Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

He fussed, he squawked, he cried. Maybe he wanted Anna to pick him up again. He wanted Anna. The idea made me want to vomit. He wanted a woman who would hurt him. That was true innocence.

‘I’m going to be there soon, son, we’ll be together. Okay? This is Daddy. I love you, Daniel. I love you.’ I did love him. I loved him, sight unseen. ‘I love you. I love… ’

‘Sam,’ Anna’s voice was back. ‘Listen to me.’

Morris County, New Jersey

Leonie looked up from staring at the floor. The driver hadn’t planned on two victims, she supposed; he only had the one set of handcuffs and he’d chained Mrs Ming to another wooden chair. He’d bound Leonie with rope from a closet in the house. The living room was small, the wallpaper old and twenty years out of fashion, musty with grime. The house carried the feel of a way station, a place used infrequently. Leonie sat, her knees folded beneath her, watching the driver pace the floor.

The driver had moved into the front rooms, to watch the windows for Sam.

‘Help me,’ Mrs Ming whispered to her.

Leonie glanced at her. ‘I’m curious as to what you expect me to do.’

It wasn’t the answer Mrs Ming was looking for. ‘He’s not from the CIA. He’s not. They said they would send someone.’

‘The CIA?’

‘Yes!’ Mrs Ming said.

Leonie inched closer to her. ‘The CIA is looking for your son.’

‘A man who said he was from the CIA called me this morning. They said Jack might be coming home. To call them if he did. I… I didn’t know to believe him, but I went to the grocery, in case. I got Jack’s favorite things to eat.’ Her voice sounded lost.

Leonie looked at her. ‘Where is your son?’

‘I don’t know… ’

‘Tell me.’

‘He left, I don’t… ’

Leonie leaned back and head-butted the woman. ‘Tell me where he is!’

Mrs Ming howled in anger and pain.

‘Hey! Hey!’ the limo driver said, hurrying into the room, kicking Leonie onto her back. ‘Stop it!’ He murmured again into his open phone, too low to hear, and then clicked it off.

‘You’re not from the CIA!’ Mrs Ming said, blood oozing from the corner of her mouth, her forehead vivid with the imprint of Leonie’s head. ‘You cannot keep me here. You cannot. They will look for me.’

‘You,’ he said to Leonie. ‘You’re with Sam Capra.’

She said nothing and he responded, in his accented English, ‘Bitch, I am short on patience’, and he began to kick her. Hard. The first blow sent her across the room.

Then he asked her a question, received hazily through the pain, that made no sense to her at all. ‘Where is the woman called Mila?’

Morris County, New Jersey

I saw the rental Prius, nosed into a grove of trees. I turned in and climbed a wall and headed down a long, paved road. A sign read PRIVATE DRIVE. NO TRESPASSING. Ahead was a long, curving driveway and a house that looked like it might once have been a grand home or summer retreat from the start of the twentieth century. She’d tried to sneak in, but I was expected. Zero point in anything except walking straight into the house.

My phone rang again. ‘Come to the front door. Nothing funny or the redhead dies and you get to watch.’ Short and sweet.

I made my way to the front door, across a grand porch. I opened the door and stepped into a large foyer.

‘Here,’ a voice called.

I headed back from the front of the house and went to my left and entered what might once have been a library or study. The limo driver must have been a Boy Scout. He was extremely well prepared. He aimed a gun at me, and held another pressed against Leonie’s temple. He had a Taser tucked into the side of his pants. Leonie’s face was bruised along the jawline.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You heal fast, bumper boy.’

‘Vitamins and milk.’

‘But those are not brain food,’ he said. He tapped Leonie’s head with the gun for emphasis. ‘I’m thinking you know the drill.’

‘I’m not armed,’ I said.

‘Liar. If I check you and you have a gun, I’m going to shoot off this bitch’s thumbs.’

I produced the security guard’s gun from the back of my pants and dropped it on the floor.

‘Kick it over,’ he said.

I did as he said.

‘Who are you with?’ he asked me.

‘Me, myself and I,’ I said.

He switched the gun over to Mrs Ming’s head and she began to wail. ‘I don’t believe you. I’m not sure who you’re more interested in – your partner here or your target.’

‘I don’t want anyone hurt.’

‘Then who are you with?’

‘I’m with nobody,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Ming’s son.’

‘And you thought I was bringing her to him?’

‘I did. Not now.’

He gave a twisted little laugh. Now that I was unarmed he put a gun up against each of their heads. Toying with me.

‘I’m not sure which one you want alive the most,’ he said.

‘Both of them.’ Ten feet separated us, plenty of time for him to shoot me if I made a move.

I knew at least that with Mrs Ming he was bluffing. He’d brought her here to hold her or to question her, on someone’s orders.

‘Are you with Novem Soles? Because we’re on the same side, then, and this is a misunderstanding.’ The thought that Anna could have opened up a bounty on Jack Ming occurred to me. They just wanted him dead; they wouldn’t care if it was by my hand.

‘Novem what?’

‘Nine Suns.’

‘Sounds like a slant restaurant.’ He seemed to be taking my measure with his gaze. Mrs Ming stared at him with hate in her eyes. ‘You’re the one answering questions, not me, who’s your friend?’

‘Her name is Leonie.’

‘And where would I find Mila? I gave your friend a roughing up and she didn’t know.’

Not a question I was expecting at all. What the hell just happened? ‘I have no idea.’

He eased the gun over toward Leonie’s eye. ‘I want you to tell me how to find Mila.’

‘Mila contacts me when it suits her,’ I said.

‘You’re going to tell me how I can find Mila, or I’m going to kill one of them.’ He shoved the guns hard against their skulls; Mrs Ming let out a twisted moan; Leonie bit her lip and her gaze locked with mine. ‘Not sure which. Guess we’ll know when I pull the trigger. On five. One. Two. Three.’

‘She sometimes meets me at a bar,’ I said in a rush. ‘She calls, she picks the bar.’

‘And define sometimes.’

‘Once a week, when I’m in New York,’ I lied. ‘But it’s on her schedule, not mine.’

He studied my face. ‘Sit down on the floor. Keep your hands behind your back.’

I obeyed. He took the gun off Sandra Ming and holstered it, and then he produced a cell phone from his pocket. He tapped buttons. And in Russian he said: ‘Yes, sir. I have him now. He says the woman will meet him at a bar every week, but she calls him.’ He listened for thirty seconds. ‘Yes. All right.’ He closed the phone.

It’s hard to keep three prisoners when one is unsecured. Right now he wanted me talking. But he hadn’t secured me; he’d used the women as hostages, but he was keeping his distance from me. The women were my bonds.

But his bonds were that he wasn’t master of his own fate. He had to call someone. Someone he called sir. He had to take orders from someone, and, speaking Russian into the phone, he hadn’t wanted me to know that. He hadn’t wanted me to know he was, well, not the top of the totem pole.

But he didn’t draw the second gun again. He felt very much in control. I watched him. He watched me. A minute ticked by. Then another. He didn’t shoot any of us or ask any questions or say what was going to happen next.