probably to some deskbound executive in need of a weekend toy. In the heady days before the credit crunch, Matt had built up a solid reputation in car enthusiast circles. He’d even sold a couple to guys whose cars he’d stolen years earlier, not that they knew it. Things had been looking up for him, all while Danny had been sucked into the black hole of his new job. A black hole that had ultimately swallowed up his life.
Or had it?
Was it possible that Danny was still alive?
Bellinger had made a convincing argument for it. And he’d been grabbed seconds after making it. That had to mean something.
Whether Danny was still alive or not, the idea that they’d all been lied to, that someone knew the truth and had kept it from them—the idea that someone, not fate, had taken Danny away from them—felt like acid in his throat.
He wasn’t about to let it slide.
He took the Willard Street exit and turned into Copeland after the roundabout, and his fury swelled even more as he thought back to how the news of Danny’s death had devastated their parents. It was bad enough their eldest son was a convicted felon. To lose Danny too—their pride and joy, the redeemer of the family name—was too much to bear. Their mom had died a couple of months later. Despite the complicated medical terminology the doctors insisted on using, Matt knew it was simply a case of a broken heart. He also knew he was partly to blame. He knew the havoc raging in her veins started the day he’d been arrested that first time, if not earlier. His dad hadn’t fared much better. Danny’s job came with life coverage, and though the insurance payout paid for the nursing home and allowed their dad some minor touches of additional comfort, he’d been left a demolished man. He and Matt had hardly spoken at his mom’s funeral, and Matt hadn’t been out to see him since that bleak day in January. Then almost a year to the day later, the local sheriff, a craggy old nemesis, had managed to track Matt down to his garage in Quincy and given him the news of his dad’s death. A stroke, he’d said, although Matt had his doubts about that too.
Bellinger’s words echoed in his mind. Someone had taken Danny, and it was linked to something that just happened in the skies of Antarctica. It sounded outlandish and surreal. Only it clearly wasn’t. The guys he’d just gone up against were very real. Highly professional. Well equipped. Ruthless. And not overly concerned with discretion.
The implications of that last point were particularly worrying.
He coasted east on Copeland, the Mustang’s forty-year-old headlights struggling to break through the swarm of cottonlike snowflakes. With no other cars around, the snow had had time to settle, covering the road ahead with a thin, undisturbed white duvet. He passed Buckley and motored on until he reached the 7-Eleven and the turnoff into the alleyway that led to his shop, and just before turning into it, a remote corner of his mind registered a set of tire tracks in the fresh snow.
They belonged to a single car that had veered off Copeland. He couldn’t see down the alley. His shop was tucked away about a hundred yards back from the main road, and there were no streetlights that way, but the tire tracks were more than enough to trip his internal alarm, as they could only have been heading to his place. There was nothing else down there.
Problem was, he wasn’t expecting anyone.
Which didn’t bode well for the rest of his magical night.
Chapter 17
Amundsen Sea, Antarctica
“You need to come here. There’s something you need to see.” The caller wasn’t a native English speaker, and Gracie couldn’t place his accent. And although he spoke slowly and deliberately, his words were laced with an urgency that came through loud and clear, despite the less-than-crystal clarity of the satellite link.
“Slow down a second,” Gracie said. “Who are you exactly, and how’d you get this number?”
“My name is Ameen. Brother Ameen, if you like.”
“And you’re calling from Egypt?”
“Yes. From Deir Al-Suryan—the Monastery of the Syrians, in Wadi Natrun.”
Her internal kook-alert monitor, which had already moved up to yellow before the man had even started talking, got a slight nudge up to blue.
“And how’d you get this number?” she asked again, a slight edge to her voice now.