Taking the Highway (33 page)

“You won’t.” Talic inserted the datacube he’d carefully preserved after the most recent Overdrive crash. No time for video upload, but still shots were better in this case. Pictures told the story he wanted to tell. He sliced three stills from the video and fed them to LaCroix’s comscreen. Nikhil and Topher Price-Powell. Nikhil and LaCroix. Then, his favorite one, showing LaCroix with both hands on Nikhil’s shoulders. LaCroix was probably yelling his head off in that picture, but he leaned toward his nephew as if to tell him the world’s most intimate secret.

“Faked up,” LaCroix said. “You can’t prove anything.”

“I can prove all this, and more.” Talic kept his voice low, his tone reasonable. “Stop stalling. Even if you had a tech willing to help you, you’d never get a fix in time. Get that temp and I’ll let you hear your brother.” Talic closed the line.

With three minutes to spare, Oliver’s datapad chimed with a signature that matched the Weigle codes sold in the Detroit area. Talic cut off the call on Oliver’s datapad and read the number into the encrypted line he’d vetted so carefully. Voice-only. He didn’t need LaCroix to know that he hadn’t yet left Oliver’s house.

“I want to talk with him now. Right now. Or I go to IA and take my chances.”

“Try this on. You ask me a question. Make it something I couldn’t guess. I tell you his answer and you know he’s alive.”

A seething pause. Then, “Ask him how many points he wanted to give Sofia Gao.”

Talic considered. This sounded too innocuous to be any kind of code. He paused audio and repeated the question. Oliver’s face quirked in brief amusement, then sobered and answered.

“He claims it was a solid eighty-nine.”

Talic thought he could hear an exhalation over the cheap handset. He moved into the other room, out of Oliver’s hearing.

“Here’s the deal, LaCroix. I don’t want your brother. I don’t even want his kid. But I need the people Nikhil can give me and I can’t wait any longer.”

“Listen to me, Talic. The one you want is calling himself Topher Price-Powell—”

“I know all about Price-Powell,” Talic growled.

“I’ve got another name,” LaCroix said. “Probably just an alias. Wilma Riley. We can work these names through the team. We can do it legally. It doesn’t have to go down like this.”

Talic gave Oliver’s expensive couch a swift kick in the leg. “It has to go down exactly like this. Price-Powell has gone to ground. Your nephew knows how to get close to him. My trap needs bait.”

LaCroix’s voice became something hard for Talic to listen to—one officer to another. “You had to stop them. There wasn’t enough proof to stop them any other way. I get it. Tough call, but that was the one you made. Now the situation has changed. We have proof. We can backtrack. Find the funding. Find the source. Find the entire organization. Take them all down, including Topher Price-Powell.”

He’s a good cop after all.
Talic smiled, half-wishing LaCroix could see it, but that would have given away the gambit, and the stakes were too high. “We both know I’m not a cop anymore. Not after what I’ve done today, not after what I’ve done the last two months. The same code you’re appealing to makes it impossible for you to overlook my actions. I understand that. Now you have to understand something as well.”

“What’s that?” LaCroix asked.

“Sacrifice.”

Silence on the line. Just the sound of angry breathing.

Talic twitched the curtains aside and looked into the back yard. “I have sacrificed five young men who threatened my city. I have sacrificed my career, my honor as a law-abiding citizen, maybe my life. So don’t think for a moment I won’t sacrifice your brother, your nephew and even you to get to these terrorists.”

“But I don’t—”

“Stop talking. Your brother and I are already on the move. The longer you stall, the further he gets out of your reach. I have a collapsing timetable. The economic summit kicks off tomorrow morning. My guess is that your nephew and his good buddy Price-Powell will trash Overdrive sometime tonight. Give me your nephew before then. Or better yet, Topher Price-Powell’s dead body. I want it by six o’clock.”

“Talic!” There was a note of desperation in LaCroix’s voice. “I don’t know where Nikhil is!”

“That,” Talic made himself reply coldly, “is your problem.”

N
o calls. That was
rule number one. No calls, no e-grams, and certainly no blips. Andre had looked for signs of a tracer on the temp phone. It was as clean as he could expect it to be, but Talic had reserved this phone. Talic would be monitoring it. He couldn’t get rid of it and he couldn’t use it to call anyone that mattered.

Of course, this was just what Talic wanted—Andre alone, without the means to call for backup or help or even advice. A man alone made desperate choices. A man alone made mistakes.

Not this time.

He drove past the Pen, watching the front door open and close, cops and civilians going in and out. He drove to the rear of the building and parked in the alley between the dumpster and the recycling bins. The sun slanted between the buildings and shone a spotlight on the back exit. No customers used this door, but sooner or later, a bartender or a waitress would come out this way.

He paced the alley in front of his car. Every cell in his body screamed at him to act, and act fast. He flexed his swollen and bruised right hand. He would wait.

And when the time came to act? What then? He reached the end of the alley and paced back again. His mind flipped over possibilities, each one worse than the last. Talic had Oliver, Talic wanted Nikhil. Andre was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, and no matter what happened next, someone he loved would die. He refused to make that choice.

But if he waited too long, he wouldn’t have any choice at all.

Five endless minutes later, the back door opened. A gray-haired waitress stepped into the alley, carrying a steel bucket full of empty bottles. She caught sight of Andre and tensed, then relaxed as she recognized him. “Our special tonight is Sandborn Canadian. Bottle for the price of tap.”

“Thanks, Chloe. You deliver out here?”

“Only the dead soldiers.” She staggered toward the recycle bins.

“Let me get that.” He took the bucket from her and tipped it in. Bottles clattered and broke.

Chloe took the bucket back. “Thanks. You lurking out here for a reason? Because if you’ve turned flasher, you can show me your pecker right now and get it over with. I got to go back to work.”

“Is Danny Cariatti still in there?”

“Honey, it’s Friday. Everyone is still in there.”

“Any way to get him out here?”

“I doubt it.” Chloe’s hair brightened into a white halo as she moved from shadow to sun. “The beer is in there. Nothing out here but you.”

“And my pecker.”

“Which I haven’t seen, so I can’t say.” She disappeared inside.

The temp phone vibrated in his pocket. Andre ignored it. He knew he should answer it, tell Talic something, beg for more time. He knew he was endangering Oliver with every passing minute, but what could he do?

The alley door burst open and Danny leapt out, reaching under his coat for his weapon. He looked left, then right, drawing on Andre.

Andre threw his hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa, Danny! It’s me.”

Danny’s eyes widened. “Chloe said something about a creep in the alley trying to flash her.”

“She wishes.”

Danny swiped his few remaining hairs off his forehead. “I knew it. I switched to coffee the minute you called me.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not half as drunk as I wish. What are you doing here? And if you say ‘my job’ I will shoot you where you stand.”

“I’m not, okay? I’m not doing my job, or my duty, or anything else you’d approve of.”

“Well, that covers a lot.”

“It’s Talic.”

“Talic again? When are you going to let that go?”

Andre swallowed past a dry throat. “He took my brother.”

“Why does Talic want your brother?”

“He thinks I have Nikhil. He wants to trade.”

“Do you have him?”

“Would we be having this conversation if I did?”

“Talic.” Danny shook his head. “I
never
liked that guy. What are you going to do?”

“I can’t do anything. I don’t have a shield. I don’t have a base of operations, or tech support. I don’t even have decent hardware. I have a shitty backup piece and a possibly bugged temp phone, and just over an hour to deliver Nikhil.”

“You can’t trade your nephew for your brother.”

“Not planning on it. But I have to give Talic something.”

“We’ll arrest him. I’ll do it myself.”

“You can’t. Nobody can. The city manager’s office is holding the other end of his leash.” He held up a hand to forestall Danny’s next statement. “You could try to untangle that mess, but by the time you do, my brother will be dead.”

Danny exhaled and leaned his hips against the wall. “You make a single move, in any direction—try to take your car on the highway, get your prints on a weapon—your career is over. You go after Talic, your life is over.”

Andre scoffed. “It’s over anyway. It’s just a matter of whether I’m alive to see it.”

“Precisely why you—”

“I’m not asking for your approval! I’m not even asking for your help. I’m going to do this. You can’t change it.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Go back inside, drink more beer than you should, and forget where you parked your car.”

Danny stood up straight, folding his arms. “I should also forget that I gave you the key?”

“And your gun, too. Way, way too much beer.”

“Fuck you, LaCroix.”

Andre flexed his swollen right hand. He should have known better than to come here. He was asking the impossible, and Danny was right to say no. He nodded his understanding.

Danny spread his hands. “I’m going to gear you up and let you go? Alone? Screw that.” He tossed Andre his key card. “My Jeep is parked out front. Let’s go.”

“Okay. Right. I need Nikhil and I don’t even know where to find the little turd. I told him to stay away from me and now he’s blocked every call I’ve placed. In twenty years the kid’s never listened to a damn thing I’ve told him, except this.”

Andre’s datapad vibrated for attention. He glanced at the display, grimaced, and put the pad back in his pocket.

“Talic?” Danny asked.

“My mother.”

“Answer it.”

“It’s my
mother
.”

“So you said. Ask her where Nikhil is.”

“She’s in Arizona. She doesn’t know.”

“She’ll find out. Nikhil’s blocking your calls. He won’t block your mom’s.”

“I block my mom’s calls all the time.”

“Yeah, but you’re an asshole.”

“And Nikhil’s not?”

“Answer the call!”

Andre glared at him, but he clicked the call through. “Mom. Hi.”

“I am so worried about my taxes, darling. What if I have government trouble?”

“Mom, you don’t owe any taxes.” Andre hurried out of the alley.

“Terrible trouble, governments. You never know what they will do.”

“Mom! Mom, mom, mom.”

“I am right here. Why do you say my name over and over?”

“You need to call Nikhil. Call him right now. Tell him to go home and stay there.”

“What is going on? You boys—”

“
Maman! Tu dois lui dire qu’il doit rentrer chez lui maintenant! Est ce que tu as compris?
”

“
Oui. Oui
.”

Danny’s Jeep was parked halfway down the block. Andre rushed toward it. “Tell Nikhil to turn off the lights and lock the doors. Tell him to wait for me.”

“Andre Francois LaCroix, if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I—”

“You have newsnets in Sedona, don’t you?”

“Of course,” his mother sniffed.

“Then I suggest you watch.”

A
ll the lights were
off in Oliver’s house, the front door locked. Danny did a perimeter scan while Andre waved at the video pickup on the front porch, waiting for the house to recognize his face and let him in.

“You are not an authorized visitor.” The house system was using its butler voice.