4

DUCKEY WAS SILENT FOR A LONG WHILE. When he did speak again, the voice coming through the phone held a weight Jack hadn’t heard before. “Jack, I’m sorry.”

Jack had no answer to that. He knew it wasn’t Duckey’s fault, that his friend had only done what he had so many times before—used his connections to try to dig Jack out of a bad situation. But there was much more to it this time, and Jack had to apply all his energy and skill to the task of getting his sons back. If he paused to deal with anything else, to consider anything other than Jim and Alex, he knew that fear would immobilize him.

Esperanza sat in the car beside Jack. The crying had ended and she had gone silent. Her eyes seemed fixed on something outside, perhaps the point in the night sky where her children had disappeared.

“Any idea who he was?” Jack asked.

“No,” Duckey answered, and Jack heard a tightness in his voice that bespoke concern for the real Russell Hodges. While his thoughts and emotions were tied up in his children, he couldn’t forget that Duckey might have killed a friend by asking for a favor. Jack could only imagine the weight he bore.

“Where will he take them?”

“I don’t know,” Duckey said. “It’ll be a safe house that McKeller feels comfortable in, but the Agency has more of those than I can count, even Stateside.”

The ex-CIA agent fell silent, and Jack followed suit. He looked over at Espy. She seemed to be somewhere else. The blackness that had settled over the airfield made Jack feel as if there wasn’t another soul around for miles.

“I don’t get it, Ducks,” Jack said, breaking the silence. “You told me McKeller couldn’t use his resources to track me down. So how does he take out Hodges and get someone else in place on such short notice?”

Duckey sighed. “Because the man did his research. I told you he was NCS. He studied his target, catalogued any hindrances, then planned for them.”

“You mean he knew I’d go to you?”

“It’s what I would do,” Duckey said. “He would have looked at everyone you work with, and my name would have raised a red flag. After that, well, I’ve probably asked for a few too many favors on your behalf for there not to be some record of it in their system. All it would have taken is for McKeller to develop a list of my old Company contacts, determine which ones I’d be most likely to call on, and then have his people in place if I did.”

Duckey’s words sobered Jack even more. Their earlier conversation had almost convinced him that the man who was after him would only have a small handful of people in whom he could confide the details of the project. But when he started tallying—when he considered the people in both SUVs back in Ellen, along with the people necessary to counterbalance help from Duckey—Jack found the potential threats growing to what seemed unmanageable proportions. That thought also sparked serious concern for his friend’s safety.

“I’m worried about you, Ducks.”

“You have more important things to worry about right now,” Duckey said. “Besides, I’ve survived bigger threats than McKeller.”

Jack couldn’t help but smile at his friend’s confidence, remembering there were few he knew with the track record to back up that sort of bravado. “So, what do you suggest we do?”

“I have a few ideas, but ultimately I don’t think you’re going to like my answer.” Duckey paused and Jack had a mental picture of the man running a hand through his hair. “Look, you can go to the police, or the media, or pretty much anyone else you can think of, but McKeller’s among the best in the world at making people disappear. All McKeller has to do is say he has no idea what you’re talking about, that the Company doesn’t have any domestic operation targeting a university professor, and that they certainly don’t abduct children. And believe me, he’ll have a wall of plausible deniability so thick you’ll never be able to break through it.”

It took Jack only a moment to accept the truth of what Duckey had said, despite that the very idea of it—the government-sanctioned disappearance of U.S. citizens—seemed like something relegated to third-world countries.

“What about McKeller’s boss?” Jack asked. “Who does he report to?”

“The deputy director. The problem, Jack, is at this point I’m not even sure trying to bend the director’s ear is the best way to go. For one thing, I’ve been out of the Company long enough for my word not to mean a whole lot.”

“And doing something like that is a good way to get yourself killed,” Jack added. Even as he said it, though, he knew it wouldn’t be a consideration as far as Duckey was concerned. Jack had no doubt that his friend would take a bullet for the boys if it came down to it.

“I’m more worried about what would happen to Alex and Jim if the director decided to open up some kind of investigation. If we spook McKeller . . .” He went silent.

“If we spook McKeller, he might cut his losses,” Jack finished.

There was a pause. When Duckey spoke again, his voice was quiet. “He’d get rid of any evidence, Jack.”

The cold feeling in Jack’s stomach was returning. He looked over at his silent wife, thankful she couldn’t hear their entire conversation. “Which means I have to go back,” Jack said. “I have to trade myself for the boys.”

It was the first thing he’d said that provoked any response from Espy. She turned her head, her eyes finding his. He reached over and took her hand for a moment, gave it a squeeze.

“I think it may come to that,” Duckey said. “But I’d sure like to turn over all the other stones before we settle on that one.”

“Except the longer I wait—”

“The longer the boys will be held someplace nice, given regular meals, and probably a Nintendo to keep them busy,” Duckey said. “Look, Jack, McKeller doesn’t gain anything by hurting the kids.” When Jack didn’t answer, Duckey added, “Believe me, whoever he has holding your boys is probably ex-Company. They’ll treat them right, keep them safe, while we figure this out.” Jack started to answer, but Duckey cut him off. “They’ll know about Jim’s medical condition. Wherever they’re taking him, they’ll have everything he needs—medicine, nebulizer, the works.”

Jack tried to raise another objection, but try as he might, he found it difficult to come up with anything beyond the requisite parental fight reflex, the one that wanted to send him running directly into the enemy camp to save his family. What tempered that impulse, though, was Duckey’s counsel—a history of sage advice that had guided him through other difficult episodes.

“Well, if I’m not going to turn myself in, where do we go?” Jack asked.

“You need a safe house of your own,” Duckey said. “Just for a little while.”

Jack shook his head. “If you’re right, they’ll have eyes on anyone we’d go to. And while we have enough cash for a hotel, my guess is that it wouldn’t take them long to find us.”

“Which is why I’m thinking somewhere exotic,” Duckey said.

Once Jack realized what Duckey meant, he turned to Espy. “Is your brother in Caracas?”

“He should be,” she said, the first time she’d spoken since the boys were taken. “He was in Paris last week, but I think he got back a few days ago.”

Jack turned his attention back to the phone. “With our bird leaving without us, we’ll have to fly commercial. And if we do that, our friends will know where we’re going.”

“Eventually,” Duckey agreed. “McKeller will have placed something in the system to flag your credit cards, along with commercial flight manifests. So you wait as long as you can, buy at the gate, and hope to God I’m right about McKeller not having the manpower available to have someone waiting for you in Caracas.”

“That’s not as encouraging as you might think,” Jack said.

“Hey, it’s all I have at the moment.”

That pulled another smile from Jack, but it also tugged at something in Jack’s mind—something he’d forgotten but that seemed important. Something he had . . . When it came to him, he jerked up in his seat. He glanced down, sending his eyes to the center console where he’d placed it.

“He dropped a phone, Ducks,” Jack said. He grabbed the cell phone and brought it closer, peered at it—as if the thing would act as some compass pointing him to his sons. It was powered off.

“Who dropped a phone?”

“Whoever took Jim and Alex dropped a phone when Alex hit him. I’ve got it here.”

Duckey responded with a grunt. “Okay, so that makes it easier for you if you decide you have to turn yourself in, but I’m not sure it changes anything at this point.”

Jack mulled that over, feeling his excitement ebb. “Because if I turn this on and make a call, we’re beholden to whoever answers. We’ll be playing their game, not ours.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s not a game,” Espy said. Her voice was quiet, but the words came with a conviction that immediately made Jack regret the remark.

“You’re right,” Jack said, giving her an apologetic smile.

“For the time being, I think you should keep the phone in your back pocket,” Duckey said. “But I wouldn’t turn it on. In fact, you should probably remove the battery and SIM card. If it’s a Company phone, McKeller might be able to track it even with the power off.”

“Noted,” Jack said.

“Along those same lines, you folks have been at that airfield way too long,” Duckey said. “Whoever it was that took the boys probably checked in as soon as the plane was in the air.”

The same thought had been circling in Jack’s mind for the last few minutes, but he’d ignored it. With Duckey bringing it out into the open, Jack was forced to acknowledge the reason he and Espy were still sitting in the car at a deserted airport when in all likelihood mercenaries attached to a rogue CIA agent were closing in on them. Was it because leaving meant conceding that the boys were really gone, and driving away would make it real?

As he sat in the darkened car, silently holding the phone to his ear, Jack felt a hand take his. When he looked over at Espy, he found he could read her eyes, knew that his thoughts were hers as well.

“We’re not doing anyone any good sitting here,” she said.

Jack took in a deep breath. When he released it, he felt as if something else went with it. He squeezed Espy’s hand. “We’re on our way, Ducks. I’ll call you from Caracas.”

After he ended the call, he took one last look into the dark sky before starting the car and leaving the airfield behind.