‘They came… after you were gone. They came and they made me tell them where you went and they wanted to know what you knew about them. I’m sorry. They said they would kill me if I didn’t talk.’
‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Are you all right?’
‘Not really. They… they took over my business. I have to work for them now or they’ll kill me. They’re taking all the money.’
‘Oh, Ricki. Oh, God. I’m so sorry.’
She sounded as though she might cry but she didn’t. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Listen. Tomorrow, I will either be dead or I’ll have the money to vanish forever. Do you want to vanish with me?’
‘What, go off with you? It… that is just stupid and crazy.’
‘I like you that much,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sorry I waited until now to tell you.’
Ricki gave what sounded like a half-sob, half-laugh. ‘Why would you trust me not to tell them? They own me now.’
‘Because, well, I don’t know. I do trust you. Do you want to come with me?’
‘I would have to walk away from everything,’ she said.
‘It’s not yours any more.’
She sniffed. ‘True. Yes, Jack, I think I would like a new start.’
‘Okay. I kind of love you a little.’
‘I know. I’ve known for a while. I love you a little, too.’
His chest made a slight lurch. ‘Okay, that’s good then.’
‘Well, don’t die now,’ she said. She started crying again.
‘I won’t. I won’t. I’ll call you back when I have the money and I’ll tell you where to go. If I don’t call, you figure out some way to get out from under these people. Just walk away if you have to, Ricki. You don’t want any part of them.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m going to mail you a key to a locker. It has a copy of the notebook. If I die then it’s yours, and you can do with it what you want. If you’re too afraid of Nine Suns, then give them the key and they’ll burn it, and I’ll already be dead so I won’t care. Or come to New York and get it yourself and give it to the police or to the FBI or sell it to the Brits or the French. I wouldn’t deal with the CIA.’
‘But if you’re okay, then I’ll be gone when the key gets here.’
‘It won’t matter. If I’m okay, I’ll have the copy with me. You just be ready to get on a plane.’
‘Okay. I wish I was there with you.’
‘I do, too. I’ll call you tomorrow night.’
‘I’m going to be an optimist and pack my bag.’
‘All right. I love you.’ The three hardest, the three easiest, words to say.
‘I love you, too.’
He hung up. If Ricki had kept her mouth shut his mother might be alive. But Ricki would be dead. He couldn’t know how it would have turned out, and he couldn’t hold it against her. If someone had said in his senior year of college he would get caught hacking, cause his father to have a heart attack, dodge arrest, hide out in Holland and fall for a Senegalese movie pirate, well, it wouldn’t have ranked very likely in his mind.
Welcome to life. Life, something so sweet, something worth fighting for.
He had to get ready for tomorrow. He didn’t have his gun any more. And he didn’t know where he could get another one. You had to get close to hand over a notebook. A hand had to reach out to you.
His mother wasn’t a great cook, but she’d loved having a gourmet kitchen.
In a drawer he found a pearl-handled chopping cleaver. He liked the unexpected.
75
The Last Minute, Manhattan
The bar was closed. Mila had vanished into whatever back corner of the night she lived. I was exhausted as I walked up to the apartment and reset the bar’s alarm system.
Leonie sat at her computer. I couldn’t be on a computer so much. I sort of hated them.
‘Where have you been?’ Leonie said.
‘I’m not going to tell you, but it’s going to get us our kids back,’ I said.
She looked at me. And she said, ‘All right.’
I went into the bedroom. I fell onto the bed. Bad day. Broken arm, missed the target, didn’t get my son back. Exhaustion surged through me like a fever.
‘We all looked at that man in the bar you thought was suspicious. He stayed another hour and ate some tapas and he left.’
‘So maybe he was just a nobody,’ I said. ‘I know your name was Lindsay Partridge once.’
She sat on the bed’s edge. Her back to me. I reached over and touched her shoulder.
‘And who told you that?’
‘Someone in Special Projects. The CIA has a file on you.’
‘You know what I don’t miss? Partridge Family or Partridge in a Pear Tree jokes. I don’t miss those at all.’
‘I think I’d still like to call you Leonie.’
‘That’s fine. That’s my name now.’
‘The CIA file on you has sections that are locked.’
‘I can’t imagine why. I’m just a soccer mom-wannabe who’s good with computers.’
‘I’d really like to know why you ran.’
‘I needed a change.’
‘Brewster has to be deep inside the CIA.’
‘Or some group the CIA helps.’
‘You were given a lot of money.’
‘Yes.’
‘To hide people off the books.’
‘Yes.’
‘That isn’t in your file, so I’m told. So your file is about work you did for the CIA. Or for Brewster, on behalf of the CIA.’
She rubbed at her face. ‘I think it’s safe to say he did… favors for the CIA.’
I didn’t say anything to this. She had done dirty work, and doing it for Ray Brewster meant, like me, she was a CIA dirty secret. I felt her back tremble under my fingers.
‘You went and talked to your friend August.’
‘Yes. He got relieved of duty. We’ve declared a temporary truce.’
‘So you can find Jack Ming.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re not going to be able to find him. They’re going to kill our kids.’
‘Listen to me. As long as we’re chasing him, they have every reason to keep Taylor and Daniel alive.’
She seemed to decide not to cry. But I could feel the shudder under her skin, the tenseness, and I rubbed her upper back with my fingertips.
‘One-armed man gives massage,’ she said.
‘House special,’ I said.
‘I should be tending to you. You’re the one went off a building.’
‘I don’t make a habit of that,’ I said. I dropped my hand from her back.
She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘If Taylor dies my life is over. Done. I will have nothing.’
‘Don’t talk that way.’
‘It’s true.’
