Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘Wise of you.’ He stared at her. In the dim glow she could see the ice in his gaze. A person stripped of every decent feeling, she thought. She tried to remember if he had been one of the men in New York who grabbed her. She thought not. He stood. He wore black slacks, a navy shirt, and she saw a bit of silver chain peeking out from under the shirt. ‘You’re going to help me find Luke Dantry.’

‘I don’t know where he is. Or where he’ll go.’

‘Let’s call him and let him know you’re still alive.’

‘Oh, God, please don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.’ She hated the begging in her voice but the fear surged and her heart swelled in her chest, as though the muscle would explode.

‘We’re going to call Luke. Tell him that you’re alive.’ He unfolded a cell phone, dialed, and then listened. After what seemed like a century he closed the phone.

‘Didn’t he have Eric’s phone?’

‘He broke it.’

Without another word the man turned and walked away from her cot.

She raised her head. It looked like she was in a cargo plane or transport of some sort. At the other end of the cabin she could see the man issuing orders to a younger man who sat at a desk, a set of computer screens before him. The young man answered in a French accent she could barely make out. The boss and the Frenchman, she named them in her head. The Frenchman glanced back at her and she saw an ugly half-circle scar on his cheek.

French. Paris? Were they taking her to Paris, as Frankie Wu had mentioned back in Chicago?

It didn’t make sense. Why were they were taking her and leaving Luke behind?

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ She wanted to know. She held her breath.

The boss glanced back at her, came back to the bed. ‘How much do you mean to him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will he try and find you or keep running?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did he run?’

‘I don’t know. He said he had to run.’ Aubrey didn’t want to say that they knew Quicksilver had funded the cabin where they were held. She was afraid of what would happen.

The boss looked at her for the longest ten seconds of her life.

‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’

Aubrey didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe him at all. But she closed her eyes, and she pretended to sleep, and she tried to listen to every sound, every word, anything that would help her figure out where she was and how she could escape.

The address for Quicksilver Risk was a twelve story building a few blocks from Washington Square. The tower glittered glass and chrome, more modern than its surrounding fellows. It did not carry the purple flag of NYU, like other structures in the area, and Luke did not see students gathered around its entrance. In the fifteen minutes he’d stood sentinel he did not see anyone leave or arrive.

He’d checked in the phone book – no listing for Quicksilver Risk. A company that didn’t bother to be in the phone book, in a building that no one entered or left.

Luke stood on a corner down from the building. He slowly read a Times he’d salvaged from the trash, glancing now and then at his watch.

So now what? Saunter in and see what happened to him? He could be walking into a trap. If Frankie Wu noticed the charge manifest was missing from the galley, or if they’d made Aubrey talk, they’d know Luke learned this address. They’d be waiting for him.

Maybe Aubrey was here. Inside. In trouble.

But he needed help. He needed a way to break into that encrypted file. If Quicksilver wanted this fifty million from the terrorists, he’d strike a deal with them. Trade them the file for Aubrey. Of course there was nothing to prevent them from just taking the drive from him and killing him and Aubrey.

Luke made his decision. The lion’s den had to be braved. Luke folded the paper and walked toward the building. At the front door, Luke could see a doorman through the heavy glass. He was an imposing sort, barrel-chested, thick hands peeking from the cuffs of the navy wool uniform. Everything about him was hard and he looked like he could deck Luke into a hospital bed with one punch. Was he one of the men at the airport? Luke didn’t recognize him.

Luke tapped at the glass. Thicker than normal glass, he noticed.

‘Good day, sir,’ the doorman said. He stood beyond the locked door, hands behind his back, but he didn’t open it. ‘Who are you here to see?’

Not just a doorman. A guard.

‘Mr Drummond.’ He remembered the name from the email to Eric about the flight from Chicago, and mentioned by Henry. ‘I’m Luke Dantry. He’s expecting me.’

The doorman stepped inside after holding the door for Luke. The entryway was cool, tiled, with a massive desk, with a large raised counter around it, the kind that concealed monitors. No building directory – no tenants. The lobby was small, with two doors behind the desk. Both were heavy steel. No decor.

The air felt very still. The soft hum in the walls seemed to be made by machinery, not people moving and talking in offices beyond. Luke had the oddest sense of entering a bunker, a hideaway, like an old comic book hero’s lair. The doorman kept a polite gaze on Luke as he keyed in a message onto a keyboard. Apparently phones weren’t good enough. Or he didn’t want Luke to hear the message he was communicating.

Luke glanced up at the camera perched in the corner. Let it read his face.

‘Mr Drummond will see you.’ The doorman moved his hand to another part of the desk. The locks on the front door engaged with a soft click.

He was locked in.

‘Follow me, please,’ the doorman said.

Apparently the front door was not to be left unattended. A fortress in Manhattan. An elevator door slid open and the doorman gestured Luke inside.

They rose in stately silence. It was the quietest elevator that Luke had ever ridden. The car stopped, suddenly, with a soft shrill whistle. The doorman pulled out a huge gun from under his jacket and pressed it against Luke’s skull.

‘You have weapons on you. Spare us both the indignity of a search.’

‘A gun in the back of my pants. But it’s unloaded.’ He tried a provocation. ‘Your buddy Frankie Wu took my ammo clip.’

The doorman stripped the gun from his back. ‘At least Frankie did something right before he flew back to Chicago.’

Luke glanced up at the elevator ceiling. ‘Metal detector?’

‘Nothing so primitive.’ The doorman entered in a key on a pad and the elevator resumed its ascent. The doorman lowered the gun away from Luke’s face and Luke remembered to breathe again.

‘This building is, um, unusual. Prime real estate but unoccupied.’

‘Mr Drummond can explain it to you. If he chooses.’

A soft ping as they reached the top floor. The doors slid open onto a hallway. It had a spare, wooden floor and an elegant Persian rug running down its stretch. A doorway stood at the end.

They stepped into the hallway and the far door opened.

‘He had a weapon, sir. The scans show him now as clear,’ the doorman said.

At the end of the hall stood a man in a dark turtleneck and jeans, salt-and-pepper hair, broad shoulders. Not tall but heavily muscled. He had a pugnacious face that looked like it had been battered over the years. His eyes were slightly pinched; it made Luke think of a reader who spent a great deal of time peering through books he found disagreeable. ‘A weapon. I blush with pride. Hello, Luke.’ He didn’t smile.

‘Hi, Mr Drummond,’ Luke said. He wondered if Drummond knew Eric was dead? He must know. This man looks like he knows everything. ‘May we talk?’

‘I have dreamed of the day.’ Drummond raised an eyebrow. He seemed to survey Luke’s face, as though it were a map he’d seen once before but that had been redrawn over time.