Will cried out against the gag in his mouth, but the resulting noise was muffled, barely audible even to himself. The menon either side of him were dressed like paramedics, might even be paramedics, and they were rolling his gurney down the hallwayof the Waldorf. An IV bag dangled from a hook on a pole above him, but as far as Will could tell it wasn’t connected to hisbody. Will caught a glimpse of a room number as they passed—1904. They hadn’t yet left the floor where he’d been taken.
I must only have been out for a few minutes, he thought. What was that thing? A Taser, I guess? And that woman.
He tried to fight through his rising panic. Someone had figured out that Will Dando was the Oracle, and they’d known whereto find him. But the only people who had known Will was at the hotel were . . . Hamza and Miko.
Will could see it in his head. Somehow, the name Will Dando had been connected to the Oracle, and whoever had done that hadsimply . . . well, they’d probably just googled his address and headed on over. If his arm hadn’t been strapped down, Willwould have punched himself in the face.
Hamza had been after him for months to move into a new apartment, someplace with more security, more room, an address theycould hide behind one of the shell companies Hamza had set up—somewhere with a doorman, at the very least, but he hadn’t wantedto take the time.
Will envisioned the older woman and her cronies breaking through the door to his apartment in much the same way she’d brokeninto the hotel room. Hamza would have been there, and probably Miko by then as well.
Will began, involuntarily, to think about the methods the woman might have used to get his location out of Hamza—or Miko andher unborn baby, for that matter.
And then, another idea, just as unpleasant.
Hamza and Miko weren’t the only ones who had known where he was. Leigh Shore had known too. She’d set him up.
The paramedics rotated Will’s gurney and pushed it into a waiting elevator. A second gurney rolled into the elevator, directlyto Will’s right. He turned his head as far as his strap would allow and rolled his eyeballs to the point where they beganto hurt with the strain. On the other gurney, her eyes wide and locked on Will’s, restrained and gagged, lay Leigh Shore.
I guess she didn’t set me up, was his first thought. His second: I’m so sorry.
The elevator doors opened and the paramedics pushed both gurneys out. Will’s view changed to a low ceiling of smooth concreteand long fluorescent lights. The parking garage.
A quick glimpse of the rear doors of an ambulance—white, with orange and blue stripes and a logo for New York PresbyterianHospital. The doors opened, and Will felt himself being loaded headfirst into the back of the vehicle. Alone.
A nasty thought—Leigh wasn’t the Oracle. They didn’t need her.
He wondered if he’d gotten her killed. Selfishly, foolishly . . . gotten her killed, all because his ego was getting a littlebruised by bad press.
Will heard the front doors of the ambulance open and close and felt the shift as the two paramedics got in. The vehicle startedup, began to move. A second later, he felt the gag being removed from his mouth. It was replaced by a straw, which Will suckedat involuntarily, before the thought to wonder what he was about to drink made it from mind to mouth.
Cool water spilled down his throat, pure joy across his chalk-dry tongue, and he drank three huge gulps before the straw waspulled away.
“Easy now,” a light, pleasant voice said from behind his head.
“Who’s there?” Will said, attempting to muster some authority in his tone, but finding it hard to rise above a whisper.
The woman from the hotel room came around to the side of Will’s gurney and sat down on a bench running the length of the rearcompartment. She reached over and loosened the strap holding Will’s forehead.
“You can call me the Coach, son,” the woman said.
“Coach of what?” Will croaked.
“Why, of the team that figured out you’re the Oracle.”
With the strap loosened, Will was able to turn and take better stock of the woman than he’d had time to do back in the hotel—shewas slim, with gray-white hair, dark eyebrows, and a sharp nose. She wore a pair of pressed khaki trousers, a blue blouse,and elegant glasses framing bright blue eyes, and she was smiling in a way that conveyed both good humor and concern for Will’swell-being. The Coach looked like she belonged in a library, expertly handling misshelved volumes and interbranch loan requestsand late fees and rowdy children.
“How are you feeling, Will?” she said.
The lady seemed so sincere, so genuine, that Will found himself considering the possibility that this was all a mistake. Thatthings had spiraled out of the Coach’s control, and now she just wanted to set everything right.
“Better, a little,” Will said.
The Coach patted him on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry about the Taser,” she said. “But we didn’t know what you were capable of, and it seemed much easier to get youout of the hotel if you were down for the count.”
Will’s jaw clenched, all warmth he’d felt toward her evaporating.
“You probably feel like a grilled cheese sandwich right about now, but it will pass,” the Coach continued. “Your body justneeds to work through all that hurt. No lasting damage, I promise.”
“Leigh,” Will said.
The Coach looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared.
“Oh, the young lady. She’s in the other ambulance. She’ll come along with us, for the time being.”
She moved an object into Will’s field of vision—the laptop Leigh had been using to take notes.
“Some very interesting material here, Will,” the Coach said. “If I’d known all this before I met you, we wouldn’t have hadto toast your bacon at all.”
She chuckled.
“See, what I
