‘Doug’s working on it,’ Lopez said. ‘They’ve been going insane trying to figure out who the eighth person is, but I don’t think it’s getting them anywhere. I’m surprised they haven’t tried blackmailing us yet.’
‘With what?’ Ethan smiled smugly, settling back into his seat. ‘They can hardly fire us as we don’t work for them directly. Either they work it out for themselves or they uphold their end of the deal.’
‘Do you know who it is?’ Lopez asked.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Are you tryin’ to tease me?’
‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘You’re an asshole, Warner.’
‘I’m not the one who sold out,’ Ethan replied.
Lopez kept her eyes on the road ahead for a long moment before she replied. ‘I took an educated gamble,’ she said finally. ‘It made sense at the time, okay? Everybody came out the other side of it.’
‘By the skin of our goddamned teeth, Nicola!’ Ethan shot back, dragging a hand across his face. ‘Jesus, we’re going up against some pretty unsavory people here and I don’t know if I can trust you from one day to the next.’
‘You can trust me,’ Lopez said instantly, locking her dark eyes onto his.
‘How can I when I don’t know what you’re doing behind my back?’ Ethan replied. ‘That little scheme of yours could have cost us all our lives, and for what? A quarter million bucks? Is that what I’m worth to you?’
‘That’s not how it went down!’ Lopez protested. ‘I didn’t do anything behind your back. Jesus, we’re not married, you know.’
‘Yes we are,’ Ethan insisted, ‘ever since we went into business together.’
‘Hey, I’m not just the dutiful wife in this arrangement, cowboy,’ she shot back, the wind rippling her hair in a dark halo. ‘I’m not just a passenger here, your damsel in distress, okay? I can make my own calls, and I’ll goddamned follow my own leads with or without you.’
Ethan chuckled bitterly and shook his head.
‘You didn’t do this for your equality,’ he muttered. ‘You did it to make hard cash, and you risked my life along with everybody else’s to pull it off. Where will it stop, Nicola? Breaking into jeeps is one thing: this is something else entirely. What will you do next?’
‘There is no next,’ Lopez said, more reasonably. ‘I did what I set out to do, and now it’s over.’
‘Is it?’ Ethan asked. ‘I thought it was over when Doug Jarvis pulled us over two days ago. You said it was.’
Lopez stared ahead as she drove, and sighed heavily.
‘It’s over,’ she repeated, and then looked at him. ‘I won’t let you down, okay? Let’s just drop it for now.’
Ethan turned away from her to look out across the blistering deserts passing by.
75
Claire Montgomery sat in the police department’s interview room with Lieutenant Enrico Zamora facing her across a desk. Two Styrofoam cups sat between them and the unblinking black eye of a closed-circuit camera watched them from one corner of the room.
‘He made you do that?’ Zamora asked. ‘Every day?’
‘Most days,’ Claire replied. ‘Jeb Oppenheimer liked his assistants to provide him with all and any services. He called them our “targets”. Trouble for him, and fortunate for us, was that most days the old bastard couldn’t get it up.’
Zamora stifled a grin, nodding as he looked down at his notes.
‘Okay, so you’re sure that Tyler Willis was being held within the SkinGen building when he died.’
‘Definitely.’ Claire nodded. ‘I heard him on the intercom shouting something, but I had no idea what was happening down there in that theater. Christ, it just doesn’t cross your mind that someone could be so evil. I mean, maybe Nazis or something, but not your boss.’
Zamora nodded.
‘Okay, well that’s all we really needed to know, Miss Montgomery. We were pretty sure that Tyler Willis died at the hands of Jeb Oppenheimer, and the only other witness we have other than Lillian Cruz was one of Oppenheimer’s bodyguards, who died out in New Mexico last week and…’ Zamora paused as he noticed Claire’s confused expression. ‘What?’
‘You said Tyler Willis died at the hands of Jeb Oppenheimer?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Claire said. ‘He was alive when Oppenheimer left the building. Willis died hours later.’
Zamora was about to reply when an urgent knock sounded at the door of the interview room, and a sergeant stepped quickly in with a sheet of paper in his hand.
‘Results of the autopsy on Tyler Willis,’ he said to Zamora. ‘You need to see this.’
Zamora took the piece of paper and scanned it, his eyes widening with each line. He stood up out of his chair.
‘You’re sure? Absolutely sure?’
The sergeant nodded.
‘And that’s not all,’ he said. ‘There’s been another abduction.’
76
Ethan sat on the edge of his bed in the hotel room and stared at the face of his cell phone, the Illinois number waiting there to be dialed taunting him in silence. The absurdity of his own reluctance, nervousness even, to just call the damned number wasn’t lost on him. But through Ethan’s moral compass he owed Saffron a promise, and despite himself he jabbed the dial button and listened to the phone ringing in his ear. To his surprise, it picked up on the second tone.
‘Ethan.’
There was no detectable tone in the voice to suggest surprise, concern or awareness that his father hadn’t received a call from him for two years. Ethan found himself suddenly unable to think of anything to say.
‘Hi, Dad, how’s things?’
Lame. The towering rock that was Henry Warner would probably laugh in his face and cut the line off with a shake of his craggy head and…
‘Not so bad, son. Haven’t heard from you for a while, thought you’d forgotten what goddamned phones were for.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ Ethan replied, strangely feeling a little bit more relaxed. ‘I’ve started a new business.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I work for the government, investigations and such like. It’s going good.’
‘Where are you right now?’
‘Santa Fe.’
‘Good for you. To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected communiqué?’
Ethan took a breath.
‘I just thought I should call. We haven’t spoken in a long time and I didn’t want to leave it any longer.’
‘You didn’t have to leave it at all, Ethan. Your mother’s found this all very difficult, you know.’
‘So have I.’
A long silence enveloped the line as Ethan struggled to find something useful to say. Nothing came. He considered hanging up, but his hand refused to obey. Henry Warner’s voice suddenly sounded down the line, startling him.
‘I take it you’ve gotten over what happened in Palestine, Ethan, Joanna’s disappearance and your… difficulties afterward.’
‘Diplomatic as always, Dad,’ Ethan responded.
‘No sense in treading on eggshells,’ his father replied. ‘Ever since you resigned your commission your life hasn’t followed a steady track.’
‘There’s no such thing as a steady goddamned track, Dad. Life doesn’t work like that.’
‘Your mother and I have done okay by living how I—’
‘Mom just does as she’s told because it’s easier than having to negotiate with you!’ Ethan shot back, unable to contain himself any further. ‘People are not machines, Dad! Families are not the Marine Corps, and home is not a barracks! When are you going to learn that?’