Jeff Abbott: Trust Me

Luke said nothing. Henry cast a gaze around the room, as though checking that all was well, then settled his stare back on Luke. ‘You’re armed.’

‘Yes.’

‘Turn around. Hands on the cabinet.’

Luke obeyed. Henry frisked him, took his guns.

‘They’re upstairs,’ Luke said. He had an idea. If only he could fool Henry. ‘My dad is up there, I think.’

‘Then let’s go give you a proper reunion,’ Henry said, the hate thick in his voice.

They went up the stairs, Luke first, Henry’s gun in the small of his back. Luke felt like he was walking up to a rickety gallows.

The second floor held import furnishings, and Mouser and six men sat around a patio table in an assortment of cheap chairs. Mouser saw Luke and Henry step inside. And he stood.

‘What. The. Hell,’ he said.

A set of clocks stood above his head and Luke glanced at them. But they were set for a crazy quilt of times. He glanced past the table. His father and Aubrey were bound to chairs. Aubrey had a black eye; his father had been beaten, dried blood caking beneath his nose and mouth. They both met his gaze.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Mouser said.

‘I’m here to lead the meeting,’ Henry said quietly.

The light above the table was dim, and Luke thought of the disaffected minds he’d studied in his psychology classes, trying to decipher their passions: the fire bloods of the French Revolution plotting the incineration of a social order and the collateral deaths of thousands of innocents; John Wilkes Booth, plotting the murder of the singular man who changed the course of history by keeping the Union together through a horrible trial by fire; the Bolsheviks, planning their paradise, who ended up with a discounted ruin built on the bones of millions.

‘You said he was dead.’ Mouser stared at Luke.

‘I lied,’ Henry said. ‘You’re not in command here. I am.’

‘Not any more.’ Mouser raised a gun and aimed it squarely at Henry’s head.

‘Gentlemen,’ Henry said. ‘You were promised a further, and much greater investment in your causes if you accomplished your initial attacks. Mouser doesn’t have your money. I do.’ He jerked his head at Luke. ‘And he does. Kill us and all investment in the Night Road stops, immediately.’

‘No,’ one of the men said. He had a pinched face that reminded Luke of a ferret, a tattoo decorating the side of his neck. ‘You will give us our money now.’

‘Wrong.’ Henry smiled at Mouser. ‘You’re such a punk idiot. You can’t run this group.’

‘No one runs us,’ one of the other men said. ‘We do what we want. We succeed, we get funded. That was the deal.’

An investment scheme, Luke thought. Terrorism Incorporated. The dark opposite of an idea like Quicksilver, which was Counter-Terrorism Incorporated.

‘You won’t get the money without us,’ Luke said, glancing at Henry. As if saying, okay, I’ll play. He had no doubt that Henry, now rejected and bitter, would shoot him the moment his usefulness was done.

His father stared at him, but Luke couldn’t look at him. Every second ticking by was a heartbeat closer to death. But that was true of any ordinary day.

‘Don’t listen to this kid,’ Mouser said. ‘He and his friend killed our best bomb maker.’

‘Only because she tried to kill me. Funny how you can put your sorrow about Snow aside when it suits you, like in Paris.’

Mouser’s face purpled, his mouth worked.

‘We’re here about the money. For a trade,’ Luke lied.

‘You didn’t have the money,’ Mouser said.

‘Eric did. Jane knew where it was. She told me.’ At this both Warren and Aubrey lifted their heads. ‘She used the Quicksilver computers to break the encryption that showed where Eric hid the fifty million. Right before genius boy here blew up their offices.’ Jane’s final words echoed in his brain: Hidden in plain sight. That little b. Eric, the bastard, who had betrayed her. He wished he knew what she meant. The answer had to be close. He was under enormous pressure. Where could he have stashed the money? Hidden in plain sight.

Mouser’s gun swiveled toward Warren and Aubrey. ‘The money. Now. Or they die.’

Luke glanced at Henry. ‘I’ll give up the money. But only to Henry. That way, he’s in control. My deal is with him. He lets my father and Aubrey go and I give him the cash. We worked it out.’ The lie was thick in his mouth. He looked at the men at the table. ‘I found you all. I pointed you to Henry. I made the Night Road happen. You owe me at least this deal.’

‘You’re owed nothing,’ the neck-tattooed man said.

‘You have nothing,’ Luke said. ‘What happens when the rest of the Night Road finds out that you’ve cut them off from potential millions to carry out their attacks?’ He pointed at Mouser. ‘You’re responsible, and your life will be worthless.’

Mouser’s face purpled in rage. ‘None of us are in this for money.’ He all but spat out the last word.

‘No, but the money makes pretending that you’re badasses easier. To buy your bomb materials, to buy your guns, to do your dirty work. Without it you’re nothing but assholes posting bullshit on the internet, pretending you’re important.’

Mouser pointed at Henry. ‘He wanted you caught. Dead. Now you’re on his side?’

‘I never wanted him dead. That was your own mistake,’ Henry said. ‘Go. Do what you have to do for Hellfire. Mouser, you stay here. We’ll work out the deal for the money.’

‘They saw our faces,’ Mouser said. ‘No witnesses.’

‘This is the only deal I’m offering,’ Luke said. Then he said the words that he knew would matter most: ‘Why don’t you put it to a vote?’

‘Did you really think I was going to negotiate with you?’ Mouser said, nearly laughing.

Luke saw sharp glances pass between the Night Roaders. Mouser had ignored the call for a vote, and he knew that these men – leaders of their own movements or cells – did not relish taking orders. They were used to giving them as captains of their own causes.

‘There is no vote. I have the access to the funds. You do as I say. Get going. You have your instructions, yes?’ Henry said.

The men nodded. Luke noticed they each had sheets of paper outlining the bomb’s operations, schematics of what looked like train tracks, photos and bios of train personnel at their target stations. Get in, stash their bombs, and get out.

‘Go. You know the plan. 6.30 a.m. Central, 7.30 a.m. Eastern, day after tomorrow.’ Henry jerked his head. ‘Go.’

They had a day to return to the targets, to set the bombs.

‘No,’ Mouser said. ‘I’m running the show.’

‘Do you have fifty million to reward and fund our friends here? Have you succeeded in anything I’ve asked you to do? Shut the hell up, Mouser.’ Henry cleared his throat. ‘Get going now. One of you will find the downstairs guard in your van sleeping off a punch.’

The men filed past Luke; he could hear the shuffle of their footsteps on the stairs. Then, from downstairs, the sounds of them loading the boxes, rushing them through the store, out of the front door.

‘So,’ Mouser said. ‘It comes to this.’

‘You left a man to kill me back in Paris,’ Henry said.

‘I didn’t. He was supposed to keep you under wraps until Hellfire was done.’

‘You’re a sorry liar, Mouser.’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Warren Dantry said. No one was expecting him to speak and they all glanced at him. Underneath his bruises a smile flickered, the grin that Luke remembered from fishing trips, from sitting with his father on the back porch of their house. His voice sounded the same as it had before, a gentle baritone, older, wiser.