Laura Caldwell - Red, White & Dead

Mayburn looked at Izzy. “I called Lucy.”

“You told her about Michael’s company, UND?”

Mayburn nodded. “He swore to her that Advent Corporation was it. He swore they’d never had any other affiliation.”

“Did you tell her about the name of Belle Joseph as the principal officer?”

He nodded. “I told her she couldn’t say anything to Michael for a few days, but the ‘Belle Joseph’ thing, that’s what pushed her over the edge-using the kids in any way.”

“So you think it will make a difference? With the two of you?”

He nodded again. “Yeah,” he said. “I think everything is going to be good. Real good.” He glanced at Christopher, then back at Izzy. “I know you have more important things to worry about, and if there’s anything at all I can do, tell me. But in the meantime, thanks, Iz. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Izzy said.

John Mayburn gave a small wave, then turned and walked back into his house.

Christopher had just pulled away from the curb when Izzy’s phone, which lay on the console between the seats, came to life-the phone trilling, the screen lighting up.

Izzy grabbed it. “An e-mail.” She scrolled with her thumb. Her face lost the excitement that had just been there. “It’s from Charlie.”

Despite his earlier lecture to Izzy about “turning around” negative emotions, Christopher was walloped by fear.

He pulled over, and Izzy leaned toward him, holding the phone so they could both see.

You don’t need the exact address, the e-mail read. Just come to Lake Street, just past Kennedy. Look for the building with the black door. You’ll figure it out. You’d better, or this kid is dead. Your 25 minutes start now.

My dad floored the car down Lincoln Avenue, blaring the horn several times to get people to move out of the way.

When we were almost at a light at Sheffield Avenue, I pointed. “Turn there!” I looked at my watch. “Fifteen minutes.” Then I looked back at the phone, despair and panic warring within. “We were supposed to get the address,” I said, still staring at my phone. “And you said when we got the address, you’d have one of your buddies run a search on the address to see if we could find anything out about the building.”

He shot through the light, turning. “And now we can’t do that.”

“So we just go in there cold?” My voice started rising. Keep your cool, I thought.

I watched as my dad reached down toward his ankle with his left hand. When he sat up, there was something in that hand, something black and gleaming. I drew back against the car door. “Where did you get that?”

I had never seen a gun up close before. The men in Naples had guns, and they were pointing them at me, but the proximity of this gun was different. Menacing. And I didn’t particularly like it.

I looked up at my father and into his eyes, and for some reason I was nervous.

“I carried it on the plane,” he said.

“They just let you do that?” I thought back to the security we’d gone through before boarding Theo’s private plane. There was little. We’d been required to show our passports and that was about it. Now that I thought about it, we could’ve packed hand grenades in our bags, which were placed by the pilots into the luggage compartment.

My father tucked the gun into his waistband. I stared at his profile. How quickly I’d sided with him, assumed that because he was my father he must be a good man. But he’d killed Maurizio, even admitted it. And Elena had been a mess around him. That was expected, of course, since she’d lost her husband, but was it something more than that? She was the only one who had known Christopher McNeil all these years. Was she afraid of him?

The air in the car seemed stale. I opened the window a little. My father’s eyes darted to my window, then went back to the road. I pushed myself farther into the side of the passenger door, felt for the handle, just in case.

He saw it. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, I’m just…”

“Are you afraid of me?” This almost seemed to amuse him, which was bizarre. I don’t know this man at all.

“I don’t know what I’m afraid of anymore.”

He blinked as if surprised, then his face cleared and he nodded. “I understand that.” His voice had been full of life when I was telling him about finding Michael’s UND corporation, but now it was flat again.

“Is there any reason I need to be nervous of you?”

He stopped the car at a light at Armitage and looked at me. He didn’t look amused now, but rather wounded. He shook his head. “But I understand if you don’t believe me. I have given you no reason for trust.” He looked back at the road. “Let’s just focus on what we have to do, and then I’ll be out of your way again. In one way or another.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head, not answering. “Let’s concentrate on Charlie.”

The reminder of Charlie made my heart skip. I looked at my watch. “We have eight minutes.”

Just then the light turned green and my dad pressed on the gas.

I glanced toward his waist. “I don’t want you to use that gun. Not even on Dez.”

“I won’t use it unless I have to.”

“You did with Maurizio.”

A single nod.

“You had to?” I said.

“I did.” His tone was grave and regretful, but resigned.

I looked out the front window, pointed at Clybourn Avenue. “Turn left here,” I told my father. “Then right on Halsted. We can take that to Lake.”

He did as I told him, flooring the car down Halsted, dodging around slower cars, edging up to the front at lights and shooting ahead of the others.

“Go faster if you can,” I said, looking at my watch. “Six minutes.”

He ran a light that had just turned red.

“What’s going to happen?” I asked, scared and overwhelmed.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I want to tell you not to worry, but I haven’t dealt with a hostage situation since my training at the academy.”

I exhaled loudly and looked at my father. I realized that I’d allowed myself a tiny false sense of security. It was a sense that assumed that my father, who’d been able to survive for the last few decades, would not only allow us to survive today, but to succeed. I saw now that he was fallible, that I was going to have to continue to be part of our survival.

“All right,” I said, “so let’s think. We know Dez wants something from you.”

My dad nodded. “Right. Hopefully, I possess whatever that information is, whatever he wants. If so, I’m hoping to keep stringing Romano along, maybe using the UND corporation. I’m hoping to do that long enough to determine the setup of the place and to get Charlie and you out of there.”

“But earlier you said he wants you, too. Like he wanted you as a person, not just information you have.”

My dad nodded. “If Dez Romano were able to kill me today, it would be huge for him. He’s a somewhat small fish in the System, but if he took me out, it would catapult him to Camorra stardom.”

I studied his profile. “Why don’t you sound upset by that?”

He glanced at me, then back at the road, veering around a car that was parallel parking. “I’ve fought the Camorra long enough. I’m done. And I’m willing to give Dez Romano what he needs just as long as it means the two of you are safe.”

I stared at him. “You can’t go away again.”

We came to a stoplight. My dad looked at me. “You don’t know if you trust me. Why would you want me to stick around?”

“So you can give me time to figure it out.”

He laughed. And it made me feel good.

Another glance at my watch. “Three minutes.”