Chapter 24
VAUGHN
Riley has been inside the house for three hours.
I sit in the back seat of the Mercedes, staring through the tinted glass at the white facade with the blue roof. The living room light is still on. Every now and then, a shadow flits past the curtains. Once, about an hour ago, I saw Riley’s silhouette in the window.
Valentino has turned off the engine and reclined his seat. He’s dozing, sunglasses on his nose, arms crossed over his chest. Valentino can sleep anywhere. In cars, at airports, on a chair in a hotel lobby. A skill he acquired during his flight from Calabria and has never lost since.
My phone vibrates. I pull it from my jacket pocket and check the display. Griffin.
I open the encrypted messenger.
Blackstone has signed. Contract notarized as of this afternoon, 2:37 PM EST. Mutual non-disclosure clause is legally binding. He cannot report you without exposing his own crimes. You cannot expose him without breaking the deal. MAD is active.
I read the message three times. Then I lean my head against the headrest and close my eyes.
It’s over.
No bang. No explosion. No moment of triumph where the music swells and the hero stands on the ruins of his enemy. Just a message on a screen and the confirmation that my plan worked.
I had imagined this moment differently. For decades, I pictured how it would feel when Blackstone fell. Satisfaction. Relief. Perhaps even joy. Instead, I feel something I didn’t expect: emptiness.
I open my eyes and type back:
Understood. Thanks, Griffin. For everything.
His reply comes seconds later:
Always, brother. But we’re not quite through yet. Read the next message.
I scroll down. A second message, sent five minutes after the first.
Separate matter. Blackstone’s new head of security: Dominic Cross.
Ex-military, Special Forces, then private security.
Has continued investigating on his own for the past three days—DESPITE Blackstone’s orders to cease everything.
Either Cross is a loner who takes his job too seriously, or Blackstone secretly let him off the leash while signing the contract. Both are possible. Both are dangerous.
My stomach knots. I read on.
Cross picked up the trail from the safehouse.
He wasn't there—the desert is too big, and without GPS coordinates, the house is practically invisible. But he evaluated gas station cameras on I-93 and identified Valentino’s Mercedes.
He knows the direction of travel: North.
He doesn’t know where you are, but he knows where you went.
I stare at the screen. The wind chime at the Thompson house tinkles happily, as if the world were a harmless place.
North. Cross knows we drove north. From Nevada, there are three routes north: Idaho, Utah, or the 93 through northeastern Nevada.
Valentino took the 93. If Cross has the gas station cameras, he has the plate.
And if he has the plate, he can check toll booths and traffic cameras in Idaho and Oregon.
It takes time—days, maybe a week, depending on how good his contacts with the authorities are. But it’s not impossible.
I type:
How much of a lead do we have?
Griffin’s reply:
Hard to say. Cross is good. Ex-Delta Force, then Blackwater, then private. The guy finds people who don’t want to be found. My estimate: 48 to 72 hours before he can narrow down your region. Maybe less if he gets outside help.
Forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Two to three days. Riley is with her biological parents for the first time in twenty-seven years, and I have two to three days before an ex-Special Forces mercenary knocks on our door.
Recommendation? I type.
Don’t stay longer than two days. Then move. I have an apartment in Seattle under a client’s name—no one can trace it back to me or you. Address follows separately. Valentino knows the route.
I delete the messages and pocket the phone.
Valentino opens one eye. "Problems?"
"What makes you say that?"
"I saw your expression in the rearview mirror when you put your phone away," he answers.
"I don't know if we can call them problems yet. But there’s a guy named Dominic Cross," I say. "Blackstone’s new security man. Ex-military. He identified our car on gas station cameras and our direction of travel."
Valentino sits up and takes off his sunglasses. His dark eyes are instantly alert.
"How much time?"
"Two days. Maybe three."
He nods slowly. No shock, no frantic movement. Valentino has survived worse.
"We leave tomorrow night," he says. "I’ll swap the plates before then and take a different route. Not the interstate, but backroads over the Cascades. Takes longer, but there are no tolls and no cameras."
"Seattle," I say. "Griffin has a safe apartment."
"Seattle is good. Big enough to disappear. Port city, plenty of exit routes if necessary." He leans back. "And Riley?"
I look at the small house. The living room light is still on.
"Riley gets one more day with her parents. Then we have to move."
Valentino watches me for a moment without saying anything. Then he nods and reclines his seat again.
Suddenly, the front door opens and Riley stands on the porch. In the warm light of the hallway behind her, she looks different than she did this morning. Her eyes are red and swollen, but there is something on her face I’ve never seen there before: peace.
Not happiness—everything is too fresh for that. But a quiet peace, like after a storm when the air is clear and you can breathe again for the first time.
She comes down the stone path and stops beside the driver’s side. I open my door and step out. The damp evening air envelops me.
"Vaughn," she says. "Are you coming in?"
I stare at her. "Pardon?"
"Coming in. Into the house. Loraine made tea, and Howard is sitting at the kitchen table pretending to read the paper, but in truth, he’s dying of curiosity to meet the man who—" She stops. "The man who brought me to them."
"Riley. I’m the man who kidnapped you."
"I know who you are." She crosses her arms, and for a moment, she looks again like the woman at the kitchen table in the safehouse, studying me over the rim of her coffee mug.
"I told them what happened. Not everything. But enough. I told them you’re a complicated man who chose a questionable method to do the right thing. "
"That is... a very generous summary."
She holds out her hand. "Come in, Vaughn. My mother wants to pour you tea. My father probably wants to punch you in the face, but he’s too polite for that. Besides, Loraine made sandwiches."
"I’ll take one too," Valentino grunts from the front.
I take Riley’s hand, and she leads me up the stone path. I cast one more look over my shoulder before we go in. Valentino has his eyes open, watching us through the windshield. I raise my hand—it's all good. He nods and closes his eyes again.
In the hallway, Loraine Thompson greets me.
She’s shorter than Riley, but the resemblance is striking—the same eyes, the same posture, the same way of tilting her head slightly when she studies someone.
She looks me up and down, and for the first time in thirty years, I feel like a boy entering a door not knowing if he’s welcome.
"So you’re Vaughn," Loraine says. Her voice is steady, but her eyes are still wet.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Riley says you brought her to us."
"Yes."
"Riley also says you kidnapped her first."
"That is also true."
Loraine studies me for another moment. Then she says: "I hope you drink your tea without sugar. We’re out."
She turns and walks into the kitchen. Riley looks at me and shrugs, as if to say: That’s my mother. I’ve only known her for a few hours too.
Howard stands up from the kitchen table as we enter. He’s half a head taller than me and at least twenty kilos heavier, and his blue eyes study me with an expression somewhere between gratitude and considering whether he should throw me through the wall.
He holds out his hand. His grip is firm. Very firm.
"Howard Thompson," he says.
"Vaughn Mercer."
"You brought my daughter back to us."
"Yes, Sir."
"For that, I am grateful." His hand squeezes harder. "And about everything else, we are going to have a serious word with one another."
"I expect nothing less."
He lets go of my hand, and Loraine sets cups on the table.
Riley sits down and pulls out the chair next to her—for me.
And I sit at the Thompsons' kitchen table and drink tea without sugar and listen to Riley telling her mother she can't cook, and Loraine saying that’s what happens when you raise a child in a casino, and Howard laughing softly and stroking the tabletop with his large hands.
Tomorrow, I’ll have to tell Riley we need to move on. That Dominic Cross is on our trail. That the past isn't finished with us yet.
But that is tomorrow.