to see Finch’s body hurtling to the ground and slamming into the hard sand a few feet away from her.
Chapter 50
Outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts
“It makes sense,” Jabba concluded, all pumped up, his mouth motoring ahead. “He’s got the money. He’s got the technical chops to pull off something like this. And he’s a major, major environmentalist.” Jabba shook his head, his face locked in concentration. “Question is, how’s he doing it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Matt replied.
They were back on the mainland, heading down the Salem Turnpike, toward the city. Jabba had told Matt what he knew about Rydell—the way he championed alternative energy projects across the globe, the passion with which he lobbied Washington to take the climate change issue seriously, the support he gave to politicians and to groups who’d been fighting the mostly losing battle against the previous administration’s callous disregard for environmental concerns. Every word of it added an additional pixel of clarity to the picture that was forming in Matt’s mind: him getting in Rydell’s face and hearing what they’d done to Danny straight from the horse’s mouth.
“How is it you know so much about Rydell?” Matt asked.
Jabba looked at him askance. “Dude. Seriously? Where’ve you been living?”
Matt shrugged. “So he really thought he could start a new ‘green’ religion? Is that it?”
Jabba cracked a grin. “We’re hardwired to believe from minute one, dude. It’s all around us from the day we’re born. There’s no escaping it. And people will believe all kinds of crap. Look at what a third-rate sci-fi writer was able to pull off, and everyone knew he was only out to get stinking rich. Rydell . . . the man’s in a whole different league. He’s got state-of-the-art technology and all the money he needs at his disposal. And he’s no fool. It’s an awesome combination.”
Matt nodded, taking it in. “And he’s set this whole thing up to save the planet?”
“Not the planet. Us. It’s like George Carlin said. The planet’s gonna be just fine. It’s been through far worse than anything we can throw at it. It was here long before us and it’ll still be around long after we’re gone. It’s
Matt shook his head in disbelief, then glanced out the window. The traffic up and down the turnpike was already noticeably heavier, with the Christmas rush home starting to clog the nation’s arteries.
“Do you think they knew what they were really working on?” he asked Jabba. “Danny, the others . . . do you think Reece and Rydell told them?”
“I don’t know . . . They had to be aware of the power of what they were putting together.” He glanced sideways at Matt. “The question isn’t just whether or not they were told. It’s whether or not they knew about it from day one. Whether or not they were working on it knowing what it was going to be used for.”
Matt shook his head again with denial.
“He was your brother, man,” Jabba added, hesitantly. “What do you think? Could he have been part of something like this?”
Matt thought about it. “A hoax like this? Scamming millions of people.” He shook his head again. “I don’t think so.”
“Even if he thought it was for a good cause?”
That one was harder to answer. Danny wasn’t any more religious than Matt was, despite their parents’ best efforts, so there wouldn’t have been any faith issues for him there. And although he was a high-minded, upstanding kind of guy, Matt didn’t remember him being particularly concerned with the planet’s environmental problems, no more than most well-read, levelheaded people. He certainly wasn’t mes- sianic about it. Still, they’d spent a lot of time apart, courtesy of Matt’s stints behind bars, and when all was said and done, how well did anyone know anyone else, really?
Jabba was scrutinizing him, unsure about whether or not to say anything more. Matt noticed it.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know, dude. I mean, I hate to say it, but it doesn’t look good. It’s been two years. If Danny didn’t pull a disappearing act to be part of this, I don’t see how they could have kept him locked up and muzzled all this time. He would’ve found a way to reach out to someone, to sneak a word out, don’t you think?”
“Not if they know what they’re doing.”
“Two years, man,” Jabba added with a slight wince.
Matt stared ahead, frowning. Suddenly, he was feeling a tightening in his chest. He didn’t know what was better—to find out Danny was actually long dead, or that he was part of all this willingly. Part of something that had gotten his own best friend killed and his brother accused of his murder.
“No way,” Matt finally said. “He’d never want to be part of something like this. Not if he knew what they were really doing.”
“Okay,” Jabba accepted and turned away.
They motored on for a mile or so, then Matt said, “Get us another lock on Maddox’s car, will you?”
“Okay, but we really shouldn’t be using this,” Jabba cautioned as he pulled out his iPhone.
“Just don’t stay on any longer than you think is safe. You can be in and out in less than your forty seconds, right?”
“Let’s make it thirty,” Jabba said and nodded reluctantly. He pulled up the tracker’s website. He didn’t need to key in the tracker’s number—it was now stored on a cookie. He waited a couple of seconds for the ping to echo back, then zoomed in on the map.
“He’s stationary. Somewhere by the name of Hanscom Field,” he told Matt. “Hang on.” He pulled up another website. Punched in his query. Waited a couple of seconds for it to upload. “It’s a small airport between Bedford and Concord. And I’m logging off before they track us.” He killed the phone, checked his watch—twenty-six seconds total—and turned to Matt.
Matt chewed it over quickly. A small airfield. He wondered what Maddox was doing there. He also liked the idea of maybe being able to surprise Maddox and get up close and personal with him outside the man’s comfort zone.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It wasn’t far, even with the holiday traffic building up. A half hour, forty minutes maybe. “That’s just outside the ninety-five, isn’t it?”
Jabba’s face sank. “Yep,” he shrugged.
“Check it again in fifteen minutes or so, will ya? Keep making sure he’s still there.”
Jabba nodded grimly and sagged into his seat, sucking in a deep breath and anticipating the worst.
MADDOX HUNG UP with his contact at the NSA and scowled. He scanned the skies instinctively for the incoming jet, but his mind was now preoccupied elsewhere.
He’d received three consecutive calls. The first one was innocuous enough: The learning software had delivered on its promise, and the targets were just north of the city, heading into town. The second call told him the targets had changed direction and were now heading west on the Concord Turnpike, which, with hindsight, should have raised an eyebrow, but hadn’t. The third call, though, was seriously troubling. The targets had turned north once they’d hit I-95, and were now less than five miles away from the airfield.
Which was, again, seriously troubling. For the simple reason that Maddox didn’t believe in blind luck any more than he believed in coincidences. And it was the second time Matt had managed to track him down that day. Which meant he was either psychic, or he had an advantage Maddox wasn’t aware of.
Yet.
His mind did a one-eighty and ran a full-spectrum sweep of everything that had happened since he’d first come across Matt Sherwood. He shelved details he thought extraneous and focused on establishing causal links
