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Chapter Seventy-Eight

…credit card transactions.

Henry

11:03 AM

The fug of radiator heat and worry hit Henry the moment he stepped inside the back door. Stevie and Alison had been sat at the kitchen table, but as Henry entered, they pushed themselves up from their seats so sharply that the chairs let out a grating screech as the feet dragged over the floorboards. Though the photographs still sprawled across the table like a wave spilling against the sand—a thousand smiling faces that beamed up at them and basked in the glow of the lights overhead—the mood in the room had darkened and it sparked with anxious energy. Both girls looked to Henry with pinches in their brows. Then their gazes darted to Russell and Agent Hayes as they stepped inside as well and stamped the rainwater from their shoes. The damp from the rain thickened the air further still.

Stevie wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the chair. Her knuckles formed white peaks through her skin. "So? Was there a tracker? Is Mom safe?"

Agent Hayes's cell phone trilled. He excused himself, bustled past Henry and Russell where they stood behind the couch, and strode away towards the dining room.

The girls' gazes followed him until the squeaking tread of his footsteps had faded, and then they returned to Henry.

Henry gave them a shaky smile. "It's okay, the car's clean."

"Really?" Stevie's fingers wrung the wood. "You're certain?"

"Positive." Henry nodded.

"No tracker?"

"No tracker." His smile widened. "False alarm."

Their shoulders slumped with relief and their bodies collapsed in on themselves, as though the threads of tension that had been holding them up had been cut in a single swoop.

Henry opened his arms to them and motioned for them to come closer, and as they neared, he pulled them into his embrace. He clung to them and let his eyes slip shut. For the first moment since Agent Hayes had mentioned the GPS device, he felt like he could breathe. Truly breathe. His car was clean. Kostov didn't know where Elizabeth was. She was safe. Their family was safe. Everything would be okay.

"Good," Jason said. "Because either this guy is really into cleaning and DIY, or he was planning on building a bomb."

Henry's breath stopped. His arms fell away from around the girls, and as the girls stepped to the sides and turned to face their brother where he perched on the stool at the end of the kitchen island, the list of credit card transactions that Agent Hayes had dumped on top of the newspaper now clutched in his hands, he frowned. He didn't just say…did he?

"What?" The word tripped from Henry's tongue at the same time as it did from Russell's.

Jason pursed his lips and shrugged whilst the rumour of a blush crept through his cheeks. He lowered his gaze to the top sheet of paper, dragged his finger down the page, and shook his head to himself as he did. "There are all these records for different DIY stores, here, here, here, here—" He folded over the page with a crisp swish that cut through the drumming of the rain. "—and then there's the chemical company that supplies the science lab at school, and the industrial cleaning company that Trent's dad works for, and I'm pretty sure that's an electrical hardware store. If you were interested in making a bomb, you'd have everything you could possibly need." He looked up again, and when he was met with Henry's and Russell's horrified stares, his blush deepened and he gave another shrug. Slightly more stilted this time. "What…? I saw some stuff online when I was looking at those forums with all those people who want to kill Mom."

The silence bristled like a cloud of charged particles had diffused through the air. It sparked against the rumbling of the rain.

Henry and Russell continued to stare at Jason in mild horror, as did Alison and Stevie.

Under their gazes, Jason shrank back on the stool until he bumped against the jut of the kitchen island, and the paper crumpled as his clutch tightened.

Russell pivoted to Henry. His eyes bugged, and he thrust one finger at Jason. "Either you seriously need to upgrade your firewall, or you need to block his VPN. Kids are meant to watch pornography, for crying out loud, not look up how to build their own bomb."

"I'm sorry. That's your concern here?" Henry frowned. "The man who belongs to a group that wants to kill my wife and who's currently God knows where running loose in the US might have access to a homemade bomb, and you're worried about my son's browser history?"

"What concerns me is that your thirteen-year-old might just have more analytical capability than all the bureau agents combined, and the fact that—if he's right—this is a total snafu waiting to happen." Russell turned away from Henry and shook his head to himself. His voice lowered to a mutter. "If the press get so much as one whiff of this…" He dug his cell phone out of the pocket of his overcoat and paced towards the kitchen table. "I'll need to put out an alert, update the agencies, make sure they know not to approach him. The last thing we need is for a trigger-happy cop to provoke a Russian citizen into setting off a bomb on US soil."

Jason looked between Henry and Russell. "But it's going to be okay, right?" He had lowered the printout to his lap and his fingers fumbled over the rain-dampened edges. "Because Dad's car was clean. So even if the guy has a bomb, he doesn't know where Mom is…right?"

In the lull, the thrumming of the rain against the windows and doors expanded into the room. It thickened the air and the silence.

A prickle like the ice cold shards splintering into the glass spread out from the pit of Henry's stomach. His car was clean, DS's cars were clean, Russell's car was clean, but what about…

It felt like his stomach had been pierced by one of those shards. His gaze darted to Russell. "Did you check her brother's car?"

Russell kept his back to Henry, his shoulders hunched whilst his thumbs darted over the keypad of his cell phone. Beads of rain still clung to his overcoat. "What?"

"The GPS tracker? Did you check her brother's car?"

"Why would we check his car?"

Oh God. The energy fled Henry's legs in an instant, and he slumped against the top of the couch. He massaged his brow, whilst the fingers of his opposite hand curled into the grey woollen blanket draped over the cushions. The wool sweated beneath his touch.

Alison looked to him. With her fists tucked into the ends of her sweater sleeves, she hugged her arms across her chest. The whites of her eyes were wide beneath the fronds of her fringe that fell across her forehead. "Dad?"

Stevie looked to him too, her bottom lip pinned beneath her teeth at one corner, and when he said nothing, her gaze swivelled to Russell. "Our uncle. He visited her the other day. At the clinic."

Russell's thumbs stilled and his shoulders pricked like someone had scraped their keys along the side of a car. "He what?" Then he turned to face Henry, slowly, as if unsure whether or not he'd hallucinated hearing that. His gaze flitted up and down, taking Henry in. "Henry…?"

Henry let his hand fall from his brow. It joined the other in gripping the cushion. "I asked him to go talk to her. I thought seeing him might help her, especially with all the guilt she—"

"You're not meant to be helping her." Russell's eyes darkened to tar whilst his features contorted with his snarl. "What part of me telling you to leave her the hell alone did you not understand?"

"She's my wife, Russell—"

"And you might very well have led her assassin straight to her."

"How was I meant to know he had a GPS tracker?"

"You weren't meant to get involved." Russell's voice strained. "Geez…" He swept one hand over his scalp, and then clutched his neck. His mouth drew tight and he shook his head to himself—it looked like he was trying to dam a stream of expletives. "Why can't people just do as I tell them?" He let out a huff, and then stared down at the screen of his cell phone. The eerie white glow lit his face as he punched a number into the keypad. "Give me his address and I'll have dispatch send someone over there now." He shot Henry a dark look. "And you'd better start praying to God or whatever else you believe in that Kostov didn't manage to get to her brother's car either."

Henry swallowed. His throat stuck. "You can't send someone to his house."

"Why the hell not?" Russell raised his cell phone to his ear.

"He's not at home."

"Then where is he?"

Henry averted his gaze to the floorboards. He shook his head, his grip on the cushions ever-tightening. "I spoke to him yesterday, to let him know that Conrad was planning to release the details of what happened… He said he was going back there today. To the clinic."

"When?"

Henry stilled. He looked up at Russell. "He's meant to be in a session with Elizabeth right now." The image of Elizabeth stood just beyond the window of the clinic, within touching distance yet a world away, flashed through his mind. Ice cold licks of dread wrapped around his stomach and bound his chest. "If he has a bomb and he parks outside the window…"

The words drifted into the room and succumbed to the thundering of the rain.

"Right." Russell scrolled through his contacts; his thumb moved so fast that it jittered against the trackball. He hit dial—"I'm calling this in."— and lifted the phone to his ear. "If he has access to bomb-making material and there's even the possibility that he has her location—"

The thud and squeak of rain-slick footsteps echoed through the kitchen. Agent Hayes strode around the corner and into the den. His cell phone was still clutched in one hand. "Mr Jackson?"

"A little busy here." Russell motioned to his own cell phone and turned his back on Agent Hayes so that he faced the back door.

"Mr Jackson, we've just had a hit on the credit card Kostov's been using."

Russell spun around. He covered the mouthpiece with his opposite hand. "What? Where?"

"At a gas station." Agent Hayes shook his head, and a puzzled frown worked its way across his brow. "But from the amount he's spent, it sounds like he's filling up a small truck."

Russell's eyes glazed. "Or loading up a car full of jerrycans." He shook off the expression and his gaze bored into Agent Hayes. "This gas station… How far is it from Fredericksburg, Virginia?"

Agent Hayes looked surprised. "Just outside… Why?"

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