Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘Of course,’ she said again. She was turning over his crimes in her head; he knew the pinched look on her face. What he had done here was nothing compared to his misdeeds in Amsterdam. Well, I hacked for some bad guys. I didn’t know how bad they were but now they want me dead and I have a notebook that they want so badly they will kill me for it because it will blow them open and I don’t even understand what I know means and I’m going to sell it to the CIA and you’ll never see me again, Mom. But you were already resigned to never seeing me again .

‘I think tomorrow we should call a defense lawyer.’

‘You’re right, Mom. Tomorrow, okay?’

His mother turned to him, an uncertain smile on her face. ‘I’m right? Um, you’ve never said that before. I don’t know what to say.’

‘I wouldn’t say I told you so. Maybe just enjoy being right. For once.’

She surprised him with a laugh. ‘All right, I’ll bask in the glow. I am happy to see you, Jack, I really am.’

‘Mom… ’

The awkward silence felt like a curtain. Neither seemed to know what to say, how to lay the first plank in the bridge.

‘I wish I hadn’t gone to Amsterdam, Mom.’ He wanted to grab the words hanging in the air. What had possessed him to confess this? It was pointless. He’d only come to say goodbye before he vanished to Australia or Fiji or Thailand or wherever he went with the CIA money. What was he hoping for? She didn’t know what he was here for. She was just someone to whom he needed to say goodbye. ‘Jail would have been better. At some point I’d have been free. Now I never will be.’

She said nothing and the coffee maker gurgled in the quiet. ‘What kind of new trouble are you in, Jack?’

The back of his eyes felt warm. He blinked. ‘I’m not in any trouble, Mom. Any new trouble.’ He forced his emotions down, but the heat kept rising into his throat.

‘Don’t you lie to me, Jack. I know… I didn’t help you very much before.’ She twisted the dishrag in her hands. ‘Let me help you now.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘I… I got involved with some bad people… Some really bad people, Mom, I didn’t know how bad… ’

She took a step forward. ‘Tell me.’

‘They… nearly got me killed. I got shot. Hurt bad. Then in the hospital, they sent a guy to kill me.’

He saw her go pale with shock. ‘Oh, my God, Jack.’

‘I killed the guy. I killed him and I got away and I think they will try and kill me again.’

His mother knotted the dishrag. She didn’t take a step toward him and he could see her playing out the possibilities of what they should do next in her mind. ‘It was self-defense,’ he said.

‘Tell me what happened.’

He did.

‘Did you see the gun before you hit him?’

The question felt like a shove. ‘He shot at me. Mom, for God’s sakes, don’t you believe me?’

‘Yes. Of course. And then you fled.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then what?’

He did not want to tell her about the notebook. Right now it lay taped to the small of his back. ‘Then a friend helped me get out of the Netherlands. On a Belgian passport.’ He said this in the tone that he might once have used to admit he cut school.

‘You entered the United States under false pretenses, with the Dutch police looking for you?’

‘I had to.’

‘Jack, you always have to do the exact opposite of what you should do.’ She put the dishrag on the counter. ‘Perhaps something strong with our coffee.’

‘Mom. I’m sorry.’

Then she surprised him: ‘Don’t apologize, Jack. Not for surviving. Not for staying alive.’

‘I said more than I meant to.’

She had been walking toward the counter and his words stopped her in her tracks. ‘More than you meant to? You weren’t going to be honest with me?’

‘I was going to be honest with the lawyer,’ he lied. ‘I didn’t want to burden you.’

‘Oh, Jack. You think I’m the delicate widow?’

It was two jabs in one. ‘You’re not delicate, Mom. I don’t need to be reminded you’re a widow. You’re still a mother.’ The words spilled out like quicksilver, faster than he could stop them.

‘You’re right. You’re right. The way I spoke to you when your father died… well, it’s done now. You cannot blame me for you running away and getting into deeper trouble.’

He blinked. ‘I don’t blame you at all, Mom.’

‘Of course you do. You blame me for being a bad mother. You think I’m a bad mother.’

‘No. I don’t.’ He couldn’t look at her face.

She mercifully changed the subject. ‘Why exactly are these people after you?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m going to cancel my appointments this afternoon,’ she said. ‘We’ll plan out a strategy. Just you and me. They want you dead because you know something?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘What?’

‘Well, I don’t know anything. But they think I do.’ Telling her the truth was only putting her in danger. He couldn’t do that. He’d lost his father to his mistakes; he was not going to lose his mother.

‘All right. But you have information you can give the police. We need to be able to make a deal, Jack. That’s what I’m asking. What’s your leverage?’

Always the diplomat, always the deal maker. He wanted to turn around and leave. Just walk out the door. Would she call the police on him before he reached the elevator? Or would she let her only son simply vanish again, because in the end it would be less trouble for her?

‘I can give them some names. Guys in Amsterdam and New York.’

‘Well, then. That’s a start. But surely if they want you dead, you know more than that.’

‘Not really.’

‘Why don’t… I know you’re exhausted. Why don’t you go get showered? Your clothes – they should still fit, I kept them all.’

‘Mom.’

‘I knew you’d come home.’

You have more faith than I did, Jack thought. Suddenly the idea of his old room felt like heaven. A cocoon to transform himself, where he could be the old harmless Jack Ming again, not be the kid being chased by the bad guys, not be the guy sneaking into his own country under a false name, not be the disappointing son coming and confessing his sins to his mother. ‘I don’t want to talk to the lawyer until tomorrow, though, Mom. Okay? We’ll call him in the morning.’ He would get what he needed here, for the meeting with the CIA, and then he would vanish. This was the goodbye to his mother, every moment of it.

She poured him a cup of coffee and he drank it down in silence. It was delicious. His mother always made good coffee, and he thought it funny that this was the comfort food he remembered of her: not peanut butter sandwiches or handmade ice cream or wonton noodles, but coffee. She’d let him start drinking it too young. Never objecting when he’d dump a dollop from the coffee pot into his milk. Just to see what she would do.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him. Now she sounded like a mom.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, why don’t you go shower and get into some fresh clothes, and I’ll make us lunch. Then we can talk.’

‘All right.’

She went to the refrigerator and opened it, peering inside, clearly hopeful that appropriate ingredients would be present. He went into his room. It seemed to be an echo of his old life: the framed certificate of achievements from his school in math, the worn paperbacks he’d plowed through as a kid, a neat stack of video games of which he’d explored every detail of every level. A row of CDs he’d forgotten he’d owned, bands that screeched about suburban angst. He thought he’d known then what feeling trapped was like, and, oh, was he wrong.