CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

“Since you want to live,” Jack said, “we need to talk about what to do next.”

“Okay, what do I need to do?” Kate asked.

“You need to get off the X.”

Kate picked up her container of moo goo gai pan again and sat sideways on the couch, tucking her legs under herself. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“When you’re marked for death, and you’re standing on the spot where people are aiming, you are standing on the X. The best thing you can do to improve your odds of living is to get off the X.

“When someone is shooting at you the most important thing you can do is move. If you stand still you’re going to get shot. Moving targets are a lot harder to hit. That’s getting off the X.”

“Well, anyone would move if someone was shooting at them.”

“No,” he said, “you would move, I would move, but more people today than you would think, wouldn’t. Or at least they wouldn’t move effectively. Willingly standing on the X is a phenomenon associated with nesting events.”

“Seems hard to believe,” Kate said. “I think anyone would move.”

“Really? Well, right now, the way you’re living, you’re standing right on the spot where the lunatics are aiming. It’s like you’re waiting for a killer to come get you.”

“You mean you think I should move?”

Jack took a bite of shrimp tempura. “That would help, but it’s really a bigger issue than that. Defending yourself is all well and good, but staying in a place where they’ve posted information on you, like where you work, your license plate number—all kinds of personal information—puts your whole life on the X.”

He gestured with his fork. “Have you gotten any strange calls on your cell phone, or your home phone?”

Kate thought a moment. “No, not that I can think of. Just a few of those calls where you say ‘hello’ a few times and no one answers so you hang up.”

“That was very likely a predator on the other end of the line, wanting to know what your voice sounds like, that kind of thing. He got your number off the Scavenger Hunt site. He was probably testing the number.”

That thought ran a chill through her. Kate hadn’t considered that possibility. She thought they were simply telemarketers or robocalls.

“Any serial killer, super-predator, or simple opportunist who happens to come across the Scavenger Hunt is liable to think to themselves, ‘I’d like to kill Kate Bishop and collect all that money. Let’s see, where does she live? Where does she work? What does her voice sound like? Is she home in the evenings?’

“Traveling for your job probably saved you more times than you know. It got you off the X without you even realizing it.”

Kate held up a hand. “Okay, I get it, but I can’t just up and leave. I have a job, a mortgage, responsibilities. I have to earn a living.” She circled a finger over her head. “Motel rooms don’t come free.”

Jack twisted to the side and took the pad of paper and pen with the motel’s name off the side table. He wrote something down, then tore the paper off the pad.

“Put this in your pocket. Enter it in the burner phones later. Keep it with you always or keep it in a safe place where you can get to it. When you have some time, memorize it.”

Kate took the paper when he leaned in and offered it. She held it up, looking at the string of numbers. “What is this?”

“It’s a numbered bank account. Just call the phone number I wrote down with it and tell them how much you want and where to transfer it. They will ask for an account number. That’s it, there, along with the password to the account.

“Use it whenever you need money. Take as much as you need. There’s more in there than you’re likely to ever use—unless you buy a private jet or something. As time goes on, the amount will grow and you will probably even be able to afford that, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Kate was baffled. “What is this? Where did it come from?”

Jack lifted an eyebrow. “If you really want to know, it’s a fund I set up.”

“A fund,” she said, suspiciously. “Where does the money in this fund come from?”

Jack’s gaze held hers. “From very bad people who died while trying to kill good people like you and me.”

Kate finally used her teeth to pull a piece of chicken off the fork. She chewed as she thought about it.

“You mean like those two rolls of hundreds we took off that guy last night?”

Jack nodded. “That’s right. It was a reward he was paid for killing your brother. I also have the guy’s phone. If he has any bank accounts, I’ll drain them. A lot of these killers are involved in other things, like drugs and any number of other criminal enterprises. Some of them have had a lot of money. Millions. I think it’s only right that the money should go toward helping people like you stay alive. It’s not easy living the way I suggest. This helps make it possible.”

Kate wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about such a notion. She stared at the string of numbers and the code word “Scavenger” for a moment. She didn’t know that she liked the idea of spending money paid out for her brother’s murder. It seemed like she would be using blood money.

“Money is just money,” Jack said, sensing her reluctance. “Don’t try to give it meaning it doesn’t have. Money is neither good nor evil. It’s not alive. It doesn’t have a brain. It doesn’t decide to kill people. It’s just money. It was taken from evil people so they can’t use it for evil. Now it’s used for good—for helping people.”

“I suppose,” Kate said, not able to think of any good argument against the idea. She had bigger concerns. “But still, this city is my home. I don’t know that I could live on the move all the time like some kind of drifter.”

“I’m not saying you have to move around all the time. How you want to live your life is up to you. I’m only telling you that your chances of survival are improved greatly if you get off the X. I can’t live your life for you, Kate, or tell you what to do. All I’m able to do is give you the best information and advice I can and then it’s up to you to decide what you want to do.

“But let me ask you this. Are you going to be able to get a good night’s sleep, knowing that your home address is posted on the Scavenger Hunt site?”

“Well I—”

“Knowing that the man who murdered your brother had been standing in your bedroom, pawing through your underwear? Touching it, putting it up to his nose and smelling it? The same man who then slaughtered AJ and her family?”

A chill ran through her at the thought. “For sure I’d sleep with my gun under my pillow.”

“I would hope so. That’s one place where a gun would be a great defensive weapon and not a liability. If you get a secret vacation cottage or something, keep a gun with you there, too.

“Life is ultimately terminal,” he said. “You could move across the country tomorrow, and the moment you landed you could be hit and killed by a bus. There are no guarantees in life, except that one day we all will die. It’s up to us to decide how to live with the time we have.

“But my advice is that we should leave town,” he said. “At least for a while. Why don’t you come to New York with me? I need to go there anyway to meet with my editor. Come with me.”

Kate stirred what was left of her moo goo gai pan as she considered.

“Monday is John’s funeral,” she finally said in a quiet tone. “I need to go to his funeral.”

“That wouldn’t be very wise. It’s likely that some of these killers are going to know about the funeral. They are going to know where it is and when it is. Talk about standing on the X.

“They will have seen your photos so they know what you look like. You don’t have any idea who they are unless you can see their eyes. They could drive by in a car with tinted windows and gun you down. They could be wearing sunglasses. They could simply spot you and then stay out of sight to surprise you.”

“I need to go,” she said.

Jack was growing impatient. “Why do you ‘need’ to go? After everything I’ve told you? How is it going to help anything?”

Kate’s eyes lowered as she answered, not wanting to see the look she knew would be on his face. “What was it you said about Rita? You wished you could have buried her? That it would have at least been something to have been able to lay her to rest?”

Jack didn’t say anything. The room turned dead quiet. Kate didn’t look up at him.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I don’t have any right to bring that up.”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “You have a point. I was only thinking of how best to keep you safe, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking of what it meant to you …”

“You’ll go with me?”

“Of course I will—if you want me to.”

She looked up at him from under her hooded brow.

“Sometimes safety isn’t in running.”

Wrinkles bunched between Jack’s eyebrows as he watched her. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been teaching me to defend myself, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, what are you teaching me to defend myself from?”

Jack squinted with a puzzled look, as if he wasn’t sure she was suggesting what he thought she was suggesting.

“What are you getting at?”

“These people aren’t ever going to stop, are they?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“So instead of waiting for one of those random, unexpected times when one of them shows up out of the blue and surprises me, catches me unaware and maybe unprepared, and I suddenly have to try to defend myself or be murdered, why not instead put them on the X.”

He was still frowning at her, as if he still wasn’t sure she meant what she was suggesting.

“Put them on the X?”

“Sure. You said that any of the predators who read about the funeral on the Scavenger Hunt site will likely look for me there. If they do, and we’re expecting them, if we know they will be attracted to me at that time and place, that puts them on the X.”

“There is no way for us to know how many of them there are. There could be several who visit the site and know you will be at the funeral.”

She dismissed his objection with a flick of her hand. “Every one of them who dies is one who doesn’t make it up the food chain to come after me later.”

Jack finally bit off a piece of shrimp and chewed as he watched her. “I’ve never helped anyone before who thought to switch roles on them like that. Turn the hunter into the hunted. That’s always just kind of been my specialty.”

“Seems pretty obvious to me. You and me working together increases our chances. They can’t come to kill me if we kill them first.”

His expression was unreadable. “We’re talking about killing human beings. Not in the desperate act of self-defense, but deliberately. Are you prepared to do that?”

“If I think about my brother’s body lying there in a pool of blood, his eyes carved out of his face, if I think about AJ half naked, lying there in a pool of blood, if I think about her husband Mike sprawled on the bloody stairs, if I think about her son Ryan’s brains splattered against the wall, if I think about what that Victor character did to your friend Rita, another woman with vision like mine … if I think about those photos of me on the Scavenger Hunt site, with all my personal information posted there so that a killer can hunt me down and murder me for a reward, if I think about what it felt like to realize that a killer had been standing in my bedroom fondling my underwear, and if I think about what it felt like to have that guy coming after me in the dark, intent on killing me, then yes, you bet I’m prepared to do that.”

“Avenging angel indeed,” Jack said quietly.