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.
And the “evidence”? None of the science, which Victoria had fabricated on the fly, was real. There was no such thing as hiding voices in static.
But Shaw had figured, rightly as it turned out, that Ian Helms, Braxton and Droon were so desperate to make sure that the lurid details of BlackBridge’s operations went undiscovered that they couldn’t take any chances; they had to assume the evidence was real and destroy it, then kill the audio analyst and Shaw.
He had considered bringing in the law but still didn’t know the extent of BlackBridge and Devereux’s reach. He’d called Tom Pepper once again and told him his concerns. The former agent didn’t know anyone in the San Francisco FBI field office, and so he couldn’t vouch for them. But he did have some trusted agent friends in Denver. A team was being assembled. But Shaw and Russell needed to move fast to nail Braxton and Droon and stop the assault on the SP family. So he and Russell and Victoria put together their own private takedown.
“Citizen’s arrest, you could call it,” Shaw had told his brother.
Russell’s response: “Hmm.” Then: “It’s a good plan, Colt.”
And for the first time since they’d been in each other’s company, the dourness had faded from his brother’s face, replaced by what could pass for enthusiasm.
Russell had enlisted Ty to play the part of a state ranger; it wouldn’t be suspicious for him to be in the park just making the rounds, spending time on his mobile, which was connected to sophisticated recording equipment that would suck up the conversation of the BlackBridge ops who came to meet Shaw and Victoria — certainly Braxton and Droon, perhaps others. He hadn’t hoped for the other fish they caught: Ian Helms himself.
Russell took a high-cover position in the park with the sniper rifle on a bipod and covered them for the takedown. They hadn’t expected a backup SUV, which, in any case, arrived via a tree-covered pedestrian trail; he’d had to move fast to get into a new position to sight in on the Cadillac and disable it.
When the FBI arrived from Denver, in about an hour, they could take this crew into custody, along with the tape and statements from Shaw, Russell, Victoria and Ty.
Shaw said to his brother, “Let’s do some horse-trading.”
Russell looked around and said, “We’re black on the perimeter here.” He looked to Ty and Victoria. “I’d get on the west and south.”
“That’s a go,” Victoria said. She snagged one of the machine guns, checked it and scouted out a position to the west. Ty took the south.
Shaw and his brother walked to where Braxton and Helms were sitting on the ground, hands in restraints. Legs in front of them. Braxton surprised Shaw by saying in a raw, wounded voice, “You didn’t need to kill him. He would have surrendered.”
Shaw didn’t respond. It would have been a push-pull conversation, since, no, Droon would not have surrendered and was a second away from shooting Shaw, in the first case, and stabbing him in the heart, in the second. The strangulation too.
The woman was clearly shaken by Droon’s loss. This seemed out of character for her, a person who’d ordered the torture or handled the execution of any number of people. Maybe there’d been more to their relationship. Shaw had to admit that he found it bordered on unpleasant to picture romance between them, but who was he to judge when it came to matters of the heart, thought the Restless Man, whose track record in love was not stellar.
As Russell remained standing, a guard of sorts, Shaw crouched in front of Braxton and Helms, who said, “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer.”
“We’re not cops. We’re not recording anymore. This isn’t about evidence.”
“Then?” Braxton muttered.
“We assume the SP hit is off now. Can you confirm that?”
A pause. “The what?” she asked.
Shaw looked from her to Helms. “If that family dies, it’ll come back on you. We’ll make sure of that. If the motive is to kill a witness, that’s capital murder. Death penalty in California.”
Helms appeared perplexed.
Russell said, “Give us the name.”
Shaw, again in the good-cop role: “We’ll tell the U.S. attorney you cooperated. That’ll go a long way in your favor.”
“Who the hell is SP?” Helms muttered. He turned to Braxton, who shook her head. She too seemed confused.
Shaw glanced at Russell. “Show them.”
Russell took his phone and displayed the picture of the note that Karin had found on Blond’s body, the kill order.
Confirmation from Hunters Point crew.
6/26, 7:00 p.m. SP and family. All ↓
Helms muttered, “I have no idea what that is.”
Braxton shook her head yet again.
Russell said, “The Stanford library the other day? The man with Droon? This kill order was in his pocket.”
Braxton said, “He was just a friend of Ebbitt Droon’s. He was meeting him at the library to drop something off. Whatever that’s about, the note isn’t about one of our projects.”
“He didn’t work for BlackBridge?”
Helms said, “No.”
The words — and the timbre of their voices — had moved Shaw from ten percent alert to ninety percent. He was in set mode.
Shaw asked Braxton, “Who is he?”
“Security. Works for a subsidiary of Banyan Tree.”
“Name. Give me his name.”
Russell crouched and leaned very close. His brother’s chosen method for retrieving information.
“He’s...” Braxton thought for a moment. “I think it’s Richard Hogan.”
Russell rose and said to his brother, “We got it wrong. Devereux’s the one that wants SP dead, not BlackBridge.”
“So the hit’s still on.” Shaw looked at his phone.
Three hours until the family died.
71
The brothers obtained Richard Hogan’s address nearly simultaneously.
Shaw had sent a request to Mack, Russell to Karin.
Shaw’s phone dinged first, but only seconds before his brother’s.
The place where the hitman had lived was a yellow Victorian-façaded townhome in the shadow of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. An upmarket neighborhood. At first Shaw found this surprising, given Hogan’s career — muscle work and kill orders — but Shaw supposed that Jonathan Stuart Devereux paid well.
Russell parallel parked on a steep incline and spun the wheel to chock the tire against the curb. Signs warned drivers to do this. Shaw supposed that the odds of a vehicle with an automatic transmission slipping out of park were minimal, but why not go the extra step? The incline had to be twenty degrees.
They climbed out of the SUV and Shaw dipped his head as two red-masked parrots zipped past. He noted several more, twitchily observing the street from the branches of a maple tree. Another pair was perched nearby too. The birds had made this neighborhood their own.
He and Russell crossed the street and approached the front door slowly, in a tactical formation, away from windows and the door itself. Hogan was no more, and Karin’s information revealed he was single, but he might have had roommates, who were fellow Devereux employees. Or a lover in the same line of murderous work that he had pursued.
It was just the two of them now. Ty and Victoria had to keep an eye on Helms, Braxton and the other ops until the agents arrived from Denver.
Shaw and his brother looked through the windows, fast and carefully. The living space appeared unoccupied.