Aubrey went still.
‘Aubrey, don’t listen… I did it all for you.’ Eric’s words cracked like falling china.
‘Yes, he did. He did it all. Every rotten thing I’ve described.’
‘You know what he is, Aubrey!’
‘Tell me, what am I, Aubrey?’ Luke’s palm was just above her mouth and the feather of her breath tickled his skin.
‘I don’t know anything – he didn’t tell me anything – please just leave us alone.’
‘I know you think he saved you,’ Luke said. ‘Fine. He’s your hero. I don’t care. But he has to tell the police about what he did…’
Eric started shaking his head, fury and hate in his face.
‘You have to. We go to the police together, we tell them everything about the Night Road. I’ve been running like hell since I got away from that cabin. And I’m done. This is the only way to save us both, Eric. We’re going to the police. Together.’
‘No. No.’
Luke glanced at Aubrey. ‘Did he tell you why you were kidnapped?’
Aubrey nodded. ‘A woman wanted access to money from accounts he controls. But he doesn’t control the money, your stepfather does.’
‘Money. Fifty million dollars that belongs to some very very bad people. They’re tied to an extremist network that might be responsible for the train bombing down in Texas.’
‘He… he…’ Aubrey blinked, glanced at Eric.
‘It’s okay, baby.’ Eric put his bloodied face in his hands.
‘Don’t call me baby,’ she said, and Luke saw her words sliced into his heart.
Luke knelt by Eric. ‘This Jane woman, who is she, how does she know about you and my stepfather?’
‘I don’t know, obviously, or I would have called the police. She said Aubrey would be killed if I didn’t do what she said, and I’d do anything for Aubrey. Anything.’ He shoved his whole world into that word. Anything.
Aubrey stiffened under the grip of Luke’s arm. She looked confused. Eric had lied to her to protect himself as her rescuing knight, and Luke was going to have to destroy the illusion.
‘Aubrey,’ Luke made his voice quiet. ‘I don’t want to hurt you or even him-’
‘Just… leave Aubrey out of this. I’ll go to the cops with you. I’ll talk. Just leave her out of this.’ All the threat, the bravado seemed gone from Eric. As though given the time to contemplate his crimes, shame had found a home. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to run. Especially if he’d tapped into that fifty million. He would have the resources to vanish and Luke might never find him again.
Don’t be fooled, Luke thought. He is a dangerous guy and now you’ve cornered him. ‘No. She’s a witness. She talks, too. Otherwise we’re the two assholes in a Beamer who killed a defenseless street person and no one can corroborate our story.’
‘Would you please let me tend to him?’ she said.
‘No. Talk first. He answers my questions before we go to the cops.’
Eric got up from the floor, sat on the sofa, took off his suit coat. He folded the fabric carefully, put it against the blood welling from his face, although the flow had stopped. ‘I’ll buy your friend a new couch, Aubrey, if I get blood on this one.’
‘For God’s sakes, Eric.’ Luke heard a resignation and a soft, quiet grief in her voice. An impatience that he didn’t understand. ‘Just tell him what he wants to know. For my sake.’
Eric blinked.
‘How are you and my stepfather connected?’
‘I got a call by a friend of mine to provide private banking services, to move some money in from overseas. I had no idea it was connected to anything criminal.’
Luke wasn’t sure he believed that, but Eric wasn’t about to damn himself further in Aubrey’s eyes; Eric was watching her reactions as closely as he was watching Luke’s. Your father was the contact.’
‘But you disguised your voice.’
‘I was ordered to do so. The voice modulator came with the phone Jane sent me after Aubrey was kidnapped.’
Why would it matter that Henry not recognize Eric’s voice? The reasonable answer was that there was an advantage for Jane if Eric was not identified as his kidnapper. Why would Jane care if Eric was known to be the kidnapper? Was Jane now somehow protecting Eric? Who was this bizarre, mysterious woman?
‘Aubrey, who grabbed you?’ Luke asked.
Aubrey sat next to Eric, put an arm around his shoulder. ‘I never saw a face. I was leaving my office – working late on my own – and suddenly a burlap sack – it reeked of onions, it’s all I really remember – yanked over my head and I felt a needle go into my arm. I woke up tied up in the trunk of a car. Blindfolded. I think I had been unconscious for a very long time. The car stopped’ – she hesitated, touched fingertips to temples, as though in pain – ‘someone dragged me inside that cabin down in Texas, chained me to the bed. The kidnapper left without saying a word. I managed to get the hood off my face. I lay there for – I don’t know, maybe a day and a half before you and Eric came. It felt like forever.’
‘Was the kidnapper a woman, maybe?’ Jane might have done her own dirty work.
Aubrey glanced at Eric. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Are you two married?’
Aubrey shook her head. ‘We’d been dating for several months. We broke up late last week but I guess the kidnappers didn’t get the memo.’
‘We’re back together…’ Eric started.
‘Eric.’ The word, short and sharp, was like a closing door.
‘I never wanted you hurt, or involved,’ Eric said.
‘I never really knew you,’ Aubrey said. ‘That’s the worst. I never knew what you were capable of.’
‘You proved your love and lost it all at once.’ Luke realized that perhaps the same trap had been intended for Henry. The kidnapping had exposed Henry’s crimes to Luke, destroyed his vision of his stepfather as a decent man. The ugliness of the truth he’d spoken hung in the air between them.
‘Don’t whine,’ Aubrey said. ‘You can still have my respect, if you’ll just be honest. Please. Tell him about this Night Road.’
Eric frowned, letting the weight of the world settle on his shoulders. ‘I don’t know exactly what they are. A group of people, scattered around the country. A client at the bank ordered me to set up several bank accounts for them, at different banks around the country. I did so. But Jane wanted all those accounts closed. That was the first part of the ransom, close the accounts. Second was killing the man in Houston. Third, and last, was grabbing you.’
He was lying, Luke was sure. ‘Jane didn’t ask you for the money?’
‘I didn’t have the money yet. Your stepfather controlled it. That’s why Jane asked him for it, not me.’ Eric turned the knife. ‘You heard him say no, Luke. He put the fifty million ahead of you.’
Luke ignored the jab. ‘Who’s this client who had you set up these bank accounts?’
‘A company called Travport. They’re a cargo aviation firm, they fly all over the world. Entirely respectable.’
‘Where are they based?’
‘Dubai. But owned by Saudis.’
Fifty million dollars. For the Night Road. To create chaos and further their agendas. Through violence. Through fear. Through their little wars, and wars needed money like the body needed blood.
For attacks like Ripley. How much terror could fifty million dollars buy? He’d sent Henry six thousand names from his online research. If Henry recruited fifty dedicated radicals for the Night Road, they could each receive a million dollars. How many guns, how many payoffs, how many weapons and explosives could all that buy? Terrorism was relatively cheap. A million could fund a huge string of attacks. And added all together, fifty million…
Horror swept up him like a flame. ‘If you were getting accounts ready to put this fifty million in, you must know where the cash is coming from.’ He was suddenly sure of it. What had Henry said first? I will not pay. Not can not. I will not. ‘You convinced Jane you didn’t have the access, that my stepfather did.’