“What were you looking for there?” Tally asked. “Or should I ask who?”
“Billy told me about the place. I was curious.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Tally said, walking around the room. He reached for the straight-backed chair where Decker had hung his coat. He picked up the coat.
“My men were right.”
“About what?”
“About your jacket hanging pretty heavy,” Tally said, hefting the coat in his left hand. With his right he held it open. “Very heavy, I see.”
“I felt I needed to carry around a little more firepower.”
“Yes, well, if you’re going to visit places like the Bucket of Blood, I agree.” Tally replaced the coat.
“Decker, I can’t protect you if you’re going to run away from me.”
“If I have your men around me, Tally, no one’s ever going to make a move,” Decker said. “I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life in New York.”
Tally walked toward the door and said, “If you keep playing it your own way, you just might end up doing that—spending the rest of your very short life here.”
When Linda Hamilton left the hospital to go home, she didn’t notice the man who was following her. She was thinking about Decker and whether he would ask her to leave New York with him.
The man followed her all the way home. Then, as she was fitting her key into the lock of the front door of her building, he closed the distance between them and stepped into the doorway behind her.
“Wha—?” she said, alarmed.
“Take it easy,” the man said. “Go ahead, open the door.”
“Who are you?”
“Quiet,” he said. After she opened the door, he said, “Let’s go upstairs.”
They went up, and she opened the door to her apartment.
“Inside,” he said, pushing her. “Light a lamp.”
She did as she was told.
“Oh, I can see what Decker sees in you, Miss Hamilton,” the man said. “You’ve very beautiful.”
“What now?” she asked, standing awkwardly in the center of the room.
“Now,” he said, “we wait.”
Chapter Thirty-three
In the morning, Decker had breakfast with Rosewood.
“They’re following us again,” Rosewood said when they were seated in that small, nameless café Decker had come to like so well.
“I know.”
“What did Tally say last night?”
“That he didn’t want me to get killed.”
“That’s nice of him,” Rosewood said. “Do we lose them again?”
“I don’t know yet,” Decker said. “Why don’t we do a little sightseeing today?”
“Why not?” Rosewood said. “You’re paying the freight.”
“Let’s go…”
The day went by uneventfully. They went to Central Park and walked; they went to museums and walked; they went to different neighborhoods that Rose-wood thought Decker might find interesting—and walked.
“You’ve been walking around all day with a target painted on your back, and nobody’s so much as looked at it twice. How many more days do you think you can do this?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m a nervous wreck.”
Decker smiled.
“Wait here. You can drive us to dinner.”
When Decker went into the hospital to get Linda for dinner, he found out she hadn’t come to work that night.
“Did she send word why?”
“No,” the nurse at the desk said. “And that’s not like her, at all.”
“No, it isn’t,” Decker said.
He hurried out to Rosewood’s cab.
“Where is she?” Rosewood asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Decker said. “Let’s get to her apartment.”
“You don’t think—?”
“Let’s just get there!”
They reached Linda’s building in record time, and Decker was out of the cab before it had stopped moving.
“Decker!” Rosewood shouted. He was afraid Decker would charge into Linda’s apartment without caution. Rosewood had come to like Decker, and he didn’t want to see him killed. He pulled the .32 out of his pocket and charged into the building after him.
Decker broke the lock on the front door getting in, and when he got to the second floor, he pulled the shotgun out and blew the lock off Linda’s door.
“Decker!” Rosewood said, coming up behind him.
Decker held his finger to his lips and motioned for Rosewood to flatten himself against the wall.
“Either she’s inside dead, or there’s somebody inside waiting,” Decker whispered.
“What do we do?”
“I go in,” Decker said. “You stay out here until I call you.”
“But I—”
“Wait here!”
The door was flapping back and forth from the force of the shotgun blast. Decker put his foot out to stop it, then slipped into the room, keeping low.
He looked right and then left, then moved farther in and checked the bedroom.
She wasn’t there, and neither was anybody else. He lowered the shotgun, aware that his heart was beating extra fast. A drop of perspiration dripped from the end of his nose and landed on the toe of his boot.
“Billy!”
“What happened?” Rosewood asked, coming in, .32 in hand, shaking.
“She’s not here.”
“That’s wasn’t one of your choices,” Rosewood said.
“I know,” Decker said, “and neither was that.” He pointed to the bed.
“What?”
“That.”
Rosewood looked closer and saw a note on the pillow. Decker went to the bed and picked up the note. It said,
DECKER,
CENTRAL PARK. MIDNIGHT.
ARMAND COLES
“He’s got her,” Rosewood said.
“Yes.”
“Midnight—that’s in fifteen minutes,” Rosewood said.
“I know,” Decker said. “His timing is perfect.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Decker crumpled the note in his hand and said, “I’m going to be there.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“The note doesn’t say where in Central Park,” Rose-wood said on the way. Decker was sitting on top of the cab with him instead of inside.
“I’ll just have to walk until he finds me.”
“With that big bulls-eye on your back?”
“There’s no other way.”
Rosewood drove Decker to the Central Park South entrance of the park.
“Why here?” Decker asked.
“It’s the closest to where we were,” Rosewood said. “First entrance we’d come to.”
“It’s as good as any,” Decker said. He dropped down to the ground and looked up at Rosewood. “Get lost, Billy.”
“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“He’s answering my challenge, Billy.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Thanks for everything, Billy,” Decker said. “Now get lost.”
Decker waited until Rosewood’s cab had turned down Eighth Avenue. Then he turned and walked into the park.
Inside the park, Armand Coles waited. Decker’s driver had taken him to the Bucket of Blood. That meant he knew the city. When Decker told him Central Park, Coles figured the driver would take him to the nearest entrance.
Now he watched Decker walk into the park and followed him a way—Decker on the path, Coles through the trees and brush. It would be easy to pick Decker off from here, but that wouldn’t be accepting the challenge.
Would it?