Dodge shook his arms once more against the duct tape. The headboard rattled, banging on the wall. The mattress creaked.
'There, there,' Mobius said. 'There, there.'
Everything blurred. Dodge thought Mobius had done something to his eyes. Then he realized he was crying.
They would find him-someone would find him-and he would be dead in his own shit and piss, with dried tears on his face, and people would make remarks and get a laugh, and then he would go under Winston’s knife-his second trip to the morgue this weekend…
A gloved hand on his face. Pushing up his chin. He fought to twist free of the hand. Couldn’t.
In the other hand-the knife.
Let me out of this, let me out…
Like it was a bad dream and he could wake up. Like it was a TV show and he could change the channel.
'There, there,' Mobius said, and the knife flicked-a hot wire of pain in his neck, then something warm and wet, which was blood.
35
When Tess could move again, she got to her feet and staggered to the door and flung it open, leaning against the door frame to inhale the warm, dry breeze.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, letting the uncontaminated air refresh her body and dilute the toxins in her blood.
The sluggishness left her muscles, and the flulike symptoms that had been her first warning signs finally abated. She was still exhausted and shaky, sore where her arms and legs had seized up in convulsions, and her heart was running too fast and too hard, but she knew she was past the worst of it. She would be okay.
Looking down, she was surprised to see that her purse was in her hand. She must have picked it up without conscious thought. The cell phone was gone, of course, as was the antidote kit, but she still had her gun, her FBI credentials, and her car keys. She wondered if she ought to drive herself to a hospital for observation, or use the phone in the manager’s office to call the police, or Thinking of a phone call reminded her of using redial on her cell phone, trying to reach Dodge…and getting no answer.
It was his cell phone number, the one he handed out to informers. He would have answered it-if he could.
'He’s in trouble.'
Her own voice startled her, coming raspy and thick.
She’d been working with Dodge. If Mobius had been following her or watching the arson site, he might have seen them together. Having targeted one of them, he might also have set his sights on the other.
Dodge had told her his address. It wasn’t far. She could be at his place in ten minutes.
She shook off the lingering effects of the gas, then closed and locked the door of room 14 so nobody would venture inside. Her bureau car was parked only a couple of yards away. She felt steadier on her feet as she walked to it, and when she started the engine and pulled out of the lot, the sense of purpose revived her further.
Speeding down Ventura Boulevard, she lowered all the car windows and shut off the air conditioner and the vents. She thought it would be a long time before she used the AC again.
The night air felt good, rushing in on her face, and by the time she headed up Coldwater Canyon Avenue into the Hollywood Hills, she was feeling almost strong again.
That was good. The night had just begun-it was only 9:25-and she would need to be strong for whatever was to come.
Tess parked down the street from Dodge’s house, on a turnout where her car was half hidden by eucalyptus trees. She’d driven the last quarter of a mile with her headlights off, in case anyone was watching from the windows.
The Sig Sauer felt reassuringly solid in her hand as she left the car and prowled past hedges of oleander to the driveway. At the end of the drive was a carport, with Dodge’s car inside.
No other vehicles were in sight. If Mobius had come, he’d either left already or parked elsewhere.
Dodge’s house was old, small, single-story. It stood on a small, untidy lot against a stand of trees. From the front stoop, the lights of the LA basin would be visible. That was the view Dodge had bragged about.
No lights were on. The curtains were shut, and the place looked empty, but it couldn’t be, not if the car was here.
For a moment she wished she hadn’t fried her phone back at the motel. She would have liked to call for backup, especially since the queasiness and blurred vision brought on by the nerve agent hadn’t entirely dissipated. Maybe she should’ve stopped at a pay phone along the way.
Too late now. She was on her own.
Both the front and rear doors were probably locked. Most likely she would have to force a window. But she decided to try the front door first.
Quickly down the slate path, the stones uneven from the seismic shifting of the earth in the decades since the bungalow was built. Up the two front steps to the door, then crouching low, huddling for cover in case she’d been spotted. A wave of dizziness quivered through her, another aftereffect of the gas.
Silently she grasped the doorknob, and it turned Turning freely under her hand…
The door opening…
Briefly she was disoriented in space and time, and she was entering the house she and Paul had shared, hearing the hiss of running water in the kitchen.
She almost called Paul’s name, as if he might be here.
Then reality snapped back, and this was LA, and it was Dodge she was looking for, and Paul was two years dead.
Probably it was a mistake to go in alone. Probably she was walking into an ambush or another gas chamber like room 14.
She entered anyway, moving fast through the doorway, then stepping to one side and hunching down as her vision adjusted to the space around her.
Living room. Very small. Reflective surface of a TV set, and the faint greenish glow of a VCR’s clock underneath. A low shape that was a sofa, and the sharper rectangles of end tables.
The room was empty. She was almost sure of it. If anyone was here-anyone alive-she would find him elsewhere.
She listened to the house. A creak from somewhere in the rear. Wood settling? Scrape of a tree limb against the roof? Or a footstep on a floorboard?
Another creak.
Footsteps. Back of the house.
She crossed the living room, treading silently, and peered through an open doorway into a dining area. Beyond it lay the kitchen and a hallway. The kitchen was barely larger than a closet, and she could see its complete interior from where she stood. No one there. And no water running either Water running in the sink…
Hissing through the pipes…
Pile of dinner dishes…
She fought off the memories and the new attack of vertigo that came with them. Her stomach twisted. A greasy, sick feeling rose in her throat, and she thought she might vomit. With effort she forced down the sickness.
Then she headed into the hallway.
The bedroom would be down there.
Mobius’s execution site.
Halfway down the hall, a bathroom provided the only illumination in this part of the house-the fifteen-watt glow of a nightlight. She detoured into the bathroom, whisked open the shower curtain.
No one was hiding there. But from down the hall came another creak-different in quality from the first two-
