Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

My face felt hot.

“Come on in,” Sebastian said, patting the leather seat. “Help me out here and I might still be able to find a spot for you, too. It might not be media relations. I’ve promised that to Ms. Henry, and I’m a man of my word. But you’d be perfect for writing up our proposals. You have a nice turn of phrase.”

“Do you have my son?” I asked.

Sebastian’s eye twitched. “I’m sorry?”

“If you have him, just tell me. If there’s something you want in exchange, name it. You hold the cards. I’ll tell you anything I know.” I allowed myself to get into the car, the door still open, one foot still on the pavement.

“All right, then,” he said. “Tell me about Constance Tattinger. You asked Ms. Henry to check into that name. That’s your source? I’m puzzled, because I’ve never heard of her. There’s no one working for me or Promise Falls with that name.”

“She’s not the source,” I said. “Constance Tattinger is, as far as I know, my wife.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow. Why would your wife have a list of names of people-”

“She didn’t. I called Sam about two different things. I guess she thought they were related when she called you.”

Sebastian leaned back into the leather seat and sighed. “I have to admit, I’m a bit confused. I thought your wife’s name was Jan.”

“Jan Richler’s the name she was using when we met, but I think she was born Constance Tattinger. I’ve been trying to find out everything I can about her, hoping it will lead me to her. I’m pretty sure she’s the one who set up the meeting at Lake George. It was a trick.”

Elmont Sebastian looked like he was getting a headache. “So your wife’s not the source, but you think she’s the one who emailed you to say she had all this information to give you about my company?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell would she do that?” Sebastian asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Not as far as you’re concerned. She wouldn’t know the first thing about your company, or what you’re doing to buy votes on council. Now what about my son?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about your kid,” Sebastian said. “And I don’t care.”

I felt deflated. As frightening as it would be for Ethan to have been picked up by this pair, I was hoping they had him to trade.

“You really don’t have Ethan,” I said.

Sebastian shook his head in mock condolence. “All my years running prisons, I don’t think I ever had an inmate in more shit than you.”

I took a moment. “If you don’t know anything about my son, then we’re done here,” I said, swinging my other leg back out of the car.

“I don’t think so,” Sebastian said. “Regardless of whoever your wife is, something was mailed to you. Something you have no business possessing.”

The list in my pocket. The one I’d foolishly told Sam about.

“I think you’re mistaken,” I said, now fully out of the car.

It would have been easy to give him the envelope. God knows I had enough to worry about right now. I could have handed Sebastian what he wanted and walked away. But I also knew there was a chance I might-just might, somehow-come out the other side of this hell I was currently living through, and actually return to work as a reporter. If not at the Standard , then someplace else. And if I did, I wanted to bring down Elmont Sebastian.

There wasn’t any chance of that happening if I handed over what was in my jacket.

“Really, David, you need to consider your position,” Sebastian said.

Welland was coming around the car. When he reached the open door, he and Sebastian exchanged a look. Sebastian said, “If you’re not going to hand it over, I’ll have to ask Welland to get it for me.”

I bolted.

Welland’s right arm shot out, got hold of me by the wrist, but I was moving quickly enough that my hand slipped out of his grasp. As I ran I reached into my pocket for my keys, thinking, naïvely, that maybe I could get behind the wheel of my car before Welland was on me.

As I felt him closing in on me, I abandoned the idea of my car and instead hightailed it across the lot for the Standard building. Welland was snorting like an angry bull in pursuit. While he had me beat in the muscle and bulk department, he wasn’t all that fast, and I felt myself pulling ahead of him.

I mounted the five steps up to the back door and had it open before Welland could get hold of me, but there was no time to pull it shut. I was overwhelmed by the sound of running presses, a heavy, loud, humming that went straight to the center of my brain. This time of night, only one of the three presses was running, producing some of the weekend sections. The other two presses wouldn’t be set into motion for a couple more hours, when the newsroom finished putting together the first edition.

I was running wildly at this point, heading down any path that presented itself to me. Ahead and to the right was a set of steep metal stairs leading up and onto the boards that ran down along the sides and through the presses.

I grabbed hold of the tubular handrails and scurried up them. Even over the din, I heard some pressmen shouting, telling me to get off. This was their domain, and they didn’t care for trespassers. They could tolerate Madeline in here to check on press repairs, but I was just some dumbass reporter.

Once up on the boards, I had a good fifty feet of catwalk ahead of me. I looked back, expecting to see either a pressman or Welland appear at the top of the stairway, but no one materialized.

But there was still a lot of indistinct shouting going on.

I stopped for a moment, wondering if it was possible I’d lost Welland. I debated doubling back, then concluded it was safer to keep going in the same direction, to the set of stairs at the far end of the presses.

To my left, the press was going at full bore, endless ribbons of newsprint going past at blinding speed, trekking up and down and through the massive apparatus. Every few feet there was an opening where the boards cut through to the other side.

I started moving again, my hands running along the top of the railing, and then there he was. At the far end of the walkway, Welland loomed into view at the top of the other set of stairs.

“Shit,” I said, although I barely heard the word myself for the humming of the press.

I whirled around, planning to double back, but standing where I’d been seconds earlier was Elmont Sebastian. He wasn’t the youngest guy in the world, but he’d scaled those steps in no time. He looked down at his hand, smeared with ink residue from the railing. He gave his suit a worried look, probably wondering how soiled it had already become.

I thought I had a better chance of bulldozing my way past him than heading the other way toward Welland.

I started running at Sebastian. He broadened his stance, but I didn’t slow down. I slammed into him, but instead of just him going down, he grabbed me around the neck and we went down together.

“You son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Give it to me!”

We rolled on the boards. I brought up a knee and tried to get him in the groin or stomach. I must have hit something, because he loosened his hold on my neck long enough for me to start scrambling back onto my feet.

But Sebastian was up almost as quickly, and leapt on my back. The tackle threw me to one side, into one of the walkways that went through the presses. Newsprint flew past us on both sides, the words and images an indistinct blur.

As I stumbled to one side, Sebastian was pitched up against the railing. He was facing it, and his upper body leaned over with the impact. He threw his hands out in front of himself, but there was nothing there to catch on to.