Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘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.’

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?