SEBASTIAN HAD NO memory of falling asleep. He was jolted awake by someone shaking his shoulder, saw Ron, and bolted upright in the chair.
“Paul make contact?”
“Two minutes ago,” Ron said. “He sent a picture, and a phone number.”
Sebastian didn’t get a chance to ask any questions; Ron had moved out of the living room and darted upstairs, to Sebastian’s home office. Sebastian could hear footsteps above him, Ron and his men talking, as he looked around for his phone. There, on the coffee table.
Sebastian checked his watch. Three thirty-five a.m.
The email’s subject line read, “Proof of Life?” The body of the email contained no text, just an attachment. Sebastian tapped a finger against the screen, and as the attachment opened, he prayed to God that she was alive—Please let her be alive.
The attachment was a headshot of Grace.
The first thing he noticed was the left side of her face. Her cheek and jawline were scraped raw, the skin slightly swollen, like she had been in a minor car accident. Her eyes were closed, her features slack from sleep.
Yes, sleep, he told himself. Grace was sleeping, not dead. There was color in her face.
Sebastian scrolled to the bottom, found a phone number written in black on a piece of paper beneath her chin.
Ron came halfway down the steps. Sebastian was already on his feet, moving. He was wide-awake. His blood was caffeine.
“We’re ready to trace the call,” Ron said. “Keep him on as long as you can.”
“Your people?”
“We’re ready.”
“Email?”
“Working on it now.”
As Sebastian dialed the number, Ron’s words from last night about Paul flashed through his mind: Now that he’s discovered your Achilles’ heel, he can torture you . . . indefinitely. You really think he’s going to give you her?
He’s wrong, Sebastian told himself as he dialed the number. Ron didn’t know Paul. Sebastian did. Sebastian knew what Paul wanted, what fed him.
The phone on the other end of the line was picked up.
Silence.
Sebastian broke it. “I have your money.”
Silence.
Wait, Sebastian told himself. Make him come to you.
Sebastian waited, pacing, watching the second hand on his clock.
Twenty-two seconds passed.
“What else do you have for me?” Paul asked.
“My donors. All of them.”
Paul chuckled. “I don’t believe you.”
“You should. Let’s arrange a trade. Where and when do you want to meet?”
“You sound anxious, Sebastian. Nervous. Is it because I have the daughter of your childhood sweetheart? You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”
“We need to discuss your product.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I found out? Aren’t you dying to know?”
Sebastian looked at his watch. Fifty-three seconds.
“Stop looking at your watch,” Paul said. “Ron and his people aren’t going to be able to trace this call.”
How did Paul know he was looking at his—?
Sebastian turned around, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck when he faced the windows at the front of the house.
“That’s right—I’m watching you right now,” Paul said. “Through a sniper scope.”
Not Paul, Sebastian thought. Guidry. Guidry was the sniper. But a round wouldn’t penetrate the windows. The original glass in all the windows had been replaced with a flexible polycarbonate designed to stop even high-caliber rounds.
Or maybe Paul was simply messing with him. Maybe Paul had installed his own cameras in here, in the house, way back when, before the summer, before everything turned to shit. Maybe Paul had been listening in for months, collecting intel.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the ceiling. Ron’s people, Sebastian knew, had binoculars equipped with thermal-imaging technology that could the detect heat signatures of people crouched behind cars, even walls. They were no doubt rushing to the windows to search the area. Sebastian heard muted conversations, Ron talking to the men positioned outside, in and around the neighborhood. They had sniper and combat scopes equipped with thermal imaging and night vision and—
“I’ve changed my mind,” Paul said.
“About what?”
“Everything,” Paul replied, suppressing a yawn. “Frank inspired me. Frank’s death. I kept thinking about the look on your face when I blew Frank’s head off his shoulders, and then I started asking myself, Why give up Ava’s little girl when I can do so many wonderfully creative things with her? Like, say, drop a finger every now and then in the mail to her mommy. Or you. Do you think Grace could hold her baby without any fingers?”
Sebastian kept the terror from reaching his face, his voice. “I’ve been running tests using Jolie’s blood. You were right. The results are remarkable. Spectacular. But it’s never going to work.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“The test subject we used died a few days after the transfusion. His blood wouldn’t clot properly—more or less turned into a hemophiliac, so he bled out.”
It was true. Maya had shown him the results the day Faye Simpson had driven him to the Wellness Center: Sixto Ferreria had hemorrhaged.
“You can see the results for yourself,” Sebastian said. “It’s all on video.”
“Speaking of which, I have something special planned for Grace tonight. Do you prefer video, or would you like me to send you pictures?”
“I know you gave Sophia Vargas a transfusion using Viramab. I don’t have to tell you that won’t deliver long-term results. You’re not going to build an empire that way. And that’s what you want—an empire. You can have mine. Pandora, the donors and infrastructure, all the money and the secret cocktail combination to—”
“But you’ve already given me what I need—something far more important,” Paul said. “I’ve hurt you. Knowing that you’re out there, suffering, in agony; knowing that you’ve become one of the walking wounded, going through your days with a noose around your neck; knowing that I can, at any time, tighten the noose—well, you can’t put a price tag on that kind of love.”
One of the front windows spiderwebbed. Intellectually, Sebastian knew the round couldn’t penetrate the bulletproof glass, but his nervous system overrode his brain, and he hit the floor. He dropped the phone and it skittered across the hardwood, his blood pounding in his ears as the adrenaline surged through his system and told him to run and seek cover. Sebastian knew the son of a bitch was laughing even before he heard it echoing from the phone’s tiny speaker.
“I’m going to pick them off one by one,” Paul said. “Ron. His people. That bitch you’ve got sleeping in what used to be my bedroom. I know where everyone lives, what kind of car they drive, their wives and kids . . . I know everything, Sebastian, and I’m going to pick them all off one by one, destroy everyone and everything you love, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.”
Sebastian grabbed the phone.
Click.
Paul was gone.