Henry. Driving fast, a gun in his hand.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Luke said, slamming the Navigator against Henry’s sedan. The Navigator rocked hard and Warren spun in his seat, grabbing at Aubrey’s gun.
‘Tell me where you put the money now!’ she screamed.
‘Don’t shoot him!’ Luke screamed back. ‘Eric hid it in plain sight! In your accounts at his bank!’
Aubrey fired. The bullet caught his father in the chest with a horrifying blast and he collapsed against the passenger door. Luke slammed on the brakes and the car slid into a long skid. Henry’s car rode alongside them, Henry standing up through the sunroof as the cars spun on sheer momentum, not bothering to steer, aiming.
Luke felt the warmth of Aubrey’s barrel against his neck and then the blast was loud in the car.
The Navigator skidded to a stop as the sedan hit its side. Luke realized he was still breathing. He could see his father slumped in his seat, eyelids fluttering, his chest a wet wreckage of blood. He wrenched around. Aubrey lay on the seat, bleeding from the side of her throat, eyes open, mouth slack.
Luke looked to his left and saw Henry, his car stopped parallel against Luke’s, positioned just behind the driver’s door. Henry still stood in the sunroof, a gun in his hand. Now aimed at Luke.
Luke had no gun.
‘My last favor to you,’ Henry said. ‘Do you know where the money is?’
Luke shook his head. ‘No,’ he lied. ‘No.’
They were the ten longest seconds of Luke’s life. They stared into each other’s eyes, the gun between them like a long-hidden truth.
Henry lowered the gun. ‘Don’t come after me.’ Luke could see, for the first time in the scant light of the highway lights, tears brimming in Henry’s eyes. ‘I will not treat you like family again.’ Henry slid down into the driver’s seat, roared his battered sedan off into the night. And out of sight, taking the first exit ramp.
Luke felt for his father’s pulse. Weak. Erratic. He saw a call button on the Navigator and jabbed it.
Instead of an emergency service he heard Frankie Wu say, ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Dad needs a doctor, he’s shot, tell me where a hospital is.’
‘We got a doctor.’
‘He’s been shot, he needs surgery.’
‘You can’t take him to a hospital,’ Wu said. ‘Too many questions. I want you to do exactly as I say, Luke. Follow my directions.’
And Luke Dantry, no longer the most dangerous man in the world, listened and drove off in the dark night, holding his father’s hand, begging him to not leave him again.
59
A Week Later
Northern Michigan, Luke decided, was one of the nicest places you could go quietly insane. He sat on the porch watching the light dapple the waters of the lake, and he folded the newspaper and tucked it where his father would not see it.
The story had dominated headlines, but not in the way he had expected. A group of suspected extremists had been found dead after a series of explosions. Two had been identified: a dentist from Milwaukee known for sending threatening letters to oil companies, and a pharmacist from a small city in Tennessee, the same town where the E. coli scare had grabbed headlines the previous week. Another man, a known neo-Nazi from Kansas City, had been found several blocks away, with two dozen bombs hidden in first aid kits, and a uniform and passes that would have given him access to the Atlanta rail system. A man who had been dishonorably discharged from the military lay dead on the pavement, and recent information via anonymous phone calls tied him to an attack on an office building in New York. FBI officials suggested the group had planned a bombing in Atlanta, and most likely in other cities as well, but it had gone wrong. Theories as to why were as plentiful as the clouds in the sky. Editorials painted a grim picture of domestic groups of disaffection arming themselves with foreign-bought weaponry. No mention of fifty million dollars in terrorist seed money, or a connection to the shooting deaths of a crazy artist, a Chicago police officer or Eric Lindoe. And no mention of networks called the Night Road or Quicksilver.
Aubrey Perrault found her rest in the quiet of an unmarked grave in this northern Michigan enclave, a quiet Luke guessed she hadn’t known in her life. Every move she had made: urging Eric to flee with them, sticking close to Luke as he trailed the money, even, as his father told them, buying time for Jane to find Luke by insisting to Mouser that Luke didn’t have the money… all of it an attempt by her or Jane to gain control of the funds. The bombing investigators found fifty million wired into her accounts as part of the bombing investigation; the FBI had seized the money. Aubrey was connected, the investigators concluded, with the terrorist attack. Now the forensic accountants were trying to trace the money back to its source. Anonymous tips kept pointing back to a prominent Arab prince.
Luke watched the dappled light play on the water. How many names did Aubrey have? How many lies did she live? Luke wondered. He had been smart enough to fight the Night Road and win, but too blind to see she was no victim. She had been one of the architects of this carnage. It was strange to know she had stuck with him simply to help her find the money. If he’d found the hidden thumb drive in her presence, back in Chicago, she would have killed him and taken the file to Jane. Or if she’d checked her account balances, she would have seen the money and she could have taken it and run to Jane. They would have won.
Luke watched Frankie Wu on the fishing pier, reeling in an empty line. The past few days had been spent fretting over his father, recovering from surgery in a private clinic north of Chicago, one under Quicksilver control. That alone had made him realize the extent of this so-called loose network. They had money, they had resources.
But so did Henry.
‘Have you decided?’ His father wheeled his chair close to the door. Pale, gaunt, but he would recover, the doctors said.
‘On dinner? I say steak. We deserve a steak. Now that you’re up and chewing.’
‘Sounds good, but I thought more about what your future holds.’
‘I’m still a missing person.’
‘You don’t have to be.’
‘Don’t I? I hardly imagine Henry or the Night Road are going to let me walk back into my old life.’
‘We can do a great deal for you.’
Now Luke watched his father, who was not looking at him, instead studying his hands folded in his lap. He felt a weird whirlpool of love and hate rise in his chest. He’d spent the past days watching his father sleep, recover, slowly regain his strength. And had not yet heard an answer to his one question.
‘In gratitude for all you’ve done, Luke, Quicksilver can help you back into your old life.’
‘Is that how you make amends to me? Make all the trouble go away? You brought a lot of the trouble on me, Dad. This… war has been building my whole life, and I had no idea that I might be pulled into it. Other than you giving me a Saint Michael’s medal and warning me I might one day have to fight. Were you assuming I’d simply follow in your footsteps? Thanks a lot.’
Warren studied his splinted fingers, as though he hadn’t heard the sharpness of Luke’s words. ‘Eric’s already been identified as a money launderer since his murder. He screwed around with the audit records trying to cover his transfers. We can fake computer records, make it look like you had previous but innocent contact with him. That he thought you knew about his crimes and that he was pursuing you. We can clear your name in every way that it’s been muddied, given time.’
‘Make up a lie so I can live a truth? My old life wasn’t truth. It was all in the service of Henry. Because you left me behind. You abandoned us.’
Now his father met his steady gaze. ‘I never would have picked this life for you, Luke. It was why I left.’
‘Why you lied. Let’s call it what it is.’ Anger that he couldn’t control steamed up in him. Before he was shot they hadn’t had enough time to talk. Only for his father to say he was sorry.
‘Fine. Why I lied. But I thought I was doing the best for you and your mom. I didn’t want anyone coming after me to come after you. They killed everyone I worked with. Do you think they would have hesitated to kill my
