Run: A Novel (24 page)

And now, my wife?

I drew level with the rear of LeBrock’s black Mercedes, and stopped. There was nothing else between me and the house to hide behind, and every window in the place seemed to be blazing with light. That killed any hope of a stealthy approach, so I had to make do with a direct assault
on the front door. I broke cover and strode straight along the path leading to it, but still couldn’t resist looking into the rooms I passed on the way.

There was a kitchen, full of stainless-steel appliances and counters that were like trolleys on wheels. A den with a horseshoe of leather couches facing a giant TV on a metal stand, like an oversize easel. And a huge living room.

Normally, I’d have been looking at the furniture and scoping out any art on the walls—if there’d been any walls—but that day, all I could focus on were the people. LeBrock, slumped in an Eames lounge chair, like mine but in the standard walnut and black. And Carolyn, perched on the matching ottoman at his feet. As I watched she leaned forward and took LeBrock’s hand in both of hers. I couldn’t see her face, but it was clear from LeBrock’s expression they were staring into each other’s eyes. Any moment now she was going to lean forward, and then they’d kiss. I knew it. Because she used to make that exact same move on me.

I hammered on the glass, watched them spring apart, then continued to the front door. It took an eternity for LeBrock to show his face. And when he did appear, he just stood in front of me, pale and silent. I was looking at the man who’d fired me. Bribed government officials. Made a fortune cheating in the bandwidth auction. Sent thugs to burglarize my home. And had links to a computer virus that threatened the security of the nation. There were serious questions I should have asked him. But after what I’d just seen, none of that mattered.

I drove my fist into LeBrock’s face. Hard. Spikes of pain shot through my knuckles and into my wrist. LeBrock staggered back, arms flailing. He slumped down on one knee. I stepped in, ready to finish him off. And heard a car engine fire up. Behind me.

It was Carolyn’s.

She was running out on LeBrock. Just like she’d done to me.

This time, I went after her. I left LeBrock on the floor in his hallway and ran to my car. I raced down every street in the neighborhood. I backtracked, every time the trail went cold. Checked people’s driveways. Their yards. Chased every shadow that looked remotely like
Carolyn’s BMW. But after forty minutes, I had to admit defeat. I had no idea what her destination could be.

Her head start had only been a few seconds, but she’d made them count.

CAROLYN WAS GONE
, but there was one last connection still in play. Weimann hadn’t blinked when I let slip that she’d left me. Which meant he already knew. Which meant he’d been in touch with her. Recently. Whether it was just to buy my secrets from her, or whether there was anything more R-rated about it, they’d been in touch since Monday.

As I drove back to his house, my thoughts about Weimann were steadily replaced by a flurry of doubts. How much could I trust him? How long had he been stealing my work? Had
he
been sleeping with Carolyn, too? Or just paying her to spy for him? Had it been a mistake to ask for his help with the virus? Why wouldn’t he let me meet his contact? And what about his threats to call the police on me? I’d been able to talk him out of it earlier, face-to-face, but what about while I was gone? Would I get back to his house and walk straight into a room full of detectives?

My nerves weren’t helped by the police cruiser that raced up behind me, a mile or so from Weimann’s street. It gave me a burst of its siren and a flash from its light bar, convincing me I was about to be arrested again. But a second later it pulled around me and sped away. Then a second cruiser appeared, with an ambulance laboring to keep up in its wake.

My conscious brain kept insisting it was a coincidence, the three of them all going the same way as me. But my heart rate accelerated, anyway, and I could feel the muscles around my stomach clamping down tight. I leaned a little harder on the gas, anxious to prove my paranoia wrong, but as I rounded the next bend that became much more difficult. A plume of thick, black smoke was rising from the heart of Weimann’s subdivision. And a moment later, denying my suspicions became impossible.

Two fire trucks were parked on the street outside Weimann’s house.
Thick hoses snaked down his driveway, past the blackened skeleton of his Jaguar and on toward the burning shell of the building. And to extinguish any last shred of hope, I saw the paramedics loading a gurney into the back of the ambulance that had passed me, minutes before.

A gurney with a body bag strapped to it.

I
N THE MOMENTS AFTER I PASSED WEIMANN’S HOUSE I FELT PROUD
of myself for mastering the panic and continuing to drive, slowly and evenly, not drawing attention to myself, not giving the watching cops the slightest clue that a wanted man had just slipped through their fingers. I told myself it was a sign of growth. Of change. Of increasing competence and self-reliance. And then I turned the rearview mirror all the way to the side to make sure I didn’t catch sight of my face.

Because if I was honest, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d become. But I had a feeling the truth would be far less flattering than the self-deception.

THE TV WAS STILL
flickering in the corner of my room on the seventh floor of the Buckingham when the sun finally rose. I’d spent most of the night pacing, hoping for something to show up on the local news that would break the endless circle of questions in my head. Could the fire have been an accident? Or had Weimann been murdered? Who’d want to kill him? Why? Had anyone told Renée, now that they were separated? How had she taken it? Where were the police?

And how long until the blame came crashing down on me?

In the end, though, there was only one thing I could be sure about. I wouldn’t find any answers—or make sure Weimann hadn’t died in vain—if I was in jail. I needed proof of my innocence. I had to follow my one remaining lead.

——

I KNEW THE RENDEZVOUS
with Weimann’s virus expert was set for Valhalla station, sometime in the morning. I found my way there easily enough and parked without any trouble. But when I put on my baseball cap and glasses it hit me how thin my disguise was. The whole area was crawling with people. How many of them had seen my face on the news? Had there been more stories, since I left the hotel? I wished I could get online to check. Or call someone and ask. But I had nowhere to go. And no one to turn to. Weimann’s contact was the last iron I had in the fire. If I couldn’t find him, I’d be on the run for the rest of my life.

No one recognized me as I hurried toward the station concourse, but the first thing I saw when I stepped inside was my own face. It was front and center on all four papers on the newsstand. My plan to hole up somewhere and watch the passersby, hoping to latch onto the fellow IT-geekiness of the virus guy suddenly seemed like madness.

“Hey!” The voice was behind me. “Stop!”

I dived around the back of the coffee cart, whipped off my hat and glasses, and shoved them behind its oversize ornate wheel, desperate to change my appearance. Then I crept to the giant barrel of ferns next to it and peered into the crowd, frantically trying to spot my pursuer.

I could see maybe fifty people, but only one likely candidate. And he wasn’t pursuing me. The guy had been calling to his teenage son. The kid had forgotten his lunch box. The dad had brought it for him. And I’d jumped like a scalded cat. It was a wake-up call. I had to accept the inevitable.

I retrieved my hat and glasses and waited for my moment to slip out from behind the cart. Then I slunk back to my car, feeling the gaze of everyone I passed boring into me like they all knew who I was, and were only delaying turning me in to draw straws for the honor of making the call.

IF I’D HAD A COIN
with me when I slid back into the car, I’d have tossed it. Heads, stay in the parking lot and hope for a miracle. Tails,
run for cover and try to come up with a plan that had a prayer of succeeding. But as things turned out, the choice was taken out of my hands.

“Marc Bowman!” A man opened the passenger door and jumped in beside me. “I was expecting you, now your buddy Weimann’s dead.”

I was half out of my seat, my heart accelerating so fast I could hear my blood bouncing off the inside of my eardrums, before I registered who it was.

“Sweet heaven above, Agent McKenna. I thought I was getting arrested! Or lynched!”

“Nothing that dramatic. I’m just waiting for a friend.”

“Wait. There’s no way. You’re the virus guy?”

“Of course not. I’m here to meet him. Just like you.”

“I don’t understand. How do you know him? I don’t even know his name.”

“His name’s not important. He probably can’t even remember it, he uses so many aliases. But he’s the top of his field. A morally confused field, granted, but that’s how the world works, these days. Most of the time we turn a blind eye. And in return, if he finds anything of interest to us, he drops a dime.”

“He told you about the virus?”

“He told me someone—Weimann—gave him a memory stick with the virus on it, along with a bunch of AmeriTel data. Which leaves me puzzled. How did your friend Weimann get his hands on such a thing when he didn’t work at AmeriTel? But you did. And you specifically told me you didn’t have any of their data.”

I didn’t answer. This was exactly what I’d hoped to avoid when I found the memory stick in the box with the fresh tequila bottle, but it was too late now to go back and undo all the mistakes I’d made.

“Never mind.” McKenna glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll talk about that later. In the meantime, start the car. I’ll give you directions. This is no time for you to be seen in public.”

MCKENNA DIRECTED ME BACK
to the highway, and from there toward a hotel his team was using as an HQ while they were working the case.
He told me it would take the best part of an hour to get there, then leaned against the side window and stared at me, unblinking, and in silence.

“What?” I caved after a couple of minutes. “Could you stop that, please? You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“OK. I’ll stop. The moment your comfort becomes important to me.”

“Are you pissed at me?”

“You lied to me, Marc. About the memory stick. And the prison van thing? I saved your ass for what, the second time? The third? And you ran out on me. You made me look like an idiot. Things like that don’t help build careers. This is a temporary thing for you. An adventure you’ll brag about to your grandkids. But it’s my life and my livelihood you’ve put on the line.”

“It’s no adventure. It’s a nightmare. I was terrified. The guy cornered me, and told me to run, and—”

“You went back to your house?”

I nodded.

“You’d hidden the memory stick there? The one you denied having?”

“I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know I had it when I told you that. I found it later. Then I put it somewhere safe.”

“Where?”

“In my kitchen. Under a section of countertop.”

“OK.” McKenna frowned. “We tossed the place twice, and never got a sniff. Did you have the countertop built that way specially?”

“No. It was an accident.” I pulled out to pass a dawdling minivan. “The kind of thing that happens when you mix Carolyn, alcohol, and heavy pieces of domestic equipment.”

“I see. So you recovered the stick and … the guy … what happened? He jumped you?”

I nodded, and a shiver ran through me. It wasn’t an episode I had any desire to revisit.

“One thing puzzles me, Marc. You went to all that trouble to hang on to the memory stick. Why turn around and give it to your friend?”

“Weimann? He wasn’t really my friend. But I needed help. And he was the only one I could think of.”

“You couldn’t think of me?”

“I didn’t know if you were still alive.”

McKenna nodded, as if conceding the point.

“The papers say
you
killed Weimann, Marc.”

I felt my chest tighten, and I involuntarily eased off the gas.

“Did you?”

“God, no.”

“Who torched his place?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“What were you two working on?”

“We started with the virus. That was a dead end, so I dipped into the AmeriTel data. And I found something crucial. Mike Millan? Their finance chief? Someone sent him an email, late last Saturday night. Right before their board decided to revise their bandwidth bid.”

“You think this Millan guy received a tip? An illegal one?”

“Definitely. The email was sent to his Hotmail account, and Millan forwarded it to his work address. That was a huge mistake, because it made it visible. To me, anyway. So they fired me before I could do anything with the data.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Absolutely.”

“OK. I’ll get you set up with the fraud guys, and they can take it from there.”

“I’ll give them whatever they need. But there’s more going on here than just fraud. I know where the email came from.”

“Where?”

“The White House.” I braced for a reaction, but I didn’t get one. “Its origin was pretty well disguised, but we tracked it.”

“You’re talking about high-level corruption? The AmeriTel boys had a tip from the top?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.” I swerved to avoid the squashed remains of a skunk. “What I think is this: The virus was already at the White House, and it spread to AmeriTel via the crooked email. Brooking’s
theory is backwards. If I’m right, and you’re the one to straighten her out, that’s got to be worth something to you, right? You could be the one who stops an attack on the White House. You could get a commendation? A medal?”

“Oh, Marc.” A grin spread across McKenna’s face. “That’s priceless. But make me a promise? When this is all done, go back to your computers. James Bond, you’re not.”