24: Deadline (24 Series) by James Swallow

where the dealership’s two mechanics were loitering.
    Frank and Josh were in their twenties, and they seemed to think that working for Roker was an entry-level job into the lucrative world of Pittsburgh’s criminal underbelly. Charlie didn’t have the heart to tell them how mistaken they were.
    “What happened?” asked Frank. He was the bigger of the two, thickset with a body honed by hours on free weights at the local gym.
    Charlie shook his head. “Same old, same old.”
    “Huh.” Josh nodded to himself, taking in Charlie’s answer as if it was something cryptic. The other mechanic was short and compact, and he radiated a nervous energy. “Hey man, you see the news tonight?” He pointed toward a small portable TV sitting on the workbench.
    On the smudged screen there was a reporter from CNB talking over footage from New York. There had been a kidnapping and a murder of a prominent foreign leader, and now something was going on with the president. “What’s all this?” he asked.
    “President quit, man,” Frank said sagely. “You know it’s gotta be bad if the prez throws in the towel.”
    “Damn Russians.” Josh offered his opinion. “They did it, you betcha. It’s like they wanna go back to the eighties or somethin’. Evil empire and all that crap.”
    Frank glared at the other mechanic. “What do you know about the eighties, dumbass? Your mom was like a baby back then.”
    “I saw a movie,” Josh said defensively.
    “What do you think, Charlie?” said Frank. But the driver wasn’t really paying attention. On the TV screen, the news feed was showing video from earlier in the day, figures in blue visibility jackets swarming along a street outside the United Nations building. Large yellow letters designated the agencies they worked for—FBI, NYPD, CTU.
    The pain in his hand came again and Charlie walked away without answering. With his good hand he reached up toward the inner jacket pocket containing the bottle of Percocets. His cell phone rang before he could touch it.
    The phone’s screen gave the caller ID as UNKNOWN, and on an impulse he couldn’t quite explain, he touched the tab to accept the call. “Yeah?”
    “ Hello, Chase, ” said a rough, low voice on the other end of the line. “ Can you talk? ”
    In that second, it was as if the ground opened up beneath him and he plunged into a freezing, bottomless chasm. His balance went away and he had to steady himself against one of the parked cars. Suddenly he was aware of every old wound he had ever suffered, every scar weighing down on him. Out of nowhere, the past he had worked so long to outpace had caught up with him.
    He swallowed hard. “Who … Who is this?” But he already knew the answer before he heard it.
    “ It’s Jack. I need your help .”
    He shot a look back at the events being displayed on the television screen, his thoughts racing. “How did you find…?”
    “ We can talk about that later. ” There was a pause, and in those brief seconds he could almost hear the sound of his world cracking apart around him. “ You owe me, Chase. And now I’m calling in the marker. ”
    “Chase Edmunds is dead,” he whispered, catching sight of his own face in the smoked-glass windows of the car. The face of a man who had gone on the run from himself, who had gotten lost from all he had been. Or so I thought.
    “ So was I, ” said the voice on the phone. “ It didn’t take. ”
    He wondered if it would be hard to just break away and leave it all behind once again. Every time in the past he had thought about doing exactly that, it seemed like an impossible choice to make. But now it felt simple. He had already made the decision, somewhere deep down, maybe months or even years ago. “What do you want, Jack?”
    “ Check your messages. ” The line went dead, and a moment later the phone beeped as a text message arrived. An address out on the interstate, past Monroeville; he knew where it was.
    “Hey! Hey, listen to