by Jeff Abbott
‘Give me Dodd’s phone,’ Miles said. ‘Let me check the call log. Might help us reach someone who works for Dodd.’
Groote handed him the phone.
Miles clicked, checked, swore under his breath. ‘No calls. The phone’s been programmed not to record the numbers.’
Groote pounded his fist against the driver’s wheel.
‘Take it easy,’ Miles said. ‘You’re no good to Amanda too rattled to think.’
‘I’ll take you all to Orange County, like Mrs. Brent wanted,’ Groote said. ‘Then I’m getting on a flight to Austin. We’re square. I get Frost, I’ll call you and let you know I have it. But getting it, I don’t need your help.’
‘Actually, you might,’ Celeste said. ‘I know someone who can help us find Sorenson and Amanda. A friend of mine.’ She laughed, a brittle, nervous sound. ‘I told him I was too afraid to go on Oprah with him – wait till he hears what I’ve been doing the past two days.’
FORTY-NINE
‘Tragic yet funny,’ Andy said from the backseat. ‘You didn’t trust me enough to tell me you were betraying my ass to the FBI, but you’ll trust a guy who shot at you and chased you off a cliff and tortured Nathan and tried to drown Celeste.’
Miles made no answer, but if he could have spoken he would have said, No, I don’t trust him, not a bit, so shut up.
Miles waited for the time to pass and for Groote to get calmer before he asked his questions. The stress of the ordeal exhausted Nathan; he’d fallen asleep, leaning against Celeste’s shoulder. Celeste stared at the car’s ceiling, lost in her own thoughts. Groote fiddled with the satellite radio, found a news channel, and they waited for the sniping spree in Yosemite to make the broadcast. The major news story was a bad tenement fire in New York that had killed a dozen people.
‘A man came to Sangriaville asking for me,’ Miles said. ‘I heard you say it when you talked to Hurley.’
‘Careful what you say,’ Andy said. ‘It got me killed.’
He watched Groote for a reaction – a tightening grip on the steering wheel, a frown that touched the mouth – but Groote’s face betrayed no secrets.
‘I’ll bet his name was DeShawn Pitts.’
‘Yeah, that was the guy,’ Groote said.
‘What did he tell you about me?’
‘He was tight lipped. Told me you might come around asking questions. Or seeking counseling. Asked me to detain you and call him if you showed up.’
‘That all?’
‘He didn’t tell me you were a federal witness. I figured that out myself.’
‘The FBI’s been very quiet in looking for me. Not putting my name, my face, on the news. That won’t last. They’ll do it…’
He stopped.
‘Do what?’
Miles repeated: ‘They’ll do it…’
‘You okay?’ Groote asked.
‘They’ll do it… as soon as… we turn off the tape,’ he said. He put his hands to his face.
‘What tape? Miles?’
Miles fell silent, took a long, shuddering breath. ‘Nothing. I’m okay. Sorry.’
‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ Groote asked. ‘Do you need medications?’
‘I’m fine. I just remembered something.’ And he put his gaze to the window and said nothing more.
Then the news shifted to the shooting in Yosemite, two people dead, another body found a distance from the falls, shot at close range, but no suspects, no motive, no explanation yet.
Groote let the news run its cycle of stories and thought, If the FBI wants you, Miles, my man, they get you. You’re my bargaining chip once I get Amanda back and she and I need to vanish. I give you to the FBI, I blow the whistle on Dodd’s operations, I get forgiven all my sins. But he said, ‘The Bureau doesn’t want to expose you, which means they’re not giving up on getting you back as a witness.’
Miles took a long time to answer; whatever he had remembered when they talked about the FBI, Groote could see it rattled him to the bone.
Miles said in a low voice, ‘You and I get them to safety, and then we go on without them. I don’t want them in any more danger.’
‘They’ll be quiet about me – what I did?’
‘Yes. I guarantee it.’
Groote nodded. It would, he knew, make his life so much easier. One enemy in his pocket was easier to manage than three. He hoped nothing was said on the satellite news about a missing WITSEC inspector; life was complicated enough right now.
FIFTY
They reached Tustin, in Orange County, late Saturday night.
Celeste could see Miles was shaken. She thought he was nervous about trusting Victor Gamby not to call the authorities on them.
‘This is a bad idea,’ Miles told Celeste. ‘You’ve never met this guy face to face.’
‘I know him,’ she said. ‘I trust Victor.’
‘You know him through e-mails, for God’s sake.’
‘Victor has done more to help PTSD patients through his blog than anyone else I know.’
‘He would be entirely in his right mind if he called the police.’
‘None of us are in our right minds,’ Celeste said. ‘Wait.’ She walked up to the doorway of the modest house in a quiet stretch of Tustin. The jacaranda trees were heavy with bloom and the breeze knocked purple blossoms settling on her head as she walked up to the front door.
Nathan said, ‘I still have a job to do. Getting Frost for the soldiers.’
Miles put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. ‘You do this my way, Nathan. Dodd stuck you in an illegal medical testing program, he took advantage of your disease and your guilt, and he’s dead and you don’t owe him a thing.’
‘I’m going to find Frost.’ Nathan’s voice was unsteady.
‘Nathan,’ Miles said, ‘we’ll discuss it later.’
Miles saw the door opened by a fortyish man in a wheelchair. Celeste spoke to him and then the man opened his arms – one of them a prosthetic – and Celeste leaned down to him and embraced him.
They talked for ten minutes, Celeste kneeling by his wheelchair. The man listened intently; he never interrupted Celeste. Then he gestured at the car, a welcoming wave.
Miles and Nathan walked toward them. Groote hung back near the Navigator.
‘Miles, Nathan, this is Victor Gamby,’ Celeste said. ‘Victor, Nathan Ruiz, Miles Kendrick. Back there is Dennis Groote. He’s, um, shy.’
He shook hands with both of them and said, ‘You boys c’mon in and we’ll talk.’ He motored the wheelchair around – Miles saw that his legs were missing as well, the pants legs tidily tucked in under stumps – and they followed him inside. Groote brought up the rear, glancing around as though the house were a trap.
‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Gamby,’ Miles said.
‘You’re welcome. Nathan, forgive me, but Celeste says you dislike mirrors.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Nathan said. He hung back, staying close to Celeste.
Victor said, ‘Freddy! Company!’
A young man, in his early thirties, came in from the back. Wearing wraparound sunglasses, walking with a cane. Blind. Scar tissue inched out along the edge of the sunglasses.
‘You fought in Iraq’, Nathan, that right?’ Victor said.
‘Yeah.’
‘So did Freddy. Blinded by an IED outside Tikrit.’
Freddy said hi as they all shook his hand.
‘Freddy, Nathan doesn’t care for mirrors, which makes no sense because he’s about ten times handsomer than I am. Would you go around, hang sheets on the mirrors that Nathan might see?’
‘That’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I can control myself.’
‘No reason to be embarrassed.’
‘If I’d known that,’ Groote whispered to him, ‘damn, I wouldn’t have used the screwdriver.’
‘Shut the hell up,’ Nathan said quietly, ‘and stay away from me.’
Miles stepped between them.
‘Then when you’re done with the mirrors, Freddy,
if you’d make sandwiches for our guests?’ Victor said.
‘Sure, but the only bread we got is rye.’ Freddy had a surfer boy’s easy accent.
‘That’ll do, I’m sure. Thank you so much.’ Victor waited for Freddy to leave the room, put an unafraid gaze on Miles. ‘Celeste’s told me the basics of the trouble you all are in.’
‘I appreciate your willingness to help us,’ Miles said. ‘I know you run a popular Web site for people with posttraumatic stress disorder…’
‘And you want to know if you can trust me with your secrets.’
‘Well…’
‘It’s all right, Miles. I’ve had my site for a couple of years now. A million hits a month. I do database consulting work for the government, I’m an independent contractor. Don’t worry, I’m not a fed. I’m not calling the cops on you all, because Celeste says you’re after a medicine that could help every traumatized patient in the world. Including me, including Freddy.’
‘Is he, um, your boyfriend?’ Nathan asked.
Victor shook his head. ‘No. I find me a lost lamb, let ’em stay till they’re on their feet. Always a PTSDer. Like you, like me. I got my legs and arm blown off on 9/11.’
‘Victor was at the Pentagon,’ Celeste said quietly.
‘Before Freddy I had a young lady staying with me, saw her brother and her fiance gunned down in a gang war in Compton. Before that another soldier from Iraq. Before that a young father who lost his parents and his children, drowning before his eyes, in Hurricane Katrina. Never a shortage of pain in this world. I help ’em get back on their feet best they can and then I send ’em out to help another soul.’
‘You need to help us with eyes wide open. Celeste killed a man in self-defense but we didn’t report it. I’m hiding from the witness protection program. Groote helped us flee the scene of a multiple homicide in Yosemite.’ Victor gave Groote a brief but appraising stare, and Miles wondered exactly how much Celeste had told him about the man. ‘People want us dead. And the government, at least a slice of it no one acknowledges, is involved in a major cover-up over medical research.’
Victor Gamby pointed at his eyes. ‘Wide open. Start talking.’
Miles told him the entire story, from his morning meeting with Allison and Sorenson, to arriving on Victor’s doorstep. Victor didn’t interrupt. Freddy stumbled through the room and noisily assembled sandwiches and salad in the kitchen. Celeste stood to go help the blind soldier and Victor grabbed her arm. ‘Freddy’s got to cope. Let him be. Kindest thing in the world for him.’ Celeste sat back down and Miles finished their account.
Victor frowned. ‘First of all. This medicine. Frost. You understand there’s ongoing research in this area – how to minimize the impact of PTSD.’
‘I don’t know much about it.’
‘I keep up with every PTSD research angle being pursued. Most shrinks don’t have the resources to deal with traumatic memory. Dose us with antidepressant meds and pray for mercy. Because PTSD’s a bitch to treat, with a smorgasbord of symptoms, and onset that varies widely after the initial trauma. Rumor has it the Chinese government experimented with beta blockers and memory diminishment, on political prisoners, back in the early nineties and got nowhere. There are highly regarded teams doing legitimate research at Harvard and at UC-Irvine. But if Frost can diminish traumatic memory long after the event takes place, then Frost is much, much further along.’
‘First to market,’ Miles said.
‘It meant millions to Quantrill,’ Groote said, ‘if we’re looking at cold, hard cash.’
Victor nodded. ‘Profits in the billions, if the research is already completed.’
‘So the buyers at this auction Sorenson’s staging will be very serious,’ Celeste said.
‘People will risk a lot for profits that big. Nice how they want to help us, isn’t it?’ Victor gave a low, soft laugh.
‘If Sorenson is ex-Pentagon,’ Miles said, ‘can your connections give us info on him, or where Dodd might have hidden Groote’s daughter?’
‘You understand that the news is saying the Bridalveil shootings was the work of a deranged ex-soldier. Lost his mind. Nobody in the government’s going to own up to your dead friend.’ Victor cleared his throat.
Celeste said, ‘So someone’s already covering up for Dodd and the Pentagon.’
Victor shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can find, but I make no promises. I’m not a hacker. I’m not doing anything illegal to help you. I can trade on connections, on favors – it’s the grease in Washington – but I may get every door slammed in my face. I’m not a government employee – my power base is dependent on my contractor connections and my fame in advocacy for PTSD patients. So I may get nowhere.’
‘My daughter-’
‘I’ll do everything I can,’ Victor said. ‘But I have to tell you, Dennis, that if I were Dodd, I would have gotten Amanda out of the country on a government flight. To a safe house in Mexico, or in the Caribbean. But off American soil. Finding her will not be easy.’
‘Understood,’ Miles said. ‘Thank you, Victor.’
‘We don’t have a dinner bell, but the quiet tells me that Freddy’s got dinner ready. Let’s eat. Then I’ll start working the phone and the computers and see if I hit any lucky numbers.’
FIFTY-ONE
‘We should rest,’ Celeste said.
‘You’re right.’ Exhaustion seeped into Miles’s whole body. Victor had excused himself into his office, banned them from interrupting him. Groote sat on the quiet of the back porch, watching the moonlight peeking out from the clouds. Miles observed him for a minute – the first time leaving Groote alone – and followed her to the guest bedroom she had claimed, and saw twin beds.
‘Nathan’s sharing with Freddy. They can talk about the war. Groote can sleep upstairs, assuming he’s human and can sleep. You don’t mind, do you?’ she said.
‘Of course not.’
She lay down on one bed and he lay down on the other. They faced each other across the space – a side table, a lamp, separating them.
‘Big risk to trust Groote,’ she said.
‘ Trust is too strong a word. He’s using us, but we’re using him, so it’s okay.’
‘He looks at you,’ Celeste said, ‘in a way I don’t like.’
‘He’s sweet on me.’
‘Don’t joke. He acts as if he still has a score to settle.’
‘He’s a hired gun,’ Miles said, ‘but he’s off the job. Now it’s personal, as they say in the movie trailers. As long as he thinks we can help him get his daughter back, he’ll work with us. I know how to keep him leashed.’
‘I imagine Victor coming to tell us he’s found Amanda, where she is, and then Groote kills us all and goes on his merry way.’
‘I won’t let that happen.’ Miles jostled the bed, trying to get comfortable.
‘You remembered something.’
‘No.’
‘Miles. I don’t know you that well, I suppose, but I can tell. What happened?’
He pulled his jacket close around him, as if cold.
‘It’s warm in here. You could take off your jacket.’
‘No. I’m comfortable.’
‘I noticed you don’t like to take off your jacket.’
‘I get cold.’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘I keep something I meant to give Allison in my jacket.’
‘What?’
He realized he had nothing to lose; he would be leaving Celeste soon enough, probably to never see her again. Truth made for a good parting gift. ‘My confession. Of murdering my best friend.’
The expression on her face didn’t change. ‘Your best friend…’
‘Yeah. Since I was three years old.’
‘Self-defense. You have nothing to confess.’
He closed his eyes.
‘It’s not your fault, Miles.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Do you really know that, in your head, your guts, your heart? Do you?’ s
he asked.
Andy stood on the far wall, arms crossed, blood on his shoulder, on his throat. Three bullet wounds glistened in the lamplight.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she repeated. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘He told me I killed him with a word. Then I remembered. On the drive. Talking with Groote about the FBI. How I killed him.’
‘Is Andy here now?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Ask him,’ she said, ‘what he wants. Why does he stay?’
‘He’s not a ghost seeking vengeance,’ Miles said. ‘My head invented him.’
‘Then your head’s trying to tell you information you need to know.’
Miles said, ‘What do you want, Andy?’ He didn’t feel embarrassed or stupid, talking to Andy with Celeste in the room.
Andy put his hands over two of the wounds. ‘I want you to know what you did, Miles. I want you to know what you didn’t do.’
Miles repeated the words to Celeste. She frowned. ‘Show me the confession.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s my burden to carry.’
‘I’m not offering to carry Andy for you. Just let me see what you remember.’
‘And reading it will, what, make you respect me?’ Thirty seconds of silence passed. ‘I killed my best friend. What kind of person am
I?’
‘I didn’t save my husband. I locked myself in a house for a year. What kind of person am I, Miles?’ She sat up from the bed. She held out her hand. ‘Give me the confession. I can handle it.’
He sat up, pulled the paper from his jacket, handed it to her. She unfolded it and began to read:
Allison:
I killed my best friend. I was working with my dad in Miami – he owned a private investigations firm. Dad died (cancer) and my friend Andy was an accountant for what I believed was an insurance company but the firm was a financial front for the Barrada crime family. Dad lost three hundred thousand on gambling and he owed the money through a Barrada bookie. When he died – I owed the debt. The Barradas threatened to take Dad’s firm, which was all Dad left me, but Andy got me a deal; he told me that I could work it off by doing clandestine work for the Barradas. Andy wanted financial and logistical information on other crime rings: spreadsheets, payments, dealer networks, information on shipments into the country.