David Morrell - The naked edge

I've gone crazy.

"What killed him?" She tried to keep her fierce emotions from affecting her voice.

Cavanaugh's face showed the strain of concentrating to keep the Taurus moving with the chaos of traffic. Ahead, a van's brake lights came on as an intersection's signal turned red. He stretched his leg over and pressed the brake pedal, stopping just before his car would have hit the van. "Eddie said something stung him."

"A needle on the steering wheel? Another pointed weapon? With some kind of toxin on it?"

"We need to find a place to park."

"In mid-town Manhattan? Lots of luck."

"Which we seem to have run out of."

The light turned green. The van moved ahead. Cavanaugh shifted his outstretched leg from the brake to the accelerator. "I don't trust myself to try to turn a corner without hitting another car. We need to stay on Seventh Avenue."

Flanked by a limousine and a delivery truck, they headed farther south. A taxi veered from the left to get into Cavanaugh's lane. He barely stretched his foot to the brake in time to avoid smashing into it.

As Eddie's head threatened to list to the right, Jamie gripped the back of his neck tighter to keep it straight. His skin felt cooler. "Driving from the passenger seat. I guess that's something else you need to teach me."

"When we get out of this."

"Yeah. When we get out of this." The lovely concept of the future.

They kept heading south on Seventh Avenue, staying in the middle of the numerous lanes of traffic. Jamie had the sense of being on a runaway wagon, Cavanaugh struggling to keep it under control. A red light stopped them at 34th Street. Then they sped forward again, car horns blaring around them. Five more red lights later, they crossed below West 14th, leaving the rectangular grids of midtown for the randomly arranged streets of Greenwich Village.

Traffic became less crowded. Easing to the left toward Sheridan Square, Cavanaugh reached a NO PARKING zone in front of the spear-tipped metal bars of tiny Christopher Park. With no policemen in sight, he jumped from the car and ran around the front to get behind the steering wheel and push Eddie into the passenger seat. Meanwhile, Jamie hurried from the back and fastened Eddie's seat belt. She closed the passenger door against him, then rushed to the back again and leaned Eddie's head against the passenger window as if he were sleeping. Cavanaugh pulled from the NO PARKING zone.

Driving was still awkward because Cavanaugh had to grip the bottom of the steering wheel, keeping a handkerchief around his right hand, wary of whatever sharp object was embedded in the wheel. He steered around a block and got back onto Seventh Avenue, continuing south.

"The Holland Tunnel?" Jamie asked.

"Yes. Hoboken. A shopping mall."

In addition to fresh clothes, what they needed were a magnifying glass and a strong pair of tweezers, all of which were in bags Jamie carried to where Cavanaugh had parked in a remote area of the shopping mall's parking lot. Jamie had worn Eddie's leather jacket to conceal the blood on her top. To be thorough, she'd bought two magnifying glasses, and after she and Cavanaugh put on jeans and pullovers in the back seat, they leaned toward the steering wheel, careful not to touch it as they gazed through the magnifying glasses, examining it in painstaking detail.

"I see something glinting," Jamie said on her third pass over the wheel. She pointed. "There."

"Careful." Cavanaugh stared through the magnifying glass. "Yes. I see it." He raised the tweezers and probed at the back of the wheel, gripping something, pulling it free.

The needle glinted in the late-afternoon sunlight coming through the windshield.

Jamie shivered.

"Looks like the back end's been snipped off," Cavanaugh said. "After it was pushed through the padding on the steering wheel, it must have been trimmed so it wouldn't stick out on either side."

"But hidden the way it was, the driver wouldn't get pricked unless he gripped the steering wheel with a little extra force," Jamie said. "Which Eddie would have needed to do when he turned the corner onto Seventh Avenue."

"Let's keep checking in case there are more."

But twenty minutes of further searching revealed nothing else. They dropped the needle into a plastic bag.

"Global Protective Services," the receptionist's voice said.

Using his cell phone, Cavanaugh stood next to the Taurus at the deserted edge of the shopping mall's parking lot. In the background, he heard objects clattering, as if workman were removing debris from the explosion at the GPS office. "Mr. Brockman, please."

"I'm sorry. He's not available."

"Then give me Mr. Karim."

"May I tell him who's calling?"

"Mr. Stoddard. He's expecting my call."

"One moment."

Cavanaugh heard a click, then nothing. He held the phone closer to his ear as an eighteen-wheel truck roared past on a neighboring highway.

"Cavanaugh?" Karim's voice suddenly asked. "Where are you? We've been worried about-"

"What's your cell-phone number?" Cavanaugh worried that the office phones were tapped.

Karim told him the number.

"Go to encryption. I'll call you right back."

Duncan's justified mania about security had prompted him to arrange for all GPS cell phones to have a scrambler capability so that protectors could speak to one another while eavesdroppers with radio scanners would hear only garbled words. It was the only time Cavanaugh felt comfortable using a cell phone.

Immediately, he activated the encryption on his phone, then pressed numbers.

On the other end, the phone barely rang before Karim answered. "Are you okay?"

"We had another casualty. Eddie's dead."

"What?"

"A needle hidden in his car's steering wheel. It had some kind of poison on it."

The phone became silent for a moment as Karim reacted to this information. "A sharp object. Like the others. After Eddie parked and came up to the office, somebody must have gotten into the building's garage and rigged his car."

"Maybe," Cavanaugh said.

"How else would-"

"After Jamie, Eddie, and I went down in the elevator, did you, Kim, Brockman stay together?"

"Together?"

"Waiting for the police and the fire department. Did you stay together?"

"No, not all the time. We went back to your office, trying to save files and contain the damage. Each of us had different things to do. When the police and the fire department showed up, things got more confusing. Why? What are you getting at?"

"Would there have been time for one of you to go down to William's office?"

"I don't understand." Karim sounded more confused. "Why would any of us have wanted to go there?"

"Because one of you got information that we went there."

But how? Cavanaugh thought. Did someone have William's office bugged to find out if he learned who Aaron Stoddard was?

"Wait a minute," Karim said. "Are you suggesting one of us tried to kill you?"

"Where's Brockman?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Home probably. Even if he's not the boss any longer, he's entitled. We spent all night at the office, remember." Karim's voice had an edge to it. "Or maybe he's as dumb as I am, and he's putting in another shift, meeting a client or whatever. Don't tell me you think Brockman-"

"I'm just trying to cover the possibilities. "

"Next, you'll be asking about Kim. I'll save you the trouble. She's not here. Did you think she had something to do with this? What about me?"

"I told you I'm just trying to cover the possibilities. There isn't time for this. We need to do something about Eddie. I'm in a parking lot at a shopping mall in Hoboken."

"Then I guess I'm not the only one having a fabulous time."