“My pleasure, I assure you. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to be free for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Sure. My treat.” She couldn’t see the figure anymore. How soon before one of the searchers reached them? A minute? Five minutes?
“Nonsense! I insist on paying.”
“Okay, fine. Do you have the code?”
“Do you mind if I put down the phone so I can type with both hands?”
“No, no. Please do.”
“I don’t wish to be rude.”
Allie fought back the urge to scream. “Really, it’s totally, completely fine. Put it down now.”
There was a rattling noise as he put the phone on some hard surface, followed by the intermittent faint clatter of a computer keyboard. She could hear Rajiv muttering to himself and humming a Britney Spears tune.
Seconds dragged by, each weighted down with unbearable tension. If she knew how to pray, she would.
A scuffing noise and the sound of footsteps nearby. Ed leaned close to her other ear. “We gotta get outta here!”
She nodded. There was a door about twenty feet away that stood ajar. The three of them crept toward it, darting from the stack of crates to a row of barrels to a pile of pipe—whatever offered cover.
They were outside! They stood in the white glare of the naked high-wattage bulbs, exposed and blinded. Allie shielded her eyes and blinked until the painful brilliance began to resolve into recognizable shapes.
She grabbed Ed’s arm and pointed toward the gate. They ran toward it, squinting and half stumbling.
She held the phone to her mouth. “Rajiv!” Nothing. They’d be spotted in seconds if she didn’t get that code. “Rajiv! ”
Clattering noise. “Yes, what is it, Allie?”
“Do you have the code?”
“Almost… one moment.”
They were at the gate now. She stopped and looked back as Ed and Mitch caught up. No pursuit. Yet.
More humming and typing in her ear, then, “Ah, here we are. The code is 2583. Did you get that?”
“Yeah, 2583.” She punched in the numbers as she spoke. “Thanks, Rajiv. I owe—”
A clanging alarm cut her off. It hammered in her ears and in her skull.
She yanked at the gate, but the rubber-coated handle wouldn’t budge. She punched in the numbers again, hit the pound sign, and pulled the handle a second time.
Ed cursed and pointed back toward the warehouse. “Here they come!”
“Rajiv! The gate won’t open! What do I do?”
He said something she couldn’t hear over the alarm.
“What? I can’t hear you!”
“You are going to die. Truly I am sorry.”
An awful empty space opened in her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“You asked what happened to Franklin Roh. You’re about to find out.”
63
THE WORLD SEEMED SURREAL TO CONNOR AS HE WALKED OUT OF THE Slanted Door. A casual observer might see a man walking out of a restaurant, but in reality he had just walked out of his life. Behind him lay the past seven years—no, more than that. It wasn’t just the time; it was the career as a big firm lawyer, the mold he had chosen to pour himself into when he decided against politics. All that was gone, swept away by a few words spoken over Vietnamese food.
In front of him lay—what? He looked around at the uncertain night, full of bright, disjointed lights and domed by foreboding black. Streams of people and cars swept past, moving in unison, but not traveling together. They were autumn leaves, carried by a common wind and drifting together, but always separate and alone.
Where would he go now? What would he do? The future is always hidden in the hand of God, but sometimes that hand is more visible than others. Tonight it was utterly invisible to him.
He shook himself. His task for the immediate future was clear enough: find a payphone. Amazing how those had virtually vanished from city streets—especially when you needed one.
After hunting for about ten minutes, he finally found one in a convenience store that had signs in the window advertising Coca-Cola in Chinese and green tea in English. He swiped his credit card and dialed Allie’s cell phone. She didn’t pick up. He tried again—still nothing.
He hung up and tried Julian’s cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Julian, it’s Connor. Have you heard from Allie?”
“No, but I haven’t been in the office since about 4:00, and she doesn’t have this number. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. She texted me and said she was trapped at Deep Seven’s dock and needed help. She said they’d tried the police, but they just talked to the guards at the gate and left. She also, ah, said there were