DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) (28 page)

Brendan watched the men pitch dirt over their shoulders. After a short time, he moved along the edge of the house. He rounded the far corner of the building. This was where he had arrived. He slipped into the garage, the same way he had done just a half an hour before.

Back in the basement, he made his way over to where the tools were, squinting to see in the gloom. Santos was upstairs with the girl. Brendan paused, listening to the piano playing softly under the chatter of rain — the music silken even as it was muffled by the floor. Leah, her small fingers dancing over the keys. Santos had made her feel secure and comfortable enough to play. That was good.

The Heilshorns had legal custody of the girl. She was theirs. No judge or social worker in the world would turn Leah Heilshorn over to any of Brendan’s people, nor to him. He was a fugitive. And in a matter of hours, he wouldn’t exist. It didn’t matter what he knew or what he’d been caught up in — more importantly, what he’d been trying to extricate himself from.

Leonard Dutko and a fireman named Chris Kelley had brought Greta Heilshorn into the basement. They had lashed her hands behind her back and tied her to a chair. Brendan found it fitting, as he imagined Jennifer Aiken once in a similar position, on Alexander Heilshorn’s orders.

Brendan stood looking at the older woman.

“You’re going to lose Leah,” he said.

Greta’s mouth twisted into a rind of silence. Her pewter eyes drove at him, the whites wrecked with red capillaries. She still wore her apron, pale brown with lace edging. An ankle-gray skirt beneath. Not a run in her stockings. Soft, comfortable shoes on her feet. Her teeth clicked together. She was biting at the air, which he wondered if she was aware of.

He jerked a thumb towards the back of the house. “Right now, outside, men are digging in your garden. I know what they’re going to find.
You
know what they’re going to find.”

He searched her face. He could hear Leonard Dutko behind him, the air whistling through his nostrils, standing with his rifle in his hands.

Brendan went on. “Greta, one way or the other, you’re going to lose her. She’s not yours — she never was; you’re all done. I know who her father really is, who has a legal claim to her. And that’s Philip Largo.”

There was a glimmer in her eyes. He could feel her resolve, hardened and refined over years of stubbornness and secrecy. He couldn’t expect to break her in just a few minutes.

“Think about it, Greta. It’s the chance of a lifetime. A man who was smeared by a sex scandal after being lured by one of your own pros. He finds out you’ve been keeping his daughter all these years? More, the press find out? I know that you’ve got all kinds of faith in Titan. I know your husband struck his deal — years ago — with the government, with the FBI, with the Federal Reserve, and their CSS army. But you’re forgetting about the public. You’re forgetting history. Marginalized people come back for their revenge. They come back with pitchforks. Or, you know, shovels.”

He waited. The two of them stared at each another for almost a minute before he spoke again. His voice was soft, his hands were steady. In the distance he thought he could hear the shovels breaking ground in the garden.

“You have a chance to do something, Greta. Help yourself. Help her — help her so she grows up never having to know what kind of a monster you are. Somewhere, you have the names; all of the women who ever worked for XList. All of their children you use to keep them working. All of the businessmen and politicians who are their fathers. All of the ways in which you and your husband have manipulated the system, buying legislation, the judiciary, funding everything with your black-market enterprise. You’re going to send out the order, Greta, to let every one of those women and children go. From the top of your pyramid, you’re going to send the information down through the organization. Because you’re not going to bury me up there like you wanted to. I’m never going to stop.”

Greta remained stone-faced. Her acidic words were delivered calmly, “Your family is cursed and dead. Your mother, father, your wife and child. You have nothing.”

Brendan took a step towards her as the rain intensified outside. He’d put a pistol to her husband’s head seven months ago. He’d gunned down her son long before that. He’d stood in the bedroom of the farmhouse in Remsen and looked down at her bloody, cut-up daughter on his first and only case as a county detective. He thought of telling Greta these things — that she was only seeing a reflection of herself — but he didn’t need to.

Instead, he turned and walked to where the old rotary phone hung on the wall next to the workbench.

He listened for a dial tone, then stuck his finger in the plate and rotated the old spider-spring assembly to enter in a long distance number. He hoped the Heilshorn’s had long distance. Their home wasn’t exactly cheap, he thought, glancing at the restored guide boat and thinking of the cathedral windows above, the grand piano, Heilshorn’s buildings in Manhattan, his house in Scarsdale, his billions in investments.

Probably they had long distance.

Yeah.

He turned and watched Greta where she sat framed in the gray light seining through the garage-door windows as the line on the other end rang. Did she look curious? Maybe. Perhaps, mildly.

“Hello?” said a voice.

“It’s Brendan Healy,” he said, still looking at Greta.

“Brendan. I’m glad to hear you.” The connection was scratchy.

“Where are you getting this call?”

“This is a SAT phone,” said Didier Lazard, sounding a bit like a child describing a favorite toy. “This is the first conversation on this phone, and there is no way to tap the line, unless it’s on your end. Is everything well?”

“Yes. How does it feel? You’re out.”

Greta kept her head turned away, but he knew she was listening.

“Oh, most definitely out. Most definitely.” The word
definitely
was hard for Lazard to pronounce, as though he had marbles in his mouth. There was a whirring white noise in the background. It sounded like Lazard was flying. “I will take care of everything now. Philip Largo is my first call.”

“That’s good. And you’ve visited the garden?”

“Just about to.”

“Is she cooperating?”

Brendan felt a smile curl the edges of his mouth. “Not really.”

“Well, you tell her. Tell her Didier says hello. I have the best law enforcement money can buy all set on this. And a racketeering charge requires the proof of multiple predicate crimes, so we’ve got plenty of good prosecutors, too.”

Brendan listened, watching Greta. She couldn’t feign complete apathy now. She was definitely showing some agitation, her teeth still clicking, and now rubbing her bony fingers together. Brendan said aloud for her benefit: “That’s right. Separate murders, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking. They’ll need to prove at least two of those beyond a reasonable doubt. To show how Greta was part of this enterprise that was committing all these crimes for the past twenty-five years.”

“You know why she plays it cool, yes?”

Brendan stared into her. “I do.”

“Huh? Right, my friend? But money talks, bullshit walks.”

Being associated with someone like Lazard wasn’t easy. But these were dirty deeds, and he was the man for the job.

“You don’t have to worry,” Lazard said from faraway, “I am the one calling the shots . . . Now that I have left the IMF, I have more power and influence than I’d ever dreamed.” He chuckled, a sound scattered and broken up by the remote connection.

“Thank you, Didier.”

“Oh thank
you,
my friend. We’ll be in touch again soon. Your flight is all prepared.”

Brendan hung up the phone slowly. The bell inside made a light chime as he set the handset in the cradle. “That was Didier Lazard,” he said. He turned to face Greta again.

“I know who it was.”

He nodded. He looked down at his feet, and scuffed a shoe against the gritty basement floor.

“Then you know that the biggest worry on Lazard’s mind is that the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are going to set up an international bank to rival the IMF. His former organization. And that the US petrodollar will be out of the world market as the number one currency for buying oil. To Lazard’s thinking, the US dollar will collapse in a short time and the BRICS nations will be in place to take over with either a gold-backed Ruble or Yuan. He wants to be where the future is, Greta. It seems everyone does. You know all this because your husband was willing to do anything to keep the power for himself, for Titan, to wage war in the Middle East for decades to come, if necessary, and to suppress any populist ideas about money, like Nonsystem’s ideas. That’s why Lazard has been covertly funding Nonsystem for the last three years. Philomena Argon came to him with the information she had on Titan. And he’s prepared to spend unlimited sums of money on the Justice Department and the FBI to ensure full cooperation in prosecuting you and XList to the fullest extent of the law.”

Brendan crossed the room and crouched down in front of Greta.

“Personally, I don’t care about all the geopolitics. I just want those women and children — and the men too — I want them free. And they will be. Because, well, Greta, Lazard has more money than you do.”

The breeze coming off the bay rustled the trees and raised the dirt and gravel. Her hearing was returning to normal after yet another deafening round of gunplay, and the birds resumed their singing.

Rascher looked up at the sky. “You’re coming with me,” he said, and offered a wan smile. There was blood between his teeth.

A soldier came trotting up behind them. He took a knee beside Rascher. “I’m alright,” Rascher said to him. Jennifer and the soldier helped Rascher to his feet. There was a dark, growing stain on his crisp white shirt. Blood pooled along his belt and pattered to the dirt driveway, turning the light brown dust black. He leaned against the SUV and looked off at Jennifer’s family home where two other soldiers dragged a man out of the woods. Delaney’s partner.

Delaney himself was still in the house. With the front door part way open, she could see the soles of his shoes. He’d fallen over like that when she’d shot him. His feet jerked with the spasms of his body. A soldier inside the house stepped into view, holding a rifle. He stood over the fallen investigator.

Jennifer turned away from the scene. “I have to check on the neighbor, Eleanor Beech. She’s old.”

She let go of Rascher and started off in the other direction when a hand caught her by the arm.

Jennifer looked down at the hand holding her. She could see every detail in that moment. The skin split over one of the knuckles. The blood spatter pattern along the inner ridge and the thumb. Then she looked up at the soldier. His eyes were iron blue.

“Let her go,” Rascher said.

The soldier released his grip and Jennifer walked away from the house.

She passed by the small cherubim statues her mother kept flanking the front driveway. The morning was warm, already high in the seventies. She turned onto Old Post Road. She’d walked this way many times as a kid, often in bare feet, heading down to the water. The rising sun winked from behind the maples. A squirrel darted across her path. Her mind was nearly empty, her thoughts some kind of background noise, far away.

Behind her came a loud crack; a single report of gunfire.

She turned down the driveway to the Beech home, which was nestled among the trees. Wind chimes dangled over the front door, tolling crystal sounds. The house was dark, no vehicle parked in front. Luckily Eleanor Beech was not home today. Still, Jennifer walked to the door and sat on the single step. She stuck her legs out in front of her. She saw that her pants were torn around the ankle and she was bleeding there. She’d cut herself kicking in the gun cabinet. She dug out a splinter embedded in the flesh. She felt the stubble on her skin and realized it had been three days since she’d shaved her legs. When the tears came, she was barely aware of them. She let go of her leg, placed her palms on the stair, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes.

The wind dried her face. She heard the gulls calling over the water. She opened her eyes and got up. She dusted off her backside and walked away from the Beech home. Back down Old Post Road, back to her family’s summer home, back to the soldiers from Camp Edwards and a wounded John Rascher, back to her life.

There was no more running.

She reached them as two soldiers were hefting Rascher into the SUV. She glanced at the front door. Delaney was no longer there. She thought she could hear the soldier who’d executed him drag him deeper into the house. Delaney’s partner was no longer outside. Jennifer guessed he was in the house, too.

When she saw the first flames lick out the den window towards the back of the place, she felt nothing. She only stood and watched the fire grow until the soldiers came out. This time when they hooked into her armpits and walked her to the SUVs she didn’t pull away or protest.

She let them place her in the back of the vehicle. Rascher was back with her, holding a compress to his side. His color was bad, his lips already waxy, but she thought he would make it. For some reason men like Rascher always made it. The soldiers got in. The two SUVs backed out of the driveway and drove off.