by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
“The one in the papers?”
She nodded. “I’m not a Catholic, Father. I’m a Buddhist. And I have committed many sins, even as I struggle to do good works. But my friend…he helps people. So I thought perhaps his God might hear me.”
“He’s your God, too.”
In the marble alcove, they kept their voices to a whisper, aware the acoustics of St. Patrick’s carried their spoken words, bouncing them off the marble ceilings and walls.
“That doesn’t sound like the party line, Father. A Buddhist and a Catholic sharing the same God in heaven.”
“The fact that you are here, praying for a friend…I believe God recognizes that. I believe the Blessed Mother recognizes that. Would you like me to say a prayer with you for your friend?”
The priest was young, about thirty, with brown hair and beard. Small wire-rimmed glasses framed his eyes, giving him the appearance of an owl. He had a gentle, trusting expression on his face.
“I would, Father.”
“What is his name?”
“Tony Flynn.”
“Blessed Mother, we ask you to intervene on the behalf of this fallen hero, a man who wears a badge and places his life on the line for the people of this city, for the unspoken poor, for the disenfranchised, for those who cannot fight for themselves. He was wounded in the line of duty, and now he needs the healing touch of Jesus Christ and God the Father. We also ask that you guide his doctors, nurses and all the people involved in his medical care. Help them to make the right decisions, to bring this man back to health…and finally, we pray for his friend here. She claims she is not a good person, Mary, Mother of God, but she is here in the wee hours before dawn, to pray for this man. We ask that you bless her. In His name we pray. Amen.”
Tessa’s head was bowed. She looked up. “Thank you, Father.”
“You’re welcome. I will pray for your friend in my personal intercessions.”
With that he stood and walked down to the next alcove. Tessa remained kneeling. Eventually, she rose stiffly and caught a lonely cab back to the Night Flight Club. It was four in the morning and the club was still rocking. She rode up to her loft and woke Lily to urge her to feed on the blood from the hospital until they could both go hunting and feed properly. Then she locked and bolted her door and fell into a restless and fretful sleep.
Chapter 20
“Things are looking better, Tessa.” Alex Williams told her on his cell phone. “The operation today repaired something in his spleen that was causing some internal bleeding. He’s not out of the woods, but if I know Tony Flynn, he’s on the road to recovery. He’s talking. They’re going to let him eat a little something, finally. He said he’s hungry, so that’s a good sign, though I don’t know if they’ll let him chow down on a foot-long hot dog with sauerkraut and onions just yet.”
“That’s great news, Alex. I’m still helping my friend. Give him my love and I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Tessa, sometimes superstitious by nature, couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the prayers of the priest, Buddha, Flynn’s willfulness, fate, or medical miracles. Not that it mattered. Even if it was all of the above, she was just relieved that he was doing better.
Lily had woken and was in the shower, relishing the small miracles of freedom: hot showers, good wine, the company of friends. When she emerged, the two friends sat at Tessa’s dining room table with a printout Tessa had of Hack’s concentric circles.
“This is the most recent circle, and it’s tightening like a noose,” Tessa explained to Lily, pointing out the rings closing around the Night Flight Club. “Tony Flynn, AlexWilliams, Jorge, Delorean…you…Cool—you’re all in danger. It’s me he wants. And you are all just pawns in this giant chess game he’s playing. He was devious and clever over a hundred years ago. I’m sure he’s grown more so with time.”
“He wants his wife back. He said as much to me. He believes you are soul mates.”
Tessa nodded. “I’m not sure how that’s possible when he has no soul. And speaking of soul mates…what about Cool? Do my eyes deceive me or do I detect something going on between the two of you?”
Lily grinned mischievously. “We kissed one night, late, when I was getting ready to go home. In the CD storage room. It was hot.”
“Doesn’t he date an actress right now?”
Lily shrugged. “And don’t I feed on blood? You and your morality, Tess. I liked you better before you went to Shanghai. Before you were a Buddhist.”
“It’s what keeps me from becoming like Marco.”
“You’ll never be like him.”
“You say that, but the appetites of a vampire don’t know morality. Haven’t you ever been feeding and felt a frenzy come on? You cease to be aware of past and future, and all you care about is the present—and drinking until you’ve had your fill.”
Lily nodded.
“Maybe you’re okay with that, Lily, but I feel a sense of self-loathing afterward. That’s why I struggle to stay in control.”
“And how much control do you feel when you’re around Detective Flynn?”
“It’s been a very long time since I felt anything like this. It frightens me. But you know me.” She looked slyly at her friend. “I’ll find a way to stay in control.”
“Handcuff him to the bed, perhaps?” Lily asked, laughing.
“I see you’re recovering your wicked sense of humor.”
“Yes. But I will get even, have no doubts about that.”
Later that night, Tessa contacted Hack.
Technofreak: Hey there, lady of the night.
Nightlady: Hey there. I got Lily back.
Technofreak: Fantastic.
Nightlady: Now I have another question for U. U said U were going to do something with algorithms. Do U have any idea when those circles R going to reach the club?
Technofreak: By my calculations, U have a week, tops.
Nightlady: And then?
Technofreak: My guess is whatever these Shanghai Red people have been doing all over town PALES in comparison to what they’re going to do at your club. Not to worry U or anything.
Nightlady: I’m long past worrying and into frantic mode. It’s not me, of course. It’s my friends. I’ve tangled them all up in my problems, my life, my past.
Technofreak: But did U ever stop to think that’s what friendship is all about?
Nightlady: Friendship shouldn’t be about giving up your life.
Technofreak: There R some things worth fighting for. If U don’t think I would have given up my life in an instant to save my mother. Or my brother.
Nightlady: I know U would have.
Technofreak: Of course I would. Sometimes, U have to take a stand. U have to sacrifice. Do U want me to e-mail you my files on the algorithm?
Nightlady: Yeah. And the map.
Technofreak: Will do. Fight the good fight.
Nightlady. I’m in it with U. To the end.
He sent her a zip file, which Tessa stored on her hard drive. Then she dressed and took a cab to the hospital.
“Hey, handsome,” she said when she walked into Tony Flynn’s room. It was a private patient room—no longer the ICU. Alex Williams had gone home to shower and shave.
“Tessa…” Flynn’s voice was raspy from the tubes that had been down his throat.
She moved to his bedside and gingerly sat on the edge, taking his hand in hers, entwining their fingers.
“It’s so good to see you off those machines.”
“It’s good to be off those machines. Alex told me you were here every night. I remember some of it, but other things…” He furrowed his brow.
“We don’t have to talk about it now.”
“I remember the warehouse…”
“Shh.” She took his hand and kissed his fingertips.
“You sure are a sight for sore eyes.”
“So are you. If you think, Detective Flynn, that making me worry about you is going to change how things are between us from th
is point forward…you’re right.”
“I still may haul your ass downtown to ask you a few questions.” He grinned.
“Will handcuffs be involved?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
“In the meantime, do you need a sponge bath?”
“Yeah. And a private-duty nurse.”
Tessa laid her head down in the crook of his arm, avoiding his IV lines, and kissed him tenderly on the neck, slipping her hand inside the folds of his hospital gown.
“You keep doing that,” he growled, “and I just may be outta here tomorrow.”
“Well, we’ll see about making you feel all better,” she purred.
Tessa returned to her loft at three-thirty in the morning. Lily was still down in the club partying like a fifteen-year-old club kid, her first time behind the velvet rope. She was enjoying herself for all it was worth.
Tessa smiled to herself, but couldn’t help thinking about the algorithm. One week. One week to…what? What was Marco planning?
Her laptop was where she had left it, and the screensaver was on, a picture of Shanghai, of a garden just like her own. Of course, she had never seen her own garden in daylight. She had never seen the glint of the sun reflected off the back fin of a koi. But the picture she had found on the Internet soothed her and made her feel a little less homesick.
She decided to check her e-mail. Hack was the only person to e-mail her. Actually, that wasn’t true. Cool sometimes sent her MP3 files. Delorean sent pictures of her daughter, and now her new son. And Lily, wired to infinity, e-mailed her just for the hell of it. She especially liked to pass along vampire jokes. That was Lily—always irreverent.
Today, she had only one e-mail. The subject line was “No one is safe.”
Tessa felt a chill pass over her. Quaking inside, she sat down. The sender was not a name she was familiar with. Hack had given her program after program—identity encoders, encryption programs and spam blockers. She never got messages from anyone she wasn’t expecting. Never.
Her finger poised over the arrow key.
“Please…” she whispered into the air, speaking to no one, to Buddha, to God, to the silence.
The e-mail opened to reveal an attachment. She ran a virus check. It was okay, so she clicked and the file opened to a Flash movie. First the words
YOU ARE MINE
They flew across her screen, the letters in random order, dancing in a way, and then reassembling to form the words correctly.
Then:
YOU HAVE BEEN MINE FROM THE MOMENT I SAW YOU
Then:
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME
Then:
AND NEITHER CAN ANYONE YOU LOVE
Finally, there was a video clip. Of an apartment. It wasn’t an apartment she had ever been to, but she leaned in close. There, on a table, stood a bottle of Manhattan Special soda. This was Hack’s place.
A shadow passed across the screen.
And then Tessa stared in cold horror at a strung-up body. A handsome man. A boy, really. She knew he had to be Hack. His eyes dead. His neck snapped and unnaturally bent to one side.
A sound escaped from Tessa’s lips. A wail so primal she didn’t recognize the voice as her own.
Chapter 21
Instead of sleeping during daylight, Tessa and Lily stayed up all day, behind the locked and bolted door of Tessa’s bedroom, talking. Tessa went through a cascade of emotions in one twelve-hour period. Horror, dread, anger, grief, rage, sadness, and back to anger again. She reminisced to Lily about Hack, and Lily listened with patience and sadness as Tessa repeated tales over and over again in the ramblings of grief.
“We used to talk on the telephone all the time…he was such a gentle soul in so many ways. I know he was in his late twenties, but I think, after all he had been through, in some ways he was still a little boy. And then at other times I detected the weariness of an old man.”
“I’m so sorry, Tessa. Marco has taken this fight to a whole new level.”
“It’s not a fight anymore. This is war.”
When night fell, she knew she had to go to Hack’s apartment and tend to the body. Hack had told her once that there was no one left—no living relatives. His world consisted of the four walls of his apartment and the world of cyberspace with its dizzying freedom. And Tessa, his lone personal contact with the outside world. Tessa knew he considered her his best friend. And he had once made her promise that when he died, she would have his body cremated and scatter the ashes in the Hudson River by tossing them from the Circle Line, a sight-seeing boat that encircled Manhattan. Hack had an attorney, she knew, an Adam Stern. Tessa had a copy of Hack’s DNR order, his living will, his regular will, and a letter detailing his wishes. She was the executor of his estate. Hack had told her all his equipment, all the hacking he had done for profit, meant a sizable bank account. He wanted all the money to go a charity for victims of domestic violence.
Tessa called Alex Williams’s cell phone.
“Williams here.”
“Alex?” Her voice came out as a choked-off sob.
“Tessa? What’s the matter? Flynn’s okay, you know. They may discharge him before the weekend.”
“It’s not that. I need you to meet me at a friend’s apartment. I think he’s been murdered.”
“Holy shit…I’m sorry, Tessa. Give me the address.”
She gave him Hack’s building address and apartment number and then asked, “Can you just come? Just you. I need to say goodbye to him. Please, just come alone.”
“It’s a crime scene, Tessa.”
“But you don’t know that yet. Pretend I just called you and asked you to check on my friend. I’m begging you, Alex.”
“For you, I’ll break the rules. How soon can you get there?”
“Give me a half hour,” Tessa said, and hung up.
Lily told her to be careful as Tessa dressed. “Maybe you should bring a dagger.”
“No. For all Alex Williams knows, I’m just a regular nightclub owner.”
“I don’t know about that. If that warehouse wasn’t enough to clue in those two cops…”
“Yeah, but Alex hasn’t pulled it all together yet. If I show up looking like the Trinity character from The Matrix, that’s another story, Lily.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“No, I want to say goodbye. Alone.”
Ordinarily, Tessa and Lily would have bantered. But Tessa felt only a numbness, but beneath that was a desire for revenge so powerful that she knew it would take all of her spirituality to conquer.
Making her promise not to touch anything, Williams allowed her to say goodbye to Hack.
She stood next to his body as Williams called for backup. “Hello, baby,” she whispered, staring into Hack’s unseeing, blank eyes. They were blue. She hadn’t known that. She had once read that the human retina captures a person’s last moments on its lens. She wondered what Hack’s eyes had seen.
“You’re with your mother and brother now. At peace. And I promise you, whoever did this to you will pay.”
Though she had promised Williams she would not touch anything, Tessa fingered one of Hack’s blond curls. Blood had seeped near his temples, turning the hairline a crimson color. Beyond that, much of his blood seemed to be drained, but any bite marks would be obscured by the ligature of red marks, now mottled, from the coarse rope tied around his neck.
Williams came over to her. “The ME will be here soon. They’ll photograph him, dust for prints. Do you want to answer a few questions, now, before there are cops swarming this place?”
“Sure.”
“You say you know this guy as Hack.”
She nodded. “His real name is Brett Jameson. We met on the Internet.”
Williams raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter, Detective. I mean we were friends. Good friends. Best—” she choked on the words “—friends.”
“And do you have any idea who would wa
nt him dead? Was he mixed up in anything that you know of? Drugs? Gangs?”
“Caffeine.”
“What?”
“His drug of choice was caffeine—and lots of it. He’s a techie. A hacker. His world was cyberspace.”
“Maybe he pissed off someone whose site he hacked into.”
Tessa shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“What about his family? Do you know them? How we can reach them?”
“He has no family, Williams. He spent all his time in this apartment. The Internet was his drug, his portal to the world.”
“So he stayed here all the time? Didn’t he go out? Go to the grocery store?”
“You live in Manhattan. It’s the city that never sleeps. Delivery. He had everything delivered.”
“What about doctors’ appointments?”
“He didn’t have any—appointments, that is. He was agoraphobic. He couldn’t even step in the hallway.”
“You’re kidding. I’ve read about people like that.”
“He even paid the man across the hall to pick up his packages downstairs and to run the occasional errand for him.”
“Paid somebody? With what? How’d he earn a living if he never left his house?”
“Programming. Software. He is—was—a genius.”
“How did you come across him? I mean today. You know…how’d you know something happened to him?”
“Off or on the record?”
“I’m not a journalist, Tessa. It doesn’t work that way. But I can stop taking notes for a minute if you want. Between us friends.”
“On the record, I just came by for a visit with an old friend. But between you and me, someone sent me an e-mail with a video clip of the apartment, poor Hack hanging there.”
“You still have the clip on your computer?”
Tessa nodded.
Williams rubbed his eyes in a gesture of world weariness. “Then…I’ve got to say that whoever has this beef has it with you, not your friend. Someone was obviously sending you a message.”
