Fear

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand.’ He sounded dazed. ‘Allison’s office is on fire?’

  ‘Someone’s screwing us over hard,’ Groote said. And screwing with medicine that could help my kid, and God help them when I find them. ‘This isn’t coincidence – a patient Allison Vance worked with breaks loose and her office gets incinerated. Did you find the guy?’

  ‘No. His name is Ruiz. He’s violent, dangerous.’

  Christ, Groote thought. He’d been in town barely an hour and the entire operation he’d been sent here to protect was collapsing. ‘I suppose we can’t call the cops.’

  ‘Um, we’d prefer not to.’ Hurley cleared his throat. ‘If Allison’s dead, hopefully the research files were blown up with her. That means we can’t be exposed.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Groote said. ‘Suppose she wasn’t at her office. Where does Allison live?’

  TEN

  ‘Hands on top of head, palms up,’ the voice ordered. ‘Now, asshole.’

  ‘I understand,’ Miles said. ‘No problem. Calm down.’ He tensed his arms, his legs, thinking, He gets his arm close, I can yank the gun past my head, before he reacts. But if Allison was a captive, fighting might endanger her; and he couldn’t escape and leave her behind.

  ‘Allison!’ he yelled.

  ‘On your knees, prisoner,’ the voice ordered.

  Prisoner? Miles sank to the brick floor, thinking, Some head shots are survivable, but not where he has the gun, right in my temple. He knew how much it hurt to be shot, the blinding pain.

  Fingers probed for his wallet. ‘Michael Raymond,’ the voice said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ll give complete answers to every question.’ Trying to sound commanding but the tone betrayed inexperience. He’s just as scared as I am. But scared was not good. Scared meant nerves pulled tauter than wire, with a finger tightening on a trigger of a gun aimed at Miles’s head.

  He forced calm into his voice. ‘I’m looking for Allison Vance. Put the gun down.’

  ‘You with the other guy?’

  ‘Other guy.’

  ‘The first guy who came.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean…’

  Hands hauled Miles to his feet, steered him into the bathroom. Sorenson lay in the tub, a wicked, bloody bruise on the side of his head, his feet and arms bound with a sheet. Miles could see Sorenson breathing shallowly; he was unconscious.

  ‘This man blew up Allison’s office,’ Miles said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her office is burning down…’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No, it’s the truth. I’m a patient of hers. I had an appointment with her tonight. I can prove it. Put the gun down, please.’

  ‘You’re not even a good liar. Her patients are all at Sangriaville.’

  ‘What’s Sangriaville?’

  The voice ignored him. ‘You said her office was burning.’

  ‘Look at my face. My hands. I was in her office parking lot. There was an explosion-’

  ‘No.’ Sharp, short, shot with shock. ‘No, no, no…’

  ‘She was in trouble. She asked me for help. This guy was in her office earlier today, I think he planted a bomb. Why is he here?’

  The voice trembled. ‘He came in the back door… I hit him.’

  ‘He was empty-handed?’ If he’s blown up her office, why not her house too? Miles thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me wake him up.’

  ‘Get away from him.’ The guy pulled Miles away from the bathroom, shoved him hard onto the tile of the den floor. ‘Leave him alone; I don’t need to be outnumbered. What have you done to Allison?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Miles kept his voice steady and calm. ‘Her office burning isn’t the kind of lie that works for long. I’m not sure you can see from here, but if you walk down Cerro Gordo you can see the glow from the fire.’

  The man’s hand shook, making the gun against Miles’s head tremble. Keep him calm, Miles thought.

  ‘Stand up,’ the voice ordered, and Miles got to his feet. The man pushed him along, keeping the barrel of the gun nestled in Miles’s hair.

  Miles pushed open the drapes. Opened the balcony window, which faced onto the sideways spill of the hillside down to Cerro Gordo.

  In the quiet, the sound of sirens carried on the wind.

  The man behind him made a choked noise in his throat. ‘They got to her. They killed her.’

  ‘Who’s they? Sorenson?’

  Silence from the man. The barrel of the gun pressed hard against his scalp, as though a decision had been reached.

  Miles’s guts turned to water. ‘I promised to help her,’ he said. ‘I have a note from her. Asking for my help.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Right pocket. Pill bottle. Read it for yourself.’

  ‘I can read it once you’re dead.’

  ‘Then you’ll have made a terrible mistake.’

  The guy jammed the barrel hard against Miles’s ear, found the vial, popped it open, read the note in the dim light that bled in from the bedroom.

  ‘It’s her handwriting,’ Miles said.

  Seconds stretched into eternity. Miles waited for the shot. Finally the guy said, ‘Allison – was at her office tonight. She told me to wait for her. She would be here soon.’

  ‘Okay, then, we’re on the same side.’ Miles found his voice. ‘Take the gun off me, please.’

  ‘No one can know I was here. They’ll stick me back on the top floor.’

  ‘I won’t tell,’ Miles said, unsure of what the man meant. ‘I promise. Put the gun down. I can help you hide.’

  ‘You. You’re nothing. I’m a certified hero, you understand me?’

  ‘Absolutely. You sound like a tough and smart guy. I need your help if we’re going to catch whoever hurt Allison,’ Miles said. ‘You already took out Sorenson, and I think he’s the bad guy. Let’s make him talk.’

  ‘Unless you killed her, and the guy in the tub’s the good guy, and you’re not. How do I know?’

  ‘But I have the note, and he doesn’t,’ Miles said.

  The guy considered. ‘You said you’re a patient. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ His standard answer, given before he could think. The gun stayed close to his skull.

  ‘Define much. Tell me how crazy you are.’ He prodded Miles’s temple with the gun.

  ‘A dead guy follows me around,’ Miles said. ‘I killed him. By accident. I didn’t mean to. But I can’t shake him.’

  ‘I’m not crazy,’ the voice said with pride. ‘Not at all, not anymore. They fixed me.’ The gun’s barrel came off Miles’s head. ‘I’m better than you, I’m made of iron now-’

  Miles lashed out hard with his hand, caught the guy solid in the chest. He stumbled back and Miles tackled him low, hit him hard in the guts twice. The guy bent in half, collapsed. Miles pried the gun from the guy’s hands, stepped back, keeping the Beretta trained on him. Miles fumbled for a lamp, flicked it on.

  The gunman was just a kid, in his early twenties. His hair was military short, a dark burr, a face crafted of angles – sharp nose, razors for cheekbones, a pointed jaw. Two light patches of scarring scored his cheeks, the bridge of his nose bent slightly from an old break. He gasped for breath, glared at Miles with dark, scared eyes.

  Miles aimed the gun at the kid’s legs. He hadn’t held a gun since he shot Andy. His hand started to quiver and he steadied the gun with a double grip. He concentrated on the weight of the steel in his palm, heard Andy’s snicker behind him.

  ‘Goddamn,’ the kid said. ‘Are you going to cry?’

  Deep breath. ‘Stand up. Hands on top of head,’ Miles said. His voice cracked like a teenager’s. He couldn’t freak now, he couldn’t lose it now.

  The kid obeyed, swallowing in air.

  A step at a time. Miles patted down his pockets and jacket. The kid wore jeans and a denim jacket that still had the store tags on them. He
wore slip-on sneakers, navy-colored. No wallet, no money in his pockets. No other weapon. A bracelet ID, the kind used at a hospital. Miles stepped back, kept the gun level. ‘Take off the bracelet. Toss it to me.’

  The kid, with humiliation hot in his eyes, wrenched the bracelet free and threw it at Miles’s face. Miles caught the bracelet. It read RUIZ NATHAN, carried a nine-digit number on it, the term FROST-C.

  ‘Shoot him if you want,’ Andy said from the corner of the room. ‘Build yourself an entourage.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Miles said.

  ‘I didn’t say nothing,’ Nathan Ruiz said, his breath back in his lungs. ‘Man, you better shoot me now because I’ll kill you when I get the chance.’

  ‘You’re a very angry person.’ Miles lowered the gun, aimed it away from the kid, ejected the clip, cycled the round out of the chamber. He put the clip and the bullet into his pocket. Now his voice sounded calm.

  ‘That was stupid,’ the kid said. ‘You should have killed me. You don’t want to piss me off.’ Hot, hard fury was in his eyes, but a waver in his voice hid behind the bravado, and he didn’t charge at Miles.

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you and you’re not going to shoot me. You’re her patient, too, I think.’

  He stepped back, bumped a coffee table, moved around it. He noticed a lipstick-red cell phone sitting on the table.

  ‘I went through his pockets.’ Nathan jerked his head at the bathroom. ‘He had Allison’s phone.’

  That didn’t bode well. Miles jiggled the broken bracelet. ‘What’s Frost?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t sit around pondering the meaning of my ID bracelet.’ But Miles didn’t believe him; the kid’s gaze returned to the floor.

  ‘Why are you waiting for Allison in the dark with a gun?’

  No answer.

  ‘I can haul your ass straight down to the police, Nathan.’

  ‘I took it from that guy – you said his name was Sorenson. Hit him over the head when he came in the back door.’ Now he stretched an empty hand toward Miles. ‘Give me the gun and the clip back and we’ll part ways.’

  ‘No. We’re going to talk to Sorenson. Together. Find out what he did to Allison-’

  Then they heard a click from the front door lock. Not a key sliding into it; a pick, working the mechanism. Miles knew the subtle difference in the whisper of metal forcing metal.

  Someone was breaking into the house.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Allison?’ Nathan turned toward the door.

  ‘It’s not her,’ Miles said. Jesus, he’d unloaded the gun, that was stupid. He knocked over the lamp, fumbled for the clip in his pocket. ‘Get in the back bedroom. Lock the back door.’

  Nathan Ruiz muttered, ‘The guards can’t find me, they can’t know she helped me-’ He spun on his heels, ran out onto the balcony, jumped over the railing. Miles grabbed at him and missed. Ruiz tumbled fifteen feet, landed in dirt and gravel, slid into the pinon trees, scrambled down the hillside that led to Cerro Gordo. Making a panicky, noisy escape.

  The front door opened. Miles saw a tall figure in the spilled light from the toppled lamp, male, thickly built. Miles, retreating against the railing, saw a gun tracking his path.

  Miles vaulted off the balcony. He heard the awful vroot of the silencer; the heat of the warped bullet passed above his shoulders, jetted near his scalp. He screamed.

  He landed, twisted into the gravel, tumbled down against a pinon trunk, wrenched himself free. He sat on his butt and skidded down the rest of the way, down from the private driveway and the house onto the unpaved stretch of Cerro Gordo.

  He heard the sound of a second muffled shot in the blackness above his head. To his left, feet pounded gravel; Nathan, panting as he ran. Follow him, and maybe they catch you both. So Miles bolted to the right, running hard and clean, zigzagging on the darkened road.

  He heard a pursuer following him off the balcony, sliding down the pebbled slope. To his left lay a patchwork of houses, yards, undeveloped land. He jumped over an adobe wall, fell down into a side yard, ran past a kitchen window where light gleamed and children pleaded for chocolate ice cream for dessert. Over another fence, down a strip of driveway, the sound of his pursuer drawing closer.

  Miles vaulted over a few more fences, then he ran into an open stretch of darkness. Armijo Park, he’d noticed it on the hike up Cerro Gordo. Flat, plenty of room for dogs to frolic, kids to run and play tag and football. He ran across the parking lot, caught his leg on a chain that fenced the park, sprawled on the grass. He could hear the pursuer and now a searchlight sparked from an approaching car, sweeping across the park.

  He got up and ran, hard, not in a straight line, trying to dodge the circle of light that hunted him past the fence, past the playground, past the swings and slides. The clouds covered the sky and the gurgle of the Santa Fe River rose in the breeze. Usually the river ran dry or with the barest trickle, but now it surged with the recent heavy rains and snowmelt.

  Get across the river, hide in the neighborhood, hunker down… Then his shoes hit the smooth glass of polished stone and he remembered the river still had to be across the street and below him, at least fifty feet, and he skidded into empty air.

  Dead. Dead in a straight drop to rocks and then he crashed through a web of tree limbs. He grabbed at a cottonwood branch that smacked hard into his back, missed, fell, hit another one, rolled along its edge, arms flailing, fell again, thinking in a crazy jag, This’ll smash out my brains and I’ll be fixed.

  But the next branch caught his weight, held, then cracked with a slow groan, and he let his weight slide down the creaking bough. Listened. No sound of a man still giving chase. The spotlight danced above him, a car driving into the park itself, searching. Hunting him.

  He scissored his legs out over empty air. The branch snapped again. He let go.

  The land rose in a sharp shift and Miles hit the ground after a ten-foot drop that jarred his ankles, sent him sliding. His legs caught a cactus, the spines needling through his thin khakis, and he howled. But he stumbled to his feet, navigated through a maze of trees, and saw a car driving by, its headlights painting the night.

  East Alameda. He ran out onto the road, eased himself down the shallow bank, forged the thread of river in a few steps, the cold water soothing against his tree-and-rock-scored hands. He clambered up the side of the bank, glancing over his shoulder. No gunman. No police car. Nobody.

  Across the street, the river, up the hill, the spotlight winked out, like a giant’s eye closing.

  He wandered into the riverside neighborhood and ran through the spiderweb of streets. A dim orange glowed against the cloud bottoms to his right – Allison’s office, or the building next to it, still burning.

  ‘You still got the gun?’ Andy asked him, walking beside him, unruffled.

  He groped along his belt. No. The Beretta was gone, lost in the tumbles he’d taken. But jammed deep in his jacket pocket, he touched the crumpled confession he’d written for Allison.

  ‘Losing the gun’s for the best,’ Andy said. ‘It would make my killing you a lot easier. What now?’

  Miles didn’t answer. He walked, steering clear of Palace and the fire engines. He could smell the smoke on the wind. He stumbled across the empty Plaza – Santa Fe rolled up early most nights – and along the side streets until he reached his rooms. He washed his hands and face clean of dirt, sprayed antibacterial lotion on his palms and on his cheek. The bleeding from his head had stopped, clotted in his hair. He dumped his wet clothes in a pile, extracted a trio of cactus spines from his leg. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondered what Sangriaville meant, who was Nathan Ruiz, who was the man who had tried to kill him, why Sorenson had come to Allison’s house, and tried not to imagine Allison vanishing in a ball of flame.

  The red cell phone on the table. Hers, he’d seen her use it before. She’d left it at her house. He tried her cell phone again. Two rings. The phone clicked on. But silence.

  ‘Hello?’ Miles whispe
red. Then against all hope: ‘Allison?’

  ‘You and I both know she’s not here.’ A man’s voice. Low, gravelly.

  ‘Where is Allison?’

  ‘All burned up. I think you know that, mister, because I think you and Ruiz were part of her plan.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you mean.’

  ‘I heard your voice,’ the voice said, ‘on the other side of Allison’s door. So don’t pretend you weren’t the asshole with Ruiz that ran away from me.’

  Miles sat on the bed. ‘Okay, I won’t pretend. Who are you?’

  ‘I don’t like names.’

  ‘Did you kill her? Do you work with Sorenson?’

  ‘I don’t know who the hell that is.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Miles said, but the voice talked over him: ‘Allison took property of mine and I doubt it coincidentally got blown up with her. I’ll pay you for the research. We can reach a deal. But you’re going to give it back, or you’re dead.’

  Miles counted to ten, thinking, trying to figure out how to play the shooter. ‘I can’t give you what she took if I don’t know what exactly it is…’

  A long silence. ‘Listen, you stupid bastard. I don’t believe you were an innocent bystander at Allison’s house tonight. You and Ruiz, you’re in on it with her, and you’re going to return Frost, or I’m going to kill you. Simple.’

  Frost. The same word on Ruiz’s bracelet.

  ‘The man in her tub… Sorenson. I think he hid a bomb in her office today. I don’t know anything else.’

  A pause and Miles could hear the man’s heavy footsteps on tile. ‘What man in what tub?’

  ‘There’s a guy in her tub… knocked out.’

  A pause. ‘There’s a bunch of sheets wadded up on the floor, and that’s all.’

  Sorenson must have escaped between the time the shooting started and when the shooter returned to Allison’s house – presumably to search for whatever this Frost was.