Jeff Abbott - Panic

He had been seconds from wrecking the car when Gabriel had grabbed him and hammered him. His tongue wormed in his dry mouth. A heavy ache settled in along his jaw and neck for permanent residence. He smelled his own sour sweat.

Mom. I failed you. I’m so sorry. He swallowed down the panic and the grief because it wasn’t doing him any good.

He had to be calm. Think. Because everything had changed.

What had Gabriel said? In your life, nothing is as it seems.

Well, one thing was exactly as it seemed. He was completely screwed.

Evan tested the handcuff. Locked. He sat up, pushing with his feet, wriggling his back against the headboard. A side table held a book – a recent thick bestseller about the history of baseball – and a lamp; no phone. A baby monitor stood on the far table.

He stared at the monitor. He couldn’t act afraid with Gabriel. He had to show strength.

For his mom, because Gabriel knew the meat of the story as to why his mom had died. For his dad, wherever he was. For Carrie, however she was mixed up in this nightmare. She knew he was in danger – how? He had no idea.

So, what do you do now?

He needed a weapon. Imagine the guy who killed Mom is here. What do you hurt him with? Look at everything with new eyes. New eyes. It was advice he gave himself when he was setting up scenes to shoot. He could barely reach the side table. He managed to fingertip the knob and open the drawer. His hand searched the drawer as far as he could reach: empty. The book on the table wasn’t heavy enough. The lamp. He couldn’t reach it but he could reach the cord, where it snaked to a plug behind the bed. As silently as he could, keeping an eye on the baby monitor, trying to quiet the handcuff from rattling against the metal headboard, he tugged the lamp closer to him; the base was heavy, ornate, wrought-iron. But at the angle he was bound, he wouldn’t be able to swing the lamp with enough force to cause serious hurt. He unplugged the cord, looped it neatly behind the table so it wouldn’t catch or snag. Just in case he got a chance. Lamps could be thrown. He peered down the back of the bed, to the floor. Nothing else but miniature tumbleweeds of dust.

‘Hello,’ he called to the monitor.

A minute later he heard the tread of feet on stairs. Then the rasp of a key in a lock. The bedroom door opened; Gabriel stood in the doorway. A sleek black pistol holstered at his side.

‘You okay?’ Gabriel said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Thanks for putting our lives at risk with your stupid stunt.’

‘Did we crash?’

‘No, Evan. I know how to drive a car while seated in the passenger side. Standard training.’ Gabriel cleared his throat. ‘How you feeling now?’

‘I’m fine.’ Evan tried to imagine driving from the passenger side to avoid a high-speed crash. It suggested an extraordinary level of calm under fire. ‘So where did you learn that driving trick?’

‘A very special school,’ Gabriel said. ‘It’s early Saturday morning. You slept through the night.’ A coldness frosted his gaze. ‘You and I can be of great help to each other, Evan.’

‘Really. Now you want to help me.’

‘I saved you, didn’t I? If you had stayed out in the open, well, you’d be dead now. I don’t believe even the police could protect you from Mr. Jargo.’ Gabriel leaned against the wall. ‘So, let’s start afresh. I need you to tell me exactly what happened yesterday when you got to your parents’ house.’

‘Why? You’re not the police.’

‘No, I’m not, but I did save your life. I could have let you hang. I didn’t.’

‘True,’ Evan said. But he watched Gabriel. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. Jumpy. Nervous. Like a man in need of a solid blast of bourbon. But there was nothing to be gained by silence, at least not now.

So Evan told him about his mother’s urgent phone call, the drive to Austin, the attack in the kitchen. Gabriel asked no questions. When Evan was done, Gabriel brought a chair to the foot of the bed and sat down. Frowning, as if he was considering a plan of action and not caring for his options.

‘I want to know who exactly you are,’ Evan said.

‘I’ll tell you who I am. And then I’ll tell you who you are.’

‘I know who I am.’

‘Do you? I don’t think so, Evan.’ Gabriel shook his head. ‘I’d call your childhood sheltered, but that would be a sick joke.’

‘I kept my promise to you. You keep yours.’

Gabriel shrugged. ‘I own a private security firm. Your mother hired me to get you and her safely out of Austin, get you to your father. Clearly she slipped up and tipped her hand to the wrong people. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.’

So he knows where Dad is.

‘Go back to the attack. You were unconscious,’ Gabriel said. ‘For a few minutes, at least, between when they hit you and they strung you up.’

‘I don’t know how long. Why does it matter?’

‘Because the killers could have gotten the files I mentioned. Found them on your or your mother’s computer.’

‘They wouldn’t have been on my computer.’ But one of the men had accessed his laptop. He remembered now, the start-up chime, the sound of typing, telling Durless about it. ‘The killers, they typed on my laptop. Said something about…’ He struggled to remember past the haze of trauma. ‘About “all gone.”’ He waited to see what else Gabriel would say.

‘Your mother e-mailed you the files.’

E-mailed. His mother had sent him those music files for his soundtrack late the night before she called. But they were just music files; he’d listened to them on the way to Austin. Nothing unusual. She hadn’t put anything weird in her e-mail to him. But he hadn’t mentioned the e-mails to Gabriel in relating Friday morning’s events; it hadn’t seemed important compared to the horrors of yesterday. ‘My mom didn’t e-mail me anything weird. And even if she did, the killers couldn’t have gotten past the password.’

So what did all gone mean?

‘There are programs that can crack passwords in a matter of seconds.’ Gabriel leaned against the wall, studied Evan. ‘I don’t have one. But I do have you.’

‘I don’t have these files.’

‘Your mother told me that you did, Evan.’

Evan shook his head. ‘These files… what are they?’

‘The less you know, the better. That way I can let you go and you can forget you ever saw me and you can go have a nice new life.’ Gabriel crossed his arms. ‘I’m an extremely reasonable man. I want to give you a fair deal. You give me the files. I get you out of the country, provide you a new identity and access to a bank account in the Caymans, which your mother had me arrange. If you’re careful, no one will ever find you.’

‘I’m just supposed to give up my life.’ Evan tried to keep the shock out of his voice.

‘It’s your call. You want to go back home, go ahead. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. Home is death.’

Evan chewed his lip. ‘I help you, then what about my dad?’

‘If your father contacts me, I’ll tell him where you are, and then finding you is his problem. My responsibility to your mother stops once you get on a plane.’

‘Please tell me where my dad is.’

‘I’ve no idea. Your mother knew how to get in touch with him, but I don’t.’

Evan let a beat pass. ‘I could give you what you want and you’d just kill me.’

Gabriel reached in his pocket and tossed a passport on the bedspread. It bore the seal of South Africa. With his free hand, Evan opened it. A picture of him was inside – his original passport photo, the same as he had in his American passport. The name on the passport was Erik Thomas Petersen. Stamps colored the pages: entry into Great Britain a month ago, then entry into the United States two weeks ago. Evan shut the passport, dropped it back on the bed. ‘Very legitimate-looking.’