Jeff Abbott - Fear

The man’s name was David Singhal and he was a former VP of research at a Swiss pharmaceutical, now running a research consulting firm based in Los Angeles. Miles searched his name using Google’s Images option and found a photo of Singhal from his interview in a European business journal. Fiftyish, cultured, intelligent eyes, a graying goatee. Miles tried the number.

‘Hello, Mr. Singhal?’

‘Yes?’ He had a clipped British accent.

Miles said with shotgun delivery, ‘Hi, this is James with Excelsior Credit Card Security, we work with VISA and with AmEx, and there’s a question about your account, did you recently cancel a flight reservation to Austin?’

Singhal was more cautious than Bradley: ‘I’m sorry, who are you with?’

Miles repeated, adding, ‘We’re assisting the credit-card companies with a database corruption. The discrepancy is that one version of the credit database has you making a charge for an LAX-Austin flight, the other rebuilt database has canceled that charge.’

‘It sounds like I should call my airline,’ Singhal said. ‘I’m not going to give you my credit-card number over the phone.’

‘Uh, yes, sir, very wise, you should never do that.’ He made a stab. ‘I can do the database fix so there’s no confusion about your ticket status. Was your flight on Southwest?’

Singhal hung up.

‘Great,’ Miles said. ‘He’ll be calling the airline directly and they’ll tell him all’s well.’

‘Give me the phone.’ Groote took the phone, dialed, spoke quietly, dialed another number, gave a clearance code. He hung up, got them both refills on their coffee, sat down. His phone rang and he listened, clicked the phone off. ‘David Singhal is on the GlobeWest flight tomorrow morning to Austin. I’ll get a call back if he changes his reservation.’

‘How’d you find that out?’

‘A contact at the Bureau.’

‘The government’s monitoring airline passenger lists.’

‘Not a surprise, surely.’

‘Okay,’ Miles said. ‘Now what?’

‘Sleep,’ Groote said.

They stopped at a twenty-four-hour megastore and bought clothes and necessities. Groote gathered cash from an ATM. They checked into a hotel near LAX, same room, twin beds.

Groote said good night and switched off the lamp. Miles couldn’t sleep; he was afraid if he closed his eyes, fell toward rest, Andy would come back.

‘Groote?’

‘Yeah?’

‘When we were driving down today… you never said exactly who attacked your wife and daughter.’

The silence was longer this time. ‘Punks who were threatened by Bureau attention to their ring, thought I was involved in helping decapitate their operations. Misplaced revenge.’

He wanted to ask, What ring? If it had been someone the Barradas aimed him at… but the only southern California ring he’d targeted were the Duartes… and they were all dead now. ‘Who were the punks? Drug dealers?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘So why’d you leave the Bureau?’

‘I could no longer reach my career goals.’

‘What goals?’

‘Well-placed revenge,’ Groote said. ‘I don’t want to talk anymore, Miles. Good night.’

The next morning, the second flight from LAX to Austin soared into the crisp blue sky and Miles saw, across the row where an elderly gentleman scanned a Sunday newspaper, the headline that read FEDERAL OFFICER MISSING and below that a picture of DeShawn Pitts.

He couldn’t read the article from where he sat and the gentleman read slowly, every word, never scanning an article. Groote dozed in the seat next to him. Five rows ahead of him sat David Singhal, dressed in a suit, reading the Wall Street Journal.

Finally the man folded the paper, tucked it into his seat pocket.

‘Sir?’ Miles leaned over and spoke in a whisper. ‘Excuse me. Might I see your paper if you’re done?’

‘Sure.’ The gentleman handed him the pages.

Miles read the article with chills touching his skin. DeShawn Pitts, a federal marshal – the story left out that he worked for Witness Protection – had gone missing two days ago, while on unspecified duty. The FBI was asking anyone who had information to call them.

Hurley died on Thursday. DeShawn was at the hospital that day – Miles heard him on Groote’s call to Hurley – and he went missing on Friday. The day after Groote had talked to him.

Or maybe DeShawn didn’t give up, kept questioning, kept looking for Miles – he would, if ordered, if WITSEC accepted DeShawn’s argument that Miles wasn’t capable of making a cogent decision given his disability – and he ran into Groote again. Groote was hunting Miles; so was DeShawn. Imagine they intersected. At a bad time.

Be okay, DeShawn, please be okay.

Miles scanned the rest of the article. No mention of him – WITSEC still wouldn’t compromise his new name. But a mention, at the end, of it having been a difficult week for Santa Fe police: a woman had been killed in an explosion at her office (Allison); a celebrity had vanished from her home (Celeste); four high-school kids critically injured in a car crash outside town; a doctor and a tourist had also gone missing. The hospital had reported Hurley missing. Would that news – or DeShawn’s sheer persistence – have brought DeShawn back to Sangriaville, closing in on a connection? Back to Groote?

Miles suddenly wanted to be off the plane, very badly.

He folded the paper, handed it back to its owner with a thank-you, got up, went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, tried to collect his thoughts, weighed the inferences. He returned to his seat. Groote was awake.

‘Airsick?’ Groote said in a low voice. ‘You’re pale.’

‘No,’ Miles said, ‘I’m okay.’

‘Don’t go mental,’ Groote said.

‘I said I’m fine.’

‘Good. Because we’re almost home free.’

If you killed DeShawn – I will kill you, Miles thought. ‘Yes. I hope we are.’

Miles sat in the Austin Four Seasons hotel bar, Allison and Andy and now DeShawn sitting across from him, an accusing retinue, people dead from his mistakes.

He could not lose his grip now. Andy’s light-switch presence – on and off, on and off – made Miles sure that his sanity was a matter of nuance and fluctuation, but now with Allison and DeShawn haunting him he knew his mind was on the verge of breaking apart, slipping into fragments that could not be easily pieced back together.

He couldn’t let it show. Groote would kill him if Miles’s mind broke and he became unneeded weight.

He put his gaze on the window, watching the calm of Town Lake as it stretched past downtown. Think of your favorite things, like that assortment of pleasantries Julie Andrews sang about in that old song. He summoned good memories of Austin: Miles had been to this bustling, creative hothouse of a city once before, to an Austin City Limits Music Festival with Andy – Andy worshiped Oasis and Miles was a huge fan of The Black Crowes and they’d come, drunk beer, grooved to the bands. Andy scored backstage passes and Miles remembered Andy relentlessly flirting with a beautiful girl who was the girlfriend of a major band’s drummer. They got kicked out of the VIP tent and laughed about it all the way back to the Four Seasons.

‘Good times,’ Andy said.

‘Yes,’ Miles answered, under his breath. ‘Now hush.’ Sweat broke out along his back.

‘What are you going to do if he killed me, Miles?’ DeShawn said. ‘I have a right to know if I can count on you.’

‘Don’t talk to him in public,’ Allison said from the other chair. ‘They’ll haul his ass to a hospital, pump him full of antipsychotics, and maybe he won’t listen to us anymore.’