Trust Me

32

Luke woke up from his doze, leaning against the airplane’s back wall. Frankie Wu stood over him. Luke’s head throbbed, thick with sleep. He blinked himself to full wakefulness. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing, Mr Lindoe. I just wanted to be sure you were all right. You’re not in your seat.’

‘Sorry. I sat to have a think and I thought too much.’ He stood awkwardly.

Frankie Wu watched him, arms crossed.

‘Shouldn’t you be flying the airplane?’ Luke said. He went back to his seat. His knapsack lay tilted on its side and he wondered if that was the position it was in when he dozed off. Had Wu searched it?

‘Auto-pilot. Just wanted to see if either of you needed anything, Mr Lindoe.’

The use of the false name again, the barest emphasis. He knows. But he’s not calling you on it. Not yet. He doesn’t want trouble in the air. ‘When do we land in New York?’

‘Forty minutes.’

Luke glanced at Aubrey; she was asleep. He wasn’t surprised, not even at his own heavy slumber. Sleep was escape. Hunger was a sudden, sharp fist of pain.

Wu turned without a word and went back to the cockpit. Closed the door.

Luke opened the knapsack. The gun was still there. He checked it. Unloaded. The clip was gone, and nowhere in the backpack. The gun was now useless. The cash he’d taken from Eric’s stash was still there, though. The laptop from Eric’s was there too, cool to the touch. It hadn’t been fired up.

Wu had searched the bag.

Luke went to the tiny galley. Quietly, he checked the drawers. In one he found a flight manifest for the food and drinks on the flight. The charges paid for by Quicksilver Risk, with a New York City address. Quicksilver.

His stomach sank to his toes. He picked up the phone in the galley. He called information for Braintree. He remembered the name of the property company of the cabin, from its sign near the gate. He got the number and called. If they rented cabins, there ought to be an emergency number in case the renters had a problem after hours. He got an answering machine that fed him such a number; he redialed.

‘Yes?’

‘Hello. My father has gone missing and he may have rented a cabin from you. Cabin number three. At the edge of the property. Was it rented by a company called Quicksilver?’

‘I sure am getting calls about this rental.’ The clerk sounded huffy. ‘Please. Allen Clifford, he’s missing…’

‘Well, he left the cabin a mess, destroyed the bedroom furniture, and we charged his card again for damages.’

‘How did he pay? I’ll make sure you’re compensated.’

‘Charge card. Company card. Quicksilver Risk Management.’

‘Thank you.’ Luke hung up. Jesus, they had paid for the cabin, Henry was right. That didn’t mean he could trust Henry. But it sure didn’t mean he could trust these people, either. He took a calming breath.

He tore the page with the address from the manifest. Eric’s escape route was a trap.

He found sandwiches in the galley and he ate one. The city that never sleeps looked like a creamy, miniature galaxy below. He guessed they would be landing in New Jersey, right across the river.

He shook Aubrey. She blinked at him, awake and ready. He handed her a sandwich and mouthed the words the pilot knows. We have to run. Her eyes widened in fear and she mouthed back what’s the plan?

He wished they’d had this discussion back in her car but they hadn’t known they’d be able to con their way onto Eric’s flight. They’d have to improvise. He whispered into her ear: ‘A company called Quicksilver paid for the cabin we were held in and for this flight.’

Her eyes widened in fright.

Who are they? She mouthed.

He shook his head. Follow my lead, he mouthed, and she nodded.

He took her hand, and they waited to land.

The plane taxied toward the small terminal at the private airfield. Wu asked, through the intercom, for them to remain in their seats.

Luke disobeyed. He got up, went to the door, popped the lever. The door swung open and an alarm brayed into the cold night air. Aubrey was at his back and they jumped to the tarmac. Aubrey landed next to him and they ran.

Cutting through the roar of the engines, he heard Frankie Wu’s once-friendly voice yelling in rage. The airport’s runway was between them and a fence and another commuter jet was preparing to take off, now that Wu’s plane was clear.

Luke and Aubrey ran to the edge of the runway – then he heard voices bellowing his name. ‘Luke! Luke Dantry! Stop!’

He glanced back, causing Aubrey to collide into him, and saw two men, running past where Frankie Wu had screeched his jet to a stop. Wu was in the doorway, pointing at them. Closing fast. Quicksilver’s welcoming party, he thought. If he and Aubrey stayed put they’d be dead. The other commuter jet approached.

We can make it, he thought. Aubrey’s hand clenched in his.

They ran across the runway, the departing jet catching them in its lights, rising, knocking them in a battering wash of engine, both stumbling to their knees from the wake.

He looked back – one of the Quicksilver men held a collapsible rifle and was unslinging it from a knapsack on his back. ‘Aubrey, run!’ he yelled.

They bolted back to their feet, running, nearly in a headlong dive, both intent on reaching the fence. Forty feet; beyond the mesh lay a parking lot, a scattering of cars. A stream of light beckoned beyond, the hazy glow of a highway.

The grass erupted in front of his feet, shots spewing green bits of lawn. They kept running.

They hit the fence. He slowed to help her but Aubrey was quicker and more nimble, clambering up the chain link with an assured grace. She reached the concertina wire and paused, pulling her coat free. She balled it over her head in a tight dome and wiggled through the slicing spiral.

‘I don’t want to get caught again,’ she screamed. And he knew to his bones her fear, that helpless, this-is-not-happening-to-me, terror. He’d felt it when Eric Lindoe had stuck the gun into his ribcage, steered him out of normalcy into the rapids of nightmare. He knew she’d felt it when that burlap bag went over her head as she left her office.

She was through, on the ground, pants torn along the leg where the razor wire scored.

He ripped off his own coat, following her lead, yelling at her to keep running, don’t look back.

He covered his head with the cheap windbreaker just as he heard the voices closing in, one saying, ‘No way.’ Then thumps against the fence, the boom of the rifle.

The lined windbreaker made a fragile cocoon. The curling wire cut past his defenses – he felt a slash along his scalp, his back, his butt. Then gravity superseded fear, yanking him through the last curve, the concertina cutting at his suddenly bare stomach.

He hit the ground, panicked, rolling free of the tattered wind-breaker, running for the lot.

Aubrey was gone. It wasn’t that big a parking lot and she wasn’t moving through the moonlight. Where was she?

She’s hiding, he thought, and then he saw a car racing away from the lot, far faster than normal traffic. And in a blur, her face, struggling at the window.

‘Aubrey!’ he yelled. He glanced back. The Quicksilver men who’d dogged him to the fence ran, yelling into cell phones. Not in such a hurry. Of course not. They had friends waiting to catch Aubrey and him, maybe a team for each. A car powered up, raced straight toward him as he ran off the curb.