Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘But you’re not with them any more.’

‘When your wife betrays the CIA, it kind of destroys your career path.’

‘I would think.’

‘A constant cloud of suspicion.’ I stood up and shoved my Styrofoam food holder in the trash. ‘So we parted ways.’

‘And she had this baby while you were apart?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was she like? Your wife?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘I’m just curious. You seem too smart a guy to be easily fooled.’

‘We all have our blind spots. She was one as large as the Sahara to me.’

‘Sometimes we don’t pick wisely.’

‘No. And the price we pay is very heavy.’

Leonie turned back to her computer. ‘Any luck with tracing the driver?’

‘No,’ she said. Not looking at me.

‘Really? No track on his driver’s license or his limo plates?’ She had memorized the plates during the long haul out of Manhattan and New Jersey, following him.

‘Stolen, I guess,’ she said. Still not looking at me.

I stood up and watched the Ming building with my binoculars. Two o’clock couldn’t come soon enough for me. I needed inside that building now, in between the last pass of the security guard and Jack’s (presumed) meeting with August.

And then I thought of a way.

Hotel Esper, Williamsburg

I left Leonie in her room and went down to the lobby. I called Russell Ming’s property company, now owned by his wife.

‘Ming Properties,’ the woman answering the phone said.

‘Hi, may I speak to,’ and I looked again at the name I’d jotted down, the one under the number on the Ming Properties sign, ‘Beth Marley?’

‘This is she.’ She sounded bright and enthusiastic, like talking to me was the highlight of her day. I’m sure it was.

‘My name is Sam Capra, and I’m interested in the building in Williamsburg.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘I own the The Last Minute Bar, over by Bryant Park.’

‘I know that bar!’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s great. I’m interested in leasing some property in Brooklyn that you own, in Williamsburg. Would it be possible to see it today?’

‘Today might be difficult, sir. What about tomorrow?’

‘I’m just in town for the day. In fact, I might be interested in leasing the whole building. I just happened to see it and think it’s perfect for what I need.’

‘Well. Okay, let me do a little juggling.’ I could hear her flipping papers. ‘Sure. I could do eleven o’clock, would that work?’

‘You’re so kind. That will be great. I’ll just meet you there, okay?’

‘Thanks, Mr Capra.’

I hung up and went back to the hotel room. ‘Well, that was easy. I have an appointment.’

Leonie, crouching over her computer, didn’t answer.

Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan

Ricardo Braun was not concerned with legalities as much as expediency: after he had discovered the limo driver’s body, he had Fagin and the Oliver Twists setting up electronic surveillance on every person in New York connected to Jack Ming, with careful instructions to report only to Braun, not to August Holdwine or anyone else in Special Projects. Braun preferred that Jack Ming’s identity not be known to anyone else.

So Fagin and the Twists watched Jack Ming’s friends on his abandoned Facebook account (which were few, mostly friends from his NYU years), a few family friends, his father’s property company. The initial surveillance centered on monitoring Facebook pages and personal email accounts. The only phones to be tapped via a hack were the phone of his father’s company and the cell phones of his two closest college friends.

The silence on Jack was deafening. There was no mention of him at all.

Until a mid-morning phone call struck Braun’s interest, not because it was about Jack Ming. No. It was about Sam Capra.

Braun called the sisters. He hoped they could contain their crazy long enough to do the job the exact way he wanted it done. He got Lizzie on the phone. He would have preferred Meggie. She was the more reasonable one. But you didn’t put off Lizzie. She held grudges.

Lizzie listened to his instructions. ‘The two men, Ming and Capra. Can we play with them for a while?’ The sisters had a cabin in upstate New York where they entertained special guests when the need took Lizzie, or when Braun needed someone interrogated, with guaranteed results.

‘If you needn’t kill them straight out, they’re yours. I would like to know what they both know. Get that out of them and report back to me.’

‘What about anyone else with them?’

He thought of August, with regret. ‘You can kill anyone else if need be. If there is a woman named Mila with him, I want proof of her death.’ The sisters needn’t know about the bounty. He would collect it himself, throw them a little bonus.

Lizzie laughed. ‘Thanks for the work.’

She hung up and looked at her sister. ‘Go get dressed. We have a lead on the job.’

‘All right, but you promised to make those phone calls about the cruise.’ Her sister Meggie stood up from the couch. She had been reading a Special Projects file on Sam Capra that Braun had just emailed her. Know thy enemy.

‘Yes, yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll get to it.’

‘Don’t put it off,’ Meggie said. ‘They book up like a year in advance.’

‘Cruises are for old people,’ Lizzie said.

‘That is completely untrue.’

‘They keep a morgue on those boats because so many old people die during cruises. I saw that on TV,’ Lizzie said.

The sisters considered this interesting tidbit.

‘You are not going to have fun on a cruise. I mean, that kind of fun,’ Meggie said. ‘Parameters for today?’

‘Capture if we can, kill if we must. Capra’s sort of a pretty boy, don’t you think?’

‘Not really.’

‘His file says he runs parkour. That daredevil running where you jump from building to building.’ Lizzie’s smile sparkled. ‘Do you think I’ll get to chase him? I better use a weapon that helps me catch him.’

‘No.’ Meggie rolled her eyes. ‘He won’t get a chance to run. Let’s focus, Lizzie.’

‘Your standards are far too high,’ Lizzie said. ‘Not every apple has to be perfect, you got to give it a big bite to see how sweet it tastes.’ She glanced over at her sister’s laptop screen, at Sam Capra’s photo looking out at her. Brownish-blond hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a full mouth. ‘I like his face. It would take a lot of time and careful thought to ruin it, truly. Those cheekbones, probably you’d need a touch of acid for them. And that runner’s body, lovely and spare. Braun had said I could play with them if we aren’t forced to kill them outright.’

Meggie didn’t care much for the fixated tone in her sister’s voice. This was always the way with Lizzie: an idea elbowed its way to the front of her mind and bit down in Lizzie’s brain with deep teeth, and wouldn’t let go until it was appeased. Her sister’s hungers were dark ones.

‘Guns?’

‘Naturally, but if we want to keep them for a while I don’t want to deal with gunshot wounds. Bandages are such a pain. I’m in kind of a Japanese mood today.’

‘Fine, but I don’t want you playing all week, you said you would research a cruise and book it.’

‘Fine, whatever. I’ll pack along the brochures.’

Ming Properties office, Lower Manhattan

My lucky day, Beth Marley thought. She’d already dodged a bullet: the other two employees in the office were out today, downed with food poisoning brought on by a highly questionable chicken curry they’d eaten while lingering at an unforgivably long lunch yesterday, one that Beth hadn’t gone on because, you know, she was too busy doing all three of their jobs.