Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

“How did you find us?” Eli asked Slay.

The agent nodded toward Shaw. “Him.”

Shaw shrugged, saying nothing, though thinking it really was a team effort. Shaw’s partner had, improbably, been Dalton Crowe.

The search for Eli had started before the cult leader and Hugh had left the Osiris Foundation camp. While the men waited for their luggage in Sheriff Calhoun’s SUV, Shaw had dug into his backpack for a notebook to write his name and number on a sheet for the sheriff. But that was just a cover. What he’d actually done was find the GPS tracker that Crowe had hidden on Shaw’s Kia, during the pursuit of Erick and Adam. He’d turned it on and stuck the unit in the bottom of Eli’s go-bag, sitting in the back of the SUV.

He’d told Slay about it, and the agent had called Crowe to find the log-in details of the unit. But the reward seeker was still pissed off about losing the Erick/Adam rewards and hung up on him. The agent tried to get a warrant to present to the tracking company but no magistrate was willing to issue one, since Crowe had no connection to Eli.

So Shaw had texted Crowe himself and, after some negotiation, he said he’d rent out the tracker codes for ten K — his text agreeing to the final terms was the one Shaw had received while sitting beside Victoria in the Compound earlier.

See you at dinner?

Probably not...

The big man would only do the deal, however, if Shaw showed up with the check in person. (To make sure he got the money, of course, though Shaw was sure there was that element of gloat in the demand too, about which Shaw could not have cared less.)

The tracking app had located the men across the border in Moody, British Columbia, where they were undoubtedly staging for a more sophisticated getaway to a location both farther away and far more exotic.

Shaw and Slay were concerned that going through the proper channels with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would have taken too long, giving the two fugitives a chance to vanish. So they’d hacked together this plan, to lure the men back across the border, as they chased Shaw.

Shaw himself had entered Canada legally at a crossing a few miles away and a man in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection uniform now approached. “Colter Shaw?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll stamp your passport. Unless you’d want to spend the night back up at the inn in Moody. I hear it’s pretty nice.”

“No, I’ll find someplace here.” Handing over the blue booklet to the CBP officer.

The odds were probably ninety percent that no one had seen him shoot Hugh, though if the ten percent came to pass, the consequences would be inconvenient, if not dire. Better to stay stateside.

Which was a shame.

Shaw had never toured a maple syrup factory before.

After his improvised mining operation in Echo Ridge, Colter Shaw returned with his father’s package to the cabin.

Accompanied by Chase only, he walked into the room that had been his father’s office, so many years ago.

He glanced at the dozens of framed photos. A particularly good one — crisply focused and in vibrant colors — was of the three siblings, arms about one another. Dorion, Colter and Russell were all smiling.

Shaw cleared a place at the desk and set down the box. He hesitated for a moment. What on earth would he find? People had died for what he was about to see. Was it really as important as the facts surrounding it suggested? Or was it nonsense, the product of his father’s dissipating mind? A collection of long-expired grocery store coupons? Or could it even be empty?

The glue at the seams was thick and hard, unbreakable. He used his locking blade knife to cut open the top. He extracted a waterproof pouch, which he also cut open, more carefully than the exterior container.

A large envelope was inside. He tore the top open and removed a half dozen sheets of paper filled with Ashton’s handwritten notes, printouts of articles, and a map of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as two keys on a ring; they appeared to be for a structure, a house or office. On top was a letter, also written by his father. Shaw smoothed the crackly sheet and leaned forward.

Hello:

My name is Ashton Shaw, former professor, amateur historian and student of political science. Over the course of my years in academia and doing my own research and writing, I grew to distrust most large corporations, institutions and individuals, as well as many politicians and lobbyists — those who thrive in the netherworld between legality and illegality, democracy and dictatorship. I’ve published numerous articles and organized and attended protests exposing those wrongs.

Of course I received threats from some of the organizations I challenged. For safety’s sake I moved my family from the Bay Area to a place where I could better protect them, while continuing my campaign underground. I know this was hard for them. But I saw no other choice.

Working with a few colleagues, I like to think we made some headway in smoothing some of society’s rough edges: exposing graft and corruption in the government or corporate world.

And then, a few years ago, I came across BlackBridge Corporate Solutions.

While I was doing research into the dangers posed by big drug companies, I learned that the incidence of addiction in certain lower-middle-class neighborhoods that had little history of drug problems increased suddenly and dramatically, almost overnight. As a result, crime would soar, property values would plummet. The neighborhoods became unlivable.

I learned, to my shock, that this trend was not the natural outgrowth typically facing challenged neighborhoods. The entire drug infestation was engineered by BlackBridge. It’s a highly secretive corporate espionage firm, based in Los Angeles. Originally small but now international, it’s made up of former corporate executives, intelligence community members, military, mercenary soldiers and even criminals. Its clients are some of the most powerful companies around the world.

Several of those clients hired BlackBridge to engineer a massive decrease in property value of certain target neighborhoods, so their clients could move in and buy up the property at fire-sale prices. BlackBridge did this by creating an artificial drug problem. BlackBridge operatives would flood the neighborhoods with drugs, supplying them virtually for free to gangs. Sometimes they would simply scatter opioids, fentanyl and meth on the streets for anyone — including children — to take. The plan resulted in hundreds of deaths from drugs and crime, and thousands of residents dislocated, many of them becoming homeless.

This real estate scheme, by the way, is simply one of dozens of such dirty-trick projects BlackBridge performs for clients around the world.

I suppose such firms are not uncommon, and you may wonder why BlackBridge became my colleagues’ and my — if I may — White Whale.

The answer is simple. A brilliant graduate student in my and several of my colleagues’ classes graduated and went on to law school and then was elected a city councilman in San Francisco. We were in touch frequently. Todd became a friend. He was the one who told me about the curious influx of drugs in the district he represented.

He had just begun looking into the matter when he and his wife were murdered. The crime appeared to be a robbery but little was taken and the police found forensic evidence linking the killer to the new drugs found on the street.

My belief is that BlackBridge killed Todd to shut him up. At the very least, they are responsible because of the drugs they seeded into his district.