The Survivor

Chapter 33

Dima pulled up in front of the house, Valerik lifted the gun barrel from Nate’s thigh, and Misha rolled back the door and prodded him out. A few shaky steps up the walk, Nate heard a whistle. When he turned, his cell phone was flying at him, and he moved to catch it in front of his face, but his hand couldn’t clench in time. The phone bounced unbroken on the pavement, and he stooped painfully to pick it up. The door slammed shut as the van pulled away, leaving Nate alone in the thickening dusk with the smell of wet grass and a cell-phone screen showing seventeen missed calls from Janie.

Moving toward the front door, he sensed a tingling in his ankle and realized that his left foot was dragging, ever so slightly, along the concrete. The first sign of the dropped foot that heralded, for the afflicted, the beginning of the descent. No wonder Lou Gehrig started having trouble with grounders. With concentration, Nate returned his stride to normal, his pace quickening at the thought of seeing Janie and Cielle.

The front door flung open, two backlit feminine forms crowding the opening, their bearings conveying distress and trepidation and-yes-relief at the sight of him. Firming his leg, he kept on, even as Janie and Cielle rushed out to meet him. His dread, as enveloping as the creeping nightfall, was penetrated by a single prick of light, a sharp gratitude for the embrace to come.

Three A.M.

Kneading his forearm, Nate sat on the couch with Janie, Cielle looking on with chagrin and flicking the edge of her scarf fretfully across her lips. Watching his daughter, he was reminded of what was at risk and had to look away to keep the dam of emotion from breaking inside him. It had been a day without beginning or end, just a prolonged episode of trauma, twisting through the hours like a trapped creature that refused to die.

After stumbling in from the coerced banya visit, he’d showered, changed into fresh clothes, and driven Janie’s car down to find Wendy Moreno-that last name they had from Urban’s list. His knock had gone unanswered, and he’d waited outside for six jittery hours until, assuming that Ms. Moreno would be spending the night out, he’d driven home in a state of exhaustion he could describe only as a stupor. While he’d been on his fruitless stakeout, Janie had scavenged every nook and cranny of the Internet to see if she could find anything about Patrice McKenna, the murdered schoolteacher from Brentwood, that might connect her to Pavlo Shevchenko. Janie had turned up little more than stunned testimonials from neighbors and relatives, variations on a common theme: Patrice was a pillar of the community, the last woman they’d ever expect something like this to happen to.

Twenty-one hours to zero hour, and Nate had not one scrap of evidence to bring to Abara. In fact, every dead end they hit reaquainted them with the alarming reality: They didn’t even know what they were looking for.

Now they were rehashing the contingency to their contingency plan. First thing tomorrow he’d drive back to Wendy Moreno’s and hope that he found her and could, through some Sherlockian miracle, scare up a piece of leverage that might flip the script on Shevchenko. Moreno’s house was near the airport, so on his way he’d drop Janie and Cielle at LAX to retrieve his Jeep from short-term parking, where it had been languishing since he’d been snatched by Misha. Janie would get the Jeep home, pack it, stay visibly present in the house in case Shevchenko’s men were watching, and wait to hear from Nate. Short of his finding the magical clue at Moreno’s to bring to Abara and the FBI, he’d race home and they’d go on the run together well ahead of Shevchenko’s midnight deadline.

“No credit cards,” he said. “No flight or hotel reservations. No phone calls.”

Janie looked across at Cielle. “That includes Jason.”

Cielle’s face wrinkled at the injustice of this, and she was about to reply when she registered something in Nate’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, honey.”

Her gaze hardened. “Remember our deal. No keeping stuff from me.”

He looked down at his hands. “I haven’t been able to draw a full breath since … The heat, I think it screwed with me. My arm and then my lungs and my goddamned ankle now-” A glimpse at his daughter’s face made him clamp his mouth shut. The words had flooded out, coming with more intensity than he’d intended.

He shook his arm gently, trying to force sensation back into it.

Janie gestured at it. “Do you need-”

“It’s okay. I got it.” He rested his arm on his thigh and dug at the muscle with his thumb.

Cielle curled her legs beneath herself on the couch. “Is it scary?”

“Being sick?”

She nodded. Her fists rose to her chin, elbows on her knees. She might have been six or ten. “What’s it like?”

He could feel Janie, too, focused on him. The stillness was electric.

“It teaches you that no part of you is sacred,” he said. “And that other people are.”

Chapter 34

When the garage door lifted, revealing the gray morning sky, Nate heard Janie’s and Cielle’s breathing accelerate. The world had become a different place, full of dark vows and hidden eyes. He eased Janie’s car from the garage, the street drawing into view, but there seemed to be no one there, no dark Town Cars or faces in the bushes. On the freeway, blazing toward LAX, he could feel his heartbeat still surging.

After dropping off Janie and Cielle to pick up the Jeep, Nate drove north toward Wendy Moreno’s house. Idling at a stoplight, he glanced across at a board shop, a few kids skating outside and sucking on cigarettes, gliding through another world where cool still mattered. The surf-rat vibe reminded him of the Marina, where he’d paid the ill-fated visit to Luis Millan. Just a few miles farther north.

He felt a faint charge, the precursor to a thought. Pulling over, he grabbed a map and a pen from the glove box and circled the locations of Wendy Moreno’s house and Luis Millan’s apartment. Then the Brentwood residence of Patrice McKenna. They were in an almost precise line running north-south.

What the hell did that mean?

He tapped the pen against the tattered paper, considering, before folding the map and shoving it into his pocket. Three targets, all in a row. How could that possibly be relevant? Why would Shevchenko want to kill three strangers whose addresses aligned?

He pondered this question the rest of the way to Wendy Moreno’s house. Though residential, her street was animated with a constant stream of through traffic. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, he drove around the block a few times. No one following.

On the porch, as he waited for an answer to the doorbell’s ring, more questions hectored him. What if Moreno was out of town? What if Shevchenko’s men had somehow identified her already? What if she hadn’t answered last night because her corpse had been lying behind the front door, draining into the carpet?

He hardly had time to weigh these considerations when a Honda Civic pulled into the driveway and a bespectacled woman in her thirties climbed out and started for him. High heels looped around one finger, she tugged at an evening dress to straighten it. Her hair was a tangle. Her night out had not been a planned one.

“Wendy Moreno?”

“That’s me.”

“Can I talk to you a minute? I got your name through someone else, and I had a few questions.”

“World of Warcraft?” She suddenly looked embarrassed. “Oh, shit, I thought you were a salesman. Come in. Gimme a minute. I just need to … you know.”

He entered the small house and sat on the couch, listening to her bang about up the brief hall, closet doors opening, water running. Finally she came back out, more put together, and offered him something to drink. Sipping ice water, he ran through the initial questions. She’d never heard of Luis Millan, Patrice McKenna, or Pavlo Shevchenko.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You lost me. I thought you were from the crew I met at Blizzcon. Which realm are you playing?”