Jeff Abbott - Cut and Run

Eve didn’t look at him again, fumbling for keys. Her skin felt like ice. She forgot entirely about the car’s remote entry. ‘Taking my picture like that, what kind of freak are you?’

‘One of your sons wanted me to find you.’ The man didn’t come closer. ‘Let me help you.’

‘Help me?’ Doyle and Bucks would be here any minute. Jesus, who the hell are you? she wanted to scream at the man.

‘Do you ever think about your sons, Ellen?’

‘That’s not my name and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She jammed the car key into the lock, turned it, yanked the door open.

‘Would you like to see one of your sons?’

‘I don’t have children,’ Eve said. She felt like a fist had smashed through her skin, her muscle and chest bones to seize her heart and squeeze it into gel. She sat in the car, slammed the door, thumbed the lock switch. The man hurried to her car window, calling to her through the glass. Calling her Ellen, unbelievable.

‘If you want to see your son, I can arrange it. No one has to know. Please. Forgiveness isn’t impossible…’

Eve powered up the car, threw it into reverse, peeled out from the lot. She watched the man standing in her rearview mirror, not giving chase. Of course not. He probably already knew Eve’s license plate, knew where she lived. But she knew nothing about him.

She gunned the car down McCarty, back onto Clinton, toward the highway.

Harry Chyme watched the gray Mercedes tear away from the parking lot. The woman had glanced at Harry when he’d yelled through the window that he could help her, that no one had to know if she saw her son, the unexpected words about forgiveness. He’d nearly had her. Harry tucked the camera back into his pocket. This wasn’t going to be easy for Whit to hear. Certain dogs should be left sleeping, even better left to die in their sleep. He had wrestled with taking this direct approach, but he had waited until she was alone, far from Bellini colleagues, and it had gotten him the answer he needed before Whit decided to charge up here: not interested.

Whit could stay home and Harry could go back to doing divorces.

Harry walked around to the back of the bar, where he’d parked after following her to the Port from the club. Go back to his hotel, call Whit, tell him the woman wasn’t Ellen Mosley. Perhaps that would be best. See if…

A voice sounded behind him. ‘Hey, buddy. You bothering Eve?’

He called you Ellen Mosley.

Eve got four blocks down Clinton before she pulled over in front of an abandoned warehouse and vomited into a ditch. She hadn’t eaten much today and she spat a long ropy strand that tasted of orange juice into the chopped tops of the roughly mown grass. She wiped a tissue across her lips, looked back down the road as if the man in the navy blazer would be leading an avenging charge of Mosleys, Babe in the lead, six angry sons marching behind.

But the road was empty.

She got back into her car. She drove along Clinton, past the highway, into blue-collar Galena Park, past a little motel that catered to truckers, fast food spots, an old-style barber shop. She pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot several blocks down. She put her lipstick back on, keeping her hand steady. What if the man was still there in a few minutes when Bucks or Doyle showed? Would he watch them, follow them? She should have said, Sorry, you have the wrong person, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Bluffed her way out and gotten into the office. But she was already rattled by Paul telling her about Frank; she wasn’t using her brain, her best weapon.

She went inside, bought herself a Coke. Drank it, further washing the hot-yuck taste from her mouth, ate a mint. Tried to call Bucks on her cell phone. No answer. Tried to call Richard Doyle at his office. No answer. She didn’t leave a message with either.

She called Paul and he answered. ‘I can’t get in touch with Bucks. Tell him the meeting with Doyle’s off.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s a heating problem in the building.’ Their code for police are watching. The man wasn’t police, but Eve couldn’t give the real reason to call off the exchange.

‘I’ll let him know.’

‘Tell him to call me. I’m down Clinton at the McDonald’s.’

Paul hung up without another word.

Eve sat down at a booth with her Coke and three booths over a mother fussed over her trio of small children, all with ketchup-smeared lips, vrooming the little plastic roadsters that came with their lunches and letting their hamburgers cool on the trays. The mother was cajoling them in Spanish to eat their burgers, not fill up on their fries. The boys ate the drooping fries like birds devouring worms. Three little boys. She watched the children.

Your boys probably ate a lot of meals at McDonald’s. God knows Babe never knew how to cook.

She waited, now that the shock was subsiding, for regret to fill her heart. Sadness. Her children had not been mentioned to her since that long-ago day in that small wreck of a motel room in Bozeman. James Powell, threatening her kids, her broken ties to them raw and fresh, her nestling the little gun in his snoring mouth.

But instead she felt scared and confused. Her kids couldn’t be looking for her, they couldn’t. She watched the clock tick its minutes. Fifteen passed. She drank a second Coke, tried again to call Doyle and Bucks.

Eve got back in her car, studied the wheel. She didn’t want to leave the plastic womb of the McDonald’s, didn’t want to go back to the Alvarez office. But Doyle would be there by now, and Bucks would still show if Paul hadn’t reached him. She couldn’t screw up this job, no, not after Frank had put them on the firing line. She started up the car, turned out into the lot, headed back to the office.

A car she recognized as Richard Doyle’s Cadillac sat parked near the Alvarez front door. No sign of the man in the navy blazer. She pulled up next to Doyle’s car; he wasn’t sitting behind the wheel. She got out, went up to the door, her key ready this time. But the door was unlocked and she pushed it open.

She smelled the crisp stink of gunfire as soon as she stepped through the doorway.

Eve froze. There was no sound but the quiet hum of the air-conditioning. The office had a small reception area, with two offices and a tiny kitchen in the back. Silk flowers that needed dusting stood on the bare receptionist’s desk. She took her gun from her purse, held it in a firing stance. She moved forward, into the main office she used for her exchanges.

Richard Doyle lay on his back. He was a florid-faced good old boy, but the rosy, full cheeks paled in death. Two bullet holes marred his forehead, dark and wet. Blood splattered his shirt and tie; another bullet had found his chest. The man in the navy blazer lay next to him, two bullets in his forehead, blood on his eyeglasses, eyes wide, mouth slack. His hand was on his chest, three of his fingers ripped by a bullet.

Eve knelt by the man supposedly sent by her son. Felt his pockets. Empty. No camera with her pictures inside, no wallet, no ID. She stood, her legs wobbly. Her foot stepped on Richard Doyle’s hand and she jumped back quickly.

There was no sign of the five million in cash Doyle was bringing to her. No duffel bag, no suitcase, nothing.

She moved through the rest of the office. There were few hiding places. Empty. The back door to the office was unlocked as well. She pushed it open, looked back into an alleyway. Empty except for a pickup truck she knew belonged to the bar owner in the neighboring building. And a car that looked like a rental, a nondescript Taurus. She took two steps toward it.

And heard sirens begin their cry on the moist breeze.

She shut the door, ran back through the office, back out the front. Got in her Mercedes, revved it away from the storefront. She pulled onto McCarty, back toward Clinton, and when she was a block away she saw in her rearview mirror a Houston police car wheel into the lot, pulling up near the bar. Someone must have heard shots and called the cops.