“For the time being. He’s making weird little snuffling sounds. May have a brain injury. I hit him hard, felt I had to. He’s a big one.”
He’s trying to freak me out. He doesn’t want me thinking, just reacting.
“He’s bleeding quite a bit,” Ondowsky continues. “Head-wounds, you know. But it’s pretty cold, and I’m sure that will aid the clotting. Speaking of cold, let’s stop fucking around. Give me the code unless you want me to twist her arm again, and this time I’ll dislocate it.”
“Four-seven-five-three,” Holly says. What choice?
13
The man does indeed have a knife: black handle, long white blade. Holding Barbara by one arm—the one he hurt—he points the tip of the knife at the lock pad. “Do the honors, girlfriend.”
Barbara pushes the numbers, waits for the green light, then opens the door. “Can we put Jerome inside? I can drag him.”
“I’m sure you could,” the man says, “but no. He looks like a chill dude. We’ll just let him chill a little more.”
“He’ll freeze to death!”
“Girlfriend, you’ll bleed to death if you don’t get a move on.”
No, you won’t kill me, Barbara thinks. At least not until you get what you want.
But he could hurt her. Put out one of her eyes. Flay her cheek open. Cut off an ear. His knife looks very sharp.
She goes in.
14
Holly stands in the open door of the Finders Keepers office, looking down the hall. Her muscles thrum with adrenaline; her mouth is as dry as a desert stone. She holds her position when she hears the elevator start down. She can’t hit execute on the program she has running until it comes back up.
I have to save Barbara, she thinks. Jerome too, unless he’s beyond help.
She hears the elevator stop on the ground floor. Then, after an eternity, it starts up again. Holly steps backward, her eyes not leaving the closed elevator doors at the end of the hall. Her phone is lying beside the computer’s mousepad. She slips it into the left front pocket of her pants, then looks down just long enough to position the cursor over EXECUTE.
She hears a scream. It’s muffled by the rising elevator car, but it’s a girl’s scream. It’s Barbara.
My fault.
All my fault.
15
The man who hurt Jerome takes Barbara by the arm, like a guy escorting his best girl into the ballroom where the big dance is going on. He hasn’t relieved her of her purse (or ignored it, more likely), and the metal detector gives a feeble beep when they pass through, probably from her phone. Her captor ignores it. They pass the stairwell that until lately was used every day by the Frederick Building’s resentful residents, then enter the lobby. Outside the door, in another world, Christmas shoppers are passing to and fro with their bags and packages.
I was out there, Barbara marvels. Just five minutes ago, when things were still all right. When I still foolishly believed I had a life ahead of me.
The man pushes the elevator button. They hear the sound of the descending car.
“How much money were you supposed to pay her?” Barbara asks. Beneath her fear, she feels a dull disappointment that Holly would deal with this man at all.
“Doesn’t matter now,” he says, “because I’ve got you. Girlfriend.”
The elevator stops. The doors open. The robo-voice welcomes them to the Frederick Building. “Going up,” it says. The doors shut. The car begins to rise.
The man lets go of Barbara, takes off his furry Russian hat, drops it between his shoes, and lifts his hands in a magician’s flourish. “Watch this. I think you’ll like it, and our Ms. Gibney certainly deserves to see it, since it’s what made all this trouble in the first place.”
What happens next is horrible beyond Barbara’s previous understanding of the word. In a movie it could be dismissed as no more than a cool special effect, but this is real life. A ripple runs up the round middle-aged face. It starts at the chin and rises not past the mouth but through it. The nose wavers, the cheeks stretch, the eyes shimmer, the forehead contracts. Then, suddenly, the whole head turns to semi-transparent jelly. It quivers and shimmies and sags and pulses. Inside it are confused tangles of writhing red stuff. Not blood; that red stuff is full of flocking black specks. Barbara shrieks and falls back against the wall of the elevator. Her legs fail her. Her purse slips off her shoulder and thumps to the floor.