Jeff Abbott - Cut and Run

‘I heard this about you,’ the Wart said. ‘But I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Listen and learn.’ Bucks drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, as though the tape had a pelvis-grinding backbeat.

‘Yeah, a tape’s gonna tell me how to live.’

‘Do you have goals, Wart?’ Bucks asked.

‘Yeah. Pop this guy, collect my money, and spend the evening with good Thai pad noodles, a bottle of Glenfiddich, and a couple of hours with a nice little whore I know.’ The Wart checked his gun again, keeping it low, below the line of the windows. ‘Loser’s got to get off Westheimer first. Too many people around.’

‘Those are powerful goals you got, Wart. You’ve got a rich life.’

‘I’m content,’ the Wart said. ‘You didn’t say if you prefer head shots.’

‘Let’s get him alone first,’ Bucks said. ‘Make him hurt. Make him talk. And if he doesn’t tell me what I want to hear, you can take as few or as many shots as you want, buddy.’

‘Nice-looking guy,’ the Wart said, ‘Reminds me of the jocks who treated me like a nothing in high school. Guy like him, I usually take special care of the face. Dead or not. You ever see what’s left of a face after you hook a gun along the gumline and fire through the lip?’

‘See? You’ve got a goal.’

‘So embrace your goals. Say them, each morning, like a prayer,’ Chad Channing intoned from the tape. ‘Make meeting your goals not simply your challenge, but your bliss.’

‘Turn that crap off,’ the Wart said. ‘It’s working my last nerve.’

Bucks could smell the five million, feel it in his hands. Not just money. Sudden power. Now. So close. Eve and this bastard had hidden it and if his luck was sweet the guy was driving to get it right now. That thought, that thought was golden. This was his reprieve.

‘Oh, please, yes,’ he said as Whit turned onto Richmond. ‘Yes, buddy, take me right to bliss.’

*

MacKay and Jerry Smacks walked into the handsome lobby of the Greystoke, Jerry muttering about taking the front door. The valets nodded but gave them no special notice as a crowd of departing guests came out at the same moment. MacKay made a beeline for the lobby phones. He didn’t even glance at Jerry as he picked up a phone.

‘You want to tell me the plan, friend?’ Jerry said.

‘Just play along.’

‘You aren’t cutting me out of the action, bud.’

‘Emily Smith’s room, please,’ MacKay said into the phone.

‘Very direct approach,’ Jerry said.

‘Ms Smith,’ MacKay said after a moment. ‘Hello. Paul sent me. The tall young man who just left? He’s here with us now. We have him. You understand me?’

There was a pause.

‘You have two minutes to come down to the lobby. We’ve taken him away in a car.’ MacKay kept his voice low and friendly. ‘You are not to make a scene. You are not to scream or do anything other than what I tell you to do. Or your young man pays the price. Do you understand me? You have a minute and fifty seconds now. I’ll see you momentarily.’ He hung up.

‘Cool,’ said Jerry Smacks. ‘I like your efficiency.’

‘Follow my lead and don’t get in the way,’ MacKay said.

Jerry pasted a smile on like MacKay’s, quiet and friendly, and the two men went to the elevator bank. There were five elevators. MacKay studied the numbers. Two young Asian women pushed the up button, an elevator arrived empty, they boarded and held the door for MacKay and Jerry.

‘Thanks. Waiting for a friend,’ Jerry said.

The elevator shut.

‘A minute left,’ MacKay said. ‘We’ll see how much this guy matters to her.’

Eve replaced the phone in the cradle. How? How could they have found her, how could they have grabbed Whit? They called her Ms Smith. They knew about the credit card. They had her son.

She dialed Whit’s cell phone, her fingers shaking, expecting there to be no answer or worse, the cool steel of Bucks’ voice.

‘Yeah?’ Whit answered after two rings. Calm.

She nearly collapsed in relief. ‘A man just called, said they snatched you.’

‘No one has me. I’m driving.’

‘I have two minutes to get to the lobby or they say they’ll kill you.’

‘Get out. Get out now.’

‘How? They’re in the lobby.’ Eve tried to keep her voice calm but the urge to run surged in her bones.

‘Find another way, I’m heading back to the hotel,’ Whit said.

‘No. It’s a trap. Don’t risk it.’

‘Get the hell out, Mom. Come to the back of the hotel. I’ll pick you up there.’

‘Don’t risk it. I’ll call you where to come get me. Don’t come back here.’

‘Stay calm. I’m coming, head for the back,’ he said.

She hung up the phone. She left the small bag she’d packed, grabbed her purse, checked her gun inside. Closed her hand around it. The CD with Paul’s files on it was in there, too. Whit had left nothing valuable in the room. She put on the wig, hat, and glasses she’d used checking in. She opened the door, peered down the hall. Nothing but empty hallway, with an abandoned room-service tray a couple of doors down. The soft buzz of a basketball game played on a television a room away. She ran for the elevators, pressed a down button.

MacKay said. ‘Her two minutes are up.’

‘Give her one more,’ Jerry Smacks said.

‘Hardly, man,’ MacKay said. ‘Go get the car, bring it around fast. We’re leaving in a hurry.’

Jerry left, and MacKay watched the lights above the elevator, watching for each elevator to make its inevitable drop to the lobby, letting out couples, an elderly woman, a teenage girl. Then one car stopped at two.

MacKay headed for the middle of the lobby, watching the stairs exit. Waiting to see if she’d come out, gambling to herself he wouldn’t grab her with other witnesses in the lobby.

Another minute passed. MacKay bolted for the front door.

On the second floor, Eve ran past the hotel’s conference center, past a spa and an exercise room, past a set of meeting rooms named after famous Texas artists, dead and living. The Ney. The Umlauf. The Kohler. Laughter bubbled behind doors, people who didn’t have a life-or-death care in the world. A stairway led to the pool and she hurried down it.

She called Whit on her cell. ‘I’m heading to the back of the hotel.’

‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

‘Stay on the phone,’ she said.

The pool was empty, but in the Saturday afternoon sun a couple of women in their forties sat at a table, sipping coffee and chatting quietly. A waiter set a two-tiered tray of cakes between the women. Eve walked past them. There was no gate opening to the back of the hotel but she spotted a service entrance, leading to the kitchen. Dinner prep work was under way, a couple of men in chef’s clothes glancing up at her as she rushed past their chopping and dicing.

‘Excuse me, ma’am…’ one started and she ignored him, heading for the red glow of an exit sign.

‘Hey!’ the chef yelled again, petulant as a toddler. ‘You can’t barge in here…’

She turned back to the chef, put the phone down for a second. ‘My ex is in the lobby. I have a restraining order against him. Excuse me.’

The chef started to apologize, conciliation in his voice, but she didn’t wait. She hit the door. A hallway, another exit sign at the end. She ran through that door into the cloud-broken light of Houston winter, the narrow lot behind the hotel empty except for valet slots lining the back lot, the hum of traffic from 610 like a ghost whispering in her ear. Next to the lot sat an office building, a squat crystal of green glass, ten stories high, and beyond it a concrete parking garage. Deserted on a Saturday. Then an Italian restaurant with a gargantuan neon sign, then a steakhouse, both lots a third full.