He stared out the window. Running was no life. Hiding was no life. He couldn’t give up, not yet. He had never felt so alone, even chained in the cabin. There, escape had been the only option he could pursue. But now, he could try to save Aubrey, or go to the police and surrender, or try and fight the Night Road and Henry.
He unpacked the knapsack. The useless gun, the laptop that he’d already picked clean. He pulled Eric’s key ring from his pocket. The Chicago Bulls toy basketball on the end of the ring caught on the pocket’s inside lining. He yanked it free.
There was a slight catch on the edge of the toy ball, under the Bulls logo. He hadn’t noticed it before. He worked his thumb on the catch.
The ball popped open.
Inside was a USB plug, the kind that slid into a computer port.
The other half of the basketball was solid. It was a hidden thumb drive; a portable way to carry computer files.
‘Oh my God,’ Luke said in the silence of the room. He powered up the laptop and logged in. Then he slid the secret thumb drive into the laptop.
The thumb drive appeared on the screen. Holding his breath, biting his lip, he clicked on it. Inside was a single file. He tried to click it open, but all he got was a dance of gobbledygook, glowing random numbers and letters, across his screen.
The file was encrypted.
Eric had started his career in bank operations; he would know about encryption. Luke knew then this must be the file that contained the whereabouts of the fifty million dollars. Nothing else could be so important. The thumb drive was Eric’s insurance in the face of certain death from the Night Road, his bargaining chip for Quicksilver. He’d simply carried it in his pocket.
This was the information on where the fifty million was hidden, and the key, he knew, to stopping Henry and the Night Road.
But he had no idea how he could access the information. The encryption key needed to be on the computer, and it wasn’t on this laptop.
He tucked the gun under his pillow; even empty, it reassured him. And he put the key ring under the pillow as well. Luke closed his eyes and the weight of what he knew he must do pressed him into fitful exhaustion.
As the darkness pressed against the windows, the eyes of the Night Road and Quicksilver kept watch, scanning every credit charge, every hotel database, looking for Luke’s name, Eric’s name, any sign, any mistake that would signal his location.
And while the thousand electronic eyes watched, he slept.
34
The day had nearly driven Mouser mad. Snow made a poor patient; she slept fitfully, waking often to worry if Hellfire would be canceled. Mouser kept waiting on the Night Road hacker to pierce the GPS database and hand him Aubrey and Luke. He’d paced tracks in the already questionable carpet of the South Chicago motel room. Snow alternated between uncomfortable sleep and watching him fret.
‘You had him in the basement,’ she said finally. ‘Is that what’s preying on your mind, baby? Because I had him in the woods and he got away from me.’
‘I’m not happy with how we’ve done. We can do better.’
‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Lie down next to me and see if you can’t calm down.’
He swallowed, thinking he shouldn’t. ‘I hate this waiting.’
‘I need a little more warmth than the blanket,’ she said. He lay down next to her certain she couldn’t want him, not after being shot in the shoulder. But she did. He was conscious of her bandages and was very gentle with her. The whole time her small mouth was a hard little O and he wasn’t sure if she was happy or angry until the savoring smile broke across her face at the end. Afterwards he watched the ceiling and thought: God sent her to me, to be my helper against the Beast. I’ve had bad luck with catching Luke but that all changes now. He’s running out of rope. He can’t go to the police. He can’t go much anywhere where the Night Road can’t find him.
‘You know why I hate the government. Why do you?’ Her breath warmed his shoulder.
He didn’t intend to answer but then her fingers began a slow meander across his stomach.
‘I knew Tim McVeigh,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
‘I’m not bragging. We weren’t buddies, but we’d met at a couple of
… meetings of folks who didn’t like the government infringing on peoples’ rights. I had some acquaintances, who decided they would emulate McVeigh by bombing a big shopping mall. I didn’t know about the plot but I got hit with a jail sentence because they’d called me and asked me about acquiring explosives, and I didn’t turn them in. They blabbed about me, I hadn’t done anything wrong and yet I went to prison for five years.’
Snow was silent.
‘So. In there I met a guy. Henry. Interviewing so-called domestic terrorists, delving into our heads. Trying to figure out if I hated my dad, was dominated by my mother, psychobabble crap.’
‘He thinks terrorists hate their dads?’
‘Some of them. He said it was a consistent pattern. I got a friend outside to send me one of his books.’
‘I would have died for my dad,’ Snow said softly. ‘I know what loyalty is.’
‘He and I kept talking. I liked talking with Henry. I got out and I sort of bummed around, did mechanics’ work when I could find it. And kept thinking about how I could make the Beast pay for taking five years of my life.’
He felt her fingers grope along his chest, skirt the tattoos that read glory and death that spread across his muscles, move down across the flat of his belly.
‘We lost a lot from the government,’ she said.
‘You more than me. Your family. I remember the rage I felt, after Waco, after Ruby Ridge, after what happened to your compound in Wyoming…’
‘Show me,’ she whispered, closing her hand around him. ‘Show me that rage.’
He made rougher love to her in answer, not caring about her injured shoulder. She gasped and writhed, gritting her teeth. When they were done she put his head on her stomach and rubbed his hair, gently. He felt he could have stayed there forever, safe against her skin. Wrong feeling. The mission was more important. The mission trumped all.
Just before ten p.m., his cell phone rang. Mouser scooped it up. ‘Yes?’
The Night Road hacker said, ‘I found your target.’
‘Where?’
‘I got a lead on them from a traffic camera last evening. That gave me a starting point for searching the GPS database and getting a read on them. Aubrey Perrault’s car is now at Lakefront Air Park. Private aviation field north of the city.’ He fed Mouser the address.
‘Thank you.’
‘When you kill the cop for me… send me the news clipping.’ The hacker hung up.
Mouser got off the bed and climbed into his clothes. A private air park. First Eric’s name forged on a passenger manifest, now a private jet to whisk them out of Chicago. He and Snow and Henry were clearly up against someone with serious resources. ‘Get up,’ he said, sharper than he intended.
Snow sat up, let the sheets pool at her waist. ‘I need my bandage changed.’
‘Get up. Now. They’re at an airport, they’re leaving the city, we got to go now.’ All gentleness in him was gone. Nothing else mattered.
Mouser parked. The small airpark appeared closed. He spotted a security guard – older, African-American, heavy-set – walking along the sidewalk in front of the terminal building.
They surprised him with their guns, hurried him into the building, using his electronic pass key.
The guard was afraid for his life. He kept telling Mouser he had a wife, two daughters, three grandsons. He kept repeating their names, a threadbare litany. Like invoking saints who would protect him.
Snow studied the computer’s database; it had not been locked. ‘Two people logged as taking a flight to New
