Trust Me

25

‘Where would he have hidden the money?’ Luke and Aubrey walked the streets of a quiet neighborhood, north of downtown. Aubrey kept glancing over her shoulder. Keep moving, Luke thought. ‘He worked for a bank… wherever he put the money, he was willing to die to keep it a secret.’

‘Which means he could have hidden it anywhere,’ she said. ‘But I’m guessing he stashed it in another account, probably another bank, that wouldn’t be so obviously tied to him.’ Her voice broke. And he could sense her drawing away from him.

‘I know you cared about him. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’

‘Are you?’ She studied the sidewalk. ‘He’s the reason you’re in this mess.’

‘No. He was a pawn, just like me, just like you. Even the people chasing us aren’t much more than pawns. The king on the chessboard is my stepfather. The queen is this Jane bitch. She has to be crazy, trying to extort money from terrorists.’

‘I don’t like chess and I don’t like being a pawn.’ She raised her head, looked at him with a mix of defiance and grief. ‘It makes me mad.’

‘Mad is good. Mad might help us stay alive.’

She started to walk again and he fell in step with her. ‘I can’t believe he’s dead. He was just so desperate to convince me he was on the side of right. He just kept talking about all he’d done for me, risked for me…’

‘He was leveraging your kidnapping to bring you back to him.’

She nodded in shame. ‘It sounds horrible. But he wanted us back together.’ She glanced over her shoulder again. ‘I’m really not so special. I don’t know why he couldn’t let me go.’

Luke thought of her calm, her brave pleading with Eric not to leave Luke chained to the bed, her resourcefulness in the elevated train in fending off the mob. He knew exactly why Eric would not let a woman like her go easily.

‘How did you meet him?’

‘At his bank. I set up my company accounts there, he handled them.’

He remembered Aubrey’s export/import business now, from her friend’s blog.

‘I bought an import company a few months back. From a friend. Pottery from South America, African decor and jewelry, crafts and furniture from Mexico and eastern Europe, not expensive stuff. But you have to watch your expenditure, deal with making payments overseas, receiving payments from overseas, it’s a hassle. Eric helped me sort it all out. Then he asked me out to dinner… I thought he was a good guy. I don’t often choose well.’

‘Did he have a chance to win you back after he saved you?’

‘I don’t know. I was furious with him and grateful all at once. But once I saw the footage on TV – I recognized you – I knew he was involved in killing that man. To save me. It was going to bind me to him forever and I was very afraid. Whoever’s after him isn’t going to give up.’

They passed a nearly empty diner and she glanced at the menu in the window.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. He realized he was starving but suggesting dinner seemed bizarre.

‘We never got to eat our pizza.’ Aubrey rubbed her temples. ‘I’m horrible to even think of food right now.’ Her stomach growled.

‘It’s okay. We’re in survival mode.’

‘Weird. And everything else seems so ordinary.’ She crossed her arms. ‘We’re different, the world isn’t.’

She was right; warm light filled the diner and the few customers laughed over coffee and sandwiches and daily specials. They went inside, Luke’s skin prickling at the thought of sitting still in public. They took turns going to the bathroom and washing faces and hands and Luke thought she might bolt, but when he came back to the booth she sat waiting. They ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and hot coffee, which sent a welcome jolt of heat through their bodies. She stared at the mug. ‘I should be a mess. But it’s a luxury, isn’t it, to be a mess. In the worst of times you just have to forge ahead.’

She was right. They had to keep moving, and they had to find the money quickly. ‘The luxury we don’t have is time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘These people expect this money soon. It’s tied to a bigger attack – even bigger than the bombing in Texas. Mouser referred to it as Hellfire. We have to find out what it is, and I’m guessing from Mouser’s tone that the attack is very soon. Within a couple of days.’

Aubrey said nothing for thirty seconds, frowning in thought. She waited for the waitress to refill their coffees and to leave their corner. ‘It won’t take the police long to find Eric.’

‘No.’

‘And they’ll look for me.’

‘Yes.’

‘And whoever this Mouser man works for, they’ll be looking for me, too.’

‘Yes.’

‘If the police find me, then Mouser finds me.’

‘Well…’

‘They killed the power, Luke. They’re more capable than I ever imagined.’

He sipped coffee. ‘If you talk to the police, you can clear my name.’

‘What will clear your name is finding this money. Prove the motive Eric had to kidnap you. Then you give the money and all the information on the Night Road to the FBI.’

Give it all to the FBI. The fifty million. And his traitorous step-father. He didn’t want Henry in jail. He realized, with shameful anger, that he wanted Henry dead for the hell he’d created for Luke. No. He put his face in his hands, let the wave of hate pass. ‘You don’t have any idea what you’re signing up for, Aubrey.’

‘I can’t tell the police anything more than I told you. I think we should stick together.’

The sense of responsibility weighed on him. He had barely survived his encounters with the Night Road; she had no idea of the brutality they would face. But he saw the resolution in her face and he decided not to argue with her. She wanted to hide, he didn’t blame her. She wanted to help him, for Eric’s sake. ‘So the two kidnapping victims are stuck with each other.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how to fight, I don’t know how to run, but I’m not going to let these people get away with what they’ve done, to me or to Eric or to you.’

Her resolve strengthened him. ‘What I don’t understand is – why didn’t Eric just hide with the money? Why not go to Thailand, take the money, run with it?’ he asked.

‘He said tonight, that he had made a deal that would save us. Right before you got there. We were having a glass of wine to celebrate but he hadn’t told me the details yet.’

‘A deal.’

‘A deal where someone powerful would protect us – just like that Mouser man said before he shot Eric.’ She cleared her throat, rubbed at her eyes. ‘I was furious with Eric for getting me involved in this mess. I wanted out and he was trying to convince me I didn’t have a way out except through him.’

‘Who was going to protect him? Maybe they could protect us.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But he called it a deal. He had to be giving something in exchange.’

‘The fifty million,’ Luke said.

He remembered the pages he’d pulled from Eric’s jacket when he’d gone for the gun. He removed the papers from his back pocket and smoothed them out on the table.

‘What is that?’ Aubrey asked.

‘Papers Eric had in his pocket.’ Each separate page was a printout confirming the opening of an account at a bank. The banks were scattered across America: Tennessee, New York, California, two in Texas, Minnesota, Washington state, Missouri. He didn’t recognize the bank names: they all appeared to be regional banks, not large chains. ‘These must be the accounts he set up for the Night Road.’

‘How would we check to see if they’re empty or not?’

He looked up at her. ‘You think he stashed the money in them?’

‘It would make sense. Maybe he opens the accounts, deposits the money, but he hasn’t given the account information yet to the Night Road. That way, he can still reach the money, even if they can’t.’

‘We can’t go to them; they’re all over the country,’ he said. ‘You have to have a password to access information online or over the phone.’

‘Then step one is finding where Eric hid those passwords,’ she said.

‘Might’ve just been in his head.’

‘That many accounts? No. He was the kind of guy who wrote everything down.’

Two policemen walked into the diner. The two officers gave the restaurant a cursory glance; Luke had his back to them. He sensed the momentary weight of their stare. Aubrey and Luke studied their coffee cups, waiting for the policemen to slide into a booth on the opposite side of the diner and to lose themselves in the study of the menu.

‘We need to go. Now,’ Luke said. Sweat coated his back.

He unfolded money for the bill and they got up and left. Aubrey leaned on him hard, rubbing his back, her pretended affection camouflage. He didn’t look like a cop killer on the solitary run. Luke was careful not to look toward the officers.

When they were out of the diner, she stepped away from him, crossing her arms. They walked for three blocks, found a bus stop, figured out the route to get back to Lincoln Park, where Aubrey’s car sat parked on a side street. The car was a late-model Volvo, and he checked its underside.

‘Do you know what you’re looking for?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘A gadget that could track you. Like I’m going to recognize that.’ He risked a grin and she smiled, barely, back.

‘Or blow us up. Aren’t I Mary Sunshine?’ Exhaustion cramped her voice.

Luke slid out from under the car. ‘I don’t see anything there that looks totally foreign.’

‘All right.’ They got in; she drove into the dark street.

‘Where to?’

‘Some place we can plan. I need sleep.’ Luke’s fatigue was overwhelming. His body had no adrenaline left. He felt like he had been running forever.

‘Someplace cheap,’ she said.

‘Someplace cheap,’ he agreed.

‘Eric lied about his whole life,’ she said unexpectedly, and tears spilled from her eyes. But not sobs. The tears were steady and controlled and she wiped them off her cheek with the back of her hand. She kept driving and Luke didn’t know what to do until he put his hand over her hand on the steering wheel. Just for comfort.

Neither of them noticed the traffic camera perched on the closest intersection, watching them with its uncaring eye as they pulled away from the curb and drove into the darkness.