Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

Above, he heard Mouser screaming Snow’s name.

It took Mouser only seconds to reason it out. The two bastards – the old man and the nine-lives punk – had entered the elevator shaft from the roof.

He forced the doors open with a mighty shove. It took all his strength but he peered down into the darkness of the elevator shaft.

He heard the crack of a shot, saw Drummond, sliding from the roof of the cabin sliding into its interior. The hatch clanged shut.

‘Snow!’ He screamed down the shaft. It made an echo: No. No.

He could see the support rails inside the shaft. He leapt inside, landed on metal, and grabbed hold. He began a mad, spidery scramble downwards.

Seventh floor. They ran for the stairwell. The floor was a huge, empty open space. Soft light made squares on the concrete floor. There was no place to take cover.

They moved quietly but quickly down the stairs. Several floors below them, they heard the clang of a door.

‘Hell,’ Drummond whispered, leaning against Luke. The injuries to his head and his shoulder made his voice thick, his walk shaky. ‘Don’t let your heart guide you. Stay cool. Remote. Always.’

‘Shut up with the advice,’ Luke said.

‘By the way, my gun is empty.’

‘I have the one you gave me.’

They reached the third floor. Storage space, empty of tenants. Crates and boxes everywhere. Plastic-wrapped office furniture – chairs, desks.

Drummond listened. ‘I hear them coming. I think they’re in the stairwell.’

‘Then we go out the window.’ Luke hurried along the windows, peering down. One side of the building was scarce of foot traffic.

He stripped plastic from a heavy desk, he braided the fire hose through the drawer’s opening and he rammed the desk through the window. Glass exploded and the desk plummeted, unfurling the heavy hose. The desk stopped ten feet above the pavement, dangling like a broken pendulum against the building.

‘Come on!’ Luke yelled. ‘On my back.’ No time for them both to climb down the rope. Luke felt Drummond’s solid weight go on his back and he threw himself out onto the makeshift rope.

The cameras in Drummond’s kitchen had been destroyed in the hail of Snow and Mouser’s gunfire, so the watchers – the boss, the scarred Frenchman and Aubrey – had to settle for a satellite view of the Quicksilver building. They’d seen Luke and Drummond retreat to the roof, vanish into the hatch, then saw Mouser and Snow come onto the roof and disappear back into the building moments later.

Aubrey made a horrified noise in her throat.

The computer screens were set up in a corner of the hold, and Aubrey could hardly hear what was said over the drone of the engines. They’d given her drugs, first to make her sleep, then to make her talk, or so she suspected. She’d been laying on a cot, staring at the gray ceiling, when the boss had come and pulled her up and made her speak to Luke on the phone.

Luke was alive. But the boss told her what to say and she said it. Then she saw and heard the tat-tat-tat of the bullets in the kitchen, then nothing.

The boss pushed Aubrey away from the black screen.

‘You have to help Luke,’ she said. ‘Please.’ She felt hazy from the drugs.

The boss ignored her. ‘Response from the security team?’

‘None,’ the scarred Frenchman said. ‘We have to assume the ground floor gunmen killed them.’

‘Drummond?’

‘Not answering. I imagine he’s busy.’

‘Access the building’s computer systems. Wipe everything clean. What can you install in its place to soften the police inquiry?’

‘We have a backup story: the building is a prototype, being built to test security technologies for sale. We will wipe and then reinstall data to that effect.’

‘Fine. Keep it simple.’ The Frenchman began his work.

‘That’s not helping them!’ Aubrey yelled.

The boss looked at her. ‘I know. Go back and lay down. We’ll be landing soon.’ The old cargo plane creaked and Aubrey looked past the man’s shoulder. On the satellite feed that monitored the building, glass shimmered as a large desk burst through a third-story window.

‘Luke?’ Aubrey said.

The hose held, the desk dangling a good ten feet above the pavement.

Luke held hard to the fabric of the hose, slid down to the desk’s surface. Drummond was wiry, all muscle, and he weighed a ton.

Luke looked up and saw a sparrow-thin man staring down at them from the broken window.

The thin man raised a sleek rifle, aimed it with confidence in his eyes. He let five seconds pass, saying, ‘You made it easy now.’

Against his back, Drummond twisted. The weight of Luke’s gun, jammed in the back of his pants, came free and a thundering boom went off near Luke’s head.

The thin man ducked back or fell dead, Luke didn’t know. He lost his grip on the hose and he and Drummond hit the canted desk, slid, hit air again. He felt Drummond’s arms wrapping around him to cocoon him, to drink the impact of the concrete.

And it hurt. Luke felt all the air drive out of him. Drummond lay beneath him, breathing in short sharp pants. Luke’s vision swam – he saw the desk, swinging above him.

Move.

Luke scrambled to his feet – muscles feeling like they’d been pulled from his body and hastily stuffed back inside his skin – and tried to lift Drummond from the sidewalk.

‘Can’t – leg broken – go.’ His voice was a hiss.

No way he was leaving Drummond behind. Luke hiked the older man up. Supported him on his shoulders. The hard shrill knife of a police siren sliced the afternoon, cutting through the Manhattan hum.

He pulled Drummond into his arms and carried him, heading for the cross street. He wanted to put buildings between him and the killers.

‘My keys,’ Drummond patted at his pocket.

‘You have a car?’

‘My keys,’ he repeated and then the shot rang out, piercing him in the back, near where Luke’s hand held him. The bullet tumbled through spine and organs and the impact nearly knocked him loose from Luke’s grip.

The crowd that had been starting to close around them scattered, a woman shrieking, students bolting.

But Luke did not stop. A tea shop was a few yards away and he stumbled through its door as the proprietor opened it to see what fresh hell had erupted in the Village. At tables people with laptops looked up from their web-induced isolation and gasped; the counter person erupted with a series of short screams.

‘Call 9-1-1,’ Luke said. ‘Please.’

Drummond opened his eyes with visible effort. ‘My keys. Run. No police.’ His eyes focused on Luke’s face. He clutched at Luke’s Saint Michael medal, which dangled above his face as Luke knelt by him. Then his hand went to his pocket and he died.

Oh, God, Luke thought. In the pocket he found a ring of car keys with a bottle opener. He grabbed the keys and Snow’s gun, still nestled in Drummond’s hand.

When he grabbed the gun everyone in the tea shop scrambled backwards. He paused. Then he tore the Saint Michael medal from Drummond’s throat, cupped it in his hand. He hurried past a counter and ran into a small side alley of brick. It was closed to the main streets by an iron gate.

Keys. A car. Drummond must have a car. A rental garage’s address was printed on the back of the bottle opener. Four blocks away.

Luke climbed over the iron gate, dropped to the next street, and ran.

The final bullet of Drummond’s long career had caught Sweet Bird under the jaw and he’d fallen back with an astonished look on his thin face.

Mouser had picked up the rifle next to Sweet Bird’s body. He’d gotten a single shot off, nailed Drummond, missed Luke. He squeezed the trigger again; no ammo left.