“What?” asked Andie.
“It sounds like a party going on,” said Jack. “I was just wondering if you were on or off duty.”
“I’m always on,” she said.
Always. For an instant, Jack wondered if she was with her “sexually deviant boyfriend,” but he caught himself
It’s her job, Swyteck.
“Jack, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you again, next chance I get.”
“Sure.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Love you, too,” he said, and then the line was silent.
The Sunny Gardens lobby was quiet as a mausoleum, which was the very next stop on the route for just about everyone who lived there. Most were lonely widows or widowers, and probably all of them would have given up their six months or a year at Sunny Gardens for another week or even a day with the spouses who had left them. Jack had all the respect in the world for Andie and her career. But hanging around a place like Sunny Gardens did make him wonder about her readiness to volunteer for assignments that reduced their relationship to weeks or perhaps even months of catch-as-catch-can phone conversations.
You knew this was her job when you popped the question.
Jack was parked in the Sunny Gardens private lot, but without a handicapped parking pass, he had a long walk to his car. He counted thirty handicapped spots in the first row of parking alone, not a single one of them being used. It made him want to stake out South Beach and confront the twenty-five-year-old triathlete who was using his eighty-seven-year-old grandmother’s pass to grab the best parking spots all over town.
Jack followed the sidewalk toward the overflow lot. The first phase of Sunny Gardens was vintage 1970s construction, which meant that there were plenty of mature olive trees along the walkway to block out the street lighting. Jack dug into his pocket for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Jack continued toward the lot, but tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. The row of olive trees had given way to even larger ficus trees, whose relentless root system had caused entire sections of the sidewalk to buckle. The canopy of thick, waxy leaves made the night even darker, forcing Jack to locate his car more from memory than sight.
Again, he heard footsteps. He walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind him seemed to match his pace. He came to an S-curve in the sidewalk and, rather than follow the concrete patch, cut straight across the grass. The sound of the footsteps behind him vanished, as if someone behind him were tracing his own silent path. He returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. A moment later, he heard the clicking heels behind him do the same.
He definitely felt like he was being followed.
Jack stopped and turned. In the pitch darkness beneath the trees, he saw no one, but he sensed that someone was there.
“Andie, is that you?” It was way too hopeful to think that she was going to surprise him again with a visit, but calling out the name of anyone seemed less paranoid than a nervous “Who’s there?”
No one answered.
Jack reached for his cell phone. Just as he flipped it open, a crushing blow between the shoulder blades sent him, flailing, face-first to the sidewalk. The phone went flying, and the air rushed from his lungs. As he struggled to breathe and rise to one knee, an even harder blow sent him down again. This time, he was too disoriented to break the fall. His chin smashed against the concrete. The salty taste of his own blood filled his mouth.
“Why… are,” he said, trying to speak, but it was impossible to form an entire sentence.
He was flat on his belly when the attacker grabbed him from behind, took a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back.
“One move and I slice you from ear to ear.”
Jack froze. A steel blade was at his throat. The man’s voice sounded foreign, but Jack couldn’t place the accent. More important, the threat sounded real.
“Take it easy,” said Jack.
“Shut up,” the man said. “Did he give you any photographs?”
“Who? Photos of what?”
“Ethan Chang. Did he give you the photographs he told you about?”
“No. I never met him.”
He yanked Jack’s head back harder. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. I never met him, I swear.”
“Lucky for you. But now consider yourself warned.”
“Warned of what?”
“Forget everything you ever heard about Prague.”
“I don’t-” Jack stopped in midsentence. The blade was pressing harder against his throat.
“The lawyers have been way too subtle. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And by the way. Remember how Ethan Chang heard you talking to your grandfather’s girlfriend about Pio Nono?”
“Yes.”
“I heard it, too,” he said. “So believe me when I tell you this: Until you have a wife or children, there is nothing more painful than watching your grandfather suffer at a time in his life when he is too old and too confused to understand why anyone would want to hurt him.”
“Leave him out of this.”
“That’s up to you,” the man said as he pulled the blade away from Jack’s throat-and then slammed the butt of the knife against the back of Jack’s skull.
Jack fought to stay conscious, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, as his world slowly turned darker than the night itself.
Chapter Twenty-six
Vince woke early on Sunday morning.
He was seated on the front step outside his house, the canopy of the porch overhang shielding him from a light, cool rain.
Rain was in some ways Vince’s best friend. The bond had formed on his first rainy day without sight, just moments after he’d stepped out the front door and stood on the top step. His mind was gearing up for the usual mental exercise, the memorized flower beds, shrubbery, and footpaths that defined his morning walk. But the rain changed all that. It was the sound of falling rain that brought the outdoors and all of its shapes, textures, and contours back into his world. Where there was once only blackness, suddenly there was water sloshing down a drainpipe. The patter of raindrops on the broad, thick leaves of the almond tree. The hiss of automobiles on wet streets. Even the grass emitted its own peculiar expression of gratitude as it drank up the morning shower. A sighted person would have heard nothing more than rainfall in its most generic sense, a white noise of sorts. To Vince, it was a symphony, and he reveled in his newly discovered power to appreciate the beautiful nuances of each and every instrument. Nature and his old neighborhood were working together, calling out to him, telling him that everything was still there for his enjoyment. He heard the drumlike beating on his mailbox, the gentle splashing on concrete sidewalks, and even the ping of dripping water on an iron fence that separated his yard from his neighbor’s. Rain, wonderful rain. It made him smile to have such a friend. Friends were not always so loyal and dependable.
Especially the ones named Swyteck.
“Did you finally get to sleep, honey?” asked Alicia. She was standing in the foyer behind him, speaking through the screen door.
“Not really,” he said.
Swyteck’s cross-examination on Friday had been nothing short of torture, and it had left him tossing and
