Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

For a moment I felt torn. I had the address of an empty building where my target would be, and if you’re planning to kill someone an empty building in New York City is convenient. But having Leonie tag after the limo driver felt like a mistake now. Jack had left his mother behind, and maybe she knew where he was, but maybe she didn’t. I had an address, an actual, throbbing clue, and Leonie could be off with our car on a fool’s errand. I stepped back out onto the street, trying to decide what to do.

The wind broke the rain clouds into jagged curls of gray; the sun flooded the sky, weak as tea.

The iPhone rang inside my pocket. The phone that Anna had given me.

‘Yes?’

‘Sam?’ Leonie. Her voice tight and stiff, rattled by fear. There is a certain pronunciation made when the lips are bruised; you don’t quite form your words right.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, God, I messed up, I messed up, please… ’

And then the limo driver’s voice. ‘You. You sent this woman to follow me. Who are you?’

‘Don’t hurt her.’

‘If you don’t want her hurt, then you come get her.’

No. Not now. I had the address where Jack most likely had run. I had Jack Ming in my grasp.

What would you do to save your child? she’d asked me.

A choice. What would I do to save my child? Would I sacrifice this woman who was basically a stranger? A little, awful voice inside me said, you don’t need her. You found Jack, not her. What good is she, what has she done to help save your kid? It was from a dark corner deep in the well of my soul, but when you are in a battle for your child’s life darkness stands close to you, whispers in your ear. Nine Suns wasn’t going to give me Daniel, or give Leonie her daughter, if Jack Ming breathed long enough to turn himself into the CIA.

‘I strongly suggest that you listen to me, mister. Retrieve your bitch. Or I’ll cut her throat.’

In the background I could hear Leonie, gasping, saying, ‘Don’t, don’t!’

I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or to the driver. Then a piercing scream.

‘Where are you?’ I managed to say.

He gave me an address and directions to Morris County, in northern New Jersey.

I clicked off the phone. If I made the wrong choice I could be abandoning either a woman I barely knew, who seemed to hold me in contempt, to death, or my own child.

If the situation was reversed, what would I want her to do? Leave me to die? Absolutely. Go save the kids, lady, what happens to me is nothing. Go.

We hadn’t anticipated an enemy beyond Special Projects, who would not have grabbed one of us and threatened us with death. Caught up in the mad rush to find Jack Ming, I had not planned for this contingency. It was on me.

I went outside, stood on the sidewalk in the warming humidity, and I started to shudder. It felt like every nerve in my body was wired to open current. I gave myself thirty seconds of weakness and I stopped shivering then I put the decision aside. Leonie was in the greatest danger right now. I could no more leave her to die than I could anyone else.

I started to walk. I needed a car.

A couple of turns later I saw a parking garage, four suited men coming down the ramp to merge into the river of pedestrians. I maneuvered carefully, bumping directly into the one who’d had his hand in his right front pocket as he had turned from the ramp onto the sidewalk.

‘Jesus, watch where you’re going, jerkwad,’ he snapped at me.

‘My bad, I’m very sorry,’ I said. I turned into the parking ramp and hurried up the stairs. I didn’t even glance to see which keys I’d pickpocketed off him until I was on the second level. A Mercedes logo on the keychain. I ran along the parked cars, testing the automatic unlock, until headlights on an SE flashed at me.

One minute later I was heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel.

If you save her and Jack Ming gets away…

I had to get a grip. Focus. I wanted to make good time. The limo driver apparently had and I thought, please, don’t let there be bad traffic or an accident. Don’t let the guy whose car I’m stealing realize his keys are gone. Let the doorman and the guard be okay after I punched them. Forgive me everything I do to save my son.

Don’t let me fail.

Along Highway 206, New Jersey

The Garden State. You tend to forget that New Jersey deserves that name when you’re stuck driving through an endless unfurling of suburbia. I drove at top speed and the rain that had hurried in from the Atlantic passed through here. The rain was like a hand cleaning a slate. The air smelled wet and fresh and new.

I drove. I didn’t use the car’s GPS – if it had been reported stolen by now, I didn’t want the system tracking where I was. I kept it switched off.

Okay. Now: who had Leonie and Mrs Ming? Jack’s mom had called someone. And then the limo driver had collected Mrs Ming. Now, I would not put it past Special Projects if they figured out like I had that Jack Ming was their new best buddy – Fagin might have tattled – to scoop up Mrs Ming for her own protection against Novem Soles. And they might even, to lure me in close, pretend-threaten Leonie’s life. If August was at this house, fine, we’d talk, and maybe he’d let me take some photos of Jack Ming looking dead, if his people had already nabbed Jack.

But. But. If August was involved in this operation, the limo driver wouldn’t have been on the phone. It would have been August. Right?

I was not optimistic that Special Projects had Leonie. It had to be the dreaded ‘Someone Else’. An enemy I didn’t know.

The phone Anna gave me rang again as I turned into the address. ‘Yes?’ I said, sounding impatient.

‘Hello, Sam.’ Anna Tremaine.

‘What?’

‘I would like to know your status.’

‘I’ll call you when the job’s done.’

‘Has Leonie found the informant?’

‘I’ll call you when the job is done.’ I made the words short, clipped.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you’ve heard your baby cry. He’s been rather fussy today. Well, both these babies are unhappy. I wonder, do you think they can sense their… precariousness?’

I don’t know how to describe the dark surge over my heart. I don’t have the words for it. It was a blackness. I hadn’t felt it in my worst moments, when I saw my brother die on a scratchy video, when my wife was kidnapped in a street of fire, when I was tortured and accused of being a traitor, choking to death when I couldn’t give the Company answers I didn’t know. I’ve had more than my share of really bad moments. This was even darker. This was reaching into me and smearing something foul on my soul. It took all my will to keep my breath steady. ‘I am doing what you asked. You don’t hurt him. You do not hurt either of them.’

‘But the job’s not done yet and you won’t tell me what’s happening.’ She sighed. ‘I’m playing with his little fingers right now, Sam. They’re more delicate than bone china.’

I told her briefly what I knew, and what I was doing. For several moments she was silent.

Then she said, ‘Listen, Sam. Listen to your son. I’m going to put the phone right by him.’ And I could hear the phone, a hiss of breath, a gurgle. My son. I had never heard him. A soft ahhhhhh, all baby breath, all happy, toothless mumble.

Then choked, frustrated gurgling; he wasn’t happy. Bored or annoyed at the phone resting next to his face.

‘Daniel. Daniel, this is Daddy.’ Like he could understand. Like my voice would mean anything to him; my soft baritone was as alien to him as any other sound he’d never heard. My words, my voice, could give him no comfort. I’d never thought about what I’d say to him: he was a baby, what would he understand? I’d never been around babies. I was the youngest in my family. ‘Daniel. It’s Daddy. I’m coming to get you.’