Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

The doorman turned and left.

Drummond watched him. A slight smile crept onto his face.

Luke decided to play his card. ‘Is Aubrey Perrault here?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘Yes, I do, and she’s safe.’

‘I doubt that. Your people shot at us last night.’

‘Rubber bullets. They hurt but they don’t kill unless you don’t know what you’re doing.’

He remembered the bullets spraying up the grass at their feet. They could have shot him and Aubrey in the legs, but they didn’t.

‘You gave everyone a fright running into traffic. You could have gotten yourself killed, Luke.’

‘You look at me like you think you know me.’

‘I know who you were, Luke. I’m more interested,’ Drummond said, ‘in who you’re going to be.’

The apartment had the most disturbing walls Luke had ever seen. Giant photos covered them like wallpaper. One image per wall, each a massive enlargement. One picture was a young girl, huddling in the bombed ruins of a stone cabin. Her face looked like a surprised ghost. Another photo showed people in a Middle Eastern bazaar, expressions contorted in naked fear as they looked over their shoulders at an unbidden and dawning threat. A gunman, a car bomb? Who knew? The terror and the resignation on their faces was a timeless stamp. Another photo of a man Luke recognized, a former senator, clearly staggered by loss, leaning against a porch railing.

‘That senator. His son died. I remember it in the papers. Shot to death by a terrorist in Japan while studying abroad,’ Luke said. ‘You have odd decor.’

‘I am an odd man,’ Drummond said. ‘After all, I am welcoming you into my office and you had a hand in my friend’s death.’

‘You kidnapped my friend last night.’

‘Your friend is perfectly safe. My friend is dead.’

‘I had nothing to do with Allen Clifford’s death. I was kidnapped, forced to drive at gunpoint. Then chained up in a cabin your company paid for.’

Drummond raised an eyebrow. ‘We financed a cabin. You being taken there was not our doing. But you killed Allen Clifford…’

‘I didn’t kill Allen Clifford. I know who did.’

‘Who?’

‘Eric Lindoe. Operating under orders from a British woman named Jane, who kidnapped Eric’s girlfriend. Kidnapping me and killing your friend was Jane’s ransom demand for Aubrey’s safety.’

‘Convenient to blame him since he’s not here to defend himself.’

‘He’s dead. Back in Chicago. He kidnapped me in Austin to force information from my stepfather.’ He thought it would be better to hold off on mentioning the fifty million; it would take over the conversation and he wanted to know more first.

‘Tell me everything,’ Drummond said. ‘I think to get to the truth, we must trust each other. We’ve been pitted against each other, Luke, and we should not be enemies. You must think the same, or you wouldn’t have come here after running from us.’ Drummond gestured at a large glass table. ‘Sit.’

Luke sat down and Drummond sat across from him.

Drummond’s faint smile inched wider, went crooked. ‘Like Eric, you wish to make a deal. Tell me everything and I’ll give you something in exchange.’

‘I ask, then you ask, we can hammer out a deal.’

‘All right. You first, you’re the guest,’ Drummond said. ‘I’ll judge whether or not to trust you further by the intelligence you show in what you ask.’

If he failed – if he asked the wrong questions – he might never learn the truth. Or Drummond could be playing him. He wasn’t ready to offer the encrypted file yet; he wanted to see what he could learn first. Drummond studied him, a cat easing on its haunches before the mouse hole.

‘First question. Is Quicksilver behind my kidnapping?’

‘No. The cabin had been rented in advance, to be used by Clifford for an interrogation of a suspect. The man he was meeting – a loser named Bridger, who ran when you and Eric approached – was selling information on a domestic terrorist network to Clifford. I suspect that he was killed, and the cabin used, to make your stepfather and the Night Road aware of Quicksilver’s existence since Clifford and the cabin point back to Quicksilver. Someone wanted the Night Road to know Quicksilver is chasing them. To put us in each other’s sights.’

‘You know about the Night Road?’

‘I didn’t know the name until Eric mentioned it two days ago. We know it’s a loose affiliation of extremist groups, turning toward violence, working together to share resources, tactics, and information. And I suspect the Road’s hand in the Ripley attack, and the attacks over the past week.’

‘Attacks?’

‘ E. coli infecting a food plant in Tennessee. Pipeline bomb in Canada. Attempted bombing of a pipeline in Alaska. And last night, a bombing at a high school football game in Kansas City, eight dead, a hundred injured. And one of our leading thinkers in counter-terrorism was slaughtered with his family while leaving a restaurant in Los Angeles.’

‘Oh, God, no. You should know I found these people.’

‘You found all these people for who? Henry?’ When he said Henry’s name his mouth made a curl of distaste.

‘Under the false pretense of doing psychological profiling for his think-tank. I gave him thousands of names. He whittled it down to the most committed and dangerous. My role is a pawn who got played.’

‘Henry used you. And you’re a pawn who’s pissed off about it,’ Drummond said.

‘Yes. What is Quicksilver?’

It was as if Drummond did not hear the question. ‘I can offer you what I offered Eric. Get you out of the country, hide you under another name. You’ll be safe. You give me all the information you have on the Night Road. That’s the deal.’

‘No. I don’t want to be stashed away. I want my life back. My good name. I want to be cleared of Clifford’s death, and the officer in Chicago. And I want to help stop the Night Road.’

‘Noble of you, but unnecessary,’ Drummond said. ‘My offer is what it is. You’re not part of this battle, Luke, and I think it best you hide until the danger’s passed. Know that you’re helping us by telling us everything about the Night Road. That’s your contribution.’

‘It’s not enough. Please. I helped build that network. I want to help destroy it. I can’t just sit someplace safe while Henry runs a terror cell.’

Drummond studied him. ‘Why did Henry use you?’

‘I don’t know; I was handy, I guess. What is Quicksilver? Are you CIA? FBI? A black ops group? What?’ He took a breath. ‘Are you like the Book Club?’

‘How did you know about the Book Club?’

‘Henry. He was desperate that I not see you.’

‘Oh, I’ll bet he was.’

‘Did you know my dad? Did you work with him in the government? What did he do?’

‘I said no more on Quicksilver.’

They stared at each other. Luke tried a different tack. Drummond wouldn’t answer his questions but oddly, he seemed to want to hear what Luke wanted to ask. ‘What are all these pictures?’

‘My many failures.’

Luke turned away from the portraits of suffering. ‘What, you screwed over all these people yourself?’

‘Consider them salt in the wound. I failed in these instances, so these people suffered. I remember them. Every day. I have no choice.’

‘The Book Club tried to help people?’

‘Mostly succeeding but not always. Good doesn’t always win out.’

‘You could take the pictures down.’

‘I would still see their faces. It’s easier to see them on the walls than in my dreams.’

‘I don’t understand why you would help Eric get out of Chicago when he killed your friend.’