me?’
‘You know that very well, Andrew,’ Sebastian said, deliberately dropping the title. ‘I want to know every detail about the backers of Woodbridge Holdings.’
It was only as the Englishman began to spill what was a very revealing can of beans that Peter Sebastian fully realized what he had done.
Twenty-Eight
Sara kept us about a mile behind Abaddon’s vehicle. There were signs to Waco on the left and Dallas on the right, but we stayed on back roads. It was difficult to make out what kind of country we were going through. All I saw were the lights of small settlements and deserted gas stations.
‘Any idea where he’s headed?’ I asked.
The Soul Collector drew a forearm across her forehead. ‘Nope. He seems to be avoiding large population centers, probably because of the weapons he’s carrying.’
‘You’re not aware of any connection he has with this neck of the woods?’
She glanced at me. ‘Killers aren’t like authors, Matt. We don’t have pages on Facebook or websites that advertise where we come from and where we like to spend our holidays.’
‘So where do you live?’ I told myself I was gathering material that could prove useful down the line, but I was actually interested in the life of the woman I had once loved. I knew she’d need some encouragement to talk. ‘Let me guess. Somewhere central so you can get to both coasts quickly.’ I stuck a pin in my mental map of the U.S. ‘Kansas City?’
‘What?’ She laughed. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘I have, actually. There are some good blues bars.’
‘Yeah, right. Anyway, it’s not great for flights. St. Louis would be better.’ She paused, her brow furrowed. ‘Now I come to think of it, there was talk that Abaddon was based there.’
‘Maybe that’s where her brother’s going.’
She thought about that and then tapped buttons on the tracking device. ‘Dallas to St. Louis is 621 miles, ten and a half hours. Bit of a long haul in that heap.’
‘True. Then again, if he wants to keep his weapons to hand, he’s hardly going to fly.’
‘Mmm.’ She seemed distracted.
‘You haven’t told me.’
‘What?’
‘Where you live.’
‘What makes you think I even have a fixed abode?’
‘Come on, Sara. I know you. Even when we were together, you kept on your own place.’ I remembered the plants and wall hangings she filled the rented flat with. ‘You need somewhere to shut out the world.’
‘Give me one reason why I should tell you.’
‘If you don’t make it, who’s going to water your plants?’
That off-the-cuff remark seemed to get to her. She blinked and kept her eyes on the road.
‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘If it looks like I’m on the way out, I’ll give you my address.’ She gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Watch out for the booby-traps.’
I could tell she wouldn’t be talking anymore. I went back to moving my wrists surreptitiously; there didn’t seem to be any slack developing. Eventually another part of my body hit the panic button.
‘Em, sorry about this, but I need to pee.’
Sara looked at me as if I were a small boy interrupting the teacher.
‘What? We’re not all superhumans with steel bladders.’
‘Evidently,’ she muttered, pulling off to the side. ‘Come on, then.’ She went round to my door and hauled me out. There was a pistol in her other hand.
I walked into the long grass. ‘You have to help me.’
She registered that I couldn’t use my hands. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ She came over and put the muzzle of her weapon against my belly, then unzipped my fly and stepped back. ‘I’m not holding it.’
Overcome with relief, I smiled. ‘Wouldn’t exactly be the first time.’
The first shot whistled past my head and Sara shoved me to the ground. Several more rang out. I heard the bullets thud into the earth beyond us. I rolled farther into the grass, hands over my exposed dick. By the time I looked back, Sara had blasted off a clip in reply. An engine revved and a car accelerated past us. I got a clear view of the driver and the gunman.
‘Are you all right?’ Sara called, from the side of the pickup.
‘Just about. Fortunately I’d finished peeing. You?’
‘Yeah. Get over here.’
I did as I was told, keeping my head down even though our assailants were long gone.
‘Did you see them?’ I asked.
‘A man and a woman. She was driving.’
‘That’s right. Any idea who they were?’
‘Never seen them before. You?’
I decided there was no advantage in sharing that information with her. It might give me an advantage later. ‘No. Presumably members of Rothmann’s or Apollyon’s cult.’
We got back into the pickup and set off again. Apollyon was still showing on the monitor and we soon caught up. There was no further sign of the car, but that didn’t mean the occupants hadn’t stopped and waited for us to pass. Sara was aware of that and kept looking in the mirror. I considered asking her to cut my bonds, but knew that would be a waste of breath. I needed to gain her trust before there was any chance of that.
In the meantime, I thought about the shooter. Had Gordy Lister been firing at me or at the Soul Collector? He had a look on his face that was very different from anything I’d seen before-determined, vicious, even enraged. I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything to put him in that zone. Had Sara? Or was he just so pissed off at what had happened during the annual rite that he wanted rid of us both? I thought about how he’d been before the ceremony and couldn’t figure that-he wasn’t a conditioned zombie or a committed devil-worshipper. Then again, maybe he’d completely fooled me and was both.
I didn’t think his driver was either of those, but she could have duped me, too. Or perhaps Mary Upson had been so traumatized by the time she had spent upside down on the cross with her head in a sack that she had completely flipped. Seeing her mother’s body in the coffin under the central cross would have aided that process. Then again, I had led her on when she had helped me escape from Maine and that had ended badly. I already knew the damage she could do. If she had inherited Nora Jacobsen’s tendency for extreme behavior, we were in seriously deep shit.
‘What is it?’ Sara asked.
‘Nothing. So, not Kansas City. Where do you live then? Omaha, Nebraska?’
She shook her head, but a smile played on her lips. Maybe I could get through her defenses after all.
Rudi Crane was on his knees in the hotel room in Washington when his cell phone rang. He ignored it and went on giving thanks to the Good Lord. Today had been a red-letter day. Both sets of meetings had ended in success. Hercules Solutions would be providing army and police training for a small but hugely wealthy Gulf oil state-the emir had himself signed the contract before lunch. The company would also be responsible for all security work for one of the world’s largest oil companies. Its CEO had flown in especially to supervise the final negotiations that afternoon. The contract would be signed in London next month. Truly, the Lord was a bountiful and benevolent God.
The Reverend Crane also offered up thanks for the favorable terms he had managed to negotiate with an Israeli arms company. They guaranteed the supply of high-quality weaponry at a price that would not put undue strain on Hercules. In six months, the company would be better equipped than most nations’ armies, and able to play a major role in the unrest that would soon engulf the world. It had not yet been revealed whether this would be the Armageddon that Rudi Crane had been waiting for all his sentient life but, even if it wasn’t, the Second
