No Second Chance

by Harlan Coben

  They paid him two thousand dollars and sent him back to Kosovo. Based on Seidman's rather specific description, the police circulated a sketch of a man who, for all practical purposes, was impossible to find. When they decided to rerun the ransom drop, Pavel was the natural goto guy. He would dress the same, look the same, play with Seidman's head in case he decided to fight back this time.

  Still, Pavel was a realist. He would adapt. He had spent time selling women in Kosovo. White slavery in the guise of strip clubs was a big market over there, though Bacard had come up with another way of using those women. Pavel, no stranger to sudden change, would do what needed to be done. He gave Lydia some attitude, but once she handed him a wad of bills adding up to five thousand dollars, he grew quiet. The fight was out of him. It was only a question of how.

  She handed Pavel a gun. He knew how to use it.

  Pavel set up near the driveway, keeping his two-way radio channel open. Lydia called Heshy and told them they were ready. Fifteen minutes later, Heshy drove past them. He tossed the tracking device out the car window. Lydia caught it and threw back a kiss. Heshy kept driving. Lydia brought the tracking device into the backyard. She took out her gun and waited.

  The-night air was starting to give way to the morning dew. That tingle was there, lighting up her veins. Heshy, she knew, was not far away. He wanted to join in, but this was her game. The street was silent. It was 4:00 A . M.

  Five minutes later, she heard the car pull up.

  Chapter 33

  Something was very wrong here.

  The roads were becoming so familiar I barely noticed them. I was wired, jazzed, the pain in my ribs barely noticeable. Rachel was absorbed in her Palm Pilot. She'd click screens with her little wand, tilt her head, change viewing angles. She dug through the backseat and found Zia's road atlas. With the cap of the Flair pen in her mouth, Rachel started marking up the route, trying to discern a pattern, I guess. Or maybe she was just stalling, so I wouldn't ask the inevitable.

  I called her name softly. She flicked her eyes at me and then back to the screen.

  "Did you know about that CD-ROM before you got here?" I said.

  "No."

  "There were photos of you in front of the hospital where I work."

  "So you told me."

  She clicked the screen again.

  "Are the photos real?" I asked.

  "Real?"

  "I mean, were they digitally altered or something--or were you really in front of my office two years ago?"

  Rachel kept her head down, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see her shoulders slump. "Make a right," she said. "Up here."

  We were on Glen Avenue now. This was getting creepy. My old high school was up on the left. They'd refurbished it four years ago, adding a weight room, a swimming pool, and a second gymnasium. The faoeade had been intentionally scuffed up and aged with ivy, giving the place a 2.proper collegiate feel, reminding the youth of Kasselton what was expected of them.

  "Rachel?"

  "The pictures are real, Marc."

  I nodded to myself. I don't know why. Maybe I was trying to buy myself some time. I was heading into something worse than unchartered waters here. I knew that the answers would alter everything again, make it all go topsy-turvy, just when I hoped to set the world right. "I think I'm owed an explanation," I said.

  "You are." She kept her head down on the screen. "But not right now."

  "Yeah, right now."

  "We need to concentrate on what we're doing."

  "Don't hand me that crap. We're just driving here. I can handle two things at the same time."

  "Maybe," she said softly, "I can't."

  "Rachel, what were you doing in front of that hospital?"

  "Whoa."

  "Whoa what?"

  We were approaching the traffic lights at Kasselton Avenue. Because of the hour, they were blinking yellow and red. I frowned and turned to her. "Which way?"

  "Right."

  My heart iced. "I don't understand."

  "The car has stopped again."

  "Where?"

  "Unless I'm reading this wrong," Rachel said, and finally she looked up and met my gaze, "they're at your house."

  I made the right turn. Rachel no longer needed to direct me. She kept her eyes on the screen. We were less than a mile away now. My parents had taken this route to the hospital on the day I was born. I wondered how many times I'd been on this road since. Weird thought, but the mind goes where it must.

  I made the right on Monroe. My parents' house was on the left. The lights were off except, of course, for the lamp downstairs. We had it on a timer. It stayed on from 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. every day. I'd put in on e of those long-lite, energy-saving light bulbs that look like soft-ice-cream swirls. Mom bragged about how long it lasted. She'd read somewhere that keeping a radio on was also a good way to scare away burglars, so she had an old AM radio constantly tuned into a talk station. The problem was, the sound of the radio kept her up at night, so now Mom put the volume so low that a burglar would have to press his ear against it to be warded off.

  I started making the turn onto my road, onto Darby Terrace, when Rachel said, "Slow down."

  "They moving?"

  "No. The signal is still coming from your house."

  I looked up the block. I started thinking about it. "They didn't exactly take a direct route here."

  She nodded. "I know."

  "Maybe they found your Q-Logger," I said.

  "That's exactly what I was thinking."

  The car inched forward. We were in front of the Citrons' house now, two away from mine. No lights were on--not even a timer lamp. Rachel chewed on her lower lip. We were at the Kadisons' house now, nearing my driveway. It was one of those situations people describe as "too quiet," as if the world had frozen, as if all you saw, even animate objects, were trying to stay still.

  "This has to be a setup," she said.

  I was just about to ask her what we should do--pull back, park and walk, call the cops for help?--when the first bullet shattered the front windshield. Shards of glass smacked my face. I heard a short scream. Without conscious thought, I ducked my head and raised my forearm. I looked down and saw blood.

  "Rachel!"

  The second shot zinged so close to my head that I felt it in my hair. The impact hit my seat with a sound like a pillowy wallop. Instincts took over again. But this time it had a mission, a direction of sorts. I hit the accelerator. The car lurched forward.

  The human brain is an amazing instrument. No computer can duplicate it. It can process millions of stimuli in hundredths of a second. That was, I guess, what was going on now. I was hunched over in the driver's seat. Someone was taking shots at me. The base part of my brain wante d to flee, but something farther along the evolutionary path realized that there might be a better way.

  The thought process took--and this is just a rough estimate--less than a tenth of a second. I had my foot on the accelerator. The tires shrieked. I thought about my house, the familiar setup of it, the direction the bullets had come from. Yes, I know how that sounds. Maybe panic speeds up those brain functions, 1 don't know, but I realized that if I were the one doing the shooting, if I had been lying in wait for this car to approach, I'd have hidden behind the three shrubs that divide my property from the Christies' next door. The shrubs were big and bushy and right on our driveway. If I had pulled all the way in, barn, you could have blown us away from the passenger side. When I hesitated, when the shooter had seen that we might back away, he was still in position, though not as good, to take us from the front.

  So I looked up, turned the wheel, and aimed the car for those bushes.

  A third bullet rang out. It hit something metal, probably the front grill, with a ka-ping. 1 sneaked a glance at Rachel long enough to take a visual snapshot: her head was down, her hand pressed against the side of her head, blood seeping through the fingers. My stomach fell, but my foot stayed on the pedal. I moved my head back and fo
rth, as if that might throw off the shooter's aim.

  My headlights illuminated the bushes.

  I saw flannel.

  Something happened to me. I talked before about sanity being a thin string and that mine had snapped. In that case, I went quiet. This time, a mix of rage and dread roared through my body. I pressed the pedal harder, almost through the floor. I heard a yell of surprise. The man in the flannel shirt tried to leap to the right.

  But I was ready.

  I turned the steering wheel toward him like we were playing bumper cars. There was a crash, a dull thud. I heard a scream. The bushes were caught up in the bumper. I looked for the man in the flannel. Nothing. I had my hand on the door handle, about to open it and go after him, when Rachel said, "No!"

  I stopped. She was alive!

  Her hand reached up and shifted the car into reverse. "Go back!"

  I listened. I don't know what I'd been thinking. The man was armed. I wasn't. Despite the impact, I didn't know if he was dead or injured or what.

  I started back. I noticed that my dark suburban street was lit up now. Shots and shrieking tires are not common noises here on Darby Terrace. People had woken up and turned on the lights. They'd be dialing 9

  Rachel sat up. Relief flooded me. She had a gun in one hand. The other was still over her wound. "It's my ear," she said, and again, the mind working in funny ways, I had already started thinking about what procedure I would use to repair the damage.

  "There! "she shouted.

  I turned. The man in the flannel was hobbling down the driveway. I turned the wheel and aimed the car lights in his direction. He disappeared around back. I looked over at Rachel.

  "Back up," she said. "I'm not sure he's alone."

  I did. "Now what?"

  Rachel had her gun out, her free hand on the door handle. "You stay."

  "Are you out of your mind?"

  "You keep revving the engine and moving^ a little. Let them think we're still in the car. I'll sneak up on them."

  Before I could protest any further, she rolled out. With blood still flowing down her side, she darted away. I, per her instructions, revving the engine and feeling like a total dweeb, shifted the car into drive, moved forward, shifted the car into reverse, went back.

  A few seconds later, I lost sight of Rachel.

  A few seconds after that, I heard two more shots.

  Lydia had watched it all from her spot in the backyard.

  Pavel had shot too early. It was a mistake on his part. From her vantage point behind a wall of firewood, Lydia could not see who was in the car. But she'd been impressed. The driver had not only flushed Pavel out but wounded him as well.

  Pavel limped into view. Lydia's eyes adjusted enough to see the blood on his face. She raised her arm and waved him toward her. Pavel fell and then started crawling. Lydia kept her eyes on the routes to the backyard. They would have to come from the front. There was a fenc e behind her. She was near the back neighbor's gate in case she needed to escape.

  Pavel kept crawling. Lydia urged him on while keeping watch. She wondered how this ex-fed would play it. The neighbors were awake now. Lights were going on. The cops would be on their way.

  Lydia would have to hurry.

  Pavel made it to the pile of firewood and rolled next to her. For a moment, he stayed on his back. His breathing was wheezy and wet. Then he forced himself up. He knelt next to Lydia and looked out into the yard. He winced and said, "Leg broken."

  "We'll take care of it," she said. "Where's your gun?"

  "Dropped."

  Untraceable, she thought. Not a problem. "I have another weapon you can use," she told him. "Keep a lookout."

  Pavel nodded. He squinted into the dark.

  "What?" Lydia said. She moved a little closer to him.

  "Not sure."

  As Pavel stared out, Lydia pressed the barrel of her gun against the hollow spot behind his left ear. She squeezed the trigger, firing two shots into his head. Pavel dropped to the ground like a marionette with his strings cut.

  Lydia looked down at him. In the end, this might be best. Plan B was probably better than Plan A anyway. Had Pavel killed the woman--an ex-FBI agent--that would not have ended it. They'd probably search even harder for the mysterious man in flannel. The investigation would have continued. There wouldn't be closure. This way, with Pavel dead-- dead by the gun used at the original Seidman crime scene--the police would conclude that either Seidman or this Rachel (or both) was behind it. They'd be arrested. The charges might not stick, but no matter. The police would stop looking for anyone else. They could disappear with the money now.

  Case closed.

  Lydia suddenly heard the shriek of tire wheels. She tossed the weapon into the neighbor's yard. She didn't want it in plain sight. That would be too obvious. She quickly checked Pavel's pockets. There was money, of course, the wad of bills she'd just given him. She'd let him keep that. One more thing to tie it all up nice and neat.

  There was nothing else in his pockets--no wallet, no slip of paper, no identification or anything that could trace back to anything. Pavel had been good about that. More lights in windows now. Not much time. Lydia rose.

  "Federal agent! Drop your weapon!"

  Damn! A woman's voice. Lydia fired toward where she thought the voice had originated from and ducked back behind the firewood. Shots came back in her direction. She was pinned down. What now? Still behind the firewood, Lydia stretched up behind her and released the gate hatch.

  "All right!" Lydia shouted. "I'm surrendering!"

  Then she jumped up with the semiautomatic already going. She pulled the trigger as fast as she could. Bullets flew, the sound ringing in her ears. She didn't know if the shots were being returned or not. She didn't think so. There was no hesitation, though. The gate was open. She darted through it.

  Lydia ran hard. A hundred yards away, Heshy was waiting in a neighbor's yard. They met up. Keeping low, they followed a trail of recently pruned shrubs. Heshy was good. He always tried to prepare for the worst. His car was hidden in a cul-de-sac two blocks down.

  When they were safely on their way, Heshy asked, "You okay?"

  "Fine, Pooh Bear." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and settled back. "Just fine."

  It wasn't until they were near the highway that Lydia wondered what had happened to Pavel's cell phone.

  My first reaction, naturally enough, was panic.

  I opened the car door to give chase, but my brain finally kicked in and made me pull up. It was one thing to be brave or even foolhardy. It was another to be suicidal. I did not have a gun. Both Rachel and her assailant did. Rushing to her aid unarmed would be, at best, fruitless.

  But I couldn't just stay here.

  I closed the car door. Once again, my foot stamped down on the accelerator. The car bolted forward. I spun the wheel and veered across my front lawn. The shots had come from the back of the house. I aimed the car there. I tore through the flower beds and shrubs. They had been here so long that I almost cared.

  My headlights danced through the dark. I started toward the right, hoping that I could work around the big elm. No go. The tree was too close to the house. The car wouldn't fit. I floored it in reverse. The tire s ripped into dewy lawn, taking a second or two to catch. I headed toward the Christies' property line. I took out their new gazebo. Bill Christie would be pissed.

  I was in the backyard now. The headlights slipped along the Gross mans' stockade fence. I swung the steering wheel toward the right. And then I saw her. I hit the brake. Rachel stood by the pile of firewood. The wood had been there when we bought the house. We hadn't used any. It was probably rotten and bug infested. The Grossmans had complained that it was so close to their fence that the bugs would start eating into it. I had promised to get rid of it, but I hadn't yet gotten around to it.

  Rachel had her gun drawn and pointing down. The man in the flannel was lying at her feet like yesterday's refuse. I didn't have to roll down a window. The winds
hield was gone from the earlier gunshots. I heard nothing. Rachel lifted her hand. She waved to me, signaling that it was okay. I hurried out of the car.

  "You shot him?" I asked, almost rhetorically.

  "No," she said.

  The man was dead. You didn't have to be a doctor to see that. The back of his skull had been blown off. Brain matter, congealed and pink white, clung to the firewood. I am not on expert on ballistics but the damage was severe. It was either a very large bullet or from very close range.

  "Someone was with him," Rachel said. "They shot him and escaped through that gate."

  I stared down at him. The rage boiled up again. "Who is he?"

  "I checked his pockets. He has a wad of bills but no ID."

  I wanted to kick him. I wanted to shake him and ask what he had done with my daughter. I looked at his face, damaged yet handsome, and wondered what had led him here, why our life paths had crossed. And that was when I noticed something odd.

  I tilted my head to the side.

  "Marc?"

  I dropped to my knees. Brain matter did not bother me. Bone splinters and bloody tissue did not faze me in the least. I had seen worse trauma. I examined his nose. It was practically putty. I remembered that from last time. A boxer, I'd thought. Either that or he'd lived some rough years. His head lolled back at a funny angle. His mouth was open. That was what had drawn my eye.

  I put my fingers on his jaw and palate and pulled his mouth farther open.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Rachel asked.

  "Do you have a flashlight?"

  "No."

  Didn't matter. I lifted his head up and aimed his mouth toward the car. The headlights did the trick. I could see clearly now.

  "Marc?"

  "It always bothered me that he let me see his face." I lowered my head toward his mouth, trying to do so without casting too much of a shadow. "They were so careful about everything else. The altered voice, the stolen van sign, the welding together of license plates. Yet he lets me see his face."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I thought maybe he'd worn an elaborate disguise the first time I'd seen him. That would make sense. But now we know that's not the case. So why would he let me see him?"

  She seemed taken aback that I was asserting myself, but that didn't last long. She joined in. "Because he had no record."

  "Maybe. Or ..."