Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘You shouldn’t say FBI in a phone conversation. The government picks up and records any conversation in the fifty states that mentions the FBI and it gets played back to the FBI. So if you say, fuck the FBI, they know you said it. They open a file on you.’

‘Sorry,’ Luke said.

ChicagoChris hung up.

Luke dialed again. Chris answered. ‘You have to be more careful. You don’t want to trigger their monitoring software with a keyword.’

Luke thought in Chris’s paranoid world monitoring software was probably a keyword but he didn’t want Chris to hang up again. ‘All right. I know you don’t know me, but we’re brothers in the struggle, aren’t we?’

Chris was silent again. ‘Maybe.’

‘I need to get to Chicago. I need your help. But I can’t travel on a charge card, and I don’t have money.’

‘You want me to send you money.’ He sounded slightly incredulous.

‘I swear I’m good for it.’ Most people would hang up. Help a friend you only knew from online? Not likely. But he was gambling on two things: Chris had sent him the contact information to begin with, because he liked Luke’s postings to the group, and because Chris seemed needy for friendship. And the communities – even being online – still had the feel of closeness, of a bonded brotherhood. These people were so alone in their hatreds, they needed each other to reinforce their certainty about the world’s wrongs. It was a key to terrorist psychology: violence was a group decision. He had to play on that sense that they were partners. ‘Brother, I just need enough to cover a bus ticket to Chicago, and a bit for food.’

‘Where are you?’

‘The library in Braintree, Texas.’ He fashioned a half-lie, one Chris couldn’t resist. ‘I got information on that chlorine accident in Texas. That the government was involved.’

‘What exactly do you have?’

‘Well, get me to Chicago, and I’ll share the info with you. If the you-know-what with three letters doesn’t grab me first.’

‘What’s the info worth?’

‘Send the money and I’ll bring it to you.’

‘You could also be a cop, trying to trick me. The cops would love to get hold of me.’

‘I’m not. I can’t email you because I’m being followed. I’ve got to stay off the grid as much as I can. I’m making the call on a cell phone I stole from a lady’s purse. So make your choice. Help me or don’t.’

Silence again.

‘There’s a bus station in Braintree,’ Luke said. ‘You can buy a ticket online for me.’

‘Do you need cash?’

‘I have zero, Chris, so yes please.’

He heard the background clatter of typing. ‘I’ll find a Western Union close to the Braintree library address, send you cash for food. If you don’t pay me back’ – he clicked his tongue – ‘I’ll find you and I’ll destroy you.’

He sounded different from Mouser. Erratic, not cool and focused. ‘No worry, I’m good for it. And thanks man. Thanks so much.’

‘You’re gonna pay me back,’ ChicagoChris said, and he hung up.

Luke erased the call from the phone’s log. The volunteers had not returned from the stacks. He dropped the woman’s phone back into her purse and walked out of the library.

Snow and Mouser knew Luke would be on the road, and all roads led to Braintree. Luke tried not to let the fever of paranoia build in his heart. He walked a half-mile and found the Western Union agent at a Price-Right chain store. Chris sent him $999 – if he’d sent a thousand, Luke would have had to show ID. It said so on a sign behind the clerk’s head. Luke couldn’t believe the guy was actually doing it. And being smart.

‘Lost my ID,’ Luke said as the customer service agent counted out the money. ‘Lost my wallet.’

‘That sucks,’ the agent said, not caring.

In the Price-Right store Luke bought a bottle of hair color. Blond. He thought: when you’ve decided to color your hair, that’s when you know you’re in serious freaking trouble. He bought a baseball cap and sunglasses; a small backpack, peanut butter crackers, bottled water and apples; toiletries, sturdy sneakers, underwear, socks, and jeans.

It was just like what he’d packed when he ran away from home all those years ago, and Luke missed his mom and dad with a pain that cut to his spine. He threw the stolen galoshes and the oversized jeans he’d stolen from the cottage in the trash after he left the store. He walked to a wireless dealer at the other end of the shopping center and bought a prepaid cell phone.

He hurried to the bus station. His online ticket, courtesy of Chris, had not been processed. He ate an apple and all the crackers. Fidgeting. Waiting for Mouser and Snow to walk through the doors as they shut off every route of escape out of Braintree.

A nerve-wracking hour later his ticket was ready, and twenty minutes after that the northbound Greyhound pulled out of Braintree.

Five miles out of town, Luke Dantry fell into a deep, desperate sleep.

The phone call came as Henry stepped out of the shower. He felt sick from lack of sleep and worry. Please be good news, he thought.

It was the Night Road hacker. ‘You wanted me to find Eric Lindoe. He and his girlfriend were on the passenger manifest for a flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Thailand yesterday.’ He fed Henry the details. Thailand. Of course Eric could run far; he’d taken the Night Road’s money. It would be most difficult for Luke to follow Eric there, without cash, without a passport. Without help.

‘What about breaking into Eric’s bank?’ Henry asked. It was their chance, without Eric, to find where the fifty million had been moved.

‘I think your Eric screwed us and his own bank. I hacked into the bank’s audit trail – the history of every transaction that’s taken place this month. Someone inside looped the audit trail onto itself – there’s dozens of gigabytes of transaction data more than there should be, it’s a complete information overload, it’s entirely disrupted the audit trail, destroyed its integrity. I expect there’s a lot of upset people at Eric’s bank right now. No one’s going to be able to find what money went where for several days. Even their backups are corrupted. Eric knew exactly what he was doing.’

Disaster. The Arab prince had given Eric to Henry as a contact. But Henry could hardly go to the prince and say: lost the fifty million somewhere in that bank, could you lean on the bankers to cough it up? Admitting failure would be a death sentence. And the bankers, if Eric had sabotaged their internal auditing system, would hardly be eager to admit they had a rogue employee; it would destroy their reputations. No. Henry would have to find the money without letting the prince know it had gone missing.

‘I don’t think I can risk a further hack at the bank. I set off intrusion alarms as it was.’

Henry thanked the hacker and hung up. Then Henry’s office phone rang. He hurried down the hallway, wrapped in his towel, to answer it. ‘Yes?’

A flat, cold voice he didn’t recognize said, ‘You want your stepson back?’ Not Mouser, not the British woman, not Drummond.

‘Who is this?’

‘You want your stepson back?’

Now he realized he’d heard this vaguely whiny voice before. Where? He couldn’t remember. ‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘I’ll call you back when I have him, and we’ll make a trade.’ Then the caller hung up.

Henry checked the call log. The phone’s number was not one he recognized, but the area code was for Chicago. Eric Lindoe’s home-town.

Seventeen critical displays stood in the Braintree Price-Right store, considered vital because the Price-Right buyers wanted to measure customer response to price and product combinations. Twenty-four security cameras watched the store. Six of the cameras above the displays had been doubly purposed; not only for security, but to observe customer behavior. What path through the store did a customer who’d paused to look at the display take? Did they go first to clothing, then to toiletries, or electronics? What facial expressions did customers show at displays – smiles, frowns, shaking of heads, curiosity? How long did each customer study the display? Did they pick up and examine items, and for how long?