Evan struggled furiously against the straps, but they were designed for precisely this purpose. The needle slid into his arm.
René smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m just going to give you a single dr—”
Evan felt a slight pressure in his vein and then watched René’s mouth continue to open more slowly than seemed conceivably possible, each millimeter taking an hour, two hours, and the end of the spoken word pulled out and out, stretched from a block of steel into a thin metal wire, a sound and a vibration, the endless tunnel of the o like a wormhole through the ages, and over the forever-gaping mouth René started to blink, but the movement of his eyelids was like the rise and fall of a lake’s watermark across the seasons, limitless microseconds crammed between microseconds, the creased skin around his eyes rearranging infinitesimally, a universe of motion contained in a single blink until at last, after a day’s grueling wait, Evan could see the thin blue veins etched in his closed lids and he knew it would be another day for them to open yet again, and the word was not yet completed, the wrinkled lips still closing the o into the p even as another sound overpowered the slow-motion hum of René’s voice, a buzz slowed to its constituent audio parts, and Evan pulled his gaze to the source, but the shifting of his eyeballs felt like altering the course of a freight ship, ligaments and muscles flexing and tugging to recalibrate his view excruciatingly, until at last he fixed upon the bottle flying airborne over René, its hairlike bristles waving sluggishly on its metallic green thorax, its wings flapping so gradually that Evan could see the quality of light alter through the semitransparent wings that were embellished with intricate patterns to put any stained-glass window to shame, and the whole horrifying, unfettered, attenuated time, Evan’s mind raced inside his skull at a real, frantic pace, alive and horror-filled, scrambling like a mouse trapped in a bowl of water, desperate, so desperate to get—
He jerked his head back into the pillow, a breath screeching through his lungs. His muscles had knotted from neck to calves, arching his body against the restraints. He turned his head to the side and vomited, warmth drooling across his cheek onto the sheets.
“I’ll do it,” he said, in a voice so hoarse he didn’t recognize it as his own. “I’ll wire the money.”
43
Unleash Hell
Evan sat before the monitor in the study on the fourth floor, his hands on the keyboard. The computer was brand-new; he’d watched Xalbador remove it from the box. That it was air-gapped, having never been hooked into the Internet, was helpful, but whatever cloaking and encryption software René had in place to hide the wire transfers would not be as impenetrable and untraceable as those Evan used. He’d learned at the elbows of the best technical security specialists in the world.
As had Van Sciver.
Van Sciver had a team of them in his employ now and more data-mining capabilities than René could possibly dream of.
Click a single button and unleash hell.
Maybe unleashing hell was the only shot Evan had left.
The heated vent above breathed warmth down his neck, making him break out in a sweat. Or was it fear, only now worming its way out through his skin? He’d spent so many years safe in obscurity, unseen and unexamined. Now the carefully positioned boulder he’d been hiding beneath was about to be rolled back, his life exposed to a blinding light.
He thought about the infinity he’d spent strapped to the gurney, an infinity that had lasted precisely two flaps of a blowfly’s wings.
He looked over at René, a last-ditch effort. “You don’t want me to do this.”
René smiled, folded his hands. “I don’t?”
“The wrong people will come. You will not be happy.”
“I’ve done this a time or two,” René said. “My procedures are completely secure.”
Evan said, “You don’t have any comprehension of what secure is.”
René snapped his fingers. With extreme caution Dex handed him a syringe. The clear, viscous liquid rippled inside. A single drop had nearly undone Evan. He couldn’t imagine what horrors a full injection would bring.
Taking a deep breath, he keyed a series of pass codes into the Privatbank AG Web site. He paused. “Once I click this button, I can’t control what will happen.”
René jammed the needle into the side of Evan’s neck. He brought his ruddy face close, sweat drops clinging to the points of his hair. He spoke through locked teeth. “I am done negotiating.”
Evan felt the twenty-one-gauge stainless-steel tube embedded in his neck. A half-inch movement of René’s thumb and he’d be trapped in an eternity of suffering.
He felt something leak out of him. The last of what he had.
He closed his eyes. Tapped the mouse. The loading wheel spun, and then a whoosh indicated that the money had gone.
René eased the needle out of Evan’s neck, and Evan allowed himself a quiet exhalation. He stared at the screen. WIRE SENT.
“What’s coming won’t be worth twenty-seven million dollars,” he said.
René turned to Dex. “Put this animal back in its cage.”
Dex seized Evan, yanking him to his feet and shoving him toward the door.
“At last,” Evan said, “we’re calling things what they are.”
44
Celebration
René stood before the picture window of the master bedroom, hands clasped at the small of his back, watching snow flurry against the pane. It occurred to him that it was a pose suited to a Cassaroy. Regal and imposing, spine held straight enough to disguise that two-inch deviation. An artist could come along and paint an oil of him planted here victoriously, an oil that would have been worthy to hang alongside portraits of Cassaroys past that sobered the grand halls of his childhood manor.
And yet.
He had a niggling sense that it wasn’t time to rest on his laurels. He’d prevailed in the battle, sure, but there was a greater war to be won.
He felt a stirring, the sensation he got when he was closing in on a financial trail, readying for the kill. He closed his eyes, sensed the data shifting, so many bits and pieces, a pattern almost discernible just beneath the surface.
Behind him David stirred in the silk sheets, exhausted from the day’s travails. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Our guest is clearly not who I thought he was,” René said, watching the snow shape-shift outside. “But I think he’s something even bigger than I imagined.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” René said, finally turning. The rungs of David’s stomach muscles stood out like something artificial, something poured from a mold. René was surprised by how little the sight aroused him. His office awaited. There were queries to be made, baited hooks to be tossed into the Deep Web. He walked past David, heading for the door. “But I’m going to start digging.”
The women’s bathroom in Mexico City International Airport smelled of disinfectant and Montezuma’s revenge. Candy wet a wad of paper towels in the sink and retreated behind a stall door. She peeled off her shirt and bra, the fabric clinging to her burn scars, then gingerly patted her weeping back with the damp towels. She allowed herself to grit her teeth but did not make a noise.
Relief was relative.
The pain was so constant that she sometimes forgot it was there. But not after an eighteen-hour flight spent leaning against a scratchy polyester seat cover.
Sitting next to Jaggers had only added to the agony. She hated everything about him. His stink. His jaundiced skin that under the yellow glow of the reading light looked like dried papaya. How he sucked his teeth after eating instead of using a toothpick.