Jersey’s Ridgcliff Air Park. Pilot, Frankie Wu. Passengers, Eric Lindoe and Aubrey Perrault.’
‘That smart bastard.’ Mouser shook his head.
Snow raised an eyebrow. ‘I strongly suggest you lose that slight tone of admiration.’
‘Nita. Shawnelle. Latika. Joy. Trevor. David. Shawn,’ the guard said, eyes on the floor, as though he could see the faces of the loved ones in the texture of the carpet.
‘Hold them in your thoughts,’ Mouser said. ‘May I ask you a question?’
The guard – in his sixties – looked up, his face crumpling with grief. I guess you don’t get any more ready to die even when you’re old, Mouser thought.
‘Before you worked here, what did you do?’
‘I’m retired. From the police department.’
‘Thank you,’ Mouser said, and paid his bill to the hacker with one quick shot.
Snow watched, then returned her gaze to the screen.
‘On the computer, who paid for the flight?’ Mouser asked.
‘Quicksilver Risk Management.’
‘Get us tickets on a red-eye to New York.’ He smiled; he had not even smiled when they’d made love. ‘I’m glad to finally know who our enemy is.’
35
At first, Aubrey thought she was dead.
Darkness surrounded her. She blinked and awareness slowly warmed her. Her hand lay stretched above her head, tingling from lack of circulation, and she thought for one surprising second that she lay back on the narrow hard bed in the east Texas cabin, waiting for Eric to come save her, the poor gallant fool. Of course she wasn’t and she gave a half-laugh, half-cough.
She moved, stretched, let her fear subside and let herself drink in her surroundings. Her hand lay bound above her head and her desert-dry mouth tasted of chemical gunk. Thirst crushed her throat.
She moaned. The flight to New York had gone so wrong. Why had she gotten involved in this madness? The plan hadn’t worked. She remembered the men closing in on her, manhandling her into the back seat of a car, trying to fight. Screaming. A needle piercing her flesh, then an awful sodden blackness that smothered her. Vague notions of a buzzing noise, darkness, the hum of machinery. She felt as though she’d slept for days. Years.
Everything had gone wrong. Luke. Did they get Luke?
A faint light switched on and Aubrey could see she lay in a narrow bedroom. She tried to blink past the medicinal haze that fogged her thoughts and focus on the man’s face that appeared above hers.
A man’s face. Familiar, maybe? But then she closed her eyes. She opened them again and the haze cleared and she didn’t know this man.
‘Aubrey.’
Her lips formed an answer. ‘Where am I?’
‘Where is a good start. Tell me where Luke Dantry will go.’
‘I don’t know.’
The voice – she kept her eyes closed because she did not want to look at him again – did not respond. Fingertips moved hair from her eyes. ‘Am I to believe that two kidnapping victims who have endured as much as you and Luke Dantry made no contingency plan if you were separated?’
‘No. We slept on the plane.’
A soft, low, patient laugh. ‘Yes, you like to sleep on planes.’ She risked opening her eyes again. ‘I almost believe you when you say you don’t know where Luke will run. But I don’t.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
A long pause. ‘Let’s talk about Eric. He was going to give us information.’
‘Information?’
‘Tell me about this Night Road.’
She wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Eric just told me the name… extremists, a bunch of different causes. He kept it all secret from me. We broke up,’ she added. She felt woozy. The bed gave a slight lurch and she became aware that the heavy droning noise wasn’t a rattling in her head, waking up from a drug-addled daze. The white noise sounded like jet engines. She blinked again at the unadorned, curved metal ceiling and she thought: This is a plane. I am on a plane again. Where are they taking me?
‘Wise of you.’ He stared at her. In the dim glow she could see the ice in his gaze. A person stripped of every decent feeling, she thought. She tried to remember if he had been one of the men in New York who grabbed her. She thought not. He stood. He wore black slacks, a navy shirt, and she saw a bit of silver chain peeking out from under the shirt. ‘You’re going to help me find Luke Dantry.’
‘I don’t know where he is. Or where he’ll go.’
‘Let’s call him and let him know you’re still alive.’
‘Oh, God, please don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.’ She hated the begging in her voice but the fear surged and her heart swelled in her chest, as though the muscle would explode.
‘We’re going to call Luke. Tell him that you’re alive.’ He unfolded a cell phone, dialed, and then listened. After what seemed like a century he closed the phone.
‘Didn’t he have Eric’s phone?’
‘He broke it.’
Without another word the man turned and walked away from her cot.
She raised her head. It looked like she was in a cargo plane or transport of some sort. At the other end of the cabin she could see the man issuing orders to a younger man who sat at a desk, a set of computer screens before him. The young man answered in a French accent she could barely make out. The boss and the Frenchman, she named them in her head. The Frenchman glanced back at her and she saw an ugly half-circle scar on his cheek.
French. Paris? Were they taking her to Paris, as Frankie Wu had mentioned back in Chicago?
It didn’t make sense. Why were they were taking her and leaving Luke behind?
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ She wanted to know. She held her breath.
The boss glanced back at her, came back to the bed. ‘How much do you mean to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will he try and find you or keep running?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did he run?’
‘I don’t know. He said he had to run.’ Aubrey didn’t want to say that they knew Quicksilver had funded the cabin where they were held. She was afraid of what would happen.
The boss looked at her for the longest ten seconds of her life.
‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’
Aubrey didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe him at all. But she closed her eyes, and she pretended to sleep, and she tried to listen to every sound, every word, anything that would help her figure out where she was and how she could escape.
36
The address for Quicksilver Risk was a twelve story building a few blocks from Washington Square. The tower glittered glass and chrome, more modern than its surrounding fellows. It did not carry the purple flag of NYU, like other structures in the area, and Luke did not see students gathered around its entrance. In the fifteen minutes he’d stood sentinel he did not see anyone leave or arrive.
He’d checked in the phone book – no listing for Quicksilver Risk. A company that didn’t bother to be in the
