The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

better place for a snatch,” Russell said, “if we’d planned it out ahead of time.”

32

Shaw’s phone hummed with a text.

Gray van is registered to a California corporation, Specialty Services, LLC. No physical address. P.O. box. Specialty Services is owned by an offshore. Have lawyers in St. Kitts and Sacramento looking into ultimate ownership.

Shaw read this to his brother, as he piloted the SUV to Burlingame.

“Doesn’t look good. Police? This isn’t a BlackBridge thing.”

“They’re undocumented. Tessy and her mother. They’ll be deported. Or Maria will be, by herself, if I can’t find Tessy. Anyway, the police won’t get on board with what we have.”

He couldn’t tell his brother’s reaction.

After fifteen minutes of silence, Russell asked, “It’s like PI work then?”

“The rewards? Pretty much. Looking for escapees, suspects. Some private. Like Tessy.”

“You do BEA?”

“No.” Bond enforcement agents pursued bail skippers and FTAs—“failures to appear” at hearings or trials. The criminals whom bond agents pursued were invariably punks and drunks and could usually be located with minimal mental effort—in places like their girlfriends’ or parents’ basements or in the same bar where they got wasted the night they committed the crime they’d been hauled to jail for in the first place. He explained this.

“You want a better quality perp.”

“A more challenging perp.”

More silence.

“What’re the rewards like?”

“You mean, amounts?”

Russell nodded.

“From a couple of thousand. To twenty million or so.”

“Million?”

“Not my kind of work, generally. It’s a State Department reward. The way those work is somebody in the bad guy’s organization gets location information to the CIA. Then it’s time for SEAL Team Six.”

“Who’s the twenty million?”

“Guy named Idrees Ayubi . . . He’s a . . .” Shaw’s voice faded as he saw his brother nodding knowingly. Given his profession, it wasn’t surprising that he’d know the name of the terrorist with the highest bounty offered by the U.S. government.

After some silence Shaw said, “But it’s not about the money. What I like about a reward is it’s a flag. It means there’s a problem that nobody’s been able to solve. Never be bored.”

“Was that one of Ash’s? I don’t remember it.”

“No.”

The boys had once asked their father—whom Russell dubbed the King of Never—why he phrased his rules beginning with the negative. The man’s answer: “Gets your attention better.”

Russell fell silent once again. Shaw wondered if he was still angry at the suggestion that he was running away from confronting the BNGs.

“A cult? Tom Pepper was saying?”

“Last week. Washington State.”

“Somebody posted a reward to get a follower out of the place?”

Shaw explained that, no, he had learned about the cult on a reward job and he’d been troubled by the cult leaders’ sadistic and predatory behavior. “I went in undercover, found a lot of vulnerable people—there were a hundred members altogether. I did what I could to save some of them. Made some enemies.”

Shaw now realized two things: One, he was rambling, and he was doing it for the purpose of encouraging his brother to engage, to dive beneath the surface of their cocktail-party small talk.

And, two, Russell was simply filling the thorny pits of silence; he evidently had little interest in Shaw’s narrative.

Finally Shaw said, “Something on your mind?” He didn’t think he’d ever asked his brother this question.

Russell hesitated then said, “An assignment I have to get to.”

“Here?”

“No. Can’t say where.”

“You don’t want to be doing this, do you?” Shaw asked. He gestured toward the pleasant street they were coursing along in Burlingame but meant the pursuit of BlackBridge.

“Just, we should get it done.”

Another voice ended the conversation: the woman within the GPS announced that their destination was on the left.

—

Ma’am, I wonder if you’d be willing to help us out,” Shaw said.

The woman in the doorway was early seventies, he estimated. She looked at them with a smile but with still eyes, as one will do with doorbell ringers who seem polite but are wholly unexpected. She’d be wondering about this pair in particular, who bore a very slight resemblance to each other. She wore an apron, not the sort serious chefs donned like body armor, but light blue, with frills and lace, insubstantial. A garment from a bygone era.

“My husband will be back soon.”

Offered as a reason that she might be less helpful to them now, being only half the complement. And spoken too as a shield. Reinforcements would arrive momentarily.

Her name, they’d learned thanks to Mack’s research, was Eleanor.

Shaw introduced himself and Russell and then said, “My brother and I are looking into some family history.”

This was indisputable. Not the whole truth, but how often is that really necessary?

“We were going through some old family papers and found out our father had some interest in this house or whoever lived here.”

Russell qualified, “A long time ago.”

“Well, this’s my husband’s family’s house. He’s lived here thirty years. Who’s your father? Oh, you said ‘had.’ Does that mean he’s not with us any longer?”

“No, he’s not,” Shaw told her.

“I’m sorry.” Her face exuded genuine sorrow. This was a woman who had experienced loss herself.

“What was your father’s name?”

“Ashton Shaw.”

A squint, and faint lines appeared in the powdery face. “I don’t think I know the name. Maybe Mort does. You have a picture? Maybe it’ll jog my memory?” She was more comfortable now, since the men weren’t trying to talk their way inside and sell her insurance or aluminum siding.

Shaw was irritated with himself for not thinking to bring a picture of their father. He was surprised when Russell produced a small photo—and not on his camera but from the location where family pictures used to be kept: his wallet. Shaw was stung even deeper at the thought that he had accused his older brother—even if silently—of killing a man whose picture he carried around with him after all these years.

Glancing down at the faded rectangle, he was more surprised yet to find that the shot was not of Ashton alone, but of the three Shaw men: father and sons. Ashton was behind, the boys in