‘What’s happening?’
‘Get out of the building now, it’s under attack.’
‘By who?’ He opened the closet door and dragged Drummond out. He was groggy, bleeding from the ear and the temple.
Luke put the phone back to his ear. ‘Who the hell are you people?’
‘Get out, Luke, get out of there now!’
He hung up the phone and started to search the apartment for a weapon.
He found a bedroom, a small office next to it. Inside the desk drawers, he found a manila file folder, crammed in crookedly as though it had been put away in haste.
In it were papers. The first was a news account of his father’s death; the plane that had gone down with several noted professors aboard. A file on Ace Beere, the man who had confessed to sabotaging the plane before he blew his brains out. A large sticky note said check airport surveillance photos from last Book Club flight, compare with Night Road suspect, ask photo archive for facial comparison and confirmation.
Under the note was an old photo of Mouser. Then a new photo, that looked like it had been taken from a security camera, stamped LAKEFRONT AIR PARK, Mouser and Snow heading toward an entrance. Another image of Mouser, taken from what might have been a traffic camera on Armitage, during the chase from Eric’s shooting. The photo was grainier but it still looked like Mouser.
Luke’s stomach felt a dark pang. Mouser. Was he connected to his father’s death? And how could Quicksilver access these surveillance cameras?
The final document was attached to a photo of the man who died in Houston. The photo was grainy, slightly hazed by sunlight. It looked like it had been taken in a desert setting; a long stretch of sand lay behind the man. In the photo, his father stood next to the man. Hands on shoulders. They were dressed in military garb, guns at their sides. Next to his father stood Drummond, smiling, an arm around his father’s shoulders.
Attached to the photo was a readout, a service record from the State Department, of a man named Allen Clifford. He had retired from the State Department two weeks after Luke’s dad died.
He hurried back to the kitchen. Drummond sat up from laying curled on the floor, holding his head. ‘Drummond!’
‘What?’ A harsh hiss, low and pained.
‘I’m really sorry. Your friends say we have to get out of here now, we’re under attack.’
He focused his gaze on a blinking red light on the kitchen wall. ‘Someone’s trying to get past the security systems.’ He rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘We have unwanted company, Luke. The Night Road must have tracked you here. I hope you’re ready for a fight.’
40
Ten minutes earlier, Snow knocked at the door of the Quicksilver building. The doorman stood up, peered at her both on the camera that monitored the street and through the bullet-proof glass.
‘Yes, I’m here to see Mr Drummond at Quicksilver Risk Management,’ Snow said with a coy, slightly crooked smile.
The doorman did not seem at all impressed with her smile. He gave her a hard, measured stare.
‘No sales calls,’ he said through the intercom.
‘I’m not a sales person. I represent a software company that has already registered the trademark of Quicksilver Risk Management in the state of New York and I’ve been trying every way I can to get in contact with Quicksilver at this address and nothing has worked.’ She tapped her foot on the pavement and ran a hand through her snow-white hair.
‘We’re not interested.’
‘Well, you might be interested that my client is planning to sue you for use of a registered trademark. And if you don’t let me in to speak with someone in charge, then I shall simply have to summon the police and the press here and say that you are refusing to accept legal papers.’
The doorman was not privy to the name of the building’s owner. And he privately thought the police wouldn’t care less. But the woman was making a fuss and one of the overriding descriptions of his job was to keep the building out of public and police notice.
She stepped inside as he deactivated the electronic locks on the door. She reached into her purse and pulled out a thick envelope. ‘Honestly, how do your clients get a hold of you?’
The doorman reached for the package and the end of it exploded. The bullet tore through his flesh like it was paper and he toppled toward the granite counter.
She thought of the uniformed men who had swarmed the burning compound, the only home she’d ever known, and she was glad the man was dead. She walked to the front door and admitted Mouser. She propped the door open with a metal wedge. They dragged the doorman’s body out of sight.
They hurried toward the elevator. She swiped an electronic code scanner card, connected to a modified handheld computer, that Sweet Bird had given them to unlock the elevator; it tested thousands of combinations within thirty seconds, scored the right one, and the doors closed. She pressed the button for the top floor.
The elevator began to rise. At floor five it jolted to a hard stop.
Sweet Bird listened to a call in his earpiece. ‘Understood,’ he said. He turned to his Birdies. ‘The showoffs got themselves trapped.’ He did not want to spend his day playing soldier; he did not like putting himself or his people in unwarranted danger. But he had no choice.
He and his five Birdies got out of the van, their guns hidden under their coats. The driver moved the van along into traffic, to start his ongoing orbit of the building until needed.
The front door was propped open, but Sweet Bird kicked the prop loose and the door shut itself again.
‘Get on the computer system,’ he told one of the Birdies, ‘see if there’s an override for the elevator, or if we got stairs to take.’ Suddenly two uniformed men barreled in from a door at the end of the small lobby, guns drawn.
The gunfire erupted just as Sweet Bird dove for the cover of the counter.
‘Look for an override button.’ Snow spoke into her mike. The distant sound of gunfire, five floors below, stopped abruptly.
A long quiet filled the elevator while she waited for an answer, hoping that Sweet Bird and his flock were still on their feet.
‘Got it,’ Sweet Bird said. Suddenly the elevator lurched into life, began its ascent toward the top floor.
‘If Luke or these assholes have our money, we kill them as soon as we’ve got our hands on it.’
‘I get Schoolboy,’ Snow said. ‘He hurt me worse than he hurt you. A bullet beats a blade.’
‘Do you know who killed my dad? Was it Mouser?’
‘Not now, Luke, for God’s sakes. Here, take this gun. We’re getting the hell out of here.’
‘Tell your friends on the other side of the camera to call the police if we’re in danger.’
‘They’re far away. They can’t help us.’
‘Where’s far away?’
‘Europe.’
‘Why are they taking Aubrey to Europe?’ Then he remembered Frankie Wu’s words back in Chicago, discussing their itinerary. New York. Paris.
‘Can you shoot this?’ Drummond pulled a Glock 9 from a kitchen cabinet, pressed it into Luke’s hand.
‘If I have lots of time to aim.’
‘Don’t be a perfectionist.’ They turned the corner into the entryway. The elevator doors were already open and Mouser leveled his semi-automatic and opened fire. Rounds exploded into the walnut paneling near Luke’s head. Drummond shoved him back around the corner, returning fire.
They retreated toward the kitchen. The finery of the living room – the cleanly upholstered sofas, the glass table tops, the vivid photos of misspent suffering on the walls – all were splintered and dusted in the gunfire.
Drummond and Luke went over the kitchen counter. A few more bullets thrummed into the granite-topped island.
Then silence.