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 closed 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.