for his spine and a shell for his conscience.

  Talic made another circuit of the room to check the windows and doors and the clear sightlines out each, then checked the restraints securing the blindfolded Oliver LaCroix to the dining room chair. Those heavy chairs were a bit of luck. Without them, he would have had to truss Oliver like a turkey and lay him out on the floor. Talic moved through the room without speaking, taking care not to menace the bound man. Anxious people were unpredictable.

  “It isn’t going to work,” Oliver said. “Andre can’t give you what he doesn’t have. He doesn’t have Nikhil and he wouldn’t hand him over to you if he did.”

  Talic sighed. Lawyers. “Last chance,” he whispered, bending swiftly closer. He tugged at the elastic band running around the man’s neck, just above his collar and impeccably knotted tie. “If you speak again, I put the gag in. You won’t like the gag.” He waited. “Nod if you understand.”

  Oliver LaCroix nodded.

  Talic moved off, resumed waiting. His instructions to LaCroix—Detective Sergeant Andre LaCroix, the deepest part of himself insisted—had been specific.

  “At the corner of Dexter and Kendall there’s a Jiro’s E-verse. You know i
t?”

  “I can find it.” The expression on the holo image had been calm, but Talic could hear the scarcely controlled rage in LaCroix’s voice.

  “You have exactly twenty minutes to get there and buy the Weigle temp phone reserved for you at the bargain counter. Call your brother’s datapad when you have it. I won’t answer. I’ll return your call on another line and we’ll have secure communications. I’ll know if you haven’t followed my instructions.” He wouldn’t, but LaCroix couldn’t know it for certain and he wouldn’t risk his brother’s life.

  “Show him to the pickup, first.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t move until I hear his voice.”

  “No.”

  “Then you can fuck yourself. What’s to stop me from calling my captain? Or going straight to hostage rescue?”

  “You won’t.” Talic inserted the datacube he’d carefully preserved after the most recent Overdrive crash. No time for video upload, but still shots were better in this case. Pictures told the story he wanted to tell. He sliced three stills from the video and fed them to LaCroix’s comscreen. Nikhil and Topher Price-Powell. Nikhil and LaCroix. Then, his favorite one, showing LaCroix with both hands on Nikhil’s shoulders. LaCroix was probably yelling his head off in that picture, but he leaned toward his nephew as if to tell him the world’s most intimate secret.

  “Faked up,” LaCroix said. “You can’t prove anything.”

  “I can prove all this, and more.” Talic kept his voice low, his tone reasonable. “Stop stalling. Even if you had a tech willing to help you, you’d never get a fix in time. Get that temp and I’ll let you hear your brother.” Talic closed the line.

  With three minutes to spare, Oliver’s datapad chimed with a signature that matched the Weigle codes sold in the Detroit area. Talic cut off the call on Oliver’s datapad and read the number into the encrypted line he’d vetted so carefully. Voice-only. He didn’t need LaCroix to know that he hadn’t yet left Oliver’s house.

  “I want to talk with him now. Right now. Or I go to IA and take my chances.”

  “Try this on. You ask me a question. Make it something I couldn’t guess. I tell you his answer and you know he’s alive.”

  A seething pause. Then, “Ask him how many points he wanted to give Sofia Gao.”

  Talic considered. This sounded too innocuous to be any kind of code. He paused audio and repeated the question. Oliver’s face quirked in brief amusement, then sobered and answered.

  “He claims it was a solid eighty-nine.”

  Talic thought he could hear an exhalation over the cheap handset. He moved into the other room, out of Oliver’s hearing.

  “Here’s the deal, LaCroix. I don’t want your brother. I don’t even want his kid. But I need the people Nikhil can give me and I can’t wait any longer.”

  “Listen to me, Talic. The one you want is calling himself Topher Price-Powell—”

  “I know all about Price-Powell,” Talic growled.

  “I’ve got another name,” LaCroix said. “Probably just an alias. Wilma Riley. We can work these names through the team. We can do it legally. It doesn’t have to go down like this.”

  Talic gave Oliver’s expensive couch a swift kick in the leg. “It has to go down exactly like this. Price-Powell has gone to ground. Your nephew knows how to get close to him. My trap needs bait.”

  LaCroix’s voice became something hard for Talic to listen to—one officer to another. “You had to stop them. There wasn’t enough proof to stop them any other way. I get it. Tough call, but that was the one you made. Now the situation has changed. We have proof. We can backtrack. Find the funding. Find the source. Find the entire organization. Take them all down, including Topher Price-Powell.”

  He’s a good cop after all. Talic smiled, half-wishing LaCroix could see it, but that would have given away the gambit, and the stakes were too high. “We both know I’m not a cop anymore. Not after what I’ve done today, not after what I’ve done the last two months. The same code you’re appealing to makes it impossible for you to overlook my actions. I understand that. Now you have to understand something as well.”

  “What’s that?” LaCroix asked.

  “Sacrifice.”

  Silence on the line. Just the sound of angry breathing.

  Talic twitched the curtains aside and looked into the back yard. “I have sacrificed five young men who threatened my city. I have sacrificed my career, my honor as a law-abiding citizen, maybe my life. So don’t think for a moment I won’t sacrifice your brother, your nephew and even you to get to these terrorists.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Stop talking. Your brother and I are already on the move. The longer you stall, the further he gets out of your reach. I have a collapsing timetable. The economic summit kicks off tomorrow morning. My guess is that your nephew and his good buddy Price-Powell will trash Overdrive sometime tonight. Give me your nephew before then. Or better yet, Topher Price-Powell’s dead body. I want it by six o’clock.”

  “Talic!” There was a note of desperation in LaCroix’s voice. “I don’t know where Nikhil is!”

  “That,” Talic made himself reply coldly, “is your problem.”

  NO CALLS. THAT WAS rule number one. No calls, no e-grams, and certainly no blips. Andre had looked for signs of a tracer on the temp phone. It was as clean as he could expect it to be, but Talic had reserved this phone. Talic would be monitoring it. He couldn’t get rid of it and he couldn’t use it to call anyone that mattered.

  Of course, this was just what Talic wanted—Andre alone, without the means to call for backup or help or even advice. A man alone made desperate choices. A man alone made mistakes.

  Not this time.

  He drove past the Pen, watching the front door open and close, cops and civilians going in and out. He drove to the rear of the building and parked in the alley between the dumpster and the recycling bins. The sun slanted between the buildings and shone a spotlight on the back exit. No customers used this door, but sooner or later, a bartender or a waitress would come out this way.

  He paced the alley in front of his car. Every cell in his body screamed at him to act, and act fast. He flexed his swollen and bruised right hand. He would wait.

  And when the time came to act? What then? He reached the end of the alley and paced back again. His mind flipped over possibilities, each one worse than the last. Talic had Oliver, Talic wanted Nikhil. Andre was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, and no matter what happened next, someone he loved would die. He refused to make that choice.

  But if he waited too long, he wouldn’t have any choice at all.

  Five endless minutes later, the back door opened. A gray-haired waitress stepped into the alley, carrying a steel bucket full of empty bottles. She caught sight of Andre and tensed, then relaxed as she recognized him. “Our special tonight is Sandborn Canadian. Bottle for the price of tap.”

  “Thanks, Chloe. You deliver out here?”

  “Only the dead soldiers.” She staggered toward the recycle bins.

  “Let me get that.” He took the bucket from her and tipped it in. Bottles clattered and broke.

  Chloe took the bucket back. “Thanks. You lurking out here for a reason? Because if you’ve turned flasher, you can show me your pecker right now and get it over with. I got to go back to work.”

  “Is Danny Cariatti still in there?”

  “Honey, it’s Friday. Everyone is still in there.”

  “Any way to get him out here?”

  “I doubt it.” Chloe’s hair brightened into a white halo as she moved from shadow to sun. “The beer is in there. Nothing out here but you.”

  “And my pecker.”

  “Which I haven’t seen, so I can’t say.” She disappeared inside.

  The temp phone vibrated in his pocket. Andre ignored it. He knew he should answer it, tell Talic something, beg for more time. He knew he was endangering Oliver with every passing minute, but what could he do?

>   The alley door burst open and Danny leapt out, reaching under his coat for his weapon. He looked left, then right, drawing on Andre.

  Andre threw his hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa, Danny! It’s me.”

  Danny’s eyes widened. “Chloe said something about a creep in the alley trying to flash her.”

  “She wishes.”

  Danny swiped his few remaining hairs off his forehead. “I knew it. I switched to coffee the minute you called me.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Not half as drunk as I wish. What are you doing here? And if you say ‘my job’ I will shoot you where you stand.”

  “I’m not, okay? I’m not doing my job, or my duty, or anything else you’d approve of.”

  “Well, that covers a lot.”

  “It’s Talic.”

  “Talic again? When are you going to let that go?”

  Andre swallowed past a dry throat. “He took my brother.”

  “Why does Talic want your brother?”

  “He thinks I have Nikhil. He wants to trade.”

  “Do you have him?”

  “Would we be having this conversation if I did?”

  “Talic.” Danny shook his head. “I never liked that guy. What are you going to do?”

  “I can’t do anything. I don’t have a shield. I don’t have a base of operations, or tech support. I don’t even have decent hardware. I have a shitty backup piece and a possibly bugged temp phone, and just over an hour to deliver Nikhil.”

  “You can’t trade your nephew for your brother.”

  “Not planning on it. But I have to give Talic something.”

  “We’ll arrest him. I’ll do it myself.”

  “You can’t. Nobody can. The city manager’s office is holding the other end of his leash.” He held up a hand to forestall Danny’s next statement. “You could try to untangle that mess, but by the time you do, my brother will be dead.”

  Danny exhaled and leaned his hips against the wall. “You make a single move, in any direction—try to take your car on the highway, get your prints on a weapon—your career is over. You go after Talic, your life is over.”