Duncan’s lungs released, allowing him to inhale. He felt stupid and hysterical. “Oh. Good. So, uh, what’s up?”
“Just letting you know that Teiko and Sam just presented their report about the apartment they bug-swept yesterday.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“It was riddled,” Braxton said. “High quality, foreign made. Amazing stuff. There were cameras behind both air vents, and bugs and traces everywhere. Teiko’s convinced that they didn’t find everything.”
“Did you have them deliver the material to Gant for the evidence techs to look over?”
“As promised. One question. Did she bring any stuff with her when she came to your place? Suitcases, electronics?”
“Who told you she was at my place?” he snapped.
“Word gets around,” Braxton said patiently. “So? Did she?”
“She brought a suitcase,” he said. “But she took it away with her again. It’s in the car, with her and Wesley.” A cold chill began to prickle up his back. “Oh, my God. Oh, shit.”
“Probably tagged,” Braxton said. “So they know where she is.”
His eyes fell on her laptop, which lay where she’d forgotten it on the couch. The chill transformed into an icy cramp, squeezing his guts. “Fuck me,” he whispered, his voice a thread. “Her laptop. It’s still here.”
“Check it,” Braxton said.
He grabbed it. It was a big, clunky dinosaur of a thing, at least eight years old. He found a screwdriver and pried the case open.
There it was. A listening device. It had its own battery and a powerful microphone. It was transmitting in real time, as he watched. Everything they had said had been heard, clear as a bell. Including the address where Nell was headed right now.
Where she might have already arrived. It had been over an hour.
He yanked the thing out, detached its power source with a brutal yank. “Bugged,” he said. “They know where she went.”
“I just tried Wesley.” Braxton’s voice was grim. “He didn’t answer.”
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Call the cops for me, right now. The local ones. Have them check the place out. I’m on my way.”
“Wait! Dunc, don’t go alone. I’ll organize a—”
He clicked “stop.” No time. He shoved the phone into his pocket, sprinted for the bedroom. Tossed on a T-shirt, a pair of army-issue pants, shoes. Shoved his gun into the back of his pants, buckled on his ankle sheath and knife. Dug out the drug-treated throwing stars from his weapons stash, filled his side pants pockets with them.
Grabbed the laptop with the software to triangulate the GPS signal implanted in the cell phone he’d given her.
And ran like holy hell on wheels.
Nell kept her face averted in the car, so she didn’t have to see the bodyguard Wesley’s sympathetic glances. Her stores of dignity and restraint had been exhausted by the last scene in Duncan’s apartment. Now all she wanted was to crawl into a hole and stay there.
Funny. That was exactly the scenario she had in store for her, once she collected this letter, if she accepted Duncan’s help. Huddled in a hole. Cloistered in a hotel suite with the blinds drawn. She supposed she should be tough and brave and loftily refuse to do it, but that would mean fleeing New York, starting over. Abandoning everything she’d worked so hard for in the last decade.
But once she got her degree, what could she do with it, if the Fiend was abroad? Even if she changed her name and ran, she would still be barred from teaching literature. Colleges and universities would be the first place any fool would look for her. The Fiend was no fool.
No, it would be waitressing for her, with her new Social Security number, or being a cashier or an office temp. She’d survive, of course. She had so far. But oh, God. All those years of study. All that work.
Nell snorkled back her tears. She had to be practical. Break this problem into pieces, and tackle the pieces one at a time. She could not control the future, but she could do something useful right now.
Finishing her thesis, now. That was within her power. Maybe this awful mess could be an inspiration. After all, the poets she studied were all heart hungry, lovelorn. Bleak despair was the very stuff of creativity. Look at Emily Dickinson, the Brontës. There was a long, noble literary tradition of hunger for love and sex being sublimated into deathless art.
Perhaps, like them, she could salvage something from the wreckage. Transmute pain into useful activity. She was unemployed, homeless, rudderless. Too scared to walk out on the street by herself. Her days would be long, silent, boring. What excuse did she have now not to hunker down and write a kick-ass thesis?
She grabbed her big black shoulder bag and unzipped the central pocket where she kept her laptop. It was not there. She’d forgotten it.
Shit, shit, shit. She blew out a shuddering breath through trembling lips at the idea of having to face Duncan’s rigid face and blazing eyes and cutting remarks again in order to retrieve it.
Maybe she could have it sent over by courier. Uh-huh. With what cash? The cost of that courier would go right onto Duncan’s personal account. Ka-ching, ka-ching. And her debt to him was already crushing her.
Her laptop was gone, but the cell phone he’d given her was there. She picked it up, turned it off. He wasn’t going to call her on it. She slid it into the side pocket of her pants.
Onward. She dragged out the folder where she kept her tattered notes, outlines, and ideas. She pulled a fresh sheet out of her notebook and dug out a pen. She could just scribble. The old-fashioned way.
By the time they pulled up in front of Elsie’s house, she’d roughed out a pretty acceptable main thesis paragraph for “Sex, Desperation, Despair, and Death in Nineteenth-Century Women Poets.” She was even feeling a little bit better, after some useful activity. Hey. If she had to have a broken heart, at least let it be broken to good purpose.
Wesley got out and opened the door for her, peering around the deserted block. Nothing moved on the narrow lane. They climbed up Elsie’s stoop, which was identical in every particular to Lucia’s. She rang the bell, and waited. And waited. She rang again, and then knocked. “Elsie?” she called. “Are you in there? It’s me! Nell!”
Still no answer. Wesley muscled her behind himself, holding up a very large and businesslike-looking pistol.
“Nell?” It was Elsie, all right, though her voice was muffled behind the door. It sounded higher and thinner than usual.
“Elsie?” Nell knocked again. “Is everything okay?”
“Ah…yes, honey, everything’s fine,” Elsie quavered. “Come on…come on in. The door’s unlocked.”
Nell reached for the door handle, but Wesley gently pushed her hand away and pushed the door open himself. She stood on her tiptoes and looked over his bulky shoulder as he peered into the dim interior, through the foyer.
Elsie stood across the room, in the entryway to the kitchen. Wesley started inside just as Nell registered the look on the old lady’s face. The pallor. The stiff, frozen expression. The staring eyes.
She knew that look. She knew that vibe. Oh, God. Oh, no.
“Wait!” She lunged after Wesley’s coat, trying to yank him back—
Thhhpt, the thud of a silenced gun, and Wesley grunted, spun, and crashed heavily to the ground.
The room boiled with black-clad masked men, leaping for her. A burlap bag whipped down over her head. She struggled and screamed in airless darkness that stank of mold and rot, arms and legs flailing—
A sting like an insect bite in her arm, a sickening weakness sweeping through her with horrible quickness—
And it all went away.
Chapter
11