Trust Me

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘Oh my God,’ Luke said in the silence of the room. He powered up the laptop and logged in. Then he slid the secret thumb drive into the laptop.

  The thumb drive appeared on the screen. Holding his breath, biting his lip, he clicked on it. Inside was a single file. He tried to click it open, but all he got was a dance of gobbledygook, glowing random numbers and letters, across his screen.

  The file was encrypted.

  Eric had started his career in bank operations; he would know about encryption. Luke knew then this must be the file that contained the whereabouts of the fifty million dollars. Nothing else could be so important. The thumb drive was Eric’s insurance in the face of certain death from the Night Road, his bargaining chip for Quicksilver. He’d simply carried it in his pocket.

  This was the information on where the fifty million was hidden, and the key, he knew, to stopping Henry and the Night Road.

  But he had no idea how he could access the information. The encryption key needed to be on the computer, and it wasn’t on this laptop.

  He tucked the gun under his pillow; even empty, it reassured him. And he put the key ring under the pillow as well. Luke closed his eyes and the weight of what he knew he must do pressed him into fitful exhaustion.

  As the darkness pressed against the windows, the eyes of the Night Road and Quicksilver kept watch, scanning every credit charge, every hotel database, looking for Luke’s name, Eric’s name, any sign, any mistake that would signal his location.

  And while the thousand electronic eyes watched, he slept.

  34

  The day had nearly driven Mouser mad. Snow made a poor patient; she slept fitfully, waking often to worry if Hellfire would be canceled. Mouser kept waiting on the Night Road hacker to pierce the GPS database and hand him Aubrey and Luke. He’d paced tracks in the already questionable carpet of the South Chicago motel room. Snow alternated between uncomfortable sleep and watching him fret.

  ‘You had him in the basement,’ she said finally. ‘Is that what’s preying on your mind, baby? Because I had him in the woods and he got away from me.’

  ‘I’m not happy with how we’ve done. We can do better.’

  ‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Lie down next to me and see if you can’t calm down.’

  He swallowed, thinking he shouldn’t. ‘I hate this waiting.’

  ‘I need a little more warmth than the blanket,’ she said. He lay down next to her certain she couldn’t want him, not after being shot in the shoulder. But she did. He was conscious of her bandages and was very gentle with her. The whole time her small mouth was a hard little O and he wasn’t sure if she was happy or angry until the savoring smile broke across her face at the end. Afterwards he watched the ceiling and thought: God sent her to me, to be my helper against the Beast. I’ve had bad luck with catching Luke but that all changes now. He’s running out of rope. He can’t go to the police. He can’t go much anywhere where the Night Road can’t find him.

  ‘You know why I hate the government. Why do you?’ Her breath warmed his shoulder.

  He didn’t intend to answer but then her fingers began a slow meander across his stomach.

  ‘I knew Tim McVeigh,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m not bragging. We weren’t buddies, but we’d met at a couple of

  … meetings of folks who didn’t like the government infringing on peoples’ rights. I had some acquaintances, who decided they would emulate McVeigh by bombing a big shopping mall. I didn’t know about the plot but I got hit with a jail sentence because they’d called me and asked me about acquiring explosives, and I didn’t turn them in. They blabbed about me, I hadn’t done anything wrong and yet I went to prison for five years.’

  Snow was silent.

  ‘So. In there I met a guy. Henry. Interviewing so-called domestic terrorists, delving into our heads. Trying to figure out if I hated my dad, was dominated by my mother, psychobabble crap.’

  ‘He thinks terrorists hate their dads?’

  ‘Some of them. He said it was a consistent pattern. I got a friend outside to send me one of his books.’

  ‘I would have died for my dad,’ Snow said softly. ‘I know what loyalty is.’

  ‘He and I kept talking. I liked talking with Henry. I got out and I sort of bummed around, did mechanics’ work when I could find it. And kept thinking about how I could make the Beast pay for taking five years of my life.’

  He felt her fingers grope along his chest, skirt the tattoos that read glory and death that spread across his muscles, move down across the flat of his belly.

  ‘We lost a lot from the government,’ she said.

  ‘You more than me. Your family. I remember the rage I felt, after Waco, after Ruby Ridge, after what happened to your compound in Wyoming…’

  ‘Show me,’ she whispered, closing her hand around him. ‘Show me that rage.’

  He made rougher love to her in answer, not caring about her injured shoulder. She gasped and writhed, gritting her teeth. When they were done she put his head on her stomach and rubbed his hair, gently. He felt he could have stayed there forever, safe against her skin. Wrong feeling. The mission was more important. The mission trumped all.

  Just before ten p.m., his cell phone rang. Mouser scooped it up. ‘Yes?’

  The Night Road hacker said, ‘I found your target.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I got a lead on them from a traffic camera last evening. That gave me a starting point for searching the GPS database and getting a read on them. Aubrey Perrault’s car is now at Lakefront Air Park. Private aviation field north of the city.’ He fed Mouser the address.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘When you kill the cop for me… send me the news clipping.’ The hacker hung up.

  Mouser got off the bed and climbed into his clothes. A private air park. First Eric’s name forged on a passenger manifest, now a private jet to whisk them out of Chicago. He and Snow and Henry were clearly up against someone with serious resources. ‘Get up,’ he said, sharper than he intended.

  Snow sat up, let the sheets pool at her waist. ‘I need my bandage changed.’

  ‘Get up. Now. They’re at an airport, they’re leaving the city, we got to go now.’ All gentleness in him was gone. Nothing else mattered.

  Mouser parked. The small airpark appeared closed. He spotted a security guard – older, African-American, heavy-set – walking along the sidewalk in front of the terminal building.

  They surprised him with their guns, hurried him into the building, using his electronic pass key.

  The guard was afraid for his life. He kept telling Mouser he had a wife, two daughters, three grandsons. He kept repeating their names, a threadbare litany. Like invoking saints who would protect him.

  Snow studied the computer’s database; it had not been locked. ‘Two people logged as taking a flight to New Jersey’s Ridgcliff Air Park. Pilot, Frankie Wu. Passengers, Eric Lindoe and Aubrey Perrault.’

  ‘That smart bastard.’ Mouser shook his head.

  Snow raised an eyebrow. ‘I strongly suggest you lose that slight tone of admiration.’

  ‘Nita. Shawnelle. Latika. Joy. Trevor. David. Shawn,’ the guard said, eyes on the floor, as though he could see the faces of the loved ones in the texture of the carpet.

  ‘Hold them in your thoughts,’ Mouser said. ‘May I ask you a question?’

  The guard – in his sixties – looked up, his face crumpling with grief. I guess you don’t get any more ready to die even when you’re old, Mouser thought.

  ‘Before you worked here, what did you do?’

  ‘I’m retired. From the police department.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mouser said, and paid his bill to the hacker with one quick shot.

  Snow watched, then returned her gaze to the screen.

  ‘On the computer, who paid for the flight?’ Mouser asked.

  ‘Quicksilver Risk Management.’

  ‘Get us tickets on a red-eye to New York.
’ He smiled; he had not even smiled when they’d made love. ‘I’m glad to finally know who our enemy is.’

  35

  At first, Aubrey thought she was dead.

  Darkness surrounded her. She blinked and awareness slowly warmed her. Her hand lay stretched above her head, tingling from lack of circulation, and she thought for one surprising second that she lay back on the narrow hard bed in the east Texas cabin, waiting for Eric to come save her, the poor gallant fool. Of course she wasn’t and she gave a half-laugh, half-cough.

  She moved, stretched, let her fear subside and let herself drink in her surroundings. Her hand lay bound above her head and her desert-dry mouth tasted of chemical gunk. Thirst crushed her throat.

  She moaned. The flight to New York had gone so wrong. Why had she gotten involved in this madness? The plan hadn’t worked. She remembered the men closing in on her, manhandling her into the back seat of a car, trying to fight. Screaming. A needle piercing her flesh, then an awful sodden blackness that smothered her. Vague notions of a buzzing noise, darkness, the hum of machinery. She felt as though she’d slept for days. Years.

  Everything had gone wrong. Luke. Did they get Luke?

  A faint light switched on and Aubrey could see she lay in a narrow bedroom. She tried to blink past the medicinal haze that fogged her thoughts and focus on the man’s face that appeared above hers.

  A man’s face. Familiar, maybe? But then she closed her eyes. She opened them again and the haze cleared and she didn’t know this man.

  ‘Aubrey.’

  Her lips formed an answer. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Where is a good start. Tell me where Luke Dantry will go.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The voice – she kept her eyes closed because she did not want to look at him again – did not respond. Fingertips moved hair from her eyes. ‘Am I to believe that two kidnapping victims who have endured as much as you and Luke Dantry made no contingency plan if you were separated?’

  ‘No. We slept on the plane.’

  A soft, low, patient laugh. ‘Yes, you like to sleep on planes.’ She risked opening her eyes again. ‘I almost believe you when you say you don’t know where Luke will run. But I don’t.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  A long pause. ‘Let’s talk about Eric. He was going to give us information.’

  ‘Information?’

  ‘Tell me about this Night Road.’

  She wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Eric just told me the name… extremists, a bunch of different causes. He kept it all secret from me. We broke up,’ she added. She felt woozy. The bed gave a slight lurch and she became aware that the heavy droning noise wasn’t a rattling in her head, waking up from a drug-addled daze. The white noise sounded like jet engines. She blinked again at the unadorned, curved metal ceiling and she thought: This is a plane. I am on a plane again. Where are they taking me?

  ‘Wise of you.’ He stared at her. In the dim glow she could see the ice in his gaze. A person stripped of every decent feeling, she thought. She tried to remember if he had been one of the men in New York who grabbed her. She thought not. He stood. He wore black slacks, a navy shirt, and she saw a bit of silver chain peeking out from under the shirt. ‘You’re going to help me find Luke Dantry.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is. Or where he’ll go.’

  ‘Let’s call him and let him know you’re still alive.’

  ‘Oh, God, please don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.’ She hated the begging in her voice but the fear surged and her heart swelled in her chest, as though the muscle would explode.

  ‘We’re going to call Luke. Tell him that you’re alive.’ He unfolded a cell phone, dialed, and then listened. After what seemed like a century he closed the phone.

  ‘Didn’t he have Eric’s phone?’

  ‘He broke it.’

  Without another word the man turned and walked away from her cot.

  She raised her head. It looked like she was in a cargo plane or transport of some sort. At the other end of the cabin she could see the man issuing orders to a younger man who sat at a desk, a set of computer screens before him. The young man answered in a French accent she could barely make out. The boss and the Frenchman, she named them in her head. The Frenchman glanced back at her and she saw an ugly half-circle scar on his cheek.

  French. Paris? Were they taking her to Paris, as Frankie Wu had mentioned back in Chicago?

  It didn’t make sense. Why were they were taking her and leaving Luke behind?

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ She wanted to know. She held her breath.

  The boss glanced back at her, came back to the bed. ‘How much do you mean to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will he try and find you or keep running?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why did he run?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said he had to run.’ Aubrey didn’t want to say that they knew Quicksilver had funded the cabin where they were held. She was afraid of what would happen.

  The boss looked at her for the longest ten seconds of her life.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’

  Aubrey didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe him at all. But she closed her eyes, and she pretended to sleep, and she tried to listen to every sound, every word, anything that would help her figure out where she was and how she could escape.

  36

  The address for Quicksilver Risk was a twelve story building a few blocks from Washington Square. The tower glittered glass and chrome, more modern than its surrounding fellows. It did not carry the purple flag of NYU, like other structures in the area, and Luke did not see students gathered around its entrance. In the fifteen minutes he’d stood sentinel he did not see anyone leave or arrive.

  He’d checked in the phone book – no listing for Quicksilver Risk. A company that didn’t bother to be in the phone book, in a building that no one entered or left.

  Luke stood on a corner down from the building. He slowly read a Times he’d salvaged from the trash, glancing now and then at his watch.

  So now what? Saunter in and see what happened to him? He could be walking into a trap. If Frankie Wu noticed the charge manifest was missing from the galley, or if they’d made Aubrey talk, they’d know Luke learned this address. They’d be waiting for him.

  Maybe Aubrey was here. Inside. In trouble.

  But he needed help. He needed a way to break into that encrypted file. If Quicksilver wanted this fifty million from the terrorists, he’d strike a deal with them. Trade them the file for Aubrey. Of course there was nothing to prevent them from just taking the drive from him and killing him and Aubrey.

  Luke made his decision. The lion’s den had to be braved. Luke folded the paper and walked toward the building. At the front door, Luke could see a doorman through the heavy glass. He was an imposing sort, barrel-chested, thick hands peeking from the cuffs of the navy wool uniform. Everything about him was hard and he looked like he could deck Luke into a hospital bed with one punch. Was he one of the men at the airport? Luke didn’t recognize him.

  Luke tapped at the glass. Thicker than normal glass, he noticed.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ the doorman said. He stood beyond the locked door, hands behind his back, but he didn’t open it. ‘Who are you here to see?’

  Not just a doorman. A guard.

  ‘Mr Drummond.’ He remembered the name from the email to Eric about the flight from Chicago, and mentioned by Henry. ‘I’m Luke Dantry. He’s expecting me.’

  The doorman stepped inside after holding the door for Luke. The entryway was cool, tiled, with a massive desk, with a large raised counter around it, the kind that concealed monitors. No building directory – no tenants. The lobby was small, with two doors behind the desk. Both were heavy steel. No decor.

  The air felt very still. The soft hum in the walls seemed to be made by machinery, not people moving and talking in offices beyond. Luke ha
d the oddest sense of entering a bunker, a hideaway, like an old comic book hero’s lair. The doorman kept a polite gaze on Luke as he keyed in a message onto a keyboard. Apparently phones weren’t good enough. Or he didn’t want Luke to hear the message he was communicating.

  Luke glanced up at the camera perched in the corner. Let it read his face.

  ‘Mr Drummond will see you.’ The doorman moved his hand to another part of the desk. The locks on the front door engaged with a soft click.

  He was locked in.

  ‘Follow me, please,’ the doorman said.

  Apparently the front door was not to be left unattended. A fortress in Manhattan. An elevator door slid open and the doorman gestured Luke inside.

  They rose in stately silence. It was the quietest elevator that Luke had ever ridden. The car stopped, suddenly, with a soft shrill whistle. The doorman pulled out a huge gun from under his jacket and pressed it against Luke’s skull.

  ‘You have weapons on you. Spare us both the indignity of a search.’

  ‘A gun in the back of my pants. But it’s unloaded.’ He tried a provocation. ‘Your buddy Frankie Wu took my ammo clip.’

  The doorman stripped the gun from his back. ‘At least Frankie did something right before he flew back to Chicago.’

  Luke glanced up at the elevator ceiling. ‘Metal detector?’

  ‘Nothing so primitive.’ The doorman entered in a key on a pad and the elevator resumed its ascent. The doorman lowered the gun away from Luke’s face and Luke remembered to breathe again.

  ‘This building is, um, unusual. Prime real estate but unoccupied.’

  ‘Mr Drummond can explain it to you. If he chooses.’

  A soft ping as they reached the top floor. The doors slid open onto a hallway. It had a spare, wooden floor and an elegant Persian rug running down its stretch. A doorway stood at the end.

  They stepped into the hallway and the far door opened.

  ‘He had a weapon, sir. The scans show him now as clear,’ the doorman said.