authorities.’
‘Humor me. What are the original targets?’
‘Shopping centers. Striking at ordinary people. Easy to deploy.’ Henry turned his face to the floor. ‘But I’m telling you, they’ll abandon that plan because they’re under such pressure and so much has gone wrong. Mouser will… think bigger. He’ll make Hellfire a memorial to Snow.’
He dragged Henry into the kitchen. He went into the bedroom off the hall; a pair of abandoned handcuffs lay on the bed, probably used for his father or Aubrey. He went back into the kitchen; Henry lay curled on the floor, in a fetal position, coughing. Luke dragged Henry to the dead guard. Snapped the cuffs on Henry’s right wrist, reached for the dead man’s wrist.
‘Please, Luke, don’t!’
The cuff clicked home. ‘I’ll leave you with your friend. You belong together more than you and I do.’
‘Don’t! I can help you!’
‘Tell me where in Chicago Mouser will take them.’
‘You’ll really let me go.’
‘Yes, Henry. Tell me where they will be.’
Henry took a hard breath. ‘He’s got the Night Road members who are carrying out the attack meeting at Aubrey’s office.’
‘For Hellfire.’
‘Yes. The final meeting before they launch the attack. Take me with you, I can talk to them for you.’
‘I’ll talk to them,’ Luke said.
‘You’ll need a password. They’ll kill you at first sight without a password,’ Henry called. ‘Let me go and I’ll tell it to you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s “determination”.’
Luke turned and started to walk away.
‘You said you’d let me go.’ Henry’s whisper became a wail. He raised his arm; the dead man’s arm went up as well, as if in a final plea for mercy.
‘I lied.’ He stared at his stepfather. ‘If I ever see you again, I will kill you.’
Luke went upstairs and he washed his face, his hair, scrubbing the blood away.
‘Luke?’
In a closet, he found a clean shirt and clean pants that nearly fit. He dumped his bloody clothes on the floor.
‘Luke? Please. Don’t leave me.’
He searched through a briefcase he recognized as Henry’s. There was an electronic passkey on it, labeled PERRAULT IMPORTS. Aubrey’s company. He held it up to Henry when he reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Eric sent it, so we would have access when the time came.’
Luke didn’t speak a word; he walked past Henry, shackled to the dead man, and he never looked back at his stepfather.
‘Luke! Luke! Please don’t leave me like this.’
Luke shut the door behind him.
Luke got into Henry’s car and drove to Charles de Gaulle airport. When he got there, he rebooked his flight on the return ticket he had in the system and changed it to Chicago. He had a while to wait. He found a pay phone and called the police. In broken French he told them where they could find one of the people responsible for the afternoon’s bombing in Paris, chained to a dead man. Then he hung up.
Henry, he thought, would not do prison well.
54
On the long flight to Chicago, Luke Dantry sat with his battered, bruised face behind dark glasses and made his plans, filling a little notebook he’d bought at the airport with scribblings, and put it in his pocket. Things he wanted to tell his father, ask his father, if they made it alive through this horror. But he also thought about how the Night Road might use its hundred-plus bombs.
The plane, to his horror, was grounded in New York due to inclement weather in Chicago. They sat on the runway for an extra six hours. Luke felt sick with waiting. Finally the jet took off again; it lost another hour orbiting Chicago as the last of a violent storm cell cleared out from the city.
When he got off the plane into the dark Chicago midnight, he knew the danger would be after clearing customs, after walking toward his rental car, that the Night Road could be waiting for him.
He could not shake Henry from his thoughts. Let him know abandonment, let him feel what it was like to have your life taken from you and wadded up like trash.
He walked toward the rental car station. He kept glancing over his shoulder, because whether it was Quicksilver or the Night Road, they had known how to find him when he traveled. To trap him. Not again. He signed off the rental car paperwork, using the false ID and credit card Drummond had left him. He walked out into the parking garage and found his car on the top level. The attendant had him inspect the car for pre-existing damage, and sign the form. He barely looked at the rental, a Lincoln Navigator SUV, and scrawled his false passport name on the paper.
The attendant said, ‘One second, I’ll get you the keys.’ He vanished into the office and when the door opened again it wasn’t the attendant, it was Frankie Wu, the pilot who had flown him and Aubrey to Chicago for Quicksilver.
Luke froze. Glanced around. All the attendants seemed to have disappeared.
‘Are you all right?’ Frankie Wu asked.
‘Yes.’ He’s part of Quicksilver, he’ll help me, Luke thought. Luke wouldn’t have to do this alone.
‘Let’s get in the car,’ Frankie said, gently. ‘We can talk about your dad.’
Wu got behind the wheel. The passenger seat was full of gear, and Wu didn’t move it, so Luke sat in the back.
They got in the Navigator, drove out of the garage – Luke noticed that the guard at the exit simply waved Frankie Wu through, no checking of the rental car papers – and into the darkness.
‘My dad. I have to go help my dad,’ Luke said. ‘You have to help me.’
‘No, Luke,’ Wu said, ‘I have my orders. We don’t engage with the Night Road. I’m sorry.’
55
‘How did you find me?’ Luke asked. His voice sounded small in the quiet of the car.
‘You traveled under the ID Drummond got for you. We get a ping every time you use it. Especially after Paris was charged with recovering you and the office got blown the hell up.’ Anger stormed Wu’s voice.
‘Then be mad at the Night Road. They attacked your offices, in New York and Paris.’
‘We’ve lost a lot of good people because of you.’
‘Because of a traitor inside Quicksilver. A British woman who called herself Jane. I don’t know what her real name was. But she’s the one who’s put the Night Road and Quicksilver at each other’s throats, she was behind my kidnapping, killing Allen Clifford in Houston, trying to steal the Night Road’s money.’
‘What matters is us surviving another day to fight them. They’ve taken out two of our centers trying to kill you. You matter to them. So it’s my job, and my only job, to get you somewhere safe. Another team will arrive soon to help me.’
Frustration was a claw in Luke’s chest. ‘That will be too late. You have to help me now. They’re here. They’re planning a massive bombing attack, maybe on shopping centers, maybe on some other target. They have dozens of bombs ready. We can’t wait, we have to act now.’
