Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

He opened his eyes to see the kind face of an elderly woman who had been sitting across the aisle from him, working a pencil patiently through the pages of a crossword puzzle book.

‘Texarkana, honey. We got a dinner stop and layover here if you’re going further.’

He blinked and thanked her in a broken mumble. She stepped back with an uncertain smile and waddled down the aisle.

Luke stumbled off the bus. The air was cool and humid, the rain past. He started to walk down the street in search of food.

A four-hour layover before his ticket took him onward to Little Rock, Memphis, and then Chicago. He devoured a double hamburger at a fast-food chain, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze. He walked down a couple of blocks to a bar, slipped inside its welcoming darkness, and ordered a Coke.

The television was on, the early news reporting that the demolishing rains that had moved up from the Gulf had begun to subside. Confirmation from a reporter outside Ripley that the rail yard disaster had been a bomb. Not an accident. The bar hushed as the reporter described how the FBI was trying to determine if this was a jihadist attack or a domestic enemy. The screen went to a commercial and the conversation of the beer drinkers resumed, although subdued. Luke sipped his soda. The news came back on, covering the bizarre shooting of the homeless man again, Henry speaking on camera once more, the betrayal repeating itself. Luke’s face was on the screen. The few early drinkers were lost in their conversations, studying their beers, or clicking billiard balls. Luke kept his sunglasses on.

But now there were new reports. Luke saw a shot of a friend’s cell phone, with the message Luke had sent to all his friends on Twitter. I’m innocent. And one of his grad school friends, rising to his defense, blinking into the camera said, ‘If Luke Dantry says he’s innocent, I believe he is. What motive does he have to kill a homeless stranger? None.’

But then the reporter went back to Luke’s past. A runaway, a couple of run-ins with the law as a kid. Enough to confirm to the casual viewer that Luke was trouble, reinforced by his stepfather’s pleas to surrender.

The barkeep let two more stories play out on the news and as a steady stream of customers began to enter the bar he clicked over to ESPN for the Dallas Mavericks game.

Luke left a dollar tip and walked a half-mile until he came to a larger gas station, one with a sizeable convenience store attached. He bought a pair of nail scissors and went to the bathroom, locked himself in a stall, and read the hair dye directions. He faced the mirror, applied the hair dye quickly and a little sloppily. He returned to the stall, sat, waited, while a few customers came and went. After thirty minutes, he rinsed the gunk from his hair quickly in the sink, dried it with a paper towel. Then he took the scissors, clipped his hair close to his head. Messy but now blond and he covered most of his new hair with his baseball cap.

He tried Chris with his prepaid phone, but got no answer. He felt tense, restless. He walked back to the bus terminal and kept his back to the passengers.

He heard the call for the bus servicing Little Rock, Memphis, and Chicago. He boarded – the bus was more crowded than he expected. Not good, but it was easy to be as anonymous as you wanted on a bus, especially at night. Luke settled into a rear seat, kept his sunglasses on, his cap low. He dozed, on and off, and as the bus made its stops and brief layovers in Little Rock and Memphis and a dotting of towns in between, the long evening and his clear lack of interest in chatting kept him in a cocoon.

When he didn’t sleep, he thought about Henry. He didn’t truly know the man who had helped raise him since his father’s death. The man who had barely survived the crash that had killed his mother. The realization sent a twisting chill down his spine. After his own dad died, Henry had been a constant rock in his life. Strong when Luke was weak, focused when Luke drifted. He was the one who always believed in Luke; the gentle man who’d married late in life and seemed both surprised and grateful to fate for giving him a special friend, and son, in Luke.

Had it all – every sign of support, every gesture of kindness, every encouragement – simply been the cruelest and most calculated of lies? What kind of monster was Henry?

I’m going to uncover the truth about you, Luke thought. Every awful truth. No matter what it would take, no matter what he would have to do.

The next day, he arrived in Chicago at three in the afternoon; the bus had been delayed extra hours in Memphis. Luke felt exhausted and grimy. The bus station near downtown Chicago was busier than Luke expected. He saw young mothers, soldiers, older couples, single men. He could vanish into the crowd, get his bearings. Then figure out a way to find Eric and to see if he could learn anything useful from ChicagoChris.

His nerves felt taut as violin string. Now he would be playing someone he knew to be dangerous, maybe even homicidal; possibly someone who was part of the Night Road. This could be a lions’ den. It could be a trap. He felt almost like bouncing on the balls of his feet, getting into a fighter’s stance, trying to cut past the fatigue to force himself to be smart.

Luke headed toward the doors on Harrison Street, navigating through the crowds of people arriving and departing, and a hand closed around his arm. He jerked away, nearly falling over. The man who held his arm was young, head shaved bald, an intense glare burning behind his clunky glasses.

‘You’re Lookout.’ He steered Luke out into the bright sunshine of the street. ChicagoChris was shorter than Luke, with a brow furrowed as if in constant worry or anxiousness or anger. Pale lips and eyes of light hazel gave his face an unfinished look. His teeth shone, tile-like, in his tense grin and Luke thought, I bet you got teased about that grill. He wore a black leather jacket and a black T-shirt with a raised fist in gaudy red. ‘You made it!’

‘Um. Yes.’ Luke had not expected him to show up at the bus station, but why shouldn’t the guy? He’d paid the ticket, he knew the itinerary, he’d been promised information in return.

‘I’m glad my money was helpful.’

‘I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’

‘Your face is all over the news, Luke. You can’t be out here. Let’s go.’ He knows you’re Luke Dantry. Luke didn’t want to go – he wanted to find Eric and Aubrey’s trail. His reluctance must have shown on his face because Chris unveiled a harder diamond smile and said, ‘Of course I could scream out to all these nice people that I found you. The cops would be here in no time.’

‘That’s not necessary,’ Luke said.

‘Glad we agree. Let’s go. I’ve got an art studio over in Wicker Park. We can talk there.’

‘Wicker Park.’ He had heard of it. ‘Very hip, right?’ If this guy had a high-end address and money to risk sending to online friends, he must be a successful artist. So why would he be spending his time posting hate and anarchy and revolution? What was he so angry about?

‘Wicker’s so ancient now,’ Chris said. ‘It’s all going corporate.’

Feeling like he had no choice, Luke followed Chris to a car. A polished new Porsche. They pulled away from the bus terminal and headed north, past downtown. Luke stayed low in the seat, wondering if Chris was the only extremist he’d found who drove a rich man’s car.

The Texarkana barkeep finally said to his wife, over cigarettes and coffee before going in for his next evening’s shift: ‘That young man on TV. The one who shot the homeless guy down in Houston.’

‘Who?’ She did not follow the news much; she found it depressing, and the recent chlorine attack in Ripley only confirmed her pessimism.