now.'
'They're the same people who used to pay him,' she said. 'I'm sure they're offering a lot because they're really scared. But you're not helping yourselves by coming here.'
'Why not?'
'I have no way to know where he is or where he's going. When I left Los Angeles, he was there. When I got home to Washington this afternoon, I learned that after I left he killed two professional shooters in a blue Ford Crown Victoria and then drove it to Pasadena and killed Tony Lazaretti. I'm sure after that he left town.'
The three men exchanged a glance, then shifted their feet, as though they were suddenly uncomfortable. 'Okay. Let's put the kids in their rooms where they can't get in the way. Keep them separate. I'll take this lady downstairs and find a way to persuade her to help us.'
The young one with spiked hair dragged Amanda out the door, and the third, a man in his thirties with a cap of curly black hair and a tattoo on his hand that Elizabeth couldn't quite make out, pushed Jim hard, once, like a punch. They went along the upstairs hallway toward the other bedrooms. The older man, the leader, took Elizabeth to the staircase and down to the first floor. When she reached the bottom, she got a clearer glimpse of him. He was just under six feet, with sandy hair and a body that seemed angular and lean, with sinewy muscles in his forearms. His jaw seemed habitually clenched, and his eyes narrowed. He clutched her arm and brought her through the living room to the little den that she used as an office for paying bills and filing financial papers.
She said, 'You must know that I don't have any power over a man like him. I can't make him do anything. He isn't my friend. You could wait forever, and he would probably never come here. I don't have a way of reaching him.'
'I have confidence in you.'
'He's a professional killer and he doesn't care what happens to people like me.'
'I'm not actually going to tell you what to do in this situation, ma'am. Your description of him is probably right. It sounds true, anyway.' He leaned closer to her. 'If you can understand that much about him, you can probably understand us too. We've taken this contract. When it started, there were six of us. Now there are three. We don't care how this feels to you or what happens to your son or daughter. What we care about is this guy we agreed to kill. We want you to help us get him.'
'How?'
'Like I said, I'm not going to tell you what to do. It's up to you to find a way.'
'But I just told you I don't know how. I tried to persuade him to give the department information in exchange for protection. He won't talk to me because he's positive he can kill anyone who comes after him.'
'Good for him. I'm going to give you time to think about what I want. But I also want you to think about us for a little while. We've killed people too. I've done a lot of them in different ways, in different places. If I have to leave you and your kids gutted like fish, I promise you I'll never lose a second of sleep over it. But I can make this an unhappy night without killing them. What are their fingers worth to you? Their eyes?'
'Please,' she said. 'Don't even say that.' For the first time she felt helpless panic. She could form no plan, no idea of how to prevent, or even delay, this horror.
He shook his head. 'I don't get any pleasure out of doing those things, or any pain either. My friend up there has already said he wants to spend a couple of hours with your daughter. In a few minutes I may tell him it's okay. While you listen to her scream, you can think about how to give me what I want before he kills her.'
Maybe this was a nightmare. Was she caught in that hellish moment before the relief would flood in and she'd realize that none of it ever happened? No. If she was thinking of the possibility, then it should already be over. She was so frightened that her breathing didn't seem to be giving her any oxygen. Her arms and legs felt as though the motor neurons had been severed. She could feel them, but she couldn't get them to move.
'I can go online and find out if he's been seen anywhere since Los Angeles, or if something happened anywhere else that could be his work.'
'That's a start,' said the man. 'I have to warn you, though. If I think you're sending a distress signal or something, I'll bring everybody down here and go to work on you in front of the kids.'
She said, 'My laptop is in my briefcase.'
'Go ahead.'
She went around him to get to the briefcase in the living room. She had gotten a better look at him in the office. He was slightly taller than average, with a bony quality-shoulders that weren't heavily muscled but square, like machined parts. His forearms, hands, and feet seemed large, his fingers long, with knotty red knuckles. His face was fair, but it had a reddish tint in some places, and he had a bony jaw and wrinkles at the eyes, as though he had spent time squinting into the sun. The eyes themselves were a flat, faded brown, and his hair a coarse, dirty blond. He spoke what she thought of as the enlisted man's dialect. Somewhere at the back of it was an accent that was vaguely southern.
She had started into the living room when his sinewy forearm hooked around her neck. She could smell his musky underarm and feel his hot breath on the back of her neck. She stopped to keep from choking.
'Go slow,' he said. 'If you get too far ahead, I'll start to get nervous.'
She waited.
'Okay, go.'
She began to move, and he was with her, his arm and part of his torso pressed against her as she walked. Her sensation was that he was attached to her like some parasitic animal about to feed. She fought the claustrophobic, powerless feeling. She bent her knees and touched the briefcase handles.
'If there's a gun in there, you'd better tell me now.'
'I work in the Kennedy building in an office. I don't carry a sidearm.'
She took the laptop, cradled it in her arms, and walked back toward the little office with the man keeping his hand on her left arm in a painful grasp. He tugged her to the dining room and pulled out a chair at the table. 'Sit here.'
She had no idea why he preferred the dining room, but it seemed that he needed to get his way about everything. She set her computer on the shiny polished table, opened it, and signed into her Justice Department account.
'Remember, I'm watching,' he said. 'Don't make contact with anybody.'
She opened her e-mail account, then saw one from John Holman at the FBI and clicked on it. The e-mail filled the screen, and as she read it, she began to scroll down.
'Hold it,' he said. 'Let's read that.'
She stopped and scrolled upward again. He was a slow reader. He was suspicious and irritated when she moved ahead too quickly, as though she were hiding some message she didn't want him to read.
Holman's e-mail described the men the Butcher's Boy had killed in Los Angeles. She heard the man mutter, 'Damn,' as he read it. Then he seemed to catch himself. 'He's had quite a workout.'
'It's been that way wherever he's been since Frank Tosca tried to get him killed. Is Tony Lazaretti the one who hired you?'
'What are you thinking-that we'll never get paid?'
'It had crossed my mind.'
He was standing just behind her and to the side when he hit her. It was a short, quick backhand to her cheek and jaw that spun her head to the side.
'Oh!' she said, and her hand went to her cheek.
He hit her on the other side with his left hand, then pushed her back and kicked the chair forward so her back hit the floor hard. He hit her again, on the head with his gun, so hard that she saw the ceiling as a red tunnel with him coming at her down the middle of it. She went limp to keep from inciting him to hurt her more, but he hit her with his fist three times. She could tell that she wasn't just feeling the sting from slaps. He was doing damage to the bones in her face.
A red haze grew across her field of vision, and everything seemed to go quiet and dark for a second, but then she could see his face right above hers again with his teeth bared.
'You're not my equal,' he rasped. 'Don't tell me what's going to happen. I'll tell you what's going to happen if I feel like it.'
She managed to croak, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' Her tongue tasted like copper, and she couldn't talk right because her mouth was pooling with blood that dribbled and bubbled out when she tried. 'I'm sorry. Please. I didn't
