The place had a mismatched cast of topers. Cliques of young, well-dressed professionals were toasting the night away in small, loud circles, in sharp contrast to the lone, sullen mopes who sat perched on their bar stools like narcoleptic vultures, staring into their tumblers through vapid eyes. The music—eighties rock, a bit tinny, coming out of a jukebox in a far corner of the bar—was just the right side of loud, which was good. They’d be able to talk without worrying about being overheard. Which, again, Bellinger realized, wasn’t something he normally thought about.
He also didn’t normally have sweat droplets popping up on his forehead when he visited bars. Especially not in Boston. In December. With snow falling outside.
He spotted Matt sitting in a corner booth. As he wove his way through the pockets of drinkers to join him, his cell phone rang. He paused long enough to pull it out of his pocket and check it. It was Jabba. He decided to ignore the call, stuffed the phone back into his pocket, and joined Matt.
Even hunched over his drink, Matt Sherwood’s hulking stature was hard to miss. The man was six-foot-four, a full head taller than Bellinger. He hadn’t changed much in the two years since Bellinger had last seen him. He still had the same brooding presence, the same angular face, the same close-cropped dark hair, the same quietly intense eyes that surveyed and took note without giving much away. If anything, any changes Bellinger thought he detected, minor though they were, were for the better. Which was inevitable, given the circumstances. He’d last seen him around the time of Danny’s funeral. Matt and his kid brother had been close, Danny’s death sudden and unexpected, the family rocked by an even bigger—and far worse—tragedy to befall its sons this time.
Which made dredging it up all the more difficult.
As Bellinger slipped onto the bench without bothering to take his coat off, Matt acknowledged him with a nod. “What’s going on?”
Bellinger remembered that about him. Laconic, to-the-point. A man who didn’t pussyfoot around, which was understandable. Time was something Matt Sherwood appreciated deeply. He’d had enough of it taken away from him already.
Bellinger found a half smile. “It’s good to see you. How are you?”
“Just terrific. I’ve got orders coming out of my ears, what with all this bonus money floating around.” He cocked his head to one side and gave Bellinger a knowing, sardonic look. “What’s going on, Vince? It’s way past both our bedtimes, isn’t it? You said we needed to talk.”
“I know, and I’m glad you could make it. It’s just that . . .” Bellinger hesitated. It was a tough subject to broach. “I was thinking about Danny.”
Matt’s eyes stayed on Bellinger for a moment, then he looked away, across the bar, before turning back. “What about Danny?”
“Well, last time I saw you, after the funeral . . . it was all so sudden, and we never really got a chance to talk about it. About what happened to him.”
Matt seemed to study Bellinger. “He died in a helicopter crash. You know that. Not much more to tell.”
“I know, but . . . what else do you know about it? What did they tell you?”
From Matt’s dubious look, it was obvious he could see through Bellinger’s tangential, circumspect approach. “Why are you asking me this, Vince? Why now?”
“Just . . . look, just bear with me a little here. What did they tell you? How did it happen?”
Matt shrugged. “The chopper came down off the coast of Namibia. Mechanical failure. They said it was probably due to a sandstorm they’d had out there, but they couldn’t be sure. The wreck was never recovered.”
“Why not?”
“There was no point. It was a private charter, and what was left of it was scattered all over the ocean floor. Not very deep there, I’m told. But the currents are tough. There’s a reason they call the area ‘the gates of hell.’ ”
Bellinger looked confused. “What about the bodies?”
Matt winced slightly. The memory was clearly a painful one. “They were never recovered.”
“Why not?”
His voice rose a notch. “The area’s swarming with sharks, and if they don’t get you, the riptides will. It’s the goddamn Skeleton Coast. There was nothing to recover.”
“So you—”
“That’s right, there was nothing to bury,” Matt flared. He was angry now, his patience depleted. “The casket was empty, Vince. I know, it was ridiculous, we cremated an empty box and wasted some decent wood, but we had to do it that way. It helped give my dad some closure. Now are you gonna tell me why we’re really here?”
Bellinger looked away, studying the faces around the bar. He felt a cold sweat rising through him, and his head throbbed with the strain of his confused, unsettling thoughts. “Did you watch the news today?”
“No, why?”
Bellinger nodded to himself, wondering how to go on.
“Vince, what’s going on?”
Just then, Bellinger’s BlackBerry beeped, alerting him to the receipt of a text message. Bellinger kept his hands on the table, ignoring it. He didn’t have the patience to deal with Jabba now.
He fixed on Matt and leaned in. “I think Danny may have been murdered.” He paused, letting the words sink in, then added, “Or worse.”
Matt’s expression curdled, and he looked like he’d been winded. “Murdered or worse? What could be worse?”
“Maybe he’s being held somewhere. Maybe they all are.”
“What?” His face was twisted with utter disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Bellinger motioned with his hand to keep it down and leaned in closer. “Maybe they killed Danny and the others and faked the chopper crash. Then again, maybe they’ve still got them locked up somewhere, working on it against their will.” His eyes were twitching left and right, scanning the bar. “I mean, think about it. If you got a bunch of geniuses to design something secret for you, wouldn’t you want to keep them around long enough to make sure nothing went wrong when you finally used it?”
His phone beeped again.
“To design what? You’re not making sense.”
Bellinger leaned in even closer and his voice dropped down almost to a whisper. “Something happened today, Matt. In Antarctica. There was this thing, in the sky. It’s all over the news. I think Danny had something to do with it.”
“Why would you think that?”
Bellinger was shaking visibly now, the words tumbling out of him nervously. His phone beeped again, but he ignored it. “Danny was working on something. He was playing around with distributed processing and he showed me some of his stuff and we talked about it and the possibilities were just mind-blowing, you know? I mean, he was brilliant, you know that. But then Reece showed up and whisked him away to work with him on that project of his, the biosensors, and—”
“Reece?”
“Dominic Reece. He taught him. He was his guru at MIT.” Bellinger shook his head, as if trying to block an unwelcome thought. “He was also in that chopper. With Danny.” He looked at Matt, as if to apologize for bringing it up. After a quiet beat, he added, “Anyway, it was a great project, the sensors would have saved thousands, tens of thousands of lives, and—”
His phone beeped for the fourth time.
Bellinger lost his train of thought and frowned. He ripped his concentration away from Matt and irritably fished out his phone. He grimaced as he fumbled to get to his inbox, and saw that three messages had come in from the same number.
Not Jabba’s. The messages were all from a number he didn’t recognize.
He punched up the last of the messages.
The words on the small screen hit him like a sledgehammer.
They simply read, “If you want to live, shut the fuck up and leave the bar now.”