Authors: Jeff Abbott
For a moment I felt torn. I had the address of an empty building where my target would be, and if you’re planning to kill
someone an empty building in New York City is convenient. But having Leonie tag after the limo driver felt like a mistake
now. Jack had left his mother behind, and maybe she knew where he was, but maybe she didn’t. I had an address, an actual,
throbbing clue, and Leonie could be off with our car on a fool’s errand. I stepped back out onto the street, trying to decide
what to do.
The wind broke the rain clouds into jagged curls of gray; the sun flooded the sky, weak as tea.
The iPhone rang inside my pocket. The phone that Anna had given me.
‘Yes?’
‘Sam?’ Leonie. Her voice tight and stiff, rattled by fear. There is a certain pronunciation made when the lips are bruised;
you don’t quite form your words right.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, God, I messed up, I messed up, please … ’
And then the limo driver’s voice. ‘You. You sent this woman to follow me. Who are you?’
‘Don’t hurt her.’
‘If you don’t want her hurt, then you come get her.’
No. Not now. I had the address where Jack most likely had run. I had Jack Ming in my grasp.
What would you do to save your child?
she’d asked me.
A choice. What would I do to save my child? Would I sacrifice this woman who was basically a stranger? A little, awful voice
inside me said,
you don’t need her. You found Jack, not her. What good is she, what has she done to help save your kid?
It was from a dark corner deep in the well of my soul, but when you are in a battle for your child’s life darkness stands
close to you, whispers in your ear. Nine Suns wasn’t going to give me Daniel, or give Leonie her daughter, if Jack Ming breathed
long enough to turn himself into the CIA.
‘I strongly suggest that you listen to me, mister. Retrieve your bitch. Or I’ll cut her throat.’
In the background I could hear Leonie, gasping, saying, ‘Don’t, don’t!’
I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or to the driver. Then a piercing scream.
‘Where are you?’ I managed to say.
He gave me an address and directions to Morris County, in northern New Jersey.
I clicked off the phone. If I made the wrong choice I could be abandoning either a woman I barely knew, who seemed to hold
me in contempt, to death, or my own child.
If the situation was reversed, what would I want her to do? Leave me to die? Absolutely. Go save the kids, lady, what happens
to me is nothing. Go.
We hadn’t anticipated an enemy beyond Special Projects, who would not have grabbed one of us and threatened us with death.
Caught up in the mad rush to find Jack Ming, I had not planned for this contingency. It was on me.
I went outside, stood on the sidewalk in the warming humidity, and I started to shudder. It felt like every nerve in my body
was wired to open current. I gave myself thirty seconds of weakness and I stopped shivering then I put the decision aside.
Leonie was in the greatest danger right now. I could no more leave her to die than I could anyone else.
I started to walk. I needed a car.
A couple of turns later I saw a parking garage, four suited men coming down the ramp to merge into the river of pedestrians.
I maneuvered carefully, bumping directly into the one who’d had his hand in his right front pocket as he had turned from the
ramp onto the sidewalk.
‘Jesus, watch where you’re going, jerkwad,’ he snapped at me.
‘My bad, I’m very sorry,’ I said. I turned into the parking ramp and hurried up the stairs. I didn’t even glance to see which
keys I’d pickpocketed off him until I was on the second level. A Mercedes logo on the keychain. I ran along the parked cars,
testing the automatic unlock, until headlights on an SE flashed at me.
One minute later I was heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel.
If you save her and Jack Ming gets away …
I had to get a grip. Focus. I wanted to make good time. The
limo driver apparently had and I thought, please, don’t let there be bad traffic or an accident. Don’t let the guy whose car
I’m stealing realize his keys are gone. Let the doorman and the guard be okay after I punched them. Forgive me everything
I do to save my son.
Don’t let me fail.
The Garden State. You tend to forget that New Jersey deserves that name when you’re stuck driving through an endless unfurling
of suburbia. I drove at top speed and the rain that had hurried in from the Atlantic passed through here. The rain was like
a hand cleaning a slate. The air smelled wet and fresh and new.
I drove. I didn’t use the car’s GPS – if it had been reported stolen by now, I didn’t want the system tracking where I was.
I kept it switched off.
Okay. Now: who had Leonie and Mrs Ming? Jack’s mom had called someone. And then the limo driver had collected Mrs Ming. Now,
I would not put it past Special Projects if they figured out like I had that Jack Ming was their new best buddy – Fagin might
have tattled – to scoop up Mrs Ming for her own protection against Novem Soles. And they might even, to lure me in close,
pretend-threaten Leonie’s life. If August was at this house, fine, we’d talk, and maybe he’d let me take some photos of Jack
Ming looking dead, if his people had already nabbed Jack.
But.
But
. If August was involved in this operation, the limo
driver wouldn’t have been on the phone. It would have been August. Right?
I was not optimistic that Special Projects had Leonie. It had to be the dreaded ‘Someone Else’. An enemy I didn’t know.
The phone Anna gave me rang again as I turned into the address. ‘Yes?’ I said, sounding impatient.
‘Hello, Sam.’ Anna Tremaine.
‘What?’
‘I would like to know your status.’
‘I’ll call you when the job’s done.’
‘Has Leonie found the informant?’
‘I’ll call you when the job is done.’ I made the words short, clipped.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you’ve heard your baby cry. He’s been rather fussy today. Well, both these babies are
unhappy. I wonder, do you think they can sense their … precariousness?’
I don’t know how to describe the dark surge over my heart. I don’t have the words for it. It was a blackness. I hadn’t felt
it in my worst moments, when I saw my brother die on a scratchy video, when my wife was kidnapped in a street of fire, when
I was tortured and accused of being a traitor, choking to death when I couldn’t give the Company answers I didn’t know. I’ve
had more than my share of really bad moments. This was even darker. This was reaching into me and smearing something foul
on my soul. It took all my will to keep my breath steady. ‘I am doing what you asked. You don’t hurt him. You do not hurt
either of them.’
‘But the job’s not done yet and you won’t tell me what’s happening.’ She sighed. ‘I’m playing with his little fingers right
now, Sam. They’re more delicate than bone china.’
I told her briefly what I knew, and what I was doing. For several moments she was silent.
Then she said, ‘Listen, Sam. Listen to your son. I’m going to put the phone right by him.’ And I could hear the phone, a hiss
of breath, a gurgle. My son. I had never heard him. A soft ahhhhhh, all baby breath, all happy, toothless mumble.
Then choked, frustrated gurgling; he wasn’t happy. Bored or annoyed at the phone resting next to his face.
‘Daniel. Daniel, this is Daddy.’ Like he could understand. Like my voice would mean anything to him; my soft baritone was
as alien to him as any other sound he’d never heard. My words, my voice, could give him no comfort. I’d never thought about
what I’d say to him: he was a baby, what would he understand? I’d never been around babies. I was the youngest in my family.
‘Daniel. It’s Daddy. I’m coming to get you.’
He fussed, he squawked, he cried. Maybe he wanted Anna to pick him up again. He wanted Anna. The idea made me want to vomit.
He wanted a woman who would hurt him. That was true innocence.
‘I’m going to be there soon, son, we’ll be together. Okay? This is Daddy. I love you, Daniel. I love you.’ I did love him.
I loved him, sight unseen. ‘I love you. I love … ’
‘Sam,’ Anna’s voice was back. ‘Listen to me.’
Leonie looked up from staring at the floor. The driver hadn’t planned on two victims, she supposed; he only had the one set
of handcuffs and he’d chained Mrs Ming to another wooden
chair. He’d bound Leonie with rope from a closet in the house. The living room was small, the wallpaper old and twenty years
out of fashion, musty with grime. The house carried the feel of a way station, a place used infrequently. Leonie sat, her
knees folded beneath her, watching the driver pace the floor.
The driver had moved into the front rooms, to watch the windows for Sam.
‘Help me,’ Mrs Ming whispered to her.
Leonie glanced at her. ‘I’m curious as to what you expect me to do.’
It wasn’t the answer Mrs Ming was looking for. ‘He’s not from the CIA. He’s not. They said they would send someone.’
‘The CIA?’
‘Yes!’ Mrs Ming said.
Leonie inched closer to her. ‘The CIA is looking for your son.’
‘A man who said he was from the CIA called me this morning. They said Jack might be coming home. To call them if he did. I
… I didn’t know to believe him, but I went to the grocery, in case. I got Jack’s favorite things to eat.’ Her voice sounded
lost.
Leonie looked at her. ‘Where is your son?’
‘I don’t know … ’
‘Tell me.’
‘He left, I don’t … ’
Leonie leaned back and head-butted the woman. ‘Tell me where he is!’
Mrs Ming howled in anger and pain.
‘Hey! Hey!’ the limo driver said, hurrying into the room, kicking Leonie onto her back. ‘Stop it!’ He murmured again into
his open phone, too low to hear, and then clicked it off.
‘You’re not from the CIA!’ Mrs Ming said, blood oozing from the corner of her mouth, her forehead vivid with the imprint of
Leonie’s head. ‘You cannot keep me here. You cannot. They will look for me.’
‘You,’ he said to Leonie. ‘You’re with Sam Capra.’
She said nothing and he responded, in his accented English, ‘Bitch, I am short on patience’, and he began to kick her. Hard.
The first blow sent her across the room.
Then he asked her a question, received hazily through the pain, that made no sense to her at all. ‘Where is the woman called
Mila?’
I saw the rental Prius, nosed into a grove of trees. I turned in and climbed a wall and headed down a long, paved road. A
sign read
PRIVATE DRIVE. NO TRESPASSING
. Ahead was a long, curving driveway and a house that looked like it might once have been a grand home or summer retreat from
the start of the twentieth century. She’d tried to sneak in, but I was expected. Zero point in anything except walking straight
into the house.
My phone rang again. ‘Come to the front door. Nothing funny or the redhead dies and you get to watch.’ Short and sweet.
I made my way to the front door, across a grand porch. I opened the door and stepped into a large foyer.
‘Here,’ a voice called.
I headed back from the front of the house and went to my left and entered what might once have been a library or study. The
limo driver must have been a Boy Scout. He was extremely well prepared. He aimed a gun at me, and held another pressed against
Leonie’s temple. He had a Taser tucked into the side of his pants. Leonie’s face was bruised along the jawline.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You heal fast, bumper boy.’
‘Vitamins and milk.’
‘But those are not brain food,’ he said. He tapped Leonie’s head with the gun for emphasis. ‘I’m thinking you know the drill.’
‘I’m not armed,’ I said.
‘Liar. If I check you and you have a gun, I’m going to shoot off this bitch’s thumbs.’
I produced the security guard’s gun from the back of my pants and dropped it on the floor.
‘Kick it over,’ he said.
I did as he said.
‘Who are you with?’ he asked me.
‘Me, myself and I,’ I said.
He switched the gun over to Mrs Ming’s head and she began to wail. ‘I don’t believe you. I’m not sure who you’re more interested
in – your partner here or your target.’
‘I don’t want anyone hurt.’
‘Then who are you with?’
‘I’m with nobody,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Ming’s son.’
‘And you thought I was bringing her to him?’
‘I did. Not now.’
He gave a twisted little laugh. Now that I was unarmed he put a gun up against each of their heads. Toying with me.
‘I’m not sure which one you want alive the most,’ he said.
‘Both of them.’ Ten feet separated us, plenty of time for him to shoot me if I made a move.
I knew at least that with Mrs Ming he was bluffing. He’d
brought her here to hold her or to question her, on someone’s orders.
‘Are you with Novem Soles? Because we’re on the same side, then, and this is a misunderstanding.’ The thought that Anna could
have opened up a bounty on Jack Ming occurred to me. They just wanted him dead; they wouldn’t care if it was by my hand.
‘Novem
what
?’
‘Nine Suns.’
‘Sounds like a slant restaurant.’ He seemed to be taking my measure with his gaze. Mrs Ming stared at him with hate in her
eyes. ‘You’re the one answering questions, not me, who’s your friend?’
‘Her name is Leonie.’
‘And where would I find Mila? I gave your friend a roughing up and she didn’t know.’
Not a question I was expecting at all. What the hell just happened? ‘I have no idea.’
He eased the gun over toward Leonie’s eye. ‘I want you to tell me how to find Mila.’
‘Mila contacts me when it suits her,’ I said.
‘You’re going to tell me how I can find Mila, or I’m going to kill one of them.’ He shoved the guns hard against their skulls;
Mrs Ming let out a twisted moan; Leonie bit her lip and her gaze locked with mine. ‘Not sure which. Guess we’ll know when
I pull the trigger. On five. One. Two. Three.’