Need You Now

was true.

“Tell him he’ll get his money,” the man said, “but tell him you’re in control.”

“I can’t-”

“Tell him ,” he said, squeezing her wrist so tightly that Lilly had to bite her lip to stop the pain. “You must do exactly as I say.”

“Okay,” she said. “I will.”

“Good. And tell him you got his name from Patrick.”

“No!”

“Do it!” he said, stern but not quite shouting.

“Please, keep Patrick out of this.”

“His name isn’t even Patrick. It’s Peter Mandretti.”

“What?”

“His father testified against the Santucci family, which means that your boyfriend has much bigger problems than Manu Robledo. The mob is breathing down his neck. Don’t make his problems yours, Lilly. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t want you to help-”

His grip was like a vise around her wrist, and this time the pain dropped her to her knees.

“Okay, okay,” she said, “whatever you say.”

He loosened his grasp, but not completely. “It’s possible you’re being watched. We have to make sure no one follows you. Don’t leave this building through the main entrance. Use the fire escape.”

Again she blinked, barely comprehending. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

He gave her wrist a final squeeze. Not a threatening one. It was as if he were trying to reassure her. “Trust me, Lilly. You deserve to live.”

He released her. She pulled her hand inside, closed the door, and instinctively withdrew to the center of the apartment. Her emotions rushed forward, a combination of fear over what had happened and relief that he hadn’t slashed her wrist. Fighting off tears, she went to the peephole. He was gone. She collected herself, trying to decide what to do. There seemed to be no right answer.

She went to the computer and found directions to the church.

“D on’t turn around.”

Robledo’s voice ripped her from the past. He was seated in the pew behind her, and she was having trouble following his command.

“Eyes forward!” he said.

She obeyed, but it wasn’t easy. It was the same voice she’d heard on the phone when Patrick was threatened in Times Square. The same voice that had threatened her in Singapore when she saw the Treasury memo. The same voice she’d heard day after day when receiving transfer orders for numbered account 507.625 RR at BOS. She wanted so badly to put a face with it.

“How did you find my name?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

She felt a cold, round point of pressure at the base of her skull. “How about now?” he asked, nudging her with the pistol. “Still none of my business?”

Lilly tried to keep her voice from shaking. “It doesn’t matter how I found out.”

The old church was silent, save for the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking.

“It matters to me,” Robledo said.

Lilly searched for the words her source had fed her, but her delivery failed her. “I’m… I’m in control.”

He grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back against the pew so that she was staring at the ceiling. The muzzle of the pistol was at her temple.

“You got my first warning shot in Singapore,” he said, speaking so close that she could feel his breath in her ear. “Your boyfriend got the second one in Times Square. That’s it. No more mock executions. The next bullet goes in your pretty little head. I’m giving you five seconds to answer my question: How did you get my name?”

Thinking under this kind of pressure-caught between one man threatening to slash her wrist if she breathed a word about his existence, and another who threatened to blow her brains out if she didn’t-just wasn’t part of her constitution.

“I don’t know,” she said, agonizing. “I don’t remember, I just don’t-”

“Patrick told you, didn’t he?”

Lilly froze. That was exactly what the man who’d delivered the flowers had wanted her to make Robledo believe.

Robledo didn’t wait for her response. “Patrick came to see me,” he said.

He couldn’t see her face, but Lilly wondered if Robledo could nonetheless sense her surprise. She wondered if that was the reason Patrick had at the hospital, seemingly out of the blue, asked about her possible involvement in a cult.

“I didn’t give Patrick your name. I swear.”

“That’s what I’m saying! He gave it to you. Didn’t he? ”

“No,” she said, searching for another explanation, anything she could think of to keep Patrick out of it. A lie finally came to her. “I got your name before I left Singapore. That’s why the bank fired me.”

“I almost believe you, which makes you one lucky girl. I’m not convinced that it takes both you and Patrick to find my money, but I’m not sure that it doesn’t. So you’ve bought yourself some daylight. For a while.”

“I need more time to find the money.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to beg.”

“Wouldn’t make a difference anyway.”

“This is not a bluff. The snags are real. Don’t worry. It’s nothing we can’t handle. We’ll get there.”

“Then get there,” he said. “No extensions.”

“I’m not asking for an extension. You gave me two weeks originally. I said I could do it in one if you kept your hands off Patrick. Just go back to the two weeks you gave me.”

“No.”

“It’s just another week.”

“I said no !” He pushed her head forward with so much force that her chin hit her chest. “And never come here again. You got that?”

Lilly felt as though she were suffocating, trapped between her fear of Robledo and an even greater fear of the deliveryman who had told her what to say to him.

“Yes,” she said. “I got it.”

19

I t had stopped snowing, but a few flakes still swirled in the sky, blown from treetops by a chilly north breeze. My toes were freezing in an inch-deep blanket of white that had fallen since breakfast. Alice and her friends looked almost edible, a chocolate bronze topped with cream-cheese icing. Snow in central park was the perfect antidote for my six months in steamy singapore.

The last two days were another story.

Barely forty-eight hours had passed since I’d skulked out of the wrong meeting in the Paradeplatz Conference Room, only to face an executive-style grilling from Joe Barber about Lilly Scanlon and Abe Cushman. Not exactly