Free The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott Page B

again, slurped more of her poison. ‘But he asked
     me to go to the store, just this once, and buy a red notebook and tape, something he needed for writing and photos. We didn’t
     have any photo albums. Not after Nic’s father left. I don’t like them.’
    A few photos still dotted Nic’s room but Jack noticed he hadn’t seen any in this room, or the outer room. A lot of painful
     history in this apartment, he thought. That he understood. ‘So Nic asked you to buy a notebook for him.’
    ‘Yes, a big one, and it was red.’
    ‘Can you tell me where it is?’
    ‘No.’
    Jack thought his patience would explode and scatter his brains around the bedroom. He took a calming breath. She was old,
     drunk, grieving, and she was his only hope.
    ‘Did the police search the entire apartment?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did they give you a list of what they took?’
    She considered this. ‘Yes. They did.’
    ‘Where is it?’
    ‘I don’t know’, and then a rare neuron fired. ‘I signed it on the kitchen table.’
    Jack got up and shuffled among the debris on the table. Found it: a list from the Amsterdam Police Department, offering an
     inventory of what they had seized. Four laptops, two desktop computers, financial files, cell phones. Jack wondered if any
     record there would lead back to him. It made him feel as though time were moving faster. He felt feverish. But there was no
     mention of a notebook. The police hadn’t taken it.
    ‘I have to know where that notebook is.’ He tried to keep the panic out of his voice.
    She had followed him out of the bedroom. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You don’t have any money, do you? Or income, now that Nic is dead.’ It was a brutal truth.
    She didn’t look at him. ‘Nic made so much I didn’t have to work.’
    Because corporate espionage, spamming and porn paid so well. Jack pitied her. If he sold the notebook, he would have to make
     sure she got some of the money. ‘Think. Where would Nic have hidden the thing that mattered to him most? Did he have a storage
     unit? Another apartment? Anywhere?’
    ‘No, no.’
    ‘They said he did videos.’ Jack had to tear the words out of his mouth. ‘Um, illegal ones. Did he have a place where he might
     have filmed them?’
    She bit her lip and he could see that if she’d known about her son’s horrible activities she’d chosen to ignore them. She
     sat down.
    ‘Mrs ten Boom. Please.’
    ‘He told me … he had stopped doing that.’ Her lips tightened into a line. ‘He promised me.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘He had an apartment … he paid cash for it. I think under a different name.’
    ‘Do you know where it is?’
    ‘Well, he never took me there,’ she said with some indignation. ‘But once … long ago, I followed him. He told me he’d quit,
     I wanted to be sure. It was like an addiction, you see.’
    The irony seemed lost on her. ‘So I followed him and I saw another man bring three teenage girls to his door … ’ She blinked.
     ‘I came home and I had a drink and … ’ She left the sentence unfinished. But he could guess that painful moment would have
     been when her drinking started in earnest.
    He said nothing for a long minute. He’d thought this woman a stupid old drunk and now he had an idea of what the knowledge
     of her son’s crimes had done to her.
    ‘He was my baby. Every person who does wrong in this world, they were once someone’s baby. Full of hope and promise. He was
     so smart. Where did I go wrong? Where did I bend him the wrong way?’
    ‘Nothing he did is your fault,’ Jack said. ‘Trust me on this one.’
    She heaved a deep sigh and it seemed to take an effort to tear the words out of her chest. ‘I can take you there.’ She got
     up and went to the kitchen drawer. She pulled it free and turned it over. Under it was a key, taped into place. ‘This is it,’
     she said. ‘This is the only one we’ve got.’
    Jack was afraid to take the bus or the train with his face in the day’s papers