Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

‘What?’ A harsh hiss, low and pained.

‘I’m really sorry. Your friends say we have to get out of here now, we’re under attack.’

He focused his gaze on a blinking red light on the kitchen wall. ‘Someone’s trying to get past the security systems.’ He rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘We have unwanted company, Luke. The Night Road must have tracked you here. I hope you’re ready for a fight.’

Ten minutes earlier, Snow knocked at the door of the Quicksilver building. The doorman stood up, peered at her both on the camera that monitored the street and through the bullet-proof glass.

‘Yes, I’m here to see Mr Drummond at Quicksilver Risk Management,’ Snow said with a coy, slightly crooked smile.

The doorman did not seem at all impressed with her smile. He gave her a hard, measured stare.

‘No sales calls,’ he said through the intercom.

‘I’m not a sales person. I represent a software company that has already registered the trademark of Quicksilver Risk Management in the state of New York and I’ve been trying every way I can to get in contact with Quicksilver at this address and nothing has worked.’ She tapped her foot on the pavement and ran a hand through her snow-white hair.

‘We’re not interested.’

‘Well, you might be interested that my client is planning to sue you for use of a registered trademark. And if you don’t let me in to speak with someone in charge, then I shall simply have to summon the police and the press here and say that you are refusing to accept legal papers.’

The doorman was not privy to the name of the building’s owner. And he privately thought the police wouldn’t care less. But the woman was making a fuss and one of the overriding descriptions of his job was to keep the building out of public and police notice.

She stepped inside as he deactivated the electronic locks on the door. She reached into her purse and pulled out a thick envelope. ‘Honestly, how do your clients get a hold of you?’

The doorman reached for the package and the end of it exploded. The bullet tore through his flesh like it was paper and he toppled toward the granite counter.

She thought of the uniformed men who had swarmed the burning compound, the only home she’d ever known, and she was glad the man was dead. She walked to the front door and admitted Mouser. She propped the door open with a metal wedge. They dragged the doorman’s body out of sight.

They hurried toward the elevator. She swiped an electronic code scanner card, connected to a modified handheld computer, that Sweet Bird had given them to unlock the elevator; it tested thousands of combinations within thirty seconds, scored the right one, and the doors closed. She pressed the button for the top floor.

The elevator began to rise. At floor five it jolted to a hard stop.

Sweet Bird listened to a call in his earpiece. ‘Understood,’ he said. He turned to his Birdies. ‘The showoffs got themselves trapped.’ He did not want to spend his day playing soldier; he did not like putting himself or his people in unwarranted danger. But he had no choice.

He and his five Birdies got out of the van, their guns hidden under their coats. The driver moved the van along into traffic, to start his ongoing orbit of the building until needed.

The front door was propped open, but Sweet Bird kicked the prop loose and the door shut itself again.

‘Get on the computer system,’ he told one of the Birdies, ‘see if there’s an override for the elevator, or if we got stairs to take.’ Suddenly two uniformed men barreled in from a door at the end of the small lobby, guns drawn.

The gunfire erupted just as Sweet Bird dove for the cover of the counter.

‘Look for an override button.’ Snow spoke into her mike. The distant sound of gunfire, five floors below, stopped abruptly.

A long quiet filled the elevator while she waited for an answer, hoping that Sweet Bird and his flock were still on their feet.

‘Got it,’ Sweet Bird said. Suddenly the elevator lurched into life, began its ascent toward the top floor.

‘If Luke or these assholes have our money, we kill them as soon as we’ve got our hands on it.’

‘I get Schoolboy,’ Snow said. ‘He hurt me worse than he hurt you. A bullet beats a blade.’

‘Do you know who killed my dad? Was it Mouser?’

‘Not now, Luke, for God’s sakes. Here, take this gun. We’re getting the hell out of here.’

‘Tell your friends on the other side of the camera to call the police if we’re in danger.’

‘They’re far away. They can’t help us.’

‘Where’s far away?’

‘Europe.’

‘Why are they taking Aubrey to Europe?’ Then he remembered Frankie Wu’s words back in Chicago, discussing their itinerary. New York. Paris.

‘Can you shoot this?’ Drummond pulled a Glock 9 from a kitchen cabinet, pressed it into Luke’s hand.

‘If I have lots of time to aim.’

‘Don’t be a perfectionist.’ They turned the corner into the entryway. The elevator doors were already open and Mouser leveled his semi-automatic and opened fire. Rounds exploded into the walnut paneling near Luke’s head. Drummond shoved him back around the corner, returning fire.

They retreated toward the kitchen. The finery of the living room – the cleanly upholstered sofas, the glass table tops, the vivid photos of misspent suffering on the walls – all were splintered and dusted in the gunfire.

Drummond and Luke went over the kitchen counter. A few more bullets thrummed into the granite-topped island.

Then silence.

Drummond pointed at the doorway at the end of the kitchen, gestured that it meant the roof. It would be a run of a dozen feet, uncovered.

Luke shook his head.

‘Schoolboy.’ Luke heard Snow call to him. ‘You left marks on my throat with those chains, and a hole in my shoulder’ – and then she went silent. Luke knew what would happen to him if she got those pale, tender hands on him. She would pay him back with agony.

He stared at Drummond and listened for the shuffle of feet on broken glass. But there was only silence. The quiet filled his chest with a crushing dread.

The silence stretched.

‘No neighbors to call for help, Mr Drummond,’ Mouser called. ‘This is one empty building. We got people going floor to floor and nobody’s home. How can you afford that in New York?’

‘Family money.’ Drummond reached into a drawer and yanked out a large knife.

‘Luke, how you doing?’ Mouser called.

‘Better than Snow,’ Luke said. Did you kill my dad? He wanted to ask the question but the words wouldn’t form in his mouth.

‘You’re a nothing punk to me,’ Mouser said. ‘You cooperate, you get to go home to stepdaddy. You don’t, I’m giving you to my girl, and it’s not going to be sunshine and lollipops. Now shut up and let the big boys talk. Mr Drummond?’

‘What, asshole?’

‘Tell me who’s trying to screw the Night Road.’

Drummond said nothing.

‘You help me, I help you.’ Mouser’s voice grew closer.

‘Fine. Here’s the deal,’ Drummond said. ‘You leave and I won’t kill you.’

Snow was silent; Luke thought she might be drawing close, grinning at him under her bottle-white hair. He risked a glance around the counter’s edge but didn’t see her.

‘I’ll leave, but with Luke. You get to live.’

Drummond said, ‘Eric stole your money. Not us. And I walk out with Luke.’

‘You’re outgunned. I got street gangbangers in the lobby. We’re over a dozen stories up. You got no place to fly.’

‘Except into my arms.’ Snow sounded like she was just on the other side of the counter.

Mouser continued his negotiation. ‘Eric hid the goods and you were gonna fly his ass out here. I think Eric gave Luke and Aubrey our money.’