“Definitely won’t work now. She told him to take the battery out.”
Wald yanked at his hair, as if trying to pull the answer out of his head. “I just don’t understand how they could get out.”
“I don’t either,” said his techie. “I gave the manager twenty bucks to let me look inside one of the rooms, just like you asked me to. There’s only one way in and one way out-and that’s the front door.”
“This has to be a ruse. They must still be in there.”
Wald flung open the passenger’s-side door, jumped from the van, and ran across the street toward the motel, hurdling over the concrete barrier that separated the divided highway. He stopped at Olivia’s car and laid his hand on the hood. It was cold; the car hadn’t moved since they’d pulled up last night. He went to room 107 and put his ear to the door. Silence.
They can’t be gone!
He wanted to bang down the door and find out for sure, but if it turned out that they were still inside, what would he say when Cantella answered the door? He needed another plan. A maid’s cart was two doors down. He ran to it and found the housekeeper making the bed inside room 103.
“Come quick!” he said. “I think my friend in room 107 is sick!”
She paused.
“Come!” said Wald. “You have to open the door.”
She followed him out to room 107. Wald retreated a few steps and waited in the doorway to room 103, behind the maid’s cart, where he would be out of sight when the door opened. The maid knocked on the door to 107.
No answer.
“Open it!” Wald said, speaking in a hurried whisper.
She knocked again, harder this time. Still no answer.
“Open the damn door!” he said, his whisper even more urgent.
The housekeeper was getting nervous and more than a little suspicious. “I’ll get the manager,” she said.
Wald cursed under his breath as she walked away. Every fiber in his body was telling him Cantella had somehow escaped, but he had to see with his own eyes. He went to the window. The drapes were drawn, making it impossible to peer inside. He tried the knob, but it was locked. He put his shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge.
The maid’s cart was still in front of room 103. He went to it, grabbed a large bath towel, and pulled the gun from his jacket. With the weapon in hand and his finger on the trigger, he wrapped the towel around it, aimed it at the lock, and fired once. The makeshift sound suppressor reduced the noise level to that of a cap gun, and the lock was destroyed. He pushed open the door and burst into the room. The gaping hole in the back of the closet immediately told the story.
“Son of a bitch!”
He tossed the powder-burned towel aside, tucked away the gun, and dialed Burn.
“Cantella’s on the move,” said Wald. “She called him and said to meet at the Dairy Queen.”
“Which one?”
“The one in North Bergen.”
“What street?”
Wald struggled, no more information. “Hell if I know.”
Wald could hear Burn’s keyboard clacking in the background. It took less than thirty seconds.
“It’s on Kennedy Avenue,” said Burn.
“You want me to meet you there?” asked Wald.
“No,” said Burn, a certain finality in his voice. “I’ve got it.”
55
BECAUSE OF ITS LOCATION ON THE HUDSON RIVER-ON RIVER Road near the George Washington Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, and major highways-Palisades Medical Center in New Bergen had one of the busiest emergency departments in New Jersey. Nearly thirty thousand patients came each year for lifesaving care.
No one came for ice cream-and neither did I.
Meet me at the DQ was a reference to the weird dream I’d shared with Ivy right before asking her to marry me-the one about the SUV running me off the road, forcing me to rush my dog to the DQ for emergency medical treatment. Ivy had conveyed her instructions to me in code, alert to the fact that Mallory’s cell was probably being monitored. “Meet me at the DQ in North Bergen” meant “meet me at the ER,” and the closest one to an actual DQ was at Palisades.
By my calculations, Ian Burn was having a hot fudge sundae as we spoke.
“You came to the right place,” she said.
I was standing by the vending machine in the crowded waiting room when the voice had come from behind me. I recognized it right away, but when I turned in response, the face wasn’t exactly the one I had remembered. She sensed my confusion.
“Rhinoplasty,” she said, turning to show me her profile. “Pretty nice work, no?”
She’d cut her hair and darkened it, too, returning to the color I’d seen in the photograph online-but it was Ivy, and instinctively I grabbed her and nearly squeezed her to death.
It’s hard for me to say how long we stayed in each other’s arms. Long-term memories were powerful forces, and just the smell of her hair seemed to unleash an emotional rush that-for a moment, at least-let me forget the circumstances of our reunion. I was remembering things that I had yet to realize I’d forgotten. The ease of our embrace. The warmth of her face against mine. How good her hands felt on my shoulder blades. The first coherent thought to bring me back to earth was a tinge of guilt-a thought about Mallory, about our pending divorce. I pushed that aside as irrelevant, but the magic was slipping away. I was slowly coming back the to harsh reality of the huge problems at hand.
“Your grandparents are safe,” she said, as we separated.
We were standing face-to-face, her fingers still loosely intertwined with mine, oblivious to the typical ER commotion around us-the boys playing soccer with a balled-up wad of white medical tape, the sneezing and coughing old man in the corner with the vomit bucket in his lap, the moaning construction worker with the bloody rag wrapped around his smashed finger.
“You met them at the airport?” I said.
“Intercepted, I guess, is a better word for it. McVee uses any pressure point he can. Family and loved ones are at the top of his list. I was afraid that if he got hold of your grandparents, you’d be at his mercy.”
“Where are they?”
“The FBI is protecting them.”
“According to your mother, you went into hiding because the FBI couldn’t protect you. Why would you put my grandparents in their hands?”
“They’re tertiary targets who don’t know anything. McVee won’t go to the same trouble to track them down as he would to find me-or you, for that matter.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
“Plus, this time I have leverage,” she said.
“What kind of leverage?”
“If the FBI screws up, I blow the lid on Mallory’s friend Andrea-who, by the way, is an FBI agent.”
It was clear from her tone that Ivy was expecting a serious show of surprise from me. But I wasn’t so shocked. Little things had always made Andrea seem different from Mallory’s other friends-the way she wolfed down pasta at Carmine’s, the blond-in-a-bottle dye job, the way she’d pressed for names when I told her about short sellers. All along, something about her didn’t meet the eye.
One thing still didn’t make sense.
“How did you know my grandparents were going to the airport?”
She sighed and said, “There’s something you should know about me.”
“You think?” I said with a mirthless chuckle.
She smiled a little, then led me to a quiet corner of the room where her coat was hanging on the back of a chair. She sat me down, pulled her coat back on, and took a seat facing me.
“I’ve been monitoring your limo driver’s wireless communications.”
“What the hell?” I said, shaking my head. “Am I the last guy on earth who doesn’t know how to listen to other people’s cell conversations?”
“Cell conversations, text messages, e-mails-none of it’s private. All it takes is simple spyware that you can buy on the Internet. The more sophisticated programs don’t even require me to touch your phone for setup. I just plug in the number, program it, and I can see every message you send or receive, and listen to every conversation you have. I can even program my device to ring every time you use your phone, so I don’t have to sit around monitoring you. The only way to break the connection is to remove the battery from the targeted phone.”