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

shuttered window. He opened the metal slat a few inches, ducking—as if to slip out of a sniper’s crosshairs. After a moment he stood, crouching, and looked out.

Apparently satisfied there were no surveillance devices, or rifles, trained his way, he closed and re-latched the shutter. Walking to a far corner of the room, he turned on an elaborate LP record player and, pulling on latex gloves, removed an old-time album from its sleeve. He set the black disk gingerly on the turntable and, with infinite care, set the needle in the groove of the first track.

Music pounded into the room, some rock group. Anyone trying to listen in would hear only raging guitar and fierce drums.

La Fleur removed the gloves and replaced them in the box. He looked his intruders over. “You two really have no clue what’s going on.”

And with a defiant look at Russell, he grabbed the bong, lit up and inhaled long.

36

The smoke spiraled upward, dissolving at its leisure.

Never into recreational drugs, Shaw nonetheless found the rich smell of pot pleasant. He waited until La Fleur exhaled and sat back. A twitching tilt of his head like a squirrel assessing a tree. The man put the blue tube down.

“Oh, yes, Amos found something, and he hid it. But it had nothing to do with the Urban Improvement Plan. I have no idea why you’re harping on that. Your father was wrong: there is no evidence against the company. If there were, Ame would have found it. He searched and searched. But there wasn’t and there’ll never be any evidence. Helms and his people’re too smart to leave anything incriminating. They used cutout after cutout, encoding, anonymous servers, shell companies, encryption. The CIA should be as good as BlackBridge.”

“Facts,” Russell said. “Not drama.”

La Fleur shot him a look that managed to be simultaneously hurt and defiant.

“My poor Ame . . . He got himself in over his head, didn’t he? He took it upon himself to end the UIP. Helms had something his main client wanted desperately. It was code-named the Endgame Sanction. Braxton and some thug had found it in the Embarcadero. Maybe Droon. Looks like a rat, doesn’t he?”

Shaw said, “The Hayward Brothers Warehouse?”

“I don’t know. But she found it and it was like . . . the ring of power. The client had wanted it forever, was paying a retainer of millions to track it down.” A faint chuckle. “And you’ll never guess what Ame did. He heard Helms talking about it, about how it was the end-all and be-all . . . and when the big boss stepped out of his office, my Ame simply waltzed in and nicked it! Dropped it in his courier bag and walked out the front door with a nighty-night to the guards.”

“Why?”

“He was going to use it as leverage, get the company to shut down the UIP program. Or maybe stealing it, he thought the client would fire Helms, and then BlackBridge’d go out of business. I don’t think he had a plan. He was just sick of working for such a vile bunch of men and women.”

“What was this thing?”

“He never had a chance to tell me.” His voice went soft. “He stole it about five p.m. He hid it about an hour later. Then at ten that night he called me. I’d never heard him so panicked. He said he’d done some research and found out what the Sanction was, and it needed to be destroyed. It was devastating. The client could never get it, no one could. He was going to destroy it himself but he couldn’t get back to where he’d hidden it. He knew BlackBridge ops were searching for him. If anything happened to him, I was supposed to find it and get rid of it.”

Shaw looked toward his brother, who frowned. What on earth was it?

“And he died while they were torturing him to find out where it was?” Shaw asked.

“That’s right, I’m sure.”

A new track came on, louder. The men had to huddle close to hear and be heard.

Russell asked, “Where did he hide it?”

“He was afraid of the phone lines, so he gave me two clues. One was the ‘dog park.’ He meant Quigley Square. A friend of ours lived there and we’d walk her dog if she was traveling.”

Shaw knew the place, a transitional neighborhood in the city.

“The other clue was ‘It’s hidden underground, someplace you’d be expecting.’”

Great, thought Shaw. More scavenger hunt.

Another hit of the weed. “Then I heard a shout. It sounded like he dropped the phone. Then it seemed like there was a scuffle.” He grew silent for a moment. “That was the last time I heard his voice.”

“Any guesses where he meant?”

“No.”

Russell: “You ever think about going to Quigley Square and doing what he wanted to? Destroying it?”

His eyes, more tearful, looked down at the dimpled wood floor. “I thought, yes, but I didn’t. I’m a coward! Helms and Irena and Droon . . . they didn’t know I existed anymore. I erased myself. I thought about it, finding whatever it was, doing what Amos wanted. But in the end, I balked. They’re so powerful, so dangerous. They’ve got all the power of the police and the CIA!” His eyes grew wild—the way their father’s occasionally had. “You just don’t know . . . Besides, he died before he told them, so hidden it was and hidden it would remain. Forever. It was like being destroyed.”

“Except,” Shaw said, “they’re still after it. And we have to get to it first.”

“To save that family.” La Fleur’s voice was low.

“That’s right.” Russell called up a map of San Francisco on his phone. He focused in on Quigley Square. There were dozens of buildings bordering the park. Presumably they’d all have undergrounds—cellars or maybe tunnels.

Shaw asked, “Would it be in the friend’s house? The dog friend?”

“Amos would never endanger anyone. In any case, she moved years ago.”

Shaw wondered aloud: “Sewers? Transit system?”

“No BART station there,” Russell noted. “Where would we expect it to