Rudy fell off the Nautilus machine. She quickly knelt, preparing to turn him and retrieve the .40 S&W from his shoulder holster.
Somewhere in the distance, a toilet flushed.
Liz’s numb right hand pulled Rudy onto his side. Her fingers seemed not to belong to her as she tugged at the pistol in his holster.
The pistol didn’t move.
“Rudy, is something wrong?” Max said.
She pulled harder with her senseless fingers, but the pistol was snagged on Rudy’s coat.
Heavy footsteps approached on the other side of the door.
No time.
Pressing the knife to her side to keep from dropping it, she rushed toward the iPhone on the desk and swept it into the pocket of her jogging jacket.
As if the dogs of hell were on her heels, she dashed up the stairs and through a huge room with an immense stone fireplace and antlered deer heads on the walls. Fumbling, she unbolted the front door and rushed outside. The van in which they’d brought her was still parked in front. But when she reached it, she saw that the keys weren’t in the ignition switch.
A thick mountain mist drifted around her.
Chilled, she raced into it.
“LET’S GO, ASSHOLE,” SIMON SAID. “Your sister’s waiting for you.”
Demidov clutched the gash in his cheek, as blood dripped past his fingers.
Simon tore a sheet of paper from a notepad, crumpled it, and shoved it into the pocket that held the nosy cell phone. Whenever he moved, the crumpled paper would scrape against the phone, sounding like bad reception, making it difficult for anyone to hear what he and Demidov said.
“Yeah, I can’t wait,” Demidov rumbled. “Lead me to her.”
He whipped the gun barrel against Demidov’s other cheek. “First we need to have an understanding.”
“Goddamn you.” Demidov lurched back against the wall. “If you didn’t have that gun—”
“But I do.” Simon grabbed the ring of keys that he’d noticed next to the cell phone earlier. “Move.”
Demidov walked ahead, passing the sofa and coffee table, and opened a far door. A black sedan occupied half of a garage. Simon touched the button on the key fob that unlatched the trunk. Seeing the trunk lid rise, Demidov stiffened, whirled, and lunged hard and fast, his shoulder slamming into Simon’s chest, throwing both of them back against a workbench. Simon grabbed Demidov around the neck and shoved the muzzle of the pistol into his ear.
“You know what you have to do,” he told him. “Get in the trunk.”
“Bite my—”
He screwed the muzzle into Demidov’s ear. “Maybe you’d like to bite this. If you get in the damned trunk, I’ll let you talk to your sister.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Oh, I definitely want to talk to her.”
“Move slowly,” Simon ordered.
He relaxed his grip around Demidov’s neck and eased the gun away from his ear. Without taking his eyes off Simon, Demidov stepped back, then crawled into the trunk. Simon saw a roll of duct tape on a bench and threw it to him. “Wrap this around your ankles.”
“Why don’t you wrap it around your—”
He picked up a length of pipe and whacked the Russian.
“All right. All right.”
As Demidov bound his legs together with the duct tape, Simon removed the phone from his pocket. After activating the video camera, he focused on the blood-smeared face.
“What time is it?” Simon demanded.
“Time? Why the hell does that matter?”
“Believe me, it does.” He aimed the pistol and the camera. “Tell your sister what time it is, or I’ll use this pipe to break your knees.”
“When this is over—” Demidov glared at his watch, telling the camera, “Twelve twenty-eight. Marta, I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s batshit crazy. You’ve really screwed up this time.”
“Marta? Thanks for telling me her name.”
Simon ended the video and sent it.
“Now what?”
“Roll onto your stomach.” He jabbed Demidov with the pipe. “Put your wrists behind your back.”
No sooner did he finish taping the guy’s arms behind him than the phone buzzed.
“Hi, Marta,” he said, mimicking the tone of an old friend. “The good news is that no matter how bad your brother looks, a minute ago he was still alive.”
“You’ll never see your fiancée again unless you release him.”
Marta’s voice sounded worried.
“I always assumed you’d kill her, so I’m not losing anything.” He climbed into the car. “The thing is, that works the other way around too. You’ll never see your brother again, unless you release my fiancée. So from this point on, I suggest you treat Liz gently. Because I swear to you, Marta, whatever you do to her, I’ll do to your brother.”
He pushed a button on a garage-door opener attached to the car’s sun visor. The door rumbled open and gray daylight filled the garage.
“I’m moving the timetable up,” he told her. “Five p.m. That’s the new deadline for the exchange.” He backed the car out of the garage and drove off along the quiet street. “At the Lincoln Memorial. Lots of witnesses if you try something stupid.”
“I’ll need more time than that.”
“While you track me? Using the GPS on the phone you gave me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hang on a second.” Simon stopped the car across from a small park where city workers were gathering trash bags. He accessed the call history of the phone he’d been given and memorized the number it was linked to. Then he called that number, but this time he used his own phone. “Marta, that buzz you hear is me. It’s coming from my personal phone. Answer it.”
She sounded confused, but did as he instructed.
He resumed driving, came abreast of the city’s open-backed truck, and tossed her phone among the garbage bags.
“I’m untethered, Marta,” he said into his own phone. “Five o’clock. The Lincoln Memorial. Don’t forget. Anything you do to Liz, I’ll do to your brother.”
IN THE BACK OFFICE OF a dry cleaner’s shop in McLean, Virginia, a tall woman with long blond hair, intense blue eyes, and strong Slavic features pressed the End button on her phone. She was in her midthirties and might have been considered a beauty if not for the cruelty around her mouth. She stared at a monitor where a pulsing green dot in Tysons Corner no longer moved. In the front of the shop, steam presses hissed and machines rumbled, but she barely heard them or registered the chemical smell that permeated the office.
Her brother had laughed at her when she’d suggested buying the business and using it as one of their fronts.
“What’s so funny?” she’d asked.
“Don’t you get it? Dry cleaning. That’s what needs to happen to all the cash we bring in from the drugs and the gambling and the whores. We should buy a couple of laundries also. Just don’t screw this up like you did when you bought those restaurants that gave people food poisoning.”
Marta kept staring at the pulsing dot.
She heard the voices of what seemed to be workmen talking about the unusual amount of trash they’d picked up in a park. Obviously Simon Childs had thrown away the phone he’d been given and was now using his own.
Could she trust him not to have police and FBI agents positioned near the Memorial?
Hardly.
“Let’s see how much you love your fiancée,” she muttered.
She pressed the button for the phone at the hunting lodge.
MAX OPENED THE DOOR.
“Rudy, what were you shouting about?”
He tensed when he saw the streaks of blood across the floor and then Rudy’s body slumped next to the Nautilus machine.