The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
There was really nothing more to add.
16
Russell sent a text on his elaborate phone. It was a brand that Shaw had never seen before.
He regarded his brother’s luxurious beard. You’d think it would be a problem in clandestine work, if that’s what Russell engaged in. He’d be instantly recognizable. Maybe he was famous in his field, though, and he sported the facial hair as a trademark.
His brother’s phone hummed.
“Nothing in our system about Urban Improvement Plan or Amos Gahl,” said Russell. He put the phone away. “Basic information about BlackBridge but they’re not flagged with any red notices.”
Shaw imagined his brother had access to a database that was exceedingly robust.
“Appreciate you checking. This group of yours... can you tell me?”
“No.”
“Just ‘group’ with a lowercase ‘g.’”
“What we go by.” After a pause Russell asked, “You always use the Yamaha in your work?”
Shaw explained about living in the Winnebago but renting cars on his jobs to stay unobtrusive. Much of the rewards business is surveillance and questioning witnesses, and nothing blended better than a black Avis or Hertz (he picked that color because it gave the impression he was law enforcement, though he never said he was). “Still might rent a car here. Depends on the weather.”
Russell took a call. He listened for a moment. He said, “That’s right. Tell them it’s closed permanently.” He disconnected.
Silence drifted between them.
Shaw asked, “You have a family? Anyone in your life?”
“No. You?”
He thought of Victoria. “No.”
“I heard you were married.”
He thought of Margot. “No.”
Roiling silence. Russell checked his phone once more.
“Dorion’s good,” Shaw told him.
“I know. I saw her and the girls last month.”
“Saw them?” Shaw couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
“I saw them. They didn’t see me.”
“Last I heard, at the funeral, you were in L.A.”
“Based there. Near there.”
The chitchat depressed Shaw and appeared to bore Russell.
All these years they hadn’t seen each other, and this was the best they could do?
“Another question,” Shaw asked.
Russell lifted his eyebrow.
“Why the hell the Oakland A’s?” Shaw glanced at his brother’s backpack.
No response to the levity.
The children had laughed a lot growing up. With very few other friends their age, they relied on one another for amusement and diversion.
Another blister of silence, then Russell said, “Need to get my team out of here.”
“So you’re leaving.” Shaw had tried to keep his expression neutral. He wasn’t sure he was successful.
“Assignments we’re scheduled for. It’s a busy time.”
Spoken like a department store buyer planning for Christmas shopping season.
“Sure.”
Russell walked down to the cellar and returned a moment later with the duffel bag. The sun had burned away the last tatters of fog by now and the water bottles bent the light, pasting fracturing shapes of brilliant white on the plaster walls.
His silent message resonated like a siren through the pleasant, yellow room: Your fight with BlackBridge isn’t my fight, even if the company killed our father.
Shaw tipped his head. “Don’t need to say I appreciate you showing up when you did.”
Russell reciprocated the nod.
Shaw tried: “You want to give me a phone number?”
“We get randomly generated ones once a month.”
Shaw wrote down his number in one of his notebooks. He didn’t tear off the page and hand it to his brother. He held it up.
Russell looked for about ten seconds. He nodded.
Was it memorized, or discarded?
Shaw thought once more: Confess now. Tell him that I was wrong to accuse him of murder...
But no. This connection with his sibling might grow into something in the future — maybe Russell had indeed tucked the phone number away. But right here, right now, it was so very fragile. Gram for gram, the strands of a spider’s web are stronger than steel. But it takes no more than a gust of wind, not even one so fierce, or the transit of a broom in the hands of a busy housekeeper to bring the creature’s home, world and perhaps life to an abrupt end.
Shaw said, “It’s good to see you’re okay. I’ll tell Mary Dove.”
“Do that.” His brother walked to the door and let himself out.
17
Shaw fished in his backpack. He left his personal iPhone there and pulled out a burner. If he was concerned that his calls might be monitored, he used this one — an Android with some Linux kernel modifications for added encryption and security.
The call he was making now had nothing to do with BlackBridge or the UIP or Amos Gahl. Still, under the circumstances he wanted all the security he could get.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Colt.” The woman’s voice was, as always, low, steady. “You’re at the house?”
“That’s right. It’s a safe house. Ash had a hidey-hole in the basement. I found more relevant material. Haven’t made too much headway yet.”
There was a pause. His mother was in effect saying: What else? Because there was obviously something else.
“I wanted to let you know. I saw him today. Russell.”
“My God...” Mary Dove’s whisper tapered to silence. She was a woman to whom the word surprised could rarely be applied. “He’s all right?”
“Yes.” Shaw was sipping coffee, tamed with milk, slowly. It was very hot.
“That answers the big question. He’s alive.”
All these years the family had not known whether Russell was still of this earth.
“How’d that come about?”
He explained that his older brother too had known about the house on Alvarez and used it occasionally.
“Yes, that’s right. Ash mentioned he’d seen Russell in San Francisco once or twice.”
“He’s with the government, it looks like. CIA sort of operation, though not them.”
“What does he do for them?”
“Intelligence of some sort.”
He did not tell his mother about Blond’s fate.
Her lack of response might have been a hum of skepticism about his answer.
“It’s called the group. Not a formal name.” Silence again. Then: “He seemed... okay. Good at his job.”
“And he’s—”
“Gone. An assignment. Couldn’t tell me what.”
A very rare sigh. “That boy... I never knew exactly what was going on in his mind. Remember? He’d spend days in the woods? And not part of Ash’s training. I’d wake up, get the coffee and biscuits going and find that he’d left before first light, with rations and his weapon.”
Her resonant voice was painted with discontent and for a moment Shaw regretted telling her about crossing paths with his brother. Maybe her hopes had been up momentarily that he’d return for a visit. “Well. He’s who he is. But... did he say why he vanished, all these years?”
In honesty Colter Shaw could tell his mother, “No, he didn’t.” Because Russell had not spoken of his profound disappointment that the younger brother had silently accused the older of murder.
“It’s going well, the search?”
“Good.”
“A mother’s got to say, ‘Be careful.’”
Shaw chuckled.
Then Mary Dove said, “Glad you told me about your brother. Imagine you were debating letting me know. But it was the right thing.” Then her tone changed and she said, “Anybody else you want to say hey to?”