“What now?” I asked.
Dobson pushed his chair back and shoved his clipboard back into his leather case. “Nothing,” he said. “I do feel terrible for having put you through all this rigmarole, and I greatly appreciate your time and cooperation. Damn system. We’ve got to check into every whistle-blower’s accusation. Believe me, you’re the last people I’d want to investigate. Personally, this is very hard for me.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, curious.
Dobson smiled, albeit somewhat sheepishly.
“Prostate cancer,” he said, putting a hand on his belly. “Early diagnosis saved my life. So while I love my job and get a lot of satisfaction bringing the bad guys to justice, I don’t derive much pleasure having to investigate a couple going through what I know to be a difficult ordeal. And my timing couldn’t have been worse.” His eyes went to the floor and might as well have burned a hole into Rhonda Jennings’s apartment below. “I’m not just giving you lip service here. I know. This is a tough battle you’re facing, and I hate being another obstacle in your way. But that’s the job.”
Ruby seemed to have lost her earlier nervousness. Despite all our troubles, she connected with Dobson on a level I couldn’t, not without being a cancer survivor myself.
“I’m so sorry,” Ruby said to him.
“No,” Dobson replied. “I am.”
“So we’re all set, then?” I asked.
I wanted Dobson out of our apartment, shared painful experience notwithstanding.
“All set,” Dobson said.
“What now?” I asked.
Play the part. . . .
“Now you get healthy and take care of each other,” Dobson said.
I noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and there was a hint of sadness to his voice. Perhaps he was a bachelor who, despite our health struggles, felt lonely in our presence. I thought of Clegg. He hadn’t called, hadn’t tried to reach us to check up on Ruby. Maybe he went by our Somerville apartment again; maybe the professors from Spain answered the door this time. They were still there. I had told them they didn’t need to move out.
Before he left, Dobson checked his phone. “Another appointment,” he said to me, holding up the device and shaking his head grimly. Ruby and I escorted Dobson to the front door, where he paused. He took out his wallet and handed me his business card with the UniSol Health logo embossed in gold on the front. “You shouldn’t need to get in touch with me,” he said. “But take this just in case.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said.
Ruby was talking to Dobson about cancer treatments when the phone rang. I felt my pulse drop. Dobson noticed something was wrong. “You all right?” he asked. “Your color just changed.”
The phone rang again.
“Yeah,” I said.
I left him and Ruby and went back into the apartment. I picked up the receiver, noticing that Ruby was watching me. Dobson, too, for that matter.
“Hello?” I said.
“Good for you, John.” Uretsky spoke into my ear. “Looks like you’ve won round two, but we’re not done yet. Not even close. We’ve got round three to play, and this time, John, you’re going to rob a liquor store. Details to come.”
I heard a click. The line disconnected. I hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Ruby asked, her voice dripping with dread.
“Wrong number,” I said.
CHAPTER 18
I told Ruby about Uretsky’s call the moment I heard Dobson descending the stairs. She didn’t break into tears, didn’t seem all that shocked to me, either. If anything, she looked numb, just like me.
“He wants you to rob a liquor store?” Ruby asked.
I nodded.
“Which one?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “He didn’t say. He just hung up.”
“How could he have known that we successfully played the part?” Ruby asked me.
I went from standing in the kitchen area to kneeling on the futon, watching Dobson through the apartment window as he crossed Harvard Avenue. Thankfully, I didn’t have to look down to see him—probably would have sent me into a dizzy spell—but from my futon perch I could follow him as he weaved in and out of the mid-morning crowds. Puffy clouds drifted lazily across an azure sky; it was a perfect June day, the kind that let people know summer lurked just around the corner.
But something else lurked around the corner, too, something waiting just for me, an evil beyond any I could have imagined.
How could he have known?
Ruby’s question haunted my thoughts.
“He must have broken in here and bugged our apartment,” I said, leaving the futon to stand beside Ruby in the center of the living room. “That’s the only explanation I can think of.”
“You mean he’s listening to us? Right now?” she said.
“I’m guessing,” I said. “I don’t know.” I began to pace, trying to walk off a toxic cocktail of agitation, frustration, and fear building inside me.
“I can’t stay here,” Ruby said as a look of disgust came across her face while surveying the apartment. She saw ghosts lurking in every corner, or at least that was what her eyes suggested. He’s been in here. He’s listening to us. He knows our every move. “We’ve got to get out of here, now,” she added.
“We can’t leave,” I said. I sounded emphatic and meant to. “Uretsky told me that we had to stay put. You know the consequences. He’s proved he’ll do what he says.”
“This has gone far enough,” Ruby said. “We’re going to the police, and we’re going now.”
“No!” I shouted, my voice both sharp and angry.
Ruby jumped, and I felt terrible for startling her.
“We can’t do that,” I said more calmly, but still unable to mask my frustration and upset. “He’ll kill again. Don’t you get it? He’ll kill again.” I spoke those last three words through clenched teeth, slowly and forcefully.
He’ll. Kill. Again.
“Well, maybe you can’t or won’t go to the police, but I can.” Ruby stormed off into the kitchen, while at the same instant my cell phone chirped out the first notes of the Beatles song “Help!”
That ringtone told me I just got a customer service complaint. Anytime a player of my One World game sends an e-mail to [email protected], I get a text message containing the sender’s name and the subject line of their message sent to my phone. This way, since I don’t always check my e-mail, I’m alerted to every new support issue as soon as it hits my in-box. “Help!” Get it? Usually, people e-mail customer support when there’s something wrong with the game, something my automated monitoring services might not have picked up. My iPhone buzzes intermittently with these alerts, so typically, I just glance at the sender and answer later, usually in a marathon customer support session. I didn’t imagine I would be doing customer support anytime soon, but habits are like a reflex, so I looked at the phone.
When I saw the sender, I just closed my eyes tightly and willed it to be different. The message came from Elliot Uretsky’s game account. The subject line of his message: Read me.
CHAPTER 19
I had two computers in the apartment, a laptop and a desktop; the others had recently been sold to fund this catastrophe of mine. I went to my laptop computer, set up on a table in the bedroom; logged in to my game administrator account; and clicked on Uretsky’s message. The message came up in my e-mail program all right, but the contents were sparse—a single link and, below that, a phone number.
Ruby stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I could hear her shallow breathing and feel the force of her fingers pulling against the back of my chair.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to call the number,” I said. “The link—it’s encrypted. There’s no way I can tell what’s going to happen if I click it.”
“And the number?” She said that like it was the worst idea in the world. “Who do you think you’ll be calling?�
��
“I’m guessing it’s Uretsky,” I said.
“Think about this, John,” Ruby said. “Are you sure this is what you should do?”
I looked up at Ruby and wanted to cry. The past twenty-four hours had simply stripped her of all her strength. It was horrible to see. Even with the weight loss, the side effects of the drug—painful nodules popping up all over her body, the swollen joints, the stomach pains she battled daily—I could always see her inner strength. It was gone, like a switch had been flicked, and its glow extinguished. Hopelessness was all I saw in her eyes.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.
I picked up my phone and called the number in Uretsky’s message.
Uretsky answered on the third ring. “Hello, John,” he said. “Long time no talk.”
That voice—the monotone rasp and deep-timbered baritone—triggered an olfactory illusion. I smelled something sour and fetid, the stench of rot and decay.
“Please,” I said. “We can stop this. Stop this now.”
“Click the link, John,” Uretsky said. No inflection to his voice, no rage or upset, either, just a direct command.
“What is it? What is it for?”
“Just click the link.”
My hand moved to the computer mouse. I felt in a trance, a creature without a will of its own, being manipulated by a master. The mouse cursor hovered over the link as though building up the strength to make the leap.
Click the link.
“What am I going to open?” I asked.
“A Web site,” Uretsky said. “I made it. I’m using an anonymous proxy server, so don’t think you can trace me via my IP address. You can’t.”
Uretsky was right, of course. Anonymous proxy servers are a special type of server that act as a go-between for a home network and the Internet. It’s like sneaking out to the Internet, snatching some bits of information, and coming back home without anybody knowing you ever set foot outside your house. If Uretsky said it was untraceable, I was inclined to believe him.
“John—” Ruby said, gripping my shoulder now instead of the chair.
My shaking hand caused the cursor to dance over the hyperlink as a mirror of my erratic movements.
“Go ahead and click, John. I’m waiting.”
I did it. I pushed my finger down and lifted it up. The click of the mouse sounded like an exit door slamming shut, then locking. No way out now.
A Web browser popped open. The background was black, and in the center of the Web page there appeared a rectangular area containing an embedded video application. The video feed was playing—a live stream, I speculated. I gasped at what I saw. Ruby did as well, taking in a wet, heavy breath and expelling the kind of moan she made during a nightmare.
The video showed a dark-haired woman, white and thin, bound with duct tape at the wrists and ankles, with a ball gag stuffed into her mouth and secured around her head with black leather straps. She was seated on a wooden chair beneath an exposed lightbulb that dangled from a cord in an otherwise empty concrete room. The woman’s eyes were wide with desperation. I recognized her but still needed a second to make the connection. When I did, I felt consumed by sickness and sadness.
“Oh my God, John . . . that’s . . . that’s . . .”
“It’s Dr. Adams,” I said. “It’s your doctor.”
I could see Dr. Adams struggling to break free, but a rope tied around her waist and secured to the chair kept her immobilized. The chair must have been anchored to the floor, because it didn’t move an inch, even though she was thrashing about like a fresh caught fish dropped onto a dock.
“What is this? What are you showing me?” Uretsky might have answered me, but all I could hear was blood pounding in my ears. “What—what—” I was stuttering, completely transfixed by Dr. Adams’s struggle, feeling every one of her jerks and spasms as if I were attempting to break free.
“You’ve already met Dr. Lisa Adams, I presume,” Uretsky said. “If you’ve forgotten, she’s the one who helped save Ruby’s life.”
“People will be looking for her,” I said.
“You’d think so,” Uretsky said, sounding surprised. “But she lives alone. No evidence of a boyfriend, or any that I could find. I checked on her schedule, and she’s off for a few days—like not on call off, not scheduled to go to the office off. So we’ve got time to play with her before anyone cares. She’s either going to be dead or she’ll be saved, by you.”
“Me? What do you want me to do?”
“I told you,” Uretsky said, the pitch rising in his voice, annoyed, as if I should have remembered. “You’re going to rob a liquor store at gunpoint. I thought if you could see what you were playing for, maybe you’d take the challenge a little more seriously.”
“You’re insane!” I screamed into the phone. “Do you know that? You are a monster! A sick freak!” I was spitting all over my iPhone, shaking with an incredible rush that boiled up inside me. A wave of hatred so deeply rooted and profound took over and for a moment I felt like a rabid animal on the loose. I didn’t want to just kill Uretsky—I wanted to take out his eyes with a fork while I slowly crushed his windpipe and sliced his flesh with the heel of one of my crampon climbing shoes.
“Are you through?” Uretsky said when I finally stopped shouting.
Ruby’s eyes were locked on the computer screen, watching poor Lisa pointlessly try to break free. If her cancer cells could talk, they would be saying, “We didn’t know there was anything worse than us.”
“Let her go,” I said.
“I will,” Uretsky said. “And that’s a promise. But only if you win.”
“The liquor store,” I said.
“That’s right, John. The liquor store.”
“I can’t do this.”
“I think you owe Dr. Lisa Adams at least a college try. She’s a real person, John. This woman’s got feelings.”
He said the word feelings like it was a joke to him.
“How come you won’t show yourself? Are you a coward?”
Uretsky laughed. I amused him, or so his laugh implied. “Is this the reverse psychology part of our conversation? Do you think you can goad me into doing something by making me kowtow to my ego? Is that it, John?”
“Let her go. Don’t make me do this,” I said.
“You’re in the middle of a game,” Uretsky said. “You don’t make up the rules. I decide. And I say if you walk away from this game, then Lisa here dies. Snip, snip, snip go the fingers, just like Rhonda. Got it?”
“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’ve got to think. Got to think.”
“Let me ask you something, John,” Uretsky said. “How well do you know yourself?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your strengths, your weaknesses. How well do you know them?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Let me ask you something else,” Uretsky continued.
“I’m going to hang up now,” I said. “I can’t speak to you.”
“If you do, gone go Lisa’s little fingers. So don’t hang up.”
I paused. “Okay,” I said. “You win. What do you want to ask?”
The more I talked to him, the calmer I felt. Was that his intention? I wanted to know what he wanted from me, even though I was afraid to find out.
Uretsky said, “Do you think there is a chasm between good and evil? Do you think a good man can be pushed by circumstance into committing evil acts?”
“I think you’re evil,” I said.
“And are you good?” he asked. “Were you good and virtuous when you cut the rope that sent Brooks Hall plummeting to his death? Were you being a good boy when you stole my identity?”
“I had good intentions,” I said. “I didn’t see another way out. There wasn’t another viable option. I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but what choice did I have?” Why was I justifying myself to him? Because he had struck a painful nerve, that was why. He was questioning things about me t
hat I questioned about myself.
“You had other choices,” Uretsky said. “But you were driven by fear. Weren’t you? You were driven by the fear of death and the fear of losing your beloved Ruby to cancer, to be specific. You acted out of fear, not rational thought.”
“You don’t know me. You have no right to pass judgment.”
He was right, of course.
“I suppose that’s true,” Uretsky said, almost with a sigh. “I don’t know you. Not fully, that is. But I want to know you. I want to know you so much better. How far can you be pushed? That’s the burning question here. I want to see with my own eyes how far you’ll bend before you break. That’s the game we’re playing, John, and there’s no way out. Think about poor Lisa, here. Is there really anything worse than having your fingers snipped off by a rusty pair of pruning shears, your life force drained from you, your windpipe crushed by the constricting power of two hands squeezing tighter and tighter? I think not. I think that’s a gruesome death.”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice shaky. “I don’t know.” I started to cry, small tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. I was listening to the ranting of a madman and watching the agony of a woman whom I was powerless to help. Well, not powerless, because there was one thing I could do.
Rob a liquor store.
“Will you knowingly take another life, John? Will you let me kill this woman, or will you try and save her? That’s what’s on the table. That’s the choice you have to make. Can you live with yourself if she dies? More guilt? Are you weak or are you strong? So much of our character is defined by adversity. How will you play this, John? Do you want me to kill her?”
“No,” I said, with my face buried in my hand, my voice weak and trembling. “No, I don’t.”
“Are you afraid that I will kill her?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid of Ruby dying of cancer?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
Stolen Page 11
