Perry's killer playlist

that moment-desperate, way out of my league, the emotional equivalent of a naked mole rat.

“You do not need to worry about her.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, wondering if he had any idea of what she’d put me through so far.

Erich just shook his head. “She will always have your back. Simply say to her, As tave myliu.”

“What’s that mean?”

He smiled again, faintly. “Just some conversational Lithuanian.”

“Perry?” Gobi had ambled over, her hair and uniform soaked and, I couldn’t help but notice, semi-transparent, clinging to her skin with the water she’d dumped over it. She offered me her hand. “Do you want to play?”

We started with judo. It was also where we ended. Gobi said she’d show me a basic two-armed shoulder throw, as simple as it got. Then she stuck her elbow under my arm and before I knew it I was upside down on the floor, my spine feeling like it was shattered like a discarded jigsaw puzzle.

“Perry?” Her face and Erich’s appeared above me, looking down, neither of them looking especially concerned. “You are okay?”

I tried to say no. But talking involved breathing, and I still hadn’t figured out how to do that. After a moment I heard Gobi say something about hitting the shower, and I discovered that, left alone, I could probably crawl back to my feet.

“She is not well,” Erich said as the two of us walked back into the living quarters.

“Her?” I managed, trying to ignore the cracked-open feeling across my sternum, as if someone had done open-heart surgery on me without putting me to sleep first. “What about me?”

“She told me that she failed to complete her mission in Venice.”

“Armitage? Believe me, she didn’t fail.”

“The first target,” Erich said. “The man disguised as a priest. It was the first time that ever happened.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I thought of the bald guy in the steamer trunk opening his eyes in the canal, and looked back at Gobi in the gym. “But she seems okay now.”

“The corticosteroids that I gave her stopped the bleeding and restored her strength temporarily, but…” Erich shook his head. “I am not a doctor. My medical skills are limited to emergency field trauma techniques that I learned in the Swiss army, and also what I have picked up over the years here. But since I saw her last, her condition has worsened considerably.”

“You mean the epilepsy?”

He stared at me. “Is that what she told you? That she had epilepsy?”

“Yeah. Temporal lobe epilepsy. Like Van Gogh. Why?”

Erich didn’t say anything.

“You’re saying she doesn’t?”

“Epilepsy does not normally cause internal bleeding. Or such intense and prolonged states of dementia.”

“When was she having dementia?”

“When you first brought her here,” he said, “she was very disoriented. She told me that you were her final target. She swore she’d been hired to kill you.”

“What?”

Erich shook his head. “If you ask her now, she claims not to remember. But at the time…”

“So if it’s not epilepsy,” I said, “what’s making her act like this?”

“Did she ever tell you how she got that scar on her throat?”

“No,” I said, following after him. “Why?”

Erich walked through the living room to where the computers were still hooked up to Paula’s iPad and began typing, not looking at me.

“Wait a second, what happened?”

“What happened to who?” Gobi asked behind me. I looked around and saw that she was still dressed in her judogi, sipping a tall glass of water. Her gaze flashed from me to Erich, and back to me again. When neither of us answered her, she set the glass down and took another step toward us, repeating the same question with quiet intensity. “What are you talking about?”

Then the typing sounds continued and I heard a voice coming from across the room, from the computer monitors hooked up to Paula’s iPad.

It was my father’s voice.

29. “Family Man” — Hall and Oates

“I don’t know where she went,” Dad was saying through the speakers. “I don’t know when she’s coming back.”

I peered over Erich’s shoulder at the monitor. On the screen, Mom, Dad, and Annie were still sitting on the floor of the same dirty white room they’d been photographed in earlier, none of them looking at the camera. Annie was asleep, and Mom was holding her head and shoulders in her arms, cradling her like a baby. If you didn’t know any better, you might have guessed they were three stranded travelers in the United terminal at O’Hare, waiting for the weather to clear. Dad had rolled his shirt sleeves up. The newspaper that he had been holding earlier lay in a rumpled gray pile next to him, along with some empty plates and wrappers and Evian bottles. That made me feel a little better. At least someone was giving them food and water.

Mom glanced at Dad. “Are you going to try to talk to her?” she asked, in a low voice, as if she didn’t want to disturb Annie, but the microphone picked it up clearly.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say,” Dad said.

“You certainly didn’t seem to have any problems with that earlier.”

He looked at my mom. “Really, Julie? We’re really going to get into this now?”

“I should have known,” Mom said tonelessly, staring at the floor, rubbing her temples, a gesture that I associated with a very specific moment in their marriage, two years ago. “I should. Have. Known.”

“Oh, like you’ve been a saint yourself lately,” Dad said, loud enough that Annie stirred on my mom’s lap.

“Keep your voice down. What’s wrong with you?”

Dad didn’t say anything, and that only seemed to make Mom madder.

“Don’t you dare try to make this about me,” she said. “This has nothing to do with that.”

My dad reached up and ran his hands through what was left of his hair. “Julie, we’re locked in a room with no idea who’s doing this or when they’re coming back. I don’t particularly give a shit what old boyfriend you’re flirting with on Facebook.”

“Wait.” I looked at Erich. “Is this live?”

“No,” Erich said. “It is a Quicktime file. An attachment. It came through the iPad just a few minutes ago.”

“Can you get any idea of where it came from?”

“There is more.” Erich clicked on the PLAY triangle again.

I immediately wished that he hadn’t.

“Your son’s girlfriend,” Mom was saying. “Tell me, Phil, just out of curiosity, is there a depth to which you wouldn’t sink?”

Dad took in a breath and let it out. Maybe it was the angle, but he didn’t look like himself at all anymore. “I already told you, nothing happened.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Right now, honestly, I don’t care what you believe.”

It was the wrong thing to say on every possible level, and I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him for it. Meanwhile, Mom’s whole body sort of folded in on itself and she just started crying. It was a terrible sound, hoarse and scratchy, like she was coming down with a cold. In her sleep, Annie shifted a little on her lap,