Jeff Abbott - Trust Me

Luke froze. Blinked. No. The man was bald; his dad had a full head of graying hair. But the eyes. The mouth, set in a nervous frown. The nose, straight as iron.

He stared at Luke. Luke felt as though the crowded acreage of the Tower contracted, the mass of people around him fading to a misty blur, the hum and rumble of Paris devolving to a giant white-noise hiss. Mouser said something in his earpiece and Luke could not register a single word. The air left his chest; his knees buckled. He kept standing through sheer force of will.

This could not be. But it was. His father did not smile at him, but he closed his eyes, as though conscious of Luke’s pain, as though it were a wave he could feel or hear or taste. Ten years. Ten years of grieving, and missing his father, feeling his absence like a raggedy gap in his chest, and clutching a piece of silver as his father’s last gift of presence in his life.

His father’s words on their last parting: I’ll miss you every moment. They rang and echoed in his head. It had all been a lie, the kind of monumental lie that did not just sting feelings but cut down to heart and bone. A lie that undid lives.

His father was alive. He was here. The shock suffocated him until his chest began to ache. Heat burned the back of his eyes. He took two steps to start running toward his father… but then he remembered where he was. Not just in the gray light of the Paris morning. He was in the crosshairs of a terrorist’s gun.

Every plan and stratagem vanished from his mind. A tremble took his body. ‘Dad?’ he said, more gasp than word. No. It was too much to ask. He couldn’t do this any more. But he had to.

‘What?’ Mouser asked in Luke’s ear.

He couldn’t let Mouser close his trap. He had to think past the maelstrom of emotion.

‘I said damn. I don’t see her.’ Luke blinked. He felt tears on his face before he realized he’d shed them. ‘They’re not here. We should go. I’ll just give you the money. Please, let’s go.’ He turned to walk away.

‘I see her. The woman you were with in Chicago. Straight ahead of you, standing with some bald guy. What the hell’s the matter?’ Mouser said in a low growl of menace.

‘That’s not her.’ He could think of nothing else to say.

‘Luke. Don’t you fuck with me.’

Maybe he won’t recognize Dad, he thought. Maybe he doesn’t remember everyone he kills.

A man he didn’t know stopped in passing, grabbed his arm. ‘Luke, it’s okay.’ He recognized the voice as that of the Frenchman who’d spoken to him on the phone.

Luke tried to shake his head. ‘Get them out of here. Please get them out of here.’

‘What?’

‘Sniper, run, scatter.’ Luke bolted toward his father and Aubrey. ‘Aubrey, Dad, run! Run!’

‘Dad?’ Mouser hissed into his earpiece. ‘What the hell game you-’ and then he stopped, as words no longer mattered.

The crack of the bullet hummed through the air, the dirt kicking up at Luke’s feet. He stopped, nearly fell. A second shot boomed in the air, and now panic rippled through the crowd approaching the Tower.

‘Sniper!’ Luke screamed. Another shot and people scattered, screaming, knocking into each other as they fled. He looked back at the Frenchman – he was racing across the grass toward where the shots came from, a weapon drawn, and then he was cut down, a bullet slicing through his throat.

Luke got knocked off his feet by a line of tourists scrambling back toward their bus at the sound of the gunfire. His sunglasses fell from his face. Feet trampled him and agony rushed up from his hand, boots landed on his scalp, his cheek. He fought to his feet. He saw his father and Aubrey, surrounded by three men in black, guns jammed to the back of their heads, being shoved through the chaos of the crowd.

This was a trap. The Night Road had wanted to flush out their enemy, and now they had. Luke had handed Quicksilver to Mouser-who wasn’t working alone.

‘Dad!’ Luke yelled. Luke saw the group headed rapidly toward the bus drop-off, borne along by the rest of the fleeing crowd. Luke struggled to catch up with them. He broke free of the main crowd and saw his father and Aubrey being shoved into the back of a van. The van was marked with a logo of a cake and read TROIS PETITS GATEAUX. Three Little Cakes.

The doors slammed and the van peeled out onto the road. Luke cut across the grassland and ran out onto the broad, tree-lined walking trail, trying to keep the van in sight on the street.

But suddenly the van wheeled hard and zoomed right. Along the allee, heading directly toward him. The driver was pointing at him. Coming back for him.

Luke turned and ran, back toward the Tower. He shot a panicked glance over his shoulder and he could see the driver’s face, frowning in concentration, teeth gritted, intent on running him down.

He had nowhere to hide. The van veered past him, a rifle butt from the window slamming him, knocking him over. The van skidded to a stop. He heard the shrill high cry of the police sirens booming across the air, through the trees, closer to the Tower, the armed guards clearing out the people, hunting for the unseen source of the shots. No more shooting; Mouser was gone. Of course. His buddies could finish the work.

‘Help me!’ Luke yelled. ‘ Aidez-moi!’ But in the panic, no one heard him.

One of the black-suited men jumped out of the van, raced toward Luke, gun drawn, screaming at him – in English – to get in the van. He saw in a flash Aubrey and his father, facedown on the van floor.

Make the creep come to you, Luke realized. The thought came with shimmering clarity. The past few days had awakened a brutal, long-drowsing instinct in him, as though the bookish web-surfer who had never thought about the reality of danger had been whittled away. Seeing his father, alive, changed him, changed everything. He was not going to lose him again.

Luke went flat on the ground. The gunman ran up to him and Luke timed it to the second, spun and scissor-kicked hard. It was awkward but forceful enough and the gunman stumbled. Luke delivered a pile-driver kick into the gunman’s groin. The guy grunted in agony and folded and Luke kicked him in the head without hesitation and wrenched the gun from him. He ran toward the van, gun raised.

One of the gunmen inside the van leveled a pistol at him. Then he saw Aubrey launch herself from the floor, claw at the gunman’s arm. The doors slammed and he heard the sound of a shot fired inside the van.

He fired at the van’s tires, hitting too high, nailing the bumper. Then a swarm of people fleeing ran between him and the van, and he couldn’t risk another shot. He rammed his way through the crowd, trying to get close enough to shred a tire.

But the van revved and accelerated, knocking through the thinning crowd. They’d run out of time to execute the grab on him, with French police swarming around the grounds. The van blasted onto Avenue Charles Floquet and was gone.

Luke tucked the stolen gun under his jacket and ran. His mind raced. Mouser. Mouser would know where they would be taken.

The sniper fire had ended, as far as he could tell. Which meant it was too risky for Mouser to stay in place. Mouser would have to run and wouldn’t he run to the Mercedes? If he couldn’t rendezvous with the Night Road team in the van after using Luke as bait, he would have to make a fast escape in the chaos. But with the immediately snarling traffic as pedestrians and every bus in the area fled, and police shutting down roads, the sedan they’d driven to the Tower would offer a difficult solution for escape. No sniper wanted to be caught in the mother of all traffic jams.

But the Paris subway, the Metro, was close by. He could be wrong. But Mouser would want safety more than retrieving an asset like a car; it was the terrorist way. He headed for the sign indicating the Metro.