We’ll find him,” the investigator from Scotland Yard promised Abby after three hours of taped interviews and the review of countless photographs taken from surveillance cameras around the city of London, Abby having been asked to search the crowds for a glimpse of Dax.
When she considered Dax’s destination, the city that shared Luke’s last name, she couldn’t help but feel that it was a taunt. His silent response to the raised middle finger she’d offered that black hat. Somehow, she is sure that he saw that.
He was not in any of the photographs.
“How will you find him?” Abby asked the investigator.
“The way it’s always done: Patience and hard work. We’ll follow his patterns, learn who he trusts, and find him through them or when he makes a mistake. It will happen.”
Abby wasn’t so sure. She didn’t think the kid trusted anyone. And while she knew the kid made mistakes, she felt as if he would make fewer of them by the day, by the hour. Each moment was a learning experience.
Abby remembered the salute he’d given her in the dim dawn light across the river, just before the kid got back into Hank Bauer’s Challenger and disappeared. He’d been in three countries since then, and no one had caught him yet.
“He’s adaptive,” Abby said. “And I think he has big goals.”
The man from Scotland Yard didn’t seem interested in Abby’s opinion. “He’s no different from the rest of his family,” he said. “Which means that, sooner or later, he’ll end up dead or in jail. We’ll see to that.”
Abby wondered how long it had taken Scotland Yard to see to that for the rest of the kid’s family, but she didn’t ask. The last question she asked was the one she felt she already knew the answer to.
“What was his father’s name?”
“He had a dozen of them.”
“The most common one, then. What did most people call him?”
The investigator hesitated, then said, “Jack.”
Abby nodded, remembering the bottle of poisoned whiskey that the boy had presented to Abby and Hank on the night they’d met.
“And the last name?”
“Blackwell.”
“Blackwell,” Abby echoed. It seemed right. It suited the family.
“He’s quite dead,” the Scotland Yard man said in a nearly chipper voice.
Abby looked at the photographs of the boy contract killer, and again, she wasn’t sure the investigator was right. The man named Jack Blackwell might be dead, but his legacy was alive and well, moving through Europe like a ghost.
If he was even still in Europe.
“I’ll tell you this,” the Brit continued, “you’re bloody lucky—and so is Shannon Beckley—that you can drive like that. Put anyone else behind the wheel out there, and you’re both in the morgue.”
“You’re right,” Abby said, and for the first time she did not doubt the accuracy of the man’s statement.
Abby had needed the wheel for this one.
“Not making light of it,” the Brit said, “but it seems to have been rather fortunate for your reputation too, based on what I’ve seen.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Luke London thing.”
The Luke London thing. Ah, yes. When she didn’t respond, just stared evenly at him, he shifted awkwardly.
“I just mean in the media. Plenty of kindness from the same folks who crucified you before. Changes the narrative, right?”
“No,” Abby said. “It doesn’t.”
The man looked at her curiously. Abby said, “It all happened. Nothing’s replaced by anything else. They fit together.”
“Sure,” the Brit said, but he didn’t understand, and Abby didn’t try to clarify. The wins were the wins, the wrecks were the wrecks, as Hank Bauer used to say. They all worked together. The only risk was in expecting that one or the other was promised to you. Neither was. When the starting flag was waved, all you ever had was a chance.
“I won’t waste it, though,” Abby said, and this seemed to please the Brit; this part he thought he followed.
“Good,” he said, and he clapped Abby on the shoulder and promised her that they’d be in touch soon. Abby was going to be important when they got the Blackwell lad in a courtroom.
Abby assured him she’d be ready for that moment. Then she left to drive to the hospital, where Shannon Beckley waited with her sister. Tara had therapy today. Tongue-strengthening exercises. Dr. Carlisle thought she was coming along well enough that spoken conversation might be possible sooner rather than later. She wouldn’t make any bolder predictions, but she’d offered this much encouragement:
She fights, and so she has a chance.
It was, Abby thought, a patently obvious statement, and yet it mattered.
She drove south to Massachusetts alone.
The coastal Maine sun was brighter than the cold day seemed to allow, an optical illusion, the sky so blue it seemed someone had touched up the color, tweaking it beyond what was natural. The Scotland Yard man had taken longer than expected, and rush-hour traffic was filling in. Abby drove at seventy-five in the middle lane, letting the impatient pass her on the left and the indifferent fall behind to the right.
Her hand was steady on the wheel.