“Billy Bob Seven Nine, what is your status?”
There might have been an accent. While Graham had never been to Chechnya himself, he thought he recognized that in the man’s voice, the same accent as his father’s. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” When all else fails, he thought, go for honesty.
The annoyance in the man’s voice magnified. “What is your status? Are you hurt?”
“No,” Graham said. “I’m fine.”
“And others?”
“I don’t know.”
A pause. “You are calling a panic number,” the man said. “Why?”
“My mother told me to,” Graham said. “If anything bad ever happened, this was the number I was supposed to call.”
“Are you alone?”
“I am now.”
The man on the other end of the phone sighed deeply. “Try to think past the words and listen to the message. Were you alone five hours ago, and will you be alone five hours from now?”
He got it. The guy was really asking if Jolaine was with him. “I have Jolaine,” he said.
“And your parents?”
Just like that, Graham found himself without enough air to speak. “No,” he said. It was the best he could do.
“I need details,” the man said.
What could he say? How could he describe the awfulness of what had happened? “They attacked our house,” he said. “Men with guns. My mom was shot. I think my dad was…” He couldn’t complete the sentence.
“Killed?”
Graham didn’t answer.
“What is your location?” the voice asked. “And where is… your friend?” He seemed hesitant to say Jolaine’s name.
“I think she’s out shopping,” he said. “She wrote that in a note.”
“A note? Where are you?”
Graham felt a flash of uneasiness. This whole conversation had been far too one-sided. “Where are you?”
“Right where I’m supposed to be,” the man said. “You, however, seem to be in trouble. How long do you want to continue playing games?”
“This isn’t a game,” Graham said. “This is my life. This is our lives. Why are people trying to kill me?”
“That’s complicated,” the man said.
“I want it to stop,” Graham said. “Can you make it stop?”
The man on the other end paused. “Do you have information for me?”
Warning bell. “What kind of information?” He was hedging, seeing how much the guy on the other end already knew.
“I think you know,” the man said. “How about a string of numbers and letters?”
So he knew.
“What do they mean?” Graham asked.
There was a smile in the man’s voice when he said, “So, you do have them.”
Graham felt a flash of anger. He wasn’t ready to give that away yet.
“Your mother did well. I need you to give me that code.”
“So it is a code,” Graham said. It felt like a victory to turn it back on the man. “What’s it for?”
“You don’t want to anger me, young man. Graham, isn’t it?”
Graham didn’t respond.
“You want me as a friend, Graham. More important, you don’t want me as an enemy. Your mother asked you to do her a favor, didn’t she? She asked you to make this phone call. You’ve been a good son. Now why don’t you continue being a good son and tell me that code.”
His mind raced, trying to find a way out. He knew he should just hang up, but he couldn’t make himself do that. He didn’t know why. He understood now what Jolaine had been trying to tell him. This man was not his friend. If anything, he was the enemy.
“I don’t have it anymore,” Graham said. “I lost it.”
The man laughed. “Now you’re lying to me, Graham.”
“No, really, I’m not.” He didn’t like the way this asshole kept using his name. It was creepy. “I had it, but I lost it.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“To tell you that.” Graham was proud that he manufactured that lie so quickly. “My mom told me to call and she gave me this piece of paper. But in all the stuff that happened last night, I lost the piece of paper.”
“Liars go to hell, Graham. You have what they call a photographic memory. Less than one percent of the population of the world can do what you do. Your mother brags about that a lot.”
A glimmer of hope. “You know my parents?”
“Of course I do. How would I know so much about you if I didn’t know them?”
Now who was lying? It was something in the man’s voice, like he was making fun of him. Sure, I’ll tell you anything if it’ll get me what I want.
Graham’s eyes shot to the clock radio. How long had he been talking? Was it long enough for them to trace the call?
Goddammit, why hadn’t he looked at the clock before dialing?
Shit!
He dropped the receiver back onto the cradle and brought his hands to the sides of his head. What had he done?
“Shit, shit, shit.” He said it aloud with brittle emphasis. “Ah, shit.” When he brought his hands down they were shaking.
A noise beyond the draped window pulled his attention to the left. The noise sounded like a car, and it sounded very close. Very, very close.
Graham jumped to his feet. Christ, how could they be so fast? They must have been waiting for him. His pounding heart was the loudest sound in the room. He glanced down at his chest — past the downy patch of dark hair that had begun to decorate his breastbone — and he could see his flesh pulsating with each stroke.
This was it. He fought the urge to rush to the window and look out, because he knew with certainty that a man with a gun stood on the other side, waiting for him to do that very thing. It would be a man with murder in his eyes, and he’d be committed to inflicting upon Graham the same fate that he’d inflicted on his parents.
Goddamn that Jolaine! Why hadn’t she left him with a gun? Or a knife or a frigging brick — anything that he could use to defend himself? He’d shot a gun before, after all. At Boy Scout camp, he’d shot .22 rifles and he was damn good at it. Why had she taken all the guns with her? Why had she left him defenseless? Even if he didn’t know how to shoot and he totally screwed it up, so what? Dying in a fight beat the shit out of dying with your hands in the air in a crappy motel begging for mercy.
Graham braced for a fight, a physical fight to the death that he knew he was destined to lose. He weighed a hundred thirty-five pounds after a big meal, and he’d never actually been in a fight — not a real one, like the ones on television. He had no idea what he’d do if a guy with a gun actually did kick open the door, but he was for sure going to do something.
Just please, God, let it be something other than dying a painful death.
The engine shut down. If something was about to happen, it was going to happen soon. And probably fast. In sixty seconds, Graham Mitchell would know if checkout time would see him dead or alive.
As terrifying as that thought was, he found it invigorating.
He braced himself.
Someone knocked on the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Jolaine paused as she approached the motel room. If Graham was awake, he had to be frightened. If she walked right up to the door and slipped the key into the lock, he might panic. Knocking seemed like the better way to go. She rapped with a single knuckle. Light and friendly. She hoped that Graham would hear the knock, look through the peephole, recognize her, and all would be right.
None of that happened.
After waiting fifteen or twenty seconds, she knocked again and said, “Graham, it’s me. It’s Jolaine. I’m coming in.”
As she slipped her key into the slot, she was struck with the possibility that things might not be normal on the other side of the door. As remote a possibility as it might be, she supposed that the bad guys might have found Graham while she was gone. She’d struggled with the decision whether to leave the M4 in the room as a hedge against a door-crashing invader, but as far as she knew, Graham didn’t know which end of the gun the bullet came out of. Any mistake made at 2,300 feet per second was as bad a mistake as could be made.