by Matt Coyle
“You have the gun. I have the power.” She showed me teeth. “You can kill everyone here tonight. Nothing will change. You and your friend will be dead in less than twenty-four hours. There will be no one to mourn you at your funeral. How sad.”
Tatiana reached into her jacket pocket.
“Hold it!” I tightened my grip on the gun. She froze her hand. The man in the front seat’s eyes went wide.
“I’m just taking out my phone.”
I leaned forward and put the gun against her forehead and slid my free hand into her pocket on top of hers. I felt something metal and rectangle. A cell phone. I took it out and leaned back against the door opposite her.
“Why do you want the phone?”
“To text you my contact information. You’re going to need it when you call me to tell me you have my flash drive.”
I glanced at the phone, then back at her.
“You can call the police, Rick.” She read my mind. “That might keep you alive for an extra day, but it won’t save Kim.”
I’d negotiated the best I could, which wasn’t much of a negotiation at all. Tatiana was right. I had the gun, she had the power. The Russian Mafia didn’t make idle threats. I accepted her terms or died, along with Kim. I tossed the phone into her lap.
I started to recite my phone number.
“Rick, you’re such a foolish boy. I already have your number.” She turned toward the window and swept her arm across it like Vanna White. “Look where we are. I know everything I need to know about you. And your ex-girlfriend. The one you still love.”
She punched something into her phone and my cell chimed in my pocket. No need to look at Tatiana’s contact information tonight. Hopefully, I’d have a reason to in the next three days.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
AS SOON AS Tatiana and I made nice, I got into my car and headed to the emergency room at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla. La Jolla. I couldn’t avoid it. That’s where my insurance dictated I go. The road started to get blurry and the night closed down around my car. Nausea. I’d lost more blood than I realized. Shock had set in and my body was shutting down.
I made it off the freeway and up the hill to the hospital. My hands were numb on the steering wheel. Luckily, I’d been to the emergency room before. Once for me, once for someone else. My vision had squeezed down into a tunnel. I could only see what was directly in front of me. I parked in front of the emergency room and got out of the car. And landed hands first on the pavement, just in time to keep from face-planting. I tried to stand, but my bleeding leg gave way again. The tunnel narrowed. I saw the bottom of the automated glass-doored entrance and started crawling.
The tunnel closed in on itself.
* * *
“Are you with us, Mr. Cahill?” Blurry-bodied voice.
“Mah legged.”
“Yes.” The nurse came into focus. A nice smiling face welcoming me back to the living. I liked the face. I liked being alive. “A surgeon operated on your leg and we’ve given you blood and now you’re on an IV drip so you can get more fluids back into your body.”
“Thakou … Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She patted my hand. “We’re happy to have you back.”
“Where did I go?” I looked over my left shoulder and saw the IV bag on a stand connected to my arm. I was in a hospital room with the curtain pulled between me and the next bed.
“A nurse found you just outside the emergency room door. You were in shock and you’d lost a lot of blood.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”
“I had an accident.”
“With a knife?”
“Pretty stupid, huh?” I smiled to hide the guilt I felt about lying to this nice lady who’d helped keep me alive. “I couldn’t find a screwdriver and was using a knife to screw in a screw in a picture frame and it slipped.”
“You must have been pushing pretty hard on the screw.” She removed her hand from my shoulder and folded her arms across her chest. “You nicked the superficial femoral artery. If the nurse hadn’t found you, you would have bled to death in another twenty minutes. You’re very lucky.”
“I feel lucky. And stupid.”
“Are you sure there isn’t something else about how you were injured that you’d like to tell me? Would you like me to call the police?”
The police. I thought about the goth psychopath, Tatiana, and her threat. No, not a threat, a promise. To kill me. And Kim. I looked at the clock on the wall. Eleven twenty-seven. I had less than seventy-two hours to find a flash drive that may no longer even exist. I couldn’t go to the police. They’d just get in the way and the clock would keep ticking.
“I’m sure. When can I leave?”
“The doctor wants you to stay overnight so we can monitor you. The artery had to be surgically repaired.” The sweetness had left her voice. “We need to keep you here and put more fluid in you.”
“How many more bags?” I nodded at the IV bag above me.
“At least one more after this one.”
“Would you mind getting my phone?” I asked. “I need to let somebody know where I am.”
She opened a wooden wardrobe against the wall and took out a white plastic bag and handed it to me.
“Your personal items are in the bag and your clothes are in the closet. Your pants are in there, too, but they’re ruined. We had to cut them off.”
“Thanks. What about my car? I think I left it in front of the emergency room.”
“I believe an orderly parked it in the parking structure. I’ll check and make sure.” She stood staring down at me with her arms still crossed. “You’re not planning on trying to leave tonight, are you, Mr. Cahill?”
“No. I just like to know where everything is.”
“Okay. I’ll give you a little privacy and find out about your car.” She left the room.
I fished my phone out of the bag and called the one person I could rely on to help me tonight.
“Rick? Now what?” The pebbles in a clothes dryer voice. Moira. The last time I’d been injured and in the hospital, I’d called Kim. I couldn’t rely on her for help anymore. She had more than enough troubles of her own.
I hadn’t talked to Moira since we’d both been questioned by the police down at the Brick House. A lot had happened since. No one on LJPD had arrested me for holding Edward Armstrong against his will on the night he was murdered, so Moira must have lied for me in the white square room. Being questioned by the police can be unnerving. Lying to them had to be frightening for someone who’d never done it before. It still scared me and I was a veteran at it.
Now I had to ask her for another favor.
“Are there still some of my clothes hanging in your closet?”
“You’re calling to talk about clothes after what happened at the police station today?”
“We can talk about that later. I promise. Right now, I need your help.”
“Of course, you do.” She paused, but I could hear her breathing. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else this time. And every other time going forward. Good-bye, Rick.”
She hung up.
Another bridge pulled up and burned. Right in front of me. I couldn’t blame Moira. I’d put her in a couple of untenable spots in a period of less than twenty-four hours. She’d helped me out of friendship. What had I given her back? Nothing. Not even a thank-you for lying to the police for me. I’d been too caught up in trying to right decades-old wrongs and playing savior for Kim one last time.
I set my phone down on the nightstand and stared at the blank TV bolted to the wall. An incoming text pinged my phone. I picked up the phone. The text was from Tatiana. It was a photo of the front of Kim’s house with the current time stamped on it.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I SAT IN my car in front of Kim’s house. No black Hummer. No knife-wielding goth Mob Boss. No gun-toting bald foot soldiers. The text had been a warning only. It had served its purpose. The clock was ticking.
I turned and looked over my left shoulder between the headrest of my seat and the door of the car at the IV bag I’d hung from the hand grip above the backseat window. The liquid still followed gravity from the bag down the tube through the needle stuck into my arm and into my vein. Sizzling pain began to push through the meds the anesthesiologist must have pumped into me while the surgeon mended the injured artery in my leg. The nurse had called in a prescription for Percocet at an all-night pharmacy before I sneaked out of the hospital. I hadn’t had time to stop and fill it on my way to Kim’s.
I reached across and opened the glove compartment and found a Subway napkin left over from long hours of surveillance in the car. I folded the napkin into a little square and pulled the IV needle out of my arm. I put the napkin over the hole then wrapped it in duct tape I kept in the glove compartment. It held the napkin in place along with the hair on my arm.
I opened the car door and maneuvered my good leg out onto the pavement and grabbed the wooden cane I’d stolen from my sleeping roommate before I staggered out of the room with an IV bag—still connected to my vein—hidden inside my jacket. I left forty dollars on the chair next to the man’s bed. I hoped that would cover the cost of a new cane. It wouldn’t the inconvenience.
Pain stabbed at my wound like a psycho goth chick with a knife all over again as I leaned on the cane and slid my leg out of the car. Sweat washed down my face. Nausea crawled back up my throat. I took a deep breath and a tiny step. A breeze tousled the flap of denim that had once been a pant leg.
Someone in the emergency room had cut the pant leg from the bottom up through the waistline. I’d closed the gap at the waist by cinching my belt tight, but it had opened a little with each halting step to my car when I fled the hospital. Now a three-inch-wide vent exposed my skin from my hip bone to my ankle.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs in front of the house and texted Kim that I was outside. It was after midnight and I didn’t want to frighten her by knocking on the door. I also wouldn’t mind help getting up the stairs.
Twenty seconds later the front door opened and light flooded out of the house silhouetting Kim in the doorway.
“Rick?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll explain inside.”
“Okay.” A quaver in her voice. She opened the door wider, waiting for me to ascend the stairs and enter the house.
I teetered on the cane and my good leg and hoisted the bad one onto the bottom step. And dry heaved. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was running on empty and empty came up.
“Rick, what’s wrong?” Kim scampered down the steps toward me.
“I …” I bent over and puked up stomach acid. My skin went clammy and my hands went numb.
Kim stroked my back as I spit the last of the acid from my mouth.
“Here.” She put her arm around my waist and her neck under my arm. “Let’s sit down for a second.”
“Okay.”
We shuffled a couple feet from the puddle of bile I’d left on the stairs, and Kim and the cane guided me to a gentle landing on the other side of the staircase.
Kim straightened up and looked at me through the splash of light coming from the house.
“What happened to your pants?” She threw her hand up to her mouth. “And your leg?”
“I’ll tell you inside.” The nausea hadn’t gone away. It was scraping my stomach for more ammunition. “Can I have some water?”
Kim ran up the stairs and into the house. Despite the nausea, I needed some food. Whatever painkillers they’d given me while they stitched up my leg had burned through my adrenaline and were now working on my empty stomach. If I could keep it down, food would make the nausea go away. Kim bolted from the house and down the stairs three at a time. She handed me an open bottle of water, and I took a long sip.
“Thanks.” I took a heartier gulp. The nausea was swimming in the water looking for an exit. “I need something to eat. Can you help me inside?”
“Of course.” Kim grabbed me as she had earlier and we glaciered up the stairs.
Once inside, she steered me into the kitchen and sat me down at a rustic wooden table. Bile floating on water rose up my throat. I hyperventilated and fought it back down.
“Can I have a piece of bread?”
Ten seconds later Kim put a piece of freshly cut sourdough in my hand. I took a small bite and swallowed without chewing. Then another, using my teeth this time. My stomach settled and blood returned to my skin. My fingers tingled. But the pain in my leg spiked and reminded me how I’d gotten in this condition.
“The color is coming back into your face.” Kim stood over me with a hand to her cheek. Green eyes wide. “I have some spaghetti from a couple nights ago. Do you want some?”
“Please.”
Kim warmed the spaghetti on a Wolf six-burner range with a built-in flattop. Range envy supplanted the nausea. She stood over the pot and stirred silently, saving her questions until I had some real food in me. She sipped from a big glass of red wine. The bottle, opened before I staggered into her house, sat on the counter two-thirds empty. She was still in the very beginning of her first trimester and life had been pitching her high and tight lately.
She put a plate of spaghetti in front of me that, right then, smelled as good as anything I’d ever smelled. The taste didn’t disappoint. Kim sat down diagonally from me with her own plate. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept since the police questioned her on Sunday morning. We sat quietly and ate for a few minutes. Me in large fork-spun mouthfuls, her one noodle at a time.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” She looked at me over the glass of wine she held in front of her mouth.
“Somebody thought I took something of theirs from Sophia.”
“Who?” Kim asked.
A lie or the truth?
“Tell me, Rick.” She’d read my pause for what it was. “Don’t lie to me to try to make me feel better. I’m not going to feel better until Jeffrey’s trial is over and he’s home safe.”
She might not be able to feel better, but she could feel worse.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s the Russian Mafia.”
“What?” Her eyes and her mouth went wide. “Why would they think you’d take something from Sophia?”
She hadn’t asked me if I’d taken what the Russians wanted. The thought hadn’t entered her mind. I loved her in that moment as much as I ever had for her unconditional faith in me. In her belief that, underneath the scars and the darkness, there was goodness in me. I’d disappointed her too many times to count. She’d chosen another man over me. But she hadn’t lost her faith in me. The one thing in the mess of a life I’d made that I still strove to live up to.
And she didn’t deserve to hear the truth I had to tell her.
“I don’t know.” I put my hand on hers and gently squeezed. “But it gets worse. It’s some kind of flash drive, and since I don’t have it, they think Jeffrey does.”
“Why do they think that?” Fear rode out on her voice.
“Process of elimination.”
“How do they know the police didn’t find this flash drive when they searched her car?” She pulled her hand from mine and bit her lower lip. “They must have searched the hotel room, too.”
“I don’t know how they know, but I can guess. They have someone on their payroll at LJPD. It wouldn’t be the first time.” I thought of my father and his betrayal.
“Do you think these people killed Sophia over the flash drive?”
“Maybe.”
Tatiana stabbed me. Someone stabbed Sophia. The thought that the stabber may be the same person had crossed my mind. The surgeon who operated on my leg would have the wound measurements as evidence against the knife Tatiana used on me. Maybe the wounds matched those on Sophia. Or maybe Tatiana used a different knife. Or maybe Jeffrey Parker used his own knife. Right now, it didn’t matter. Finding the flash drive did.
“We can’t go to the police.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo of her house that Tatiana texted me. “They’ll kill you, they’ll kill me, and they’ll kill Jeffrey. They aren’t afraid of the police. They’d trade one of their soldiers to do life in prison for making an example of us.”
Kim sank back down into her seat, eyes wide and mouth slack. “What are we going to do?”
“We have to find the flash drive.”
“How?”
“We have to search the house and Jeffrey’s office.”
“He doesn’t have it.” She spit the words at me. “Besides, the police already searched all over this house.”
“They were looking for something that would incriminate him in Sophia’s murder, not necessarily an anonymous flash drive.”
“But why would he take it? Just tell the Russians he didn’t take it. Make them understand.”
“They don’t want to understand, Kim. They want the flash drive.”
“The police took his computer.” She put a hand to her forehead.
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I was in shock. Some clothes. Some knives from the kitchen.”
“Flash drives?”
“I don’t know. I signed some papers, but I didn’t read everything they took.”
“Show me Jeffrey’s office.” I stood up with the help of the cane. The pain in my leg doubled, but I stayed upright. The food hadn’t helped the pain, but I felt steadier. Stronger.
Kim led me down the hall to Jeffrey Parker’s converted bedroom office. It took a while, but I made it on my own. We searched his desk. No flash drives. We searched the closet. Nothing. No safe hidden behind a façade that held a flash drive or decades-old secrets.
We searched their bedroom, the spare bedrooms, every room in the house. Each new search a little more frantic by Kim. Nothing. It was after three a.m. by the time we were done. Less than sixty-six hours to Tatiana’s deadline.