Tell No One, стр. 39

"Have they established a time for the murder yet?"

"Around midnight. Their timetable is a little tight, but they figure you took off right after I left."

"Okay," I said. "I need you to do something for me."

"Name it."

"First off, you have to pick up Chloe."

"Your dog?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"For one thing," I said, "she needs a walk."

Eric Wu spoke on his cell phone. "He's on the phone, but my man can't get close enough."

"Did he make your guy?"

"Possibly."

"Maybe he's calling off the meet then."

Wu did not reply. He watched as Dr. Beck pocketed his cell phone and started crossing through the park.

"We have a problem," Wu said.

"What?"

"It appears as though he's leaving the park."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Wu waited.

"We lost him before," Gandle said.

Wu did not reply.

"We can't risk it, Eric. Grab him. Grab him now, find out what he knows, and end it."

Eric nodded a signal in the direction of the van. He started walking toward Beck. "Done."

I headed past the park's statue of Garibaldi unsheathing his sword. Strangely enough, I had a destination in mind. Forget visiting KillRoy, that was out for now. But the PF from Elizabeth's diary, aka Peter Flannery, ambulance-chaser-at-law, was another matter. I could still get to his office and have a chat with him. I had no idea what I would learn. But I'd be doing something. That would be a start.

A playground was nestled up on my right, but there were fewer than a dozen children in there. On my left, "George's Dog Park," a glorified doggy run, was chock-full of bandanna-clad canines and their parental alternatives. On the park's stage, two men juggled. I walked past a group of poncho-sheathed students sitting in a semicircle. A dyed-blond Asian man built like the Thing from the Fantastic Four glided to my right. I glanced behind me. The man who'd been reading the newspaper was gone.

I wondered about that.

He had been there almost the whole time I was. Now, after several hours, he decided to leave at the exact time I did. Coincidence? Probably.

You'll be followed…

That was what the email had said. It didn't say maybe. It seemed, in hindsight, pretty sure of itself. I kept walking and thought about it a little more. No way. The best tail in the world wouldn't have stuck with me after what I'd just been through today.

The guy with the newspaper couldn't have been following me. At least, I couldn't imagine it.

Could they have intercepted the email?

I couldn't see how. I'd erased it. It had never even been on my own computer.

I crossed Washington Square West. When I reached the curb, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Gentle at first. Like an old friend sneaking up behind me. I turned and had enough time to see it was the Asian guy with the dyed hair.

Then he squeezed my shoulder.

Chapter 31

His fingers bore into the joint's crevice like spearheads.

Pain – crippling pain – slashed down my left side. My legs gave out. I tried to scream or fight, but I couldn't move. A white van swung up next to us. The side door slid open. The Asian guy moved his hand onto my neck. He squeezed the pressure points on either side, and my eyes started rolling back. With his other hand, he toyed with my spine and I bent forward. I felt myself folding up.

He shoved me toward the van. Hands reached from inside the back and dragged me in. I landed on the cool metal floor. No seats in here. The door closed. The van pulled back into the traffic.

The whole episode – from the hand touching my shoulder to the van starting up – took maybe five seconds.

The Glock, I thought.

I tried to reach for it, but someone leapt on my back. My hands were pinned down. I heard a snap, and my right arm was cuffed at the wrist to the floorboard. They flipped me over, nearly ripping my shoulder out of the socket. Two of them. I could see them now. Two men, both white, maybe thirty years old. I could see them clearly. Too clearly. I could identify them. They would have to know that.

This wasn't good.

They cuffed my other hand so I was spread-eagle on the floorboard. Then they sat on my legs. I was chained down now and totally exposed.

"What do you want?" I asked.

No one answered. The van pulled to a quick stop around the corner. The big Asian guy slid in, and the van started up again. He bent down, gazing at me with what looked like mild curiosity.

"Why were you at the park?" he asked me.

His voice threw me. I had expected something growling or menacing, but his tone was gentle, high-pitched, and creepily childlike.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He slammed his fist in my gut. He punched me so hard, I was sure his knuckles scraped the van floor. I tried to bend or crumple into a ball, but the restraints and the men sitting on my legs made that impossible. Air. All I wanted was air. I thought that I might throw up.

You'll be followed…

All the precautions – the unsigned emails, the code words, the warnings – they all made sense now. Elizabeth was afraid. I didn't have all the answers yet – hell, I barely had any of them – but I finally understood that her cryptic communications were a result of fear. Fear of being found.

Found by these guys.

I was suffocating. Every cell in my body craved oxygen. Finally, the Asian nodded at the other two men. They got off my legs. I snapped my knees toward my chest. I tried to gather some air, thrashing around like an epileptic. After a while, my breath came back. The Asian man slowly kneeled closer to me. I kept my eyes steady on his. Or, at least, I tried to. It wasn't like staring into the eyes of a fellow human being or even an animal. These were the eyes of something inanimate. If you could look into the eyes of a file cabinet, this would be what it felt like.

But I did not blink.

He was young too, my captor – no more than twenty, twenty five tops. He put his hand on the inside of my arm, right above the elbow. "Why were you in the park?" he asked again in his singsong way.

"I like the park," I said.

He pressed down hard. With just two fingers. I gasped. The fingers knifed through my flesh and into a bundle of nerves. My eyes started to bulge. I had never known pain like this. It shut down everything. I flailed like a dying fish on the end of a hook. I tried to kick, but my legs landed like rubber bands. I couldn't breathe.

He wouldn't let go.

I kept expecting him to release the grip or let up a bit. He didn't. I started making small whimpering sounds. But he held on, his expression one of boredom.

The van kept going. I tried to ride out the pain, to break it down into intervals or something. But that didn't work. I needed relief. Just for a second. I needed him to let go. But he remained stone like He kept looking at me with those empty eyes. The pressure built in my head. I couldn't speak – even if I wanted to tell him what he wanted to know, my throat had shut down. And he knew that.

Escape the pain. That was all I could think about. How could I escape the pain? My entire being seemed to focus and converge on that nerve bundle in my arm. My body felt on fire, the pressure in my skull building.

With my head seconds from exploding, he suddenly released his grip. I gasped again, this time in relief. But it was shortlived. His hand began to snake down to my lower abdomen and stopped.

"Why were you in the park?"

I tried to think, to conjure up a decent lie. But he didn't give me time. He pinched deeply, and the pain was back, somehow worse than before. His finger pierced my liver like a bayonet. I started bucking against the restraints. My mouth opened in a silent scream.