Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘You’re not my friend.’

‘I’m trying to save your life.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘I can assure you of your safety.’

‘I am so reassured, August.’

‘You haven’t told me how you know my name.’

‘I’ll tell you when you’ve made me safe.’

August was silent.

‘You don’t tell anyone where you’re going. You come alone. Understood?’

‘And when I’ve seen the evidence we get you to a safe house and we get you your money.’

‘It’ll be worth it, August, I promise. They are insane that I have this. Insane.’

‘Understood.’

‘Don’t lie to me. I have had a shitty week. I want this to go smoothly and to be a day you talk about when they hand you the gold watch.’

‘I’m all for that,’ August said.

‘Go to the United Nations Plaza. Be there in thirty minutes. Alone, like you promised. I’ll call you then.’ He hung up.

August folded the phone. He headed out the door. He told no one where he was going. But two men on the street followed him.

A visitor might expect the United Nations plaza would be a riotous color of international garb, but it seemed most people wore the same dark suits nowadays. And everyone seemed to be speaking English. August stood at the plaza’s edge for four minutes before his phone rang.

‘You came alone.’

‘As promised. Where are you?’

‘Not here. Go to FAO Schwarz on Fifth. I’ll call you there. Stay alone. I’m watching.’

How? August thought. He pocketed the phone in annoyance. He understood the informant’s precautions but this seemed almost theatrical. Was the informant watching him now? He glanced around, smoothing out his pale hair with his hand. He walked and doubled-back. He did not spot a tail.

The two men tracking him fell off, to be replaced by two new ones, one staying ahead of August, one behind, frowning.

*

At FAO Schwarz, tourist children danced on keyboards and August thought: they still make those? Kids swarmed the aisles and standing there alone, childless, August thought: I don’t want to draw attention. One mother, with four-year-old twin boys orbiting her, gave him the greasy eyeball of doubt. He told himself he was a visiting businessman buying a gift for his own child and that’s how he would act.

The phone rang as he surveyed an astonishing display of action figures. I’d like my own action figure, August was thinking. New York Spy Skulking Guy. He answered the phone.

‘You’re supposed to be alone, August,’ the informant said. ‘I spy, with my little eye, two goobers who picked you up at UN and are still with you.’

August kept his poker face in place. How did he know he had agents following him, tasked to help him scoop up the informant?

‘Now. Those guys could be your buddies, backing you up, or Novem Soles, following you to get us both into a corner and to kill me dead. Lose them.’

August was silent. Shocked.

‘Do you know what they look like?’

‘No,’ August lied.

‘One is black, wearing a blue suit and dark rectangular glasses. The other has brown, slightly longish hair, wearing jeans and a maroon shirt. Lose them. When you have lost them I’ll call you back.’ He hung up.

August lingered for a moment in the aisle, shaken, and doing his best not to show it. When he walked out of the store he brushed his hand twice through his thick, blond hair. It was a signal: the meeting was off. The trackers would retreat back to the Special Projects office. He had not anticipated his shadows being spotted, not by a kid. He stood outside the store, hailed a cab and got inside.

The phone rang before he had the door shut.

‘Go to Brooklyn. The flea market in Williamsburg. Don’t be followed.’

August figured it out en route to Brooklyn. The clever little punk had hacked his way into the traffic camera system. And into the private security cameras at the toy store. Any place he sent August had an active, multiple-camera presence – all were very public spaces. That’s how he was watching August. He would have an entrance into the flea market’s camera system as well.

He called the Special Projects office.

‘He’s tracking us via traffic and store security cameras. See if you can trace him off the FAO Schwartz or Williamsburg Brooklyn Flea Market camera feeds, he’s hacking into them right now. Get a team to Brooklyn now, we need to scoop him up immediately when he gives me a final destination.’

‘Will do.’

August leaned back in the cab. The phone rang.

‘Yes.’

‘I changed my mind. Here’s where I want you to go.’

Ming building, Brooklyn

Leonie stared down at Beth and Lizzie. Her mouth trembled.

‘I know them,’ she said, in a hushed tone.

I sat on the floor, inspecting my injuries. I was sore and exhausted but I didn’t have time to hurt. Nothing was broken, as far as I could tell. I unknotted my slashed tie, threw it on the floor. ‘How do you know them?’

Her mouth worked. ‘I made new identities for them.’

‘As Lizzie and’ – I remembered the name Lizzie had screamed – ‘Meggie?’

‘No. Those were their real names. Lizzie and Meggie Pearson. They were from Oregon. Their father… he killed their mother in front of them and then told everyone his wife and kids had left him, but he kept the sisters in a cage in his basement for three years when they were little. The father finally got too close to the cage and the girls strangled him against the bars. They were maybe ten and nine. Didn’t you hear about that? One of those stories where they were all the news for five minutes then the world forgot about them.’

‘I grew up overseas, no, I never heard of them.’

‘They got put into foster care but… I don’t think they ever recovered. No family would keep them for long. Meggie was cold and calculating, Lizzie was crazy and vicious. They were in trouble with the law a lot; there was talk that they had killed a college student who knew Lizzie slightly, nothing was proven, but he was found dead in a cage in an abandoned cabin.’

Cage. Playpen.

‘They had to vanish.’ Leonie’s voice broke. ‘Oh God, oh God, we have to get out of here.’

‘Why?’

Leonie stepped away from Lizzie’s body. Shuddering. ‘Because… someone I knew once wanted them to come work for him, and he needed them to have new identities. Not be the least bit notorious. New names. New histories. So they could work for him… unimpeded.’

‘As hired killers.’

‘Yes, and as interrogators. Lizzie is supposed to be good at getting information out of people.’

‘And you hid them.’

‘Yes. That’s what I did, for three years, hid people for him. Before I hid myself.’

‘Who?’

‘The man I’m hiding from, Sam.’

‘Who, Leonie?’

‘His name is Ray Brewster. He must be behind all this. He must be.’

‘Who is he?’

She stared out the window, through the slats. Her fist pressed against her mouth. ‘They’re here.’

Ming building, Brooklyn

I stepped next to Leonie and I watched through the slats. August Holdwine approached the building from the sidewalk, via the back entrance along the alleyway. Alone. He was in jeans, a dark, untucked shirt, a summer-weight jacket, probably to conceal his weapon.

So if August was here, where was Jack Ming?

August moved along the alleyway, hand tucked under blazer, being careful. Maybe if I stood and waved he’d wave back. Could invite him up to hang out with Leonie and me and the dead sisters. After all, we’re all looking for the same guy.

‘Stay here,’ I said to Leonie. She’d heard my shocked intake of breath, come closer to the window.