She went to bed so tired that the problems and worries of the day seemed to merge into a single category-things she could not solve without sleep. For a few seconds she thought about the Butcher's Boy. It occurred to her that he was probably traveling again, somewhere alone in a car on the night roads, and she wondered which city he was heading for. And then she was asleep.
At two A.M. she was startled awake. Her mind struggled to the surface, aware that there was some kind of emergency. She had been hearing noises, and there weren't supposed to be noises. Elizabeth sat up, switched on the light by her bed, kicked a little to get the blankets off, and swung her feet to the floor.
A male voice startled her. "Stay right there. Don't move." The voice was sharp, angry, coming from inside her room just on the other side of her bed.
She sat still, not daring to turn around, her eyes squinting in the light. She fought to catch up. The kids had been in the house. Had this man overlooked them? Maybe they'd heard him breaking in and gotten out. Maybe they were on the stairs trying to get out right now. She had to keep him occupied. "Who are you? What do you want in my house?"
"I'm Number One, and wherever I am, I own it. Don't try to do anything. I have a man with your son and one with your daughter. If anything happens, they'll die first."
Her chest felt like it was being crushed. She tried to breathe, but her breaths were quick and shallow, her chest refusing to expand to take in air. Her heart seemed to be pounding harder and harder. "You don't need to harm my children." She had a desperate hope. "Having them can't help you."
"They're not going anywhere," the man said. "This will be a family thing from beginning to end."
"What do you want?"
"The Butcher's Boy. You were with him in L.A. Tell us where he is and get him to come here."
"I don't know where he is," she said. "If I did, he'd already be in jail. I work for the Justice Department."
"We know where you work," he said. "You're not being helpful, so now it's time to get ready for what comes next. Get up slowly and put your hands up."
She slowly stood and turned.
He surged forward instantly, so she hadn't come completely around before he was there, delivering a bare-handed slap to the side of her head. She completed her turn and saw Jim and Amanda at the entrance to the room, each with a man holding a pistol close to their heads.
"Oh, God," she said. "You can't."
"What do you think, guys? Think we can't?"
One of the two men, a man in his late twenties or early thirties with spiked blond hair, answered, "We can do what we want."
Number One said, "You know who's paying us. They want their money's worth. They want him dead, now."
"They're the same people who used to pay him," she said. "I'm sure they're offering a lot because they're really scared. But you're not helping yourselves by coming here."
"Why not?"
"I have no way to know where he is or where he's going. When I left Los Angeles, he was there. When I got home to Washington this afternoon, I learned that after I left he killed two professional shooters in a blue Ford Crown Victoria and then drove it to Pasadena and killed Tony Lazaretti. I'm sure after that he left town."
The three men exchanged a glance, then shifted their feet, as though they were suddenly uncomfortable. "Okay. Let's put the kids in their rooms where they can't get in the way. Keep them separate. I'll take this lady downstairs and find a way to persuade her to help us."
The young one with spiked hair dragged Amanda out the door, and the third, a man in his thirties with a cap of curly black hair and a tattoo on his hand that Elizabeth couldn't quite make out, pushed Jim hard, once, like a punch. They went along the upstairs hallway toward the other bedrooms. The older man, the leader, took Elizabeth to the staircase and down to the first floor. When she reached the bottom, she got a clearer glimpse of him. He was just under six feet, with sandy hair and a body that seemed angular and lean, with sinewy muscles in his forearms. His jaw seemed habitually clenched, and his eyes narrowed. He clutched her arm and brought her through the living room to the little den that she used as an office for paying bills and filing financial papers.
She said, "You must know that I don't have any power over a man like him. I can't make him do anything. He isn't my friend. You could wait forever, and he would probably never come here. I don't have a way of reaching him."
"I have confidence in you."
"He's a professional killer and he doesn't care what happens to people like me."
"I'm not actually going to tell you what to do in this situation, ma'am. Your description of him is probably right. It sounds true, anyway." He leaned closer to her. "If you can understand that much about him, you can probably understand us too. We've taken this contract. When it started, there were six of us. Now there are three. We don't care how this feels to you or what happens to your son or daughter. What we care about is this guy we agreed to kill. We want you to help us get him."
"How?"
"Like I said, I'm not going to tell you what to do. It's up to you to find a way."
"But I just told you I don't know how. I tried to persuade him to give the department information in exchange for protection. He won't talk to me because he's positive he can kill anyone who comes after him."
"Good for him. I'm going to give you time to think about what I want. But I also want you to think about us for a little while. We've killed people too. I've done a lot of them in different ways, in different places. If I have to leave you and your kids gutted like fish, I promise you I'll never lose a second of sleep over it. But I can make this an unhappy night without killing them. What are their fingers worth to you? Their eyes?"
"Please," she said. "Don't even say that." For the first time she felt helpless panic. She could form no plan, no idea of how to prevent, or even delay, this horror.
He shook his head. "I don't get any pleasure out of doing those things, or any pain either. My friend up there has already said he wants to spend a couple of hours with your daughter. In a few minutes I may tell him it's okay. While you listen to her scream, you can think about how to give me what I want before he kills her."
Maybe this was a nightmare. Was she caught in that hellish moment before the relief would flood in and she'd realize that none of it ever happened? No. If she was thinking of the possibility, then it should already be over. She was so frightened that her breathing didn't seem to be giving her any oxygen. Her arms and legs felt as though the motor neurons had been severed. She could feel them, but she couldn't get them to move.
"I can go online and find out if he's been seen anywhere since Los Angeles, or if something happened anywhere else that could be his work."
"That's a start," said the man. "I have to warn you, though. If I think you're sending a distress signal or something, I'll bring everybody down here and go to work on you in front of the kids."
She said, "My laptop is in my briefcase."
"Go ahead."
She went around him to get to the briefcase in the living room. She had gotten a better look at him in the office. He was slightly taller than average, with a bony quality-shoulders that weren't heavily muscled but square, like machined parts. His forearms, hands, and feet seemed large, his fingers long, with knotty red knuckles. His face was fair, but it had a reddish tint in some places, and he had a bony jaw and wrinkles at the eyes, as though he had spent time squinting into the sun. The eyes themselves were a flat, faded brown, and his hair a coarse, dirty blond. He spoke what she thought of as the enlisted man's dialect. Somewhere at the back of it was an accent that was vaguely southern.