The two men moved quickly, Smith taking the Russian’s place and pinning Jeremy down as the Russian grabbed Jeremy’s arm.
For a few terrifying seconds Jeremy didn’t know what to expect, but then he realized that the Russian was rolling up his sleeve.
Jeremy fought back then — it was the reflex to recoil — but Smith and the Russian were too strong.
“Hold him,” the Russian snapped.
“I am,” Smith snapped back.
The Russian applied an arm lock, did so expertly. He was an expert, too, Jeremy noted, at handling a syringe with one hand.
Jeremy felt a familiar pinch as the tip of the needle pierced his skin and slipped at an angle into his brachial artery.
Then he felt the warm rush of heroin entering his bloodstream.
Straight to his heart, and from there to his brain.
His last thought was that these men were staging an overdose. He felt for a quick moment sorrow at the idea that his death would be seen as that last, sad act of a wasted life.
He wanted to fight back, felt the urge to do so rise in him.
But the heroin moved fast, and that urge, along with everything else, simply dissipated.
He felt himself being lifted, then being carried. He was outside briefly, then once again in the back of that van.
He had no idea how long the ride lasted. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours.
All he knew — all he could perceive when the van stopped moving — was that it was dawn.
The Russian opened the rear door and pulled Jeremy through it, dropping him onto the sidewalk like a bundle of trash.
He stood over Jeremy, said something Jeremy couldn’t hear, then dropped something onto Jeremy’s chest.
It rolled off and landed on the sidewalk.
Jeremy looked at the item as the van drove away. It was the cell phone he had bought last night, the cell phone that had slipped from his hand when the Russian had sacked him hours ago.
Jeremy lay there and looked at it. He listened to silence for a long time before he was finally able to roll his head and take a look around. He needed to know where the hell he was — the place to start, no?
He realized he was back at McCarren Park.
A junkie, lying in the gutter.
He knew then that he was in over his head, had been all along. He needed to make a call, the very call he had put himself through hell to avoid having to make.
If she wouldn’t have believed him yesterday, when he was straight, would she believe him now that heroin was once again in his blood?
Jeremy reached for his cell phone. It was powered up. He rose from the gutter — it took him a while, thanks to the state of his mind and the beatings he had taken. Once he was standing, he wandered on weak legs till he found the side of a building to lean against.
There, in the dawn light, he entered Cat’s number.
If half their force advances and half retreats, they are trying to lure you.
— Sun Tzu
EPISODE FOUR
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cat was in Fiermonte’s apartment — not the apartment Fiermonte had shared with his wife for nearly twenty years on a quiet cross street in Gramercy, but the one he had moved into recently, a small loft in the East Village.
She had almost forgotten that he was currently separated.
She had also almost forgotten their conversation over drinks last week.
I have feelings for you, Cat, he had confessed.
There was, she told herself, no way he could confuse this circumstance as romantic, or anything even close to romantic.
He had picked her up at the hospital in White Plains, where her broken forearm had been set and placed in a nylon cast and sling. From there they made the drive back into the city in his car. When Cat realized they weren’t heading for her apartment in Long Island City, she didn’t bother to say anything; she was tired, just wanted to lie down and didn’t care where.
And anyway, maybe it would be best if she weren’t alone for the next day or two.
No pharmacies were open yet, so Cat’s prescription for painkillers had yet to be filled. Fiermonte had assured her, though, that he had a few pills left over from a recent oral surgery. Upon their arrival at his place, he had sat her on his platform bed in the middle of the brightly lit room, then retrieved a pill from the bathroom.
He was handing it to Cat now, along with a glass of water.
“You’re going to take advantage of me once I pass out, aren’t you?” she joked.
“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” Fiermonte said. “But now that you mention it…”
“This has been your plan all along, right?”
Fiermonte smiled. It was a patient smile. “You see right through me.”
Cat shrugged. “I see through men. It’s my special gift.”
He nodded toward the pill. “Take the thing, Cat. You look like you need it.”
“Flatterer.”
“And maybe it’ll shut you up for a while.”
Cat downed the pill, then handed the glass back to Fiermonte. He placed it on a table next to the bed.
“So how much trouble am I in?” she asked.
He removed Cat’s cell phone from his jacket pocket and placed it next to the glass. Then from the other pocket he took out Cat’s Sig. He must have gotten it from one of the troopers, she thought. Fiermonte removed the clip and pulled back the slide, expertly catching the chambered round as it was ejected.
Cat saw this and was more than a little impressed. “Fancy,” she said.
“I’m full of all kinds of tricks,” Fiermonte replied. “To answer your question, I know the Westchester County DA. Better yet, he owes me a favor. I’ll talk to him later today and straighten everything out.” He paused, then said, “How’s your throat?”
“Hurts.”
“How good of a look did you get at the woman who attacked you?”
“I can pick her out.”
“And she’s definitely the woman you saw at the coffee shop when you were talking to the Hall woman?”
“Yes.”
Fiermonte thought about that for a moment. He seemed to be bothered by something.
“What?” she said finally.
“A garrote is the tool of a pro, don’t you think? And I don’t imagine there are a lot of professional female killers out there. Maybe we can get lucky with a composite sketch. You feel up to doing that? Making a description to a tech?”
Cat nodded.
“If she’s in the system, maybe we can find out who she works for,” Fiermonte said. “Or has worked for in the past. I’ll make a few phone calls. In the meantime, you should probably get some sleep.”
“Actually, what I could really use is a bath,” Cat said.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll get one started.”
He crossed the room and entered the bathroom. Cat heard the crash of water falling into a tub.
She tried to think through everything she knew — everything she had learned from Elizabeth Hall, everything she had seen, everything that had been done.
It was a lot to keep track of in her current state. And it would be even more difficult once the painkiller hit and numbed her brain.
One thing stood out in her mind, though. It was something Elizabeth Hall had said about Jeremy.
He had just transformed before my eyes.
Into?
A man. A man with a purpose.
Cat wondered about him now. Where was he? Was he even still alive? Was all this for nothing? Had whoever sent a killer after her also sent a killer after him?
She wondered, too, about Johnny. She should have heard from him by now, no? She reached for her phone and picked it up, noticing right away that it was lighter than it should be. Turning the phone over, she saw the reason why.
The battery had been removed.
She called to Fiermonte. He stood in the bathroom door.
“The battery is missing from my phone. Do you have it?”
>
He checked his pockets. “No.”
Cat thought for a moment. The effects of the painkillers were on their way.
“Could the troopers have taken it?” she asked.
Fiermonte shrugged. “Why would they?”
Cat thought for a moment more. “Could she have?”
“Maybe. If she didn’t want you making any calls.”
“But why would she do that if she was trying to kill me? And when would she have had the chance?”
Fiermonte shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ll get you a new battery when I’m out getting your prescription filled.”
“Could you maybe do that now?”
“Nothing’s open yet. It’s only seven.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You need to rest, Cat. You’ve done all you can for now. I’ll take it from here, okay?”
She nodded. A warmth was spreading through her chest. “Okay.”
“I’ve put some towels by the tub. If you need anything, just ask.”
“And I’m sure you’ll bring it in to me, right?” Cat said.
Fiermonte’s only response to her teasing was to offer a half smile. Cat knew he was losing his patience, but she didn’t care about that.
If a man didn’t eventually grow impatient with her, she grew impatient with him.
Two means to the same inevitable end.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
At their motel room in Jersey City, Johnny sat on the bed while Haley locked the door, then drew the curtain.
It was a chilly June morning, but the room was downright cold. Despite this, Johnny removed his shirt so Haley could take a look at his ribs. One long oval bruise, the colors of a summer sunset, had erupted on his skin. Though Haley was no stranger to bruises — she was a daughter and sister to professional boxers — she nonetheless winced at the sight of Johnny’s wound.
“If your ribs are broken, we need to get you to the hospital,” she said.
“They aren’t broken.”
“You can’t be certain.”
“I’d know. Trust me.”
“You’ve broken your ribs before?”
Johnny nodded.
“Let me feel them, at least.”
Johnny told her to go ahead, and she proceeded to carefully touch each rib, lightly feeling along the length of every one with the tips of her fingers. When she reached the injured ribs — there were three of them — Johnny flinched and drew in sharp breaths through clenched teeth. She checked both sides of his rib cage, not just the side with the bruise, and found no indications of breaks.
When she was done, Johnny said, “We’ll get some tape and wrap them up.” He knew that she knew how to do that.
Haley looked at him and nodded. “Okay.” She saw that his eyes were watering — from the pain of her touch, no doubt. A single tear fell from one eye, but she pretended not to notice it. She hated the idea of her touch causing him anything other than pleasure.
“I need a bath,” Johnny said.
“You should probably just rest for now.”
He shook his head and said quietly, “I pissed myself when I hit the dashboard.”
Haley nodded. “Okay. You’ll need some clean clothes, then.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“I should at least go out and get the tape. And something for the pain and swelling. I saw a CVS on the corner.”
“No, not without me.”
“We’re safe, Johnny. No one knows where we are. I think I can risk a trip to the CVS in broad daylight.”
Johnny shook his head but said nothing.
“I’ll just wait till you’re asleep, then, that’s all,” Haley said. Her tone was a mix of assurance and defiance.
He knew that there was no point in arguing with her. And she was right — no one knew where they were, and it was broad daylight out.
“I’ll need you to give me a hand first,” Johnny said.
She helped him stand, then undressed him. It wasn’t easy. When she led him into the bathroom, they noticed that there was no bathtub, only a shower stall. Johnny obviously couldn’t stand up for too long without help, so Haley told him that she’d go to the CVS later and began to undress, too. It was quicker for her — she wasn’t injured, and she never wore underwear. As she undressed, Haley thought for some reason of those porn actors at Dickey’s bar last winter, stripping themselves for a night’s work as Johnny and she quickly closed up, the woman with a sleeve of tattoos very much like her own.
That woman was to Haley as Richter was to Johnny — men, when desperate, have their violence to sell, and women, when desperate, have their sex.
In the shower Haley washed Johnny. It was all he could do to stand there. Nearly every move caused him pain, sometimes severe. And though Johnny bore it, Haley could tell it was draining him. All men, she knew, had their limits.
She was careful to keep her head out of the stream of hot water; her long red hair took hours to dry on its own, and it was unlikely that this cheap motel provided hair dryers. She and Johnny had nothing but each other, the clothes on their backs, and what their pockets contained, which was little more than three grand in cash and their respective prepaid cell phones. They would travel to wherever it was they were going with only these things, then accumulate — just as they did upon their arrival in Brooklyn — only the things that they needed.
After the shower Haley eased Johnny down onto the bed and covered him with the blanket. It was a thin motel blanket with no real weight, but the steam from their shower had warmed the room up significantly.
Johnny watched Haley as she reached for her clothes. Even in his condition, the sight of her fully naked body — full breasts, strip of red pubic hair, pale ass, and well-muscled back — caused his gut to tighten.
He thought of his vow — no man will ever harm you. He was as committed to that as ever.
But the thought of his vow caused him to wonder about the man whose trachea he had fractured. Was he dead? Was there now yet another killing from which they would need to run?
A justifiable killing, yes, but there was too much to explain — too much to easily explain, anyway, too much to be certain that the truth wouldn’t be lost or ignored.
It was the same fear he felt as they escaped Thailand.
Even the best-case scenario of several hours in a police station, making a statement to the cops, would be too many hours spent away from Haley.
Even the next-best scenario, a single night in jail — certainly either Donnie Fiermonte or Dickey McVicker would get him released quickly — would be one night too long.
And of course a prolonged trial, not to mention the possibility of prison, were out of the question.
No, they would run.
Johnny couldn’t help but wonder what his father would think of what had become of his eldest son and namesake.
An army washout turned drifter turned fugitive.
Hardly a continuation of the Coyle tradition of service and sacrifice.
Johnny liked to think, though, that his father would take one look at Haley and understand. John Coyle Sr. had gone to great lengths to protect those he loved. He had, in fact, married relatively late in life — a sworn bachelor for his first ten years in the FBI, married to his work, until a certain woman came along, a woman who changed everything, a woman for whom he created a secret world in Ossining.
So maybe I’m continuing at least one Coyle tradition, Johnny thought. And maybe that’s the only one that really matters.
Haley was balancing on one foot, about to step into her jeans, when Johnny said, “Don’t leave yet.”
She lowered her foot and looked at him. “You need something for the pain and swelling.”
“Just lie next to me for a while.”
She stood there for a moment, then tossed her jeans on a nearby chair and approached the bed. She climbed in next to him, careful not to jostle the mattress, and lay as close to him as she dared. He was flat on his back, couldn’t
even put his arm around her, but they were under the same blanket together, and that was enough.
It wasn’t long before Johnny’s exhaustion caught up with him and he fell asleep. Haley slipped out of the bed as carefully as she had slipped into it, then quietly dressed. She removed Johnny’s KA-BAR knife from his boot and placed it on the nightstand so he could easily reach it. Then she took his box cutter from the back pocket of his jeans and pocketed that. Johnny had taught her to fight with a knife, had spent long nights shortly after their return to Brooklyn doing so. She had taken to it quickly; the footwork wasn’t unlike a boxer’s footwork, the slicing motions not unlike a hook punch, the sticking motions not unlike a jab.
She was confident that she could protect herself if the need arose. She was not the woman she was when she had met Johnny in Thailand. She wasn’t even the woman she was hours ago, when Richter had knocked on her door and told her that Johnny had sent him to take her somewhere safe.
She would not fall for that again.
Exiting the motel, Haley paused to have a look around, checking the doorways that she could see and the few parked cars lining the long city street. She was doing everything Johnny had taught her to do, and would do that and only that from now on.
When she was satisfied that all was well, she headed toward the CVS.
She got everything they needed — first-aid supplies, food, bottled water, a travel-sized packet of detergent. She looked for prepaid cell phones, didn’t see any, asked a clerk, but was told the store didn’t carry any. As she headed back toward the motel she scanned the street, looking for anything out of the ordinary in general and Richter in particular. She happened to spot a small convenience store with a sign in the narrow storefront window indicating that prepaid cell phones were for sale there. She entered and bought two.
Johnny was still asleep when she entered the room. She picked up his jeans and underwear and took them into the bathroom, removed the wad of money from his pocket, then washed the two items of clothing in the sink with the detergent she had bought. When she was done she hung them over the shower rod to dry.
There was nothing else for her to do now but wait. The room had gotten chilly again, so climbed into bed next to Johnny with her clothes and boots still on.
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