the north side of Broadway, where he’d hot-wired a defenseless, decade-old Ford Taurus. He’d then cut west, heading out of town before looping back on the turnpike, on the lookout for any blue-and-whites. He’d parked in an inconspicuous corner on the backlot of a small shopping center around the corner from the hotel and walked the rest of the way.
He stood by the window of his room, watching the city as it sprang to life. It was another overcast, wintery day, the sun struggling to break through the pasty-gray cloud cover. He lay down on his bed, his muscles and nerves ravaged by tension and fatigue. He hadn’t slept, and his body was crying out for a break. He hadn’t put it through such a ringer for years. But he knew that would have to wait. He opted instead for a long, hot shower to reinvigorate him and help settle his mind. It bought him a renewed, if rapidly dwindling, lease on life. Twenty minutes later, he was back at a workstation in the austere and windowless business center.
He used the white pages’ website to do a reverse listings search on the phone number he got off Bellinger’s answering machine. The number yielded the curious name of Csaba Komlosy, with a home address—no surprises there—in the same geek-central catchment area straddling Harvard and MIT that Bellinger—and Danny—lived in. He thought about calling him. According to his message, he and Bellinger had been discussing what was happening in Antarctica just before Bellinger had met Matt, and Matt sensed that this Csaba—he wasn’t sure how to pronounce it—could fill in some of the blanks. He decided against making that call. The goon squad seemed to be avid wiretappers. A face-to-face would be better anyway. He jotted down the address, an apartment by the sound of it, clicked on the map link for a more accurate read of its location, then, deciding he couldn’t duck it anymore, pulled up the website of the Boston Globe and hit the link for the local, breaking news section.
It was the first item.
His face contorted with sadness—and rage.
The report wasn’t long. A stabbing. Close to a bar in South Boston, shortly after midnight. They’d identified the body as Bellinger’s. There was a brief mention of a brawl in the nearby bar, but nothing more. A murder investigation was under way.
The report didn’t mention Matt—yet. But he knew there’d be more to come on that front.
They’d make sure of it.
He exhaled heavily, rubbed some alertness into his face, and re-read the article. Its dry, clinical words pushed a caustic bile of anger up to his throat, burning him with their finality. His fists hovered over the keyboard, clenched bloodless-white tight, as he summoned up every drop of restraint inside him to keep from bashing it against the desk and ripping the whole workstation to shreds.
It was that simple for these bastards. They could just pluck someone off the street, cut him open, dump him in the snow, and move on to their next assignment without batting an eyelid. A man’s life—an innocent, decent man’s life, snuffed out in its prime, and all because of what . . . a phone call? An idea?
Matt was boiling.
He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing his fury to subside. A moment later, he raised his concentration back to the screen, keyed in the homepage of his tracker, and logged in.
The Chrysler was no longer outside his place.
A detailed map displayed the car’s itinerary in thirty-second increments. Backtracking to the first movement that his GPS tracker had registered, Matt saw that the goons had finally given up their stake-out—or, he thought, merely passed the baton to the next team—almost an hour ago. Which, he noted, was after he’d made it out of Bellinger’s place. He wondered if that meant that they were already aware of his little excursion to Cambridge. If they were, it meant they had insights into police activity, either through radio scanners or courtesy of someone inside the department. He made a mental note of it and zoomed in on the Chrysler’s current location.
It was parked on a street in Brighton, not far from St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, and hadn’t moved for twenty-three minutes. The tracker’s website featured a built-in link-up with Google Maps. Matt clicked on the “street view” option, moved the little orange avatar to the Chrysler’s current location, and clicked again. A wide-angle shot popped up, as clear and detailed as if