The phone rang, shrill and insistent. I lifted my head and blinked, searching for the phone in the darkness. Beside me, Amy stirred but didn’t wake, sleeping as if she had a winter’s hibernation ahead of her. I pushed myself up with the heel of my hand and reached over her and grabbed the phone from its base. Then I climbed out of the bed and walked into the hallway, squinting to make out the number in the display as it rang a third time. Karen’s house.
I answered the phone just as my eyes found the clock in the living room and saw that it was ten minutes to three.
“Karen, what’s wrong?”
“He called me, Lincoln. Just now.” Her voice was terse and frightened.
“Who did?”
“The man who killed my husband! He asked me how much money Matthew would have inherited. I started yelling at him, I was hysterical almost—”
“Slow down, Karen.” She was talking so fast I could hardly understand her.
“He told me I didn’t have to die,” she said, and this time the words were slow and clear.
“What else?”
“He said that all he wanted was whatever had been coming to Matthew, provided that it was reasonable. He actually said that. Provided that it was reasonable. Then he said that all further instructions were going to come through you.”
“What?”
“He said I was supposed to tell you that you have a conference call coming on the phone in the gym. He told me to call you immediately and tell you that.”
I was standing in the kitchen now, the tile floor cold on my bare feet. “He told you I had a conference call coming on the phone in the gym.”
“Yes. Lincoln, what—”
“I’ll call you back, Karen.”
Amy was pushed up on one arm when I went back into the bedroom, her eyes bleary with sleep but concerned.
“Who was that?”
“Karen. My friend from the other night has apparently requested that I take a phone call in my gym.”
Now she sat all the way up, holding the sheet to her chest. “Lincoln, do you really think you should—”
“I’ve got to,” I said. “It’ll just be a phone call.
He doesn’t want to kill me.” He hadn’t the last time we’d met, at least, but of course I had spent the past twenty-four hours ignoring his instructions.
“I’m going down with you.”
“No, you’re not.” I pulled a shirt over my head and looked at her. “Stay here, Amy. Stay here, and if it sounds like there’s anything wrong, call the police.”
I went into the extra bedroom and got my Glock out and checked the load. When I stepped back into the hall, she was standing in the door of my bedroom, a pool of light from the street at her feet.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, and then I left.
I was still barefoot, and the pavement was hard and cold as I crossed to the gym, got the key in the lock, and opened the door. Everything was still, the way it should be at three in the morning. Standing with my back to the wall, I slid my hand around until I found the light switch and got the lights in the office turned on. Then I pivoted, keeping low, and pushed inside, sweeping the room with the barrel of my gun. Empty.
The overhead lights in the gym had been turned off by the last member to leave, but a ring of low-wattage emergency lamps around the room offered a dim glow. You never want a twenty-four-hour facility to be entirely dark, even when it’s empty.
I wanted to check the rest of the building, but I also wanted to remain close to the phone. The phone won out, and I sat down on the edge of the desk with the Glock in my hand, waiting.
When the phone out in the gym rang, I almost emptied my clip into the wall. I’d been ready for the desk phone, so having the sound come from someplace else caught me off guard. There’s a phone on the wall in the weight room for members to use, but it’s a separate number from the office line. It rang again, and I stood up and took a deep breath, rocking the gun in my hand.
“All right, asshole,” I said aloud. “I’m coming.”
I was halfway across the weight room when the front window exploded. Glass blew into the room, and with it came cold air and the staccato rattle of a semi-automatic weapon. I hit the ground and rolled to my left, trying to push myself behind the concrete pillar that stood in the middle of the room and supported the weight of the building. Bullets shredded the wall behind me, nicking off chunks of stone and shattering metal and glass. I got all the way behind the pillar, pressed my back against it, and ducked my head and put my forearms against my ears as the deafening rattle continued, the wail of the alarm from the broken window still not drowning out the gunfire. Bullets drilled into the pillar and decimated the paper towel dispenser attached to the opposite side, shards of plastic scattering around me. There was a brief pause, and then more bullets were emptied into the room, an east-to-west sweep that rippled past me.
Then it was gone. The alarm had stopped even before the gunfire, taken out by one of the bullets, apparently. I lowered my arms and held the Glock with both hands, a shooter’s grip, preparing to turn around. It took me a few seconds to convince myself to do it.
When I spun around the pillar, all I could see was the empty street in front of me. The room was covered with stone and glass and other debris, but with the window gone, there was nothing out there but the street. No cars, no gunmen.
The phone on the wall rang again. The waves of sound trapped in my ears from the shooting and the alarm almost kept me from hearing it, but as soon as I did I moved across the room, not caring that the last time the phone had rung it had been a prelude to the gunfire.
I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear but didn’t say anything. When the man on the other end of the line spoke, I could hardly hear him, but that was probably due more to the echoing ringing in my ears than to a soft voice. Even so, I knew the speaker. He’d just left the same impression on my gym that he had on my face.
“Still alive,” he said. “Good. I shot high and wide, but with all those bullets, you never know.”
“When I find you—”
“Shut up, Lincoln. You’re not going to find me, and if you try, you die. I’ve got a nasty feeling that’s what will happen here, eventually, but you have no one but yourself to blame for that. You were given an opportunity to step back. An opportunity you should have taken but did not. Next time you won’t even have time to regret that.”
“You’ll be the one talking about regrets, you piece of shit. You shouldn’t have shot high and wide.”
“Damn, but you get your confidence back quickly.” His tone was light, carefree. “Jefferson’s son was due a nice chunk of cash before his unfortunate passing. Something in the neighborhood of five million dollars, probably. Could have been more, could have been less, but we’re going to be fair, in the interest of time, and ask for a mere three million. Tell the wife to get it ready to move, and we’ll be in touch to tell her where to move it and when to move it. Do that, and maybe nobody else dies.”
He continued before I had a chance to respond to that.
“Go ahead and call the cops, Lincoln. You disappointed me today, running to them so quickly. My opinion of you was clearly set too high. Go ahead and call them now. It’s not going to stop a thing.”
Then all I could hear was the hum of the dead line after he hung up, and the sirens of police on their way, and Amy screaming my name from outside.