He was cruising on auto-pilot, without any specific destination in mind, just putting some distance between him and the guys in the Chrysler.
He felt shattered. His brain was all tangled up, and he was having trouble making sense of what had happened since Bellinger called him. After the adrenaline rush from tagging the Chrysler, his body was now crumbling from under him. He needed to rest and think things through, but there were no obvious spots where he could crash out and no one to take him in. No spunky-and-resourceful girlfriend, no reluctantly supportive buddy, no irritable-but-still-smitten ex-wife.
He was on his own.
He rode up the expressway for a while, then drifted onto the South Station off-ramp and ended up at a fifties-style diner on the corner of Kneeland, the only place in town that he knew would be open this late.
He looked like a real mess and drew a couple of contemptuous glances as he stepped inside, which wasn’t ideal. The last thing he needed right now was to get noticed. He disappeared into the men’s room and cleaned himself up as best he could, then grabbed a stool at the far end of the bar. He ordered himself a coffee and decided to add on a cheeseburger, not knowing when he’d have a chance to eat in peace again, and hoping the caffeine- and-protein boost would help carry him through until daybreak.
Although his body still ached from his fall, the food and the coffee helped clear his mind. He asked the waitress for a refill and sifted through his options. He didn’t hold out much hope of being able to do anything to help Bellinger. It seemed pretty clear to him that the hit team that came after them were connected to whatever had happened to Danny, and they weren’t messing around. He was facing pros with serious resources and no inhibitions, and his options were limited, especially given that he didn’t really know much beyond the cryptic words Bellinger had left him with—and the idea that Danny could still be alive. If he was going to get anyone to help him —the press, maybe even the cops, he wasn’t sure who at this point—he needed to know more about what was going on. He could think of two threads to tug. One was the tracker. The other was Bellinger. Or, more accurately, whatever it was that Bellinger knew that put him in their crosshairs. His heart sank at the thought of the harmless scientist, his brother’s buddy, and the dire situation he must now be in, and he seethed with frustration at not being able to do something about it.
Not yet, anyway.
He needed to check the tracker’s position, and he also wanted to see what he could find at Bellinger’s place. And for both lines of attack, he needed to go online.
By now, it was well past midnight, and hotel business centers were the only option at this hour. He asked his waitress and got directions to a nearby Best Western, raided an ATM three doors down from the diner, and pulled into the hotel’s parking lot fifteen minutes later.
The business center by the soulless lobby was open all night, but it was restricted to hotel guests. Given that his home was off-limits for the time being, the idea of a safe bed and a hot shower had its merits, so he gave the receptionist a fake name, took a single, and paid in cash. He was soon ensconced at a workstation with a high- speed connection pumping information to his screen.
He logged onto the tracker’s website and checked its position. Having been a car thief, he appreciated the value of trackers more than anyone, especially when it came to covetable, high-value classics like his Bullitt Mustang. Right now, he was more grateful than ever for having it. The contract he’d taken out had the tracker set up to transmit its location every thirty seconds when the car it was attached to was on the move. It would hibernate and ping its location once every twelve hours if the car was stationary. Assuming the car wasn’t spending a lot of time on the road, the tracker’s battery would normally last around three weeks between recharges, only Matt was pretty sure it was near the end of that cycle and running low on juice. It probably wouldn’t last more than a few days before conking out.
It hadn’t moved. Which was both good and bad. If the goons were still there, it meant they weren’t on his tail, but then again, it also meant they weren’t giving up easily. He moved on and trawled the online white pages for Bellinger’s home address, which he found with ease. Clearly, Bellinger wasn’t too fussy about his privacy, though it was frightening how much information one could find about anyone online. It was over in Inman Square, a trendy, upmarket enclave in neighboring Cambridge that Matt had visited a few times. Danny had lived there too, right up to his disappearance, Matt thought, preferring the sound of that to the words he would have used before tonight: his death. At this hour, it was only a quick hop there. One that couldn’t wait.
Matt jotted down the address and was about to log off when he thought of something else. He Googled “Antarctica” and “sky” and “news” and let the billion-dollar algorithms do their thing. He hadn’t taxed them too hard. Almost instantly, they presented him with over a million hits. The first page was dominated by news reports about a huge ice shelf breaking off, and Matt clicked on the first link, the one of the Sky news channel, and read through the report.
It was less than enlightening. He sat back and digested it, perplexed as to how it could possibly be linked to Danny or lead to the vicious reaction that targeted Bellinger. He re-read it and was none the wiser, and was about to get up when a link below the article caught his eye. It mentioned an “unexplained sighting” on the frozen continent. He clicked on it, and it took him to a related article that had an accompanying, YouTube-like video clip.
This one had more bite.
He felt a tightening at the back of his neck as he read the report and watched the short video of the reporter and the apparition over the ice shelf. He re-read the report and viewed the clip a second time, his face flickering with confusion. He dug deeper and initiated a new search, and got a geyser of hits related to the unexplained sighting, and as he skimmed through them and let the implications they debated sink in, a grim realization dropped further into the roiling pit of his stomach.
This was no small event.
If Danny was somehow involved in it—
Minutes later, the Mustang was crossing the Longfellow Bridge and veering onto Broadway, a lone car gliding across the desolate cityscape. There was a stark beauty to the stillness around him, but Matt didn’t feel any of it. His mind was swirling with wild theories, and with them came an increasingly uncomfortable feeling, a sense of a sinister malignancy closing in on him.
He tried to stay focused as he made his way to the intersection with Fayette and a three-story Victorian house that matched Bellinger’s address. He did a precautionary drive-by, looped back on himself a couple of blocks up the street, and cruised past the house again for another look. It had stopped snowing, and the neighborhood was now huddled under a couple of inches of white frosting. The lights of a lone Christmas tree blinked out of a bay window on the ground floor, but otherwise, the rest of the building was dark, and the street seemed equally comatose. He also noticed that the snow outside the house was undisturbed.
He pulled into a small alley that separated the house from the similar, slightly larger one next door, and switched off the throaty V-8—not the most discreet of engines. He waited a moment to make doubly sure he was alone, then climbed out of the car. Everything around him was eerily quiet, the air cold and torpid under a moon that shone more brightly now that it wasn’t filtered by a veil of snow. He rummaged through his glove box and found what he needed, his trusted Leatherman multi-tool and a small, stiff piece of wire, and pocketed them, then climbed out of the car, pulled up his collar, and walked briskly over to the house’s front porch.
The labels on its buzzer showed three occupants, which matched the number of floors—one apartment per floor. Bellinger’s name was on top, which Matt took to mean that he had the penthouse. The lock on the communal entrance didn’t pose too much of a challenge. It was a five-pin tumbler, a standard household lock that was surprisingly easy to pick, even without his preferred tools for such a job—a pair of paper clips. Getting past the lock on the door to Bellinger’s place, up the stairs and on the third floor, was equally effortless. Matt had had way too much practice over the years.
Easing the door closed behind him, he slipped in quietly without turning the lights on, his eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. He stepped deeper into the apartment, wishing he had a flashlight. The small entrance hall opened up to twin, open-plan living and dining rooms with a two-sided gas fireplace between them, its mantelpiece lined with a dozen or so Christmas cards. Moonlight bathed the wide, bay-windowed space with a delicate, silvery sheen that ushered him farther in. He advanced carefully, all senses on high alert. He spotted an upright halogen lamp with a dimmer switch in a near corner, by a large leather couch and away from the windows,
