Trust Me

18

Eric Lindoe stepped onto the third car of a Brown Line train. Staying well back, Luke stepped onto the fourth car, nestled close to the doors. He hoped that at each stop he could step out to see if Eric disembarked.

The first stop Luke eased out a foot onto the platform, pretending to make way for departing passengers, holding the door. He got a couple of thank-yous, which was more attention than he liked.

Eric stayed on the car. So did Luke.

More stops; the train headed north. He felt like the doorman. The woman next to him had a smartphone; she was reading CNN’s news feed on it. Luke glanced at it over her shoulder. All bad news but worse than usual. An explosion in Canada had ruptured and shut down an oil pipeline. A recall of a million pounds of ground beef from a plant in Tennessee after several people in twelve states got sick yesterday with E. coli; a note sent to the local paper claimed the poisoning had been on purpose, an attack on the American food system. Authorities said they had no proof, yet, of malicious intent. A young actress of note was in rehab. The ‘Houston hobo’ shooting, with its unexpected tie to a Washington power player’s son, remained unsolved. A Chicago police officer and a bystander had been shot and killed an hour ago in Wicker Park.

His story.

The woman kept her back to him but she sensed his uncomfortable closeness and he saw her back stiffen. He moved away, locked his gaze to the floor. The police would dig into Chris’s mess of a life, and find that Chris sent money to buy a bus ticket, and the authorities would figure out the recipient was Luke. Chris’s mother would not remember her son’s cruelties, but rather Luke’s face. And Chris and the officer lay dead together in an alley.

He could not let Eric slip through his fingers. He had to force him to tell the truth.

Because, Luke knew, his life was gone. Destroyed, mangled in a way that could not be set right again. If he had self-destructed – turned away from a woman he loved, become a drunk, lost himself in work and neglected the rest of his life – then the fracturing of his life would have been easier to accept. But this? He had no idea why he had been destroyed. No idea why a man who called him son had used him and betrayed him so deeply. He had no trail to follow except Eric. If he lost Eric now, in the crowd, or because someone recognized him and grabbed him, he was finished.

The train stopped at the Armitage station. Eric rushed out, surrounded by a pool of other commuters, from the third car.

He would have to walk past Luke to reach the ground exit.

Luke hung back and followed, letting Eric storm a good ten feet ahead of him. The flock of commuters marched from the elevated platform to a metal stairway. Eric headed down and Luke risked drawing closer – only five people separating him from his kidnapper. If Eric glanced over his shoulder he would see Luke.

Eric reached Armitage Avenue, went through the exit gate. Luke stopped behind a pillar and waited, watched Eric hesitate – and then Eric crossed the street, under the elevated rails, dismissing the jeer of annoyed car honks with a polite, gentlemanly wave of his hand.

Luke followed, staying on the opposite side of Armitage, trying to keep him in view, trying not to be noticed. Thin trees stood on his side of the street and he tried to stay close to them, not be noticed, feeling vulnerable as he tracked Eric.

Lincoln Park – banners on the streetlights announced the neighborhood’s name – was a well-heeled neighborhood, high on charm factor. Storefronts, nice retail and restaurants, with apartments and offices on the higher floors. Eric turned into a small candy shop. Luke fought the urge to stop. He walked on, risking a single glance back. No Eric. Luke stopped at the end of the block. He felt horribly conspicuous just standing there. Five minutes passed. He walked back another half-block toward the candy store, paused to study the posted menu on an Italian bistro. When he dared a glance over his shoulder he saw Eric six steps out from the candy store – thank God I didn’t cross the street, Luke thought – heading on his original course. A bag of candies in his hand. Eric walked, glancing down at his phone, tapping out a number with his thumb. Luke let him pass his position, careful to keep his back turned toward Eric.

When Luke turned back, Eric was gone, as though the street had swallowed him whole.

Panic clutched Luke’s chest. He scanned the street again. Eric was tall. He couldn’t have vanished off the street.

Luke scanned the storefronts. A wine store, a small bookshop, women’s clothing boutiques, a fancy kids’ clothing store. Eric could have gone into any of them. He could be watching Luke from any of them.

Luke retreated into the doorway of a small bar. He could hear the thrum of music. He checked his watch. Two men moved past Luke, laughing, and opened the bar door, letting a blast of sound, a jangle of folksy guitars, and laughter rise from inside.

Eric stepped out of the wine shop. A neat paper bag in his hands. He didn’t glance over at Luke; he was fifteen feet ahead of him and across the street.

Candy and wine. Luke wondered if Eric was going to spend an evening with Aubrey. Had he just stepped back into his normal life after murder and kidnapping?

Luke walked slowly, trying to keep a few cars in the diagonal angle between him and Eric. He crossed the street, dodging traffic. He gained on Eric, hurrying now, not running.

He got up five feet behind him, but he couldn’t grab him on the street. People would notice. And maybe he still had the gun he kept at Luke’s throat and ribs.

Eric spoke into his phone. ‘Yeah, a large vegetarian, thin crust. Yeah. For Crosby, Grace.’

Grace Crosby. Luke remembered the name; the young blogger who had raised the alarm that Aubrey was missing; it was the clue that had led him to Chicago.

Eric turned into a side street and Luke dropped back, let Eric walk ahead. He had gotten too close. A gaggle of young women, early twenties, loud, laughing, stylish and they knew it – walked between him and Eric and he used them as camouflage crossing the street. The women peeled away, heading down Armitage toward an Italian restaurant.

Eric walked up a stone flight of stairs into a condo building.

Luke followed.

Eric vanished into the entryway. Luke hurried to the bottom of the stairs and counted to ten. He walked up slowly. He couldn’t see into the building’s entryway; the glass was leaded and shaded.

An array of buttons announced the residents’ last names. Crosby was listed.

He could buzz in twenty minutes, pretend to be the pizza guy. But if he timed it wrong, if the pizza guy arrived while he was heading up the stairs or trying to find the right condo… he considered. He might not have enough time to make it. Then Eric would be on guard. Better to wait, not get caught in a time trap.

The pizza guy came up the side street twenty minutes later. Indian, looking harried, snuffling like he was losing a battle against a cold.

The pizza guy hurried up the steps and Luke took a chance.

‘You got a pie for Crosby?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

Luke flashed a twenty and a ten. ‘It’s mine.’

The pizza guy looked again at the slip. ‘You don’t look like a Grace.’

‘I’m a Greg. They keyed my name in wrong and they’ve never fixed it. How much?’

‘I’m supposed to deliver it to the door.’

‘Well, then you can follow me on up. I called it in on my way home, got scared you’d beat me here.’ You’re talking too much, Luke thought. He stuck the money out.

The pizza guy took it, started digging for change.

‘You can keep it,’ Luke said. ‘And tell them it’s Greg, not Grace.’

‘Sure, sir, thanks.’ Luke made a show of opening the box, inspecting the pie. A waft of fragrant steam stroked his face and he breathed in the scent of mushrooms, olives and garlic.

The slip read CROSBY GRACE APT 404.

He glanced over his shoulder, made sure the delivery guy was hurrying back to his car and was out of earshot. He pressed Crosby on the callboard.

Long silence and then Aubrey’s voice, burned into his brain, the voice that had begged Eric Lindoe to spare his life. ‘Yes?’

He glanced at the slip. ‘Romano’s Pizza, ma’am.’

‘Come on up.’ She sounded tired. The door buzzed and he pushed his weight against it.

The foyer was tiny and tiled and the only sound was the huff of his own breathing.

He ignored the small elevator and headed up the stairs, considering his plan of attack. His hair was a different color; he wore sunglasses. Through a peephole, expecting to see a pizza deliveryman, would she recognize him? He thought of holding the pizza box at such an angle that it masked part of his face, but that would look suspicious. And if Eric came to the door, he’d recognize Luke, no doubt. They’d spent far too much time together.

He kept up the stairs, reaching the fourth – and top – floor. The hallway bent in regular ninety-degree angles. The walls boasted new paint but the carpet appeared worn. From behind the door of the apartment closest to the stairway he heard a low thump, then a woman’s voice saying turn it off, boys, dinner’s ready. He found 404. He crept up to the door and listened. He heard the soft murmur of the television, turned to local news – no sound of conversation. It was one of two apartments tucked into the corner of the hallway. The irregular grouping of doors suggested some apartments were larger than others.

It gave him an idea.

The closest apartment to 404 was 405 and he tiptoed toward the door. He pressed his ear against the wood and listened hard. No sound of television, music, or movement. He knocked, lightly, hopeful that neither Eric nor Aubrey would hear.

No answer.

He risked a louder knock.

No answer.

He stationed himself leaning against the wall. Back toward 404, slouching a bit, pizza held aloft. ‘Piz-za!’ He announced with a louder knock. ‘Piz-za, hello!’

No answer but he heard the door to 404 – ten feet behind him – creak open.

‘Hey, that’s ours.’ Eric. He sounded tired.

‘Piz-za,’ Luke repeated, keeping his back to Eric, slouching against the doorframe. He cussed softly in garbled words, hoping he sounded vaguely Russian or Serbian. He wanted Eric to think he was a confused immigrant, new to making deliveries.

He heard the whisper of feet on carpet. ‘You’re at the wrong door, dude, that’s our pizza,’ Eric said.

Luke turned and let the surprise dawn onto Eric’s face.

Then he powered his fist into Eric’s gut. Hard. Eric bent, stumbled onto the dropped pizza box and Luke hit him again, square in the jaw. Pain bit into his fist.

Eric staggered back and aimed his own fist at Luke’s face. Hit Luke’s jaw. Luke fell against the wall, heard shattering glass. He reached into the broken fire extinguisher holder. He pulled out the extinguisher and slammed it into Eric’s face, heard the crunch. Eric fell back, blood gushing from nose and mouth. Moaning.

Luke seized him by the throat and bum-rushed him into Aubrey’s apartment. He kicked the door closed.

The condo was small and neat. Most of it had a minimalist, sleek feel – clean woods and chrome, a geometric rug on the floor, blotchy modern art on the walls. A framed photo on the mantle of a couple, not Aubrey and Eric. Across the living room was a small kitchen and Aubrey stepped into the doorway, a glass of red wine in her hand.

She dropped the glass; it shattered at her feet with a plum spray. ‘You scream or run and I swear to God I’ll bash his head in.’ Luke still had the fire extinguisher, and he hoisted it to club Eric.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ she said. ‘Please.’ Fright whitened her cheeks. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Who else is here?’ Luke asked.

‘No one,’ Aubrey answered. She looked tired but lovely, the grime of her ordeal gone. She wore jeans and a black sweater and her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

‘Where’s Grace Crosby?’

‘With her husband, he’s a lawyer. At a conference in Detroit. Gone through the weekend. We decided to hide here.’

Hide. ‘Where’s Eric’s gun?’

She glanced at Eric. Her voice had a warm rasp to it. ‘Chicago River. I made him get rid of it.’

‘Please,’ Eric said. ‘Please just leave us alone.’

‘You have to be kidding me. Leave you alone?’ Luke forced Eric against the wall, frisked him under the suit jacket. No gun.

Eric tried to jerk away. Luke swung the extinguisher and it caromed hard off Eric’s head, into the wall, and back against his skull. Eric fell into a crunch, clutching his head.

Luke glanced up. Aubrey was gone. He bolted through the dining room and saw the bedroom door starting to slam. He kicked it open; the wood splintered above the knob. But she didn’t fold, pushing the door back toward him. He squeezed through, grabbed the back of her sweater as she lunged for the phone.

He clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her scream locked in her jaws.

‘Eric kidnapped me,’ he hissed in her ear as he hauled her, kicking, back down the hall. She was wiry-strong, determined, and she knocked him against the wall twice before he got the leverage to muscle her down the hallway.

Eric still was in the apartment. He could have run and he hadn’t. Not without Aubrey, Luke saw. Eric stood on unsteady feet and raised a bloody hand. ‘Don’t hurt her.’

‘I don’t want to hurt anyone. Aubrey!’ Luke yelled; she’d nearly wrenched loose from his grasp. ‘Stop it – you know he kidnapped me to rescue you. I was your ransom.’

Now she grew still.

‘You know what else he did?’

Eric wiped his face with the sleeve of his suit. ‘Aubrey, he’s a liar. I told you what kind of guy he is. You know how much I risked to save you…’

‘He grabbed me at the Austin airport. He threatened to shoot a family if I yelled for help. Forced me to drive to Houston and he shot a helpless man dead in the street. Shot him in cold blood’ – Aubrey moaned into the cup of his hand, started struggling against him – ‘and then he got a phone call telling him where you were. And you know he left me in your place.’

Aubrey went still.

‘Aubrey, don’t listen… I did it all for you.’ Eric’s words cracked like falling china.

‘Yes, he did. He did it all. Every rotten thing I’ve described.’

‘You know what he is, Aubrey!’

‘Tell me, what am I, Aubrey?’ Luke’s palm was just above her mouth and the feather of her breath tickled his skin.

‘I don’t know anything – he didn’t tell me anything – please just leave us alone.’

‘I know you think he saved you,’ Luke said. ‘Fine. He’s your hero. I don’t care. But he has to tell the police about what he did…’

Eric started shaking his head, fury and hate in his face.

‘You have to. We go to the police together, we tell them everything about the Night Road. I’ve been running like hell since I got away from that cabin. And I’m done. This is the only way to save us both, Eric. We’re going to the police. Together.’

‘No. No.’

Luke glanced at Aubrey. ‘Did he tell you why you were kidnapped?’

Aubrey nodded. ‘A woman wanted access to money from accounts he controls. But he doesn’t control the money, your stepfather does.’

‘Money. Fifty million dollars that belongs to some very very bad people. They’re tied to an extremist network that might be responsible for the train bombing down in Texas.’

‘He… he…’ Aubrey blinked, glanced at Eric.

‘It’s okay, baby.’ Eric put his bloodied face in his hands.

‘Don’t call me baby,’ she said, and Luke saw her words sliced into his heart.

Luke knelt by Eric. ‘This Jane woman, who is she, how does she know about you and my stepfather?’

‘I don’t know, obviously, or I would have called the police. She said Aubrey would be killed if I didn’t do what she said, and I’d do anything for Aubrey. Anything.’ He shoved his whole world into that word. Anything.

Aubrey stiffened under the grip of Luke’s arm. She looked confused. Eric had lied to her to protect himself as her rescuing knight, and Luke was going to have to destroy the illusion.

‘Aubrey,’ Luke made his voice quiet. ‘I don’t want to hurt you or even him-’

‘Just… leave Aubrey out of this. I’ll go to the cops with you. I’ll talk. Just leave her out of this.’ All the threat, the bravado seemed gone from Eric. As though given the time to contemplate his crimes, shame had found a home. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to run. Especially if he’d tapped into that fifty million. He would have the resources to vanish and Luke might never find him again.

Don’t be fooled, Luke thought. He is a dangerous guy and now you’ve cornered him. ‘No. She’s a witness. She talks, too. Otherwise we’re the two assholes in a Beamer who killed a defenseless street person and no one can corroborate our story.’

‘Would you please let me tend to him?’ she said.

‘No. Talk first. He answers my questions before we go to the cops.’

Eric got up from the floor, sat on the sofa, took off his suit coat. He folded the fabric carefully, put it against the blood welling from his face, although the flow had stopped. ‘I’ll buy your friend a new couch, Aubrey, if I get blood on this one.’

‘For God’s sakes, Eric.’ Luke heard a resignation and a soft, quiet grief in her voice. An impatience that he didn’t understand. ‘Just tell him what he wants to know. For my sake.’

Eric blinked.

‘How are you and my stepfather connected?’

‘I got a call by a friend of mine to provide private banking services, to move some money in from overseas. I had no idea it was connected to anything criminal.’

Luke wasn’t sure he believed that, but Eric wasn’t about to damn himself further in Aubrey’s eyes; Eric was watching her reactions as closely as he was watching Luke’s. Your father was the contact.’

‘But you disguised your voice.’

‘I was ordered to do so. The voice modulator came with the phone Jane sent me after Aubrey was kidnapped.’

Why would it matter that Henry not recognize Eric’s voice? The reasonable answer was that there was an advantage for Jane if Eric was not identified as his kidnapper. Why would Jane care if Eric was known to be the kidnapper? Was Jane now somehow protecting Eric? Who was this bizarre, mysterious woman?

‘Aubrey, who grabbed you?’ Luke asked.

Aubrey sat next to Eric, put an arm around his shoulder. ‘I never saw a face. I was leaving my office – working late on my own – and suddenly a burlap sack – it reeked of onions, it’s all I really remember – yanked over my head and I felt a needle go into my arm. I woke up tied up in the trunk of a car. Blindfolded. I think I had been unconscious for a very long time. The car stopped’ – she hesitated, touched fingertips to temples, as though in pain – ‘someone dragged me inside that cabin down in Texas, chained me to the bed. The kidnapper left without saying a word. I managed to get the hood off my face. I lay there for – I don’t know, maybe a day and a half before you and Eric came. It felt like forever.’

‘Was the kidnapper a woman, maybe?’ Jane might have done her own dirty work.

Aubrey glanced at Eric. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Are you two married?’

Aubrey shook her head. ‘We’d been dating for several months. We broke up late last week but I guess the kidnappers didn’t get the memo.’

‘We’re back together…’ Eric started.

‘Eric.’ The word, short and sharp, was like a closing door.

‘I never wanted you hurt, or involved,’ Eric said.

‘I never really knew you,’ Aubrey said. ‘That’s the worst. I never knew what you were capable of.’

‘You proved your love and lost it all at once.’ Luke realized that perhaps the same trap had been intended for Henry. The kidnapping had exposed Henry’s crimes to Luke, destroyed his vision of his stepfather as a decent man. The ugliness of the truth he’d spoken hung in the air between them.

‘Don’t whine,’ Aubrey said. ‘You can still have my respect, if you’ll just be honest. Please. Tell him about this Night Road.’

Eric frowned, letting the weight of the world settle on his shoulders. ‘I don’t know exactly what they are. A group of people, scattered around the country. A client at the bank ordered me to set up several bank accounts for them, at different banks around the country. I did so. But Jane wanted all those accounts closed. That was the first part of the ransom, close the accounts. Second was killing the man in Houston. Third, and last, was grabbing you.’

He was lying, Luke was sure. ‘Jane didn’t ask you for the money?’

‘I didn’t have the money yet. Your stepfather controlled it. That’s why Jane asked him for it, not me.’ Eric turned the knife. ‘You heard him say no, Luke. He put the fifty million ahead of you.’

Luke ignored the jab. ‘Who’s this client who had you set up these bank accounts?’

‘A company called Travport. They’re a cargo aviation firm, they fly all over the world. Entirely respectable.’

‘Where are they based?’

‘Dubai. But owned by Saudis.’

Fifty million dollars. For the Night Road. To create chaos and further their agendas. Through violence. Through fear. Through their little wars, and wars needed money like the body needed blood.

For attacks like Ripley. How much terror could fifty million dollars buy? He’d sent Henry six thousand names from his online research. If Henry recruited fifty dedicated radicals for the Night Road, they could each receive a million dollars. How many guns, how many payoffs, how many weapons and explosives could all that buy? Terrorism was relatively cheap. A million could fund a huge string of attacks. And added all together, fifty million…

Horror swept up him like a flame. ‘If you were getting accounts ready to put this fifty million in, you must know where the cash is coming from.’ He was suddenly sure of it. What had Henry said first? I will not pay. Not can not. I will not. ‘You convinced Jane you didn’t have the access, that my stepfather did.’

‘Henry’s the big dog. I’m just hired help.’

‘Where’s the money, Eric, where’s it coming from?’ Who would just give fifty million dollars to a bunch of American extremists?

‘If I know, then that’s my insurance, isn’t it? No one can touch the money but me.’ Eric lifted his chin in defiance.

‘You have the money,’ Luke said slowly.

‘Yes. I have it. We can hide anywhere in the world. I’ll give you a slice, Luke. We’ll all hide. We’ll all have a real life again.’

‘Oh God, Eric.’ Aubrey put her face back in her hands. ‘Just tell us where it is.’

‘The one thing the money won’t protect you from is a murder charge,’ Luke said. ‘I can testify you killed that man under duress.’

Eric shifted in his seat. ‘I’m not going to tell you where the money is. You don’t need to know.’

Luke tried another tact. ‘Who was the man in Houston you killed?’

‘His name is Allen Clifford. I don’t know anything else about him. I was just told where he would be, what he would look like. Jane emailed me a picture.’

Allen Clifford. The name meant nothing to Luke.

He tried to think how Jane could have entered this picture. An extremist network created by Henry, funded by Eric’s mysterious corporate client, with the money handed out by Eric. Jane was ruining the Night Road’s plans. But who was she? Who else would know about the existence of the Night Road – except people like Chris, who’d been approached and rejected?

Who was Jane?

Luke asked, ‘Give me the phone Jane sent you.’ Luke held out his hand.

Eric hesitated. ‘Give it to him,’ Aubrey said. ‘Please. He’s smart, he’s gotten this far, maybe he can figure out who’s after us.’ Eric tossed it to him. Luke caught it.

‘I want to know why you haven’t already run and hid with this fifty million,’ Luke said. ‘You could buy a lot of protection with it. You could cut one of those deals you loved to mention.’ Luke stopped. ‘Maybe you already have.’

Eric stared at him, an answer starting to form on his lips.

The lights went out.