“I will get you the flash drive.”
“That’s my girl. Oh, and Holly? I’m getting impatient. You have until six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
I glance at my watch. “That’s barely eight hours.”
“More than enough time, wouldn’t you say?”
“How will I contact you?”
“You won’t.”
Then he’s gone and I’m left sitting there alone in a car that used to be mine but isn’t anymore. Not after what happened today. Not after it was used in a kidnapping.
I reach back into the glove box, extract the keys. I start the engine just as my rear windshield shatters.
There are whoops and shouts. The three punks have returned. While the one was packing, the others apparently weren’t, and now they’re back with metal baseball bats. One hits the rear windshield again. Another takes a shot at my taillights. The third—my boyfriend in the Red Sox cap—steps up to the front and shatters my left headlight.
He smiles at me, hawks and spits a loogie. It lands with a plop right on the hood.
I consider getting out of the car. Consider kicking the shit out of these three idiots. It will be good for me, help me relieve the stress, but right now these assholes are just a distraction.
I place the car in reverse and punch the gas. The car jerks backward. It knocks one of the punks aside. He falls to the ground and once again I consider hurting him more, but instead I maneuver a quick one-eighty and peel out onto the street.
My hands are white around the steering wheel. My arms are shaking. Every single terrible thought and scenario is slithering their way through my brain. I feel like I’m on fire. I feel like my head is going to explode. I scream, as loud and as long as I can until my voice goes raw.
Then I scream some more.
Fifty-Four
The GPS takes me north. Up 495 into Maryland, then west on 190 toward Elmer County. Nearly an hour and a half has passed. It’s now almost eleven thirty.
According to the address Garmin gives me, Atticus Caine lives in a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. A large metal gate blocks the driveway. To access it one needs a code, which I don’t have, and even if I did, I doubt I would be able to make it through the gate and up the long drive to the house at the top of the hill without alerting Caine and possibly the authorities.
I drive a half mile down the road. I find a place to park, enough where I’m properly concealed by passing traffic.
The night is still. The shrill of cicadas fill the air.
I start into the trees. I go at a quick enough pace where I won’t trip and twist my ankle. I know the direction is correct, because after ten minutes I come across a chain-link fence. Barbed wire runs across the top of it.
I begin to wonder what kind of farmhouse needs the protection of barbed wire when a twig snaps behind me and I draw my gun as I spin around and aim it right at Nova’s face.
He says, “I didn’t know you were the hiking type.”
I lower the gun. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I figured somebody would be watching your place. After I left, I circled around and parked two blocks up so I could watch your building. After about five minutes I saw you come out and book down the street. I followed you to the gas station. Say, what’d you do to piss off those kids?”
“Does the name Atticus Caine mean anything to you?”
Nova shakes his head. “This his place?”
“According to Zane.”
“Zane told you to come here?”
“He says if anybody would know the location of the flash drive, it’d be this Caine guy.”
Nova looks at the fence, at the barbed wire. He brings his arm out from behind his back to show a pair of bolt cutters. “I always knew these would come in handy one day.”
It takes Nova a few minutes to cut a big enough hole in the fence. Once we’re on the other side, he says, “Now what?”
This side of the fence is completely bare. No trees, no bushes, no cover of any kind. The farmhouse sits less than a quarter mile away. It’s a two-story and it seems as if every light on the first floor is burning.
“Now that we’re in,” I say, “we might as well introduce ourselves.”
We head up the long slope of grass. At the porch there are both steps and a ramp. As we approach the door, Nova reaches for his gun. I tell him don’t.
“Why the hell not?”
“I have an idea this guy’s not an enemy.”
“Holly, we just busted through his fence. We’re trespassing on his property. Trust me, to him we are now the enemy.”
I knock on the door. Wait a couple seconds. Knock again.
Nova says, “Fuck this,” and reaches out, turns the knob.
The door opens.
He looks at me, shrugs, and enters the house. I follow him, walking slowly, listening to the heavy silence.
“Hello?” My raised voice sounds odd to me, much too strained. “Mr. Caine?”
Nothing.
Nova now has the Beretta out. He walks just as slowly as I do. The floor is polished oak. Framed photographs line the hallway, what look like Ansel Adams’s work.
A stairway is directly in front of us. On the left and right are two open doorways. Nova leans up close against the wall, peeks in the one room, then the other. He looks back at me, shakes his head.
An electronic voice says, “Drop your weapons.”
Both of us freeze.
“The police have been called. They will be here momentarily. Drop your weapons now and surrender.”
The voice comes from every single room of the house.
I shout, “We are here to speak to Atticus Caine!”
A man appears in the doorway directly ahead of us. He’s tall
