Cold Around the Heart

by Michael Prescott

  “No one can tail me without being spotted.”

  “Want me to go back and ask him? I promise I’ll come back so you can finish me off. Scout’s honor.”

  “Were you ever a Girl Scout?”

  “Nope.”

  “What is Mr. Kirby’s home address?”

  She wasn’t going to give up that info, even though Pascal could obtain it easily enough. “I don’t know. He called me, and we met on the boardwalk.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “Yeah, just us. Look, I know you don’t believe me—”

  “On the contrary, perhaps I do. There was a sizable sum of money in your wallet. I did not count it.”

  “Count it now. You’ll see. Twenty-five hundred bucks is what he paid me. I didn’t even stop to make a deposit at an ATM.” She was making progress with the tape, but it was slow, too slow. “Just count it,” she said again.

  “So I shall.” He rose, smiling down on her. “I would tell you not to go anywhere, but it hardly seems necessary.”

  “Good one. By the way, I’m gonna need that money back. Bills to pay.”

  “You do amuse me, Bonnie Parker. You truly do.”

  He walked out, and she worked the tape harder. If she could get free, she’d amuse him, all right.

  She’d amuse the crap out of him.

  CHAPTER 16

   

  Pascal was certain he had broken the girl. She was telling the truth. The money would confirm it.

  He opened her purse and riffled through the bills, counting quickly. The amount was twenty-five hundred forty-one dollars. She claimed her client paid twenty-five hundred tonight, which would account for the bigger bills, leaving forty-one dollars she had left home with. It added up.

  Of course, Walker had lied to her when he said he was being stalked. And Walker could not have followed him to this motel. That part of her story did not make sense.

  But he was untroubled by a few loose ends. As he knew, Walker had been in contact with Amy Bernstein in New York. Bernstein had snapped the photo; the eatery was one he had visited when shadowing her just hours before her death. After dispatching her, he had found the photo on her phone. He had deleted it, of course; but evidently she had sent it to Walker soon after it was taken.

  So Walker had known Pascal was coming. And he could have learned of Pascal’s arrival at this motel in many ways. In a provincial backwater such as this, people gossiped about strangers with unknown accents and continental manners. And the motel manager had looked at him queerly when he checked in.

  It did not matter. He would not remain long at the motel anyway.

  He replaced the purse in the nightstand drawer, then switched on his iPad. Using a cellular connection, he ran an Internet search for the terms Alan Kirby and Millstone County, New Jersey. He found an Alan Kirby who practiced law in McKendree Park. His office address had been the home of an accounting firm only eight months ago, suggesting that the law practice was new. And this man Kirby had kept a low profile; there were no photos of him online.

  A new arrival, with a law degree, lying low—almost certainly the man he sought.

  Kirby’s home address was unlisted, but perhaps the girl’s phone would be of help. She had claimed he called her landline, but she could have been lying. He switched on her cell. The most recent call in the log was from Mr. Alan Kirby, and his address was conveniently provided.

  Well, then. All the pieces had come together. He could reasonably plan on concluding things within the next few hours. He would dump the girl in the ocean, then proceed to his target’s home.

  He took out his cell phone and called a memorized number. The man who answered said, “Sunrise Transport.”

  “I require a pickup,” Pascal said. “Before dawn, at Millstone Airport in southern New Jersey. It was a public airport at one time, but it is no longer in operation.” He had passed the closed-down county airfield on his way from the city.

  “Okay, we have someone available for that. Can you narrow down the timeframe?”

  “The departure window is two o’clock AM to six o’clock AM.”

  “And will you be requiring transportation out of the country?”

  “Yes. To South America.”

  “You know our policy regarding payment?”

  “Remittance in the amount of ten thousand dollars will be transferred to your account within five minutes.”

  “Very good. Look for a Beechcraft turbojet, tail number N219LK. Our pilot will arrive at two. If you’re not there by six, you lose your ride and your money.”

  “I will be there.”

  “Any complications, and he takes off. Flight’s canceled, and your deposit is nonrefundable.”

  “There will be no complications.”

  He went online and made the transfer, moving the cash into a Cayman Islands account. The service he was buying wasn’t cheap, but it was dependable. Within six hours he would be in the air, en route to a new life.

  He returned to the bathroom and found the girl struggling pitiably in the tub, her shoulders twisting with effort as she strained at the tape on her wrists.

  “Very well, Miss Parker,” he said. “I believe you. You have indeed been on the case just long enough to get paid. You have learned next to nothing and accomplished less. You are, in fact, precisely what you appear to be—a small-town rube in over your head, kept in the dark by Jeffrey Walker, with absolutely no conception of whom you were up against.”

  Her shoulders continued to twist. “You’re kind of a dick, did you know that?”

  “I can safely assume there is nothing more you can tell me. And that brings us, I am afraid, to our denouement. That is a cultured way of saying the end, my dear.”

  He bent over her again, moving the leads, placing them alongside her heart. She stared up at him, her blue eyes big in her face.

  He would not gag her this time. It no longer mattered if she bit off her tongue or shattered her teeth. Any such damage to her body would be ascribed to an impact with the jetty or to the actions of ocean predators.

  He had felt no carnal thrill when taking Amy Bernstein’s life. But with this one, he did feel something. A stir of the old passion, the primal pleasure of indulging this most atavistic and forbidden urge. It was only a stir, nothing more, but it surprised him. He had thought he was past all that.

  Watching the girl suffer had been pleasurable, he realized. Watching her die would be more so.

  “As I mentioned before,” he said, pressing the tape into place, “the heart is the organ most sensitive to electric shock. The current will now pass directly through your chest cavity. It will initiate ventricular fibrillation, meaning that your heart muscle will begin to spasm. Death will follow—though not, I think, as quickly as you might hope.”

  She stopped struggling and lay still. “So this is it? Just like that? I don’t get a cigarette or a blindfold?”

  “You get nothing—not even my regrets. You were sent here to eliminate me. Instead, you are the one to be eliminated. It is simple justice.” He smiled down on her. “Any last words?”

  “Just three.” Her eyes blazed. “Fuck you, asshole.”

  Then she was up, out of the water, her hands free, something shiny and metallic in her fist.

  He had time to realize she had not been struggling helplessly—she had cut through the tape somehow—and now she was stabbing at him as he stumbled back and warded off the blow. He grabbed for the stun gun, hoping to immobilize her with another shock, but before he could reach it, she seized him around the legs and yanked him forward, halfway into the tub, shoving his head underwater as she climbed onto his back.

  He reared up, throwing her off. She hit the floor. He spun to face her, and she kicked out with both legs, knocking him off balance, his shoes slipping on the wet floor. He plunged backward, submerged in the tub.

  He thought of the stun gun. If she switched it on—

  A slam of impact lit up his brain.

  She had clos
ed the circuit, and somewhere beyond the flood of pain that engulfed him, he heard her ragged, triumphal shout.

  “You like that, jerkoff? You fucking like that?”

  Pascal thrashed and writhed, his head whipsawing underwater, legs and arms jerking in random directions. Distantly he remembered reading that the worst pain a human being could experience was a nonlethal electric current coursing through the skull. He had trained himself to withstand pain, even torture, but nothing like this—nothing like this—

  His neck strained as if fighting to pull free of his shoulders. Brightness blazed behind his eyes, and a screaming whine filled the echo chamber of his head. Pain shouted like a migraine in his forehead, invading his cheeks, his sinus cavities, his eye sockets. It was a pain too large for his head to contain, a pain that threatened to shatter his skull like ice.

  And then it ended.

  He gasped, going limp, amazed that she would spare him, until he saw that one of the wire leads lay on the bathroom floor. His flailing limbs must have dislodged it.

  She saw it too, but before she could grab the wire, he surged upright, howling. She retreated through the bathroom door, her sneakers squishing like sponges, water streaming off her hair and clothes. He clambered out of the bath, sliding on the floor, steadying himself against the towel rack.

  When he looked up, she was already gone from the motel room, the door swinging wide. He followed at a run, his legs shaky.

  He could not catch her. But he could kill her. It was all he wanted to do.

  He drew the Beretta from the shoulder holster under his jacket, and a new pain hit him.

  His hands.

  The bathtub water had cooled since he’d run it, cooled enough to trigger one of his attacks. A sudden, violent onset, one that made his hands shake with palsy.

  He bit his lip and fought off the crippling pain as he lifted the gun. His target was halfway across the parking lot, arrowing toward a beat-up Jeep. She was moving fast, but the session in the tub had taken its toll, leaving her muscles weak, her actions uncoordinated. Twice she nearly fell.

  The distance was not great. He should not miss. But his hands refused to hold steady. He could not draw a bead on her.

  She reached the Jeep, unlocked the door, threw herself behind the wheel. The engine started. He had to fire. Had to will his goddamned hands not to betray him.

  Teeth gritted, both hands on the pistol, he forced his seething wrists to lock in place. He pulled the trigger.

  No good.

  He knew it as soon as he fired. He had jerked the trigger too sharply, and the gun had tilted up, the shot going wild. He had missed the Jeep entirely.

  Worse, he’d had no time or ability to screw on a silencer tube. The report echoed through the parking lot. Even in an establishment this seedy, it would probably attract the police.

  Stupid. Careless.

  There was no use shooting again, not with his hands on fire.

  He watched the Jeep skid out of the parking lot, fishtailing onto the highway. Then he backed away from the open door, massaging his aching fingers.

  He must pack his things and depart. Immediately, before the authorities arrived. Run, then make things right.

  Despite this setback, he would still take care of business. Then somehow he would find Miss Bonnie Parker.

  And when he did, he would not underestimate her again.

  CHAPTER 17

   

  Spots of rain lashed the Jeep’s windshield as Bonnie sped away from the motel. She drove straight home, checking the rearview mirror with paranoid frequency to be sure Pascal wasn’t following. She didn’t think he could be after her, not this soon, but getting cooked in a big pot of water like a poached egg had a way of putting her on edge.

  Even if he wasn’t following her now, he might head for her place before long. Her address was on her driver’s license, and he had that, along with everything else in her purse. She wished like hell she’d retrieved the purse, but in the rush out the door she hadn’t had time to look for it. It could have been in the nightstand or in his luggage or anywhere.

  So, yeah, he could come after her. Realistically, though, she didn’t think he’d play it that way. He was a pro, and Alan Kirby—formerly Jeffrey Walker—was his primary target. He would focus on Alan first. For the moment, she was probably safe.

  More than that, she was still alive, which was amazing, even if she couldn’t exactly enjoy it because she felt like a sack of garbage. Her abs ached as if she’d done a million crunches. Her stomach was kind of whoopsy too.

  Dying wasn’t so scary when it was impersonal and quick. What had happened in the tub was something different, something sadistic and crazy, and she kept flashing back to it in Dolby quadraphonic sound and Imax 3D.

  All in all, she’d had better nights. And this one wasn’t over yet.

  Her house came up fast in the Jeep’s headlights. She parked in front of the garage and took a moment to grab the Ziploc bag on the passenger seat, which contained the .38 from Des’s house.

  She had some trouble exiting the Jeep. The muscles of her legs still weren’t working right. She stumbled to the front door, grateful that her house keys and car keys shared the same key ring, so she could let herself in. The only difficulty was disarming her security system. The tremors vibrating through her fingers made it hard to punch in the six digits on the keypad.

  She didn’t think Pascal could have beaten her here, but events had already proven how wrong she could be. She entered the house cautiously, checking for any sign of forced entry. She half expected the son of a bitch to jump up out of the dark and grab hold of her with his black-leather hands.

  He didn’t, though. He wasn’t there.

  She locked and bolted the door, then headed toward her bedroom. She’d lost her Walther, and she needed another weapon. Hell, she needed more than one.

  She was halfway down the hall when abruptly she felt sick. Her stomach twisted. She bent double and threw up.

  Get yourself under control, Bonnie. God damn it, you’re not doing anybody any good puking like a damn baby.

  The severe little scolding didn’t help. Her legs were shaking, her knees threatening to fold. The room swam around her, its contents doubled, the air sparkly, the lights too bright. She could see the bedroom doorway—two doorways, actually. They were just a few strides away, those twin doors. Fighting for balance, she staggered nearly all the way to the bedroom before a high hum rose in her head and the room grayed out.

  She came to with her face on the carpet. At first she didn’t understand what had happened. She’d forgotten everything except the tub and the pain. And now the pain was gone. Maybe she was dead. Maybe this was what death was—this numbness, blankness, this bright fog everywhere, and no sound, no feeling. It could be worse.

  Then she remembered. She’d escaped.

  So get moving already.

  She was on her feet again, stumbling into the bedroom.

  Next to her bed was a small fireproof safe. The lock was keyed to her fingerprint. She opened the safe and put in the plastic bag containing the .38. She would need the gun soon, but for now it had to be kept in storage.

  There were other guns in the safe, backup weapons. All of them were unregistered. Over the years she had acquired them through black market channels. None except the .38 had been used in anything criminal; she made it a point to dispose of any weapon that could tie her to a crime.

  She chose a Glock 17 with an Osprey silencer, and a Ruger 10/22 carbine. The Glock shot 9mm Luger ammo. The Ruger fired .22 Long Rifle rounds. Ordinarily she wanted more stopping power than a .22, but the Ruger had a surprise or two up its sleeve.

  She felt stronger now. Sharper.

  She heeled fresh magazines into each weapon and gathered up all the extra mags she had. When both guns were loaded, she allowed herself a moment of rest.

  Son of a bitch had tortured her. Had come damn close to frying her good. Without the keys and the extra time she’d boug
ht by getting him to count her money ...

  She shuddered, not just from cold, although she was cold—soaked to the skin.

  In her bathroom she grabbed a towel and dried her hair. She tried not to look at the bathtub.

  Her clothes were a sopping mess. She kicked off her shoes and wriggled out of everything else. While pulling off her jeans, she found a scrap of paper in the back pocket. The poem from his motel room. Waterlogged but still readable, if she could find someone who knew Spanish.

  She grabbed a dark blouse and a pair of navy blue pants out of a laundry hamper, not knowing if they were dirty or clean, and put them on, angry at every small delay, even the time it took to snap a button or tug on a zipper.

  Come on, get it together. You’ve got a family to save.

  She’d given Pascal his quarry’s name. And Pascal had her phone. He would disable the lockout screen somehow, then check the call log and find the call from Alan. The Caller ID app listed his home address. After that, all he had to do was drive there and—well, a guy like Pascal wouldn’t leave any witnesses. If he came for daddy at home, he’d put down mommy too, along with the kid.

  Bonnie wasn’t the type to get all sentimental about children. She didn’t think they were precious angels. Most of them were noisy, snot-nosed little monsters who belonged in a damn zoo. Still, all things being equal, she didn’t especially want some rug rat knocked off just because papa got himself involved in something crazy.

  She thought of calling Alan to warn him. Nope, bad idea. The call would only freak him out, throw the whole family into chaos. Better to get over there and deal with the situation on the ground.

  Before leaving the bedroom, she grabbed a fanny pack to replace her purse. It would hold the Glock and two spare magazines in a zippered breakaway pocket, along with a pack of cigs, a lighter, her tool kit from the Jeep’s glove box, and the spare cell phone she kept in her bureau. On her way out of the room, she grabbed a smart little beret. Never go hatless, that was her motto.

  At the dining table she opened up her laptop and navigated to her cell account. If her phone was still on, she should be able to track Pascal with it. Knowing she was ditzy enough to misplace it, she’d made sure to activate the unit’s find-my-phone feature.

  She searched for the GPS signal. A moving blip appeared on an onscreen map at the intersection of Highway 35 and Jefferson Boulevard.