Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

“I need to confess something,” the kid said. His voice seemed to echo, but it was really coming from the phone’s speaker. “Covert audio recording is illegal here in Massachusetts. This is a two-party-consent state.”

He sighed, and the sigh echoed on the phone like a distant gust of wind.

“I’ve had to make my peace with that,” he said, “because my uncle was a big fan of recording things. Knowledge is power, right? The more eyes and ears one has, the more one knows. I think my uncle would’ve liked this hat. I never got the chance to show it to him, but...” He shrugged. “I’m confident of his opinion.”

He moved his hand to the ignition and started the engine again.

“You’re about to meet the man who’s responsible for the unfortunate trouble Hank Bauer encountered,” Dax said, pulling away from the curb.

“You killed him,” Abby said. “I don’t care who paid you.”

“Sure you do.”

At an intersection, they paused at a stop sign, then they continued along the dark street and pulled into a driveway that was flanked by ornate brick pillars, a gate between them. Dax put the window down, punched four buttons on a keypad mounted in one pillar, and the gates parted. He drove through. The gates closed behind them and locked with a pneumatic hiss followed by a clang.

He pulled down the drive, parked, and cut the engine.

“Just sit tight,” he said. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but at least you’ll have a view.”

With that, he stepped out of the car, slammed the driver’s door, and locked the car with the key fob, engaging the alarm. If Abby tried to smash the window, it was going to be loud, and the kid would have plenty of time to get outside. There was a slim chance that a neighbor might come to investigate, but probably not. Car alarms were viewed as nuisances, not cries for help. Unless Abby freed herself from the passenger seat, she wasn’t going to achieve anything by breaking a window.

Dax walked around the back of the house and disappeared from sight. Abby’s eyes went to the cell phone, and now she could see from Dax’s point of view: a light came on in the back of the house. Dax went to knock, but the door opened before he could make contact, and a short, wiry man with graying hair and a nose crooked from a bad break stood in front of him, gun in hand.

For an instant, Abby thought this could be good news — she didn’t care who this guy was; anyone who shot the kid was on her team.

But the man didn’t shoot. He lowered the gun and said, “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“My job,” Dax said. If he was in any way troubled by the gun, he didn’t show it.

“Your job? You don’t come to my fucking home unless I tell you to! That’s not your—”

Something moved at the edge of the frame and then came into the center. Dax was holding up Oltamu’s phone. “This was my job, Gerry.”

The man stared at the phone. He leaned forward, then pulled back, suspicious and confused.

“How’d you get it? Kaplan said—”

“Kaplan’s trying to bluff her way back to life,” Dax said. “Let me in. I don’t want to stand outside and talk about this shit.”

Gerry hesitated, then nodded, and stepped aside. Abby followed the bouncing path of the camera as the kid walked through a sunroom with a marble fireplace, opened another door, and stepped into a kitchen that was filled with expanses of white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances.

“You alone?” Dax asked.

“Yeah. And remember, the questions are—”

“The questions are yours to ask, right. I didn’t think that one could do much harm.”

Gerry paced back into the frame. His body language was tense, like a fighter’s before the bell. The kid worked for him, but he didn’t seem to have his employer’s trust.

Maybe that was because Gerry had just arranged to kill him.

“How in the hell did you get that?” he asked.

“Kaplan’s been bullshitting you the whole time. She never had it. The salvage-yard guy gave it to his brother. It was in his pawnshop. I bought it for ninety bucks. I assume I’ll be reimbursed?”

“Let me see it.”

Dax passed it over. Gerry set his gun down on the counter to study the phone.

Unwise, Abby thought, watching in the car. She was captivated by the scene playing out on the phone’s screen, but it was time to worry about more important things — she was literally captive within the car, and that wasn’t going to change unless she could free her neck.

She reached for the cord with her clumsy, bound hands. There was just barely enough room between skin and cord to get a grasp, and when she did, the cord had no give. She leaned forward, straining painfully, and twisted until she got her hands over her shoulder. It was an awkward movement that put pressure on her rotator cuff as well as her throat, but she was able to feel the way the cord had been looped around the headrest and knotted. The knot was a pro’s work; Abby wasn’t going to be able to untie it from this angle, working blind and unable to separate her hands.

There was, however, another option. She was tied to the headrest, which was a perfectly effective approach when the headrest was in place, but the headrest could be removed. It would be awkward, and it would be painful, but if she could lift the headrest out, the cord would slide off it.

She arched her back, wincing at the pain, stretched her shoulders until the tendons howled in protest, and began to hunt for the headrest release with her fingers.

When he’d seen the kid arrive at his back door — his back door, he didn’t even walk up the front steps like a normal human — Gerry was tempted to shoot him. It had been years since he’d killed anyone, but he intended to do it in the next twelve hours regardless, and the sight of Dax seemed to portend trouble. Gerry didn’t want to kill him on his own property and in a quiet neighborhood with an unsilenced weapon unless it was necessary, though.

Then he saw the phone, and killing Dax Blackwell became less of a concern. The phone was the whole point, and somehow the kid already had it.

Standing in his kitchen, Gerry was no longer thinking about the arrangements he’d made in Old Orchard or the suppressed handgun that was under his driver’s seat, the one that already had a bullet chambered for Dax. The phone had all his attention.

It was the right phone — no signal, a clone, and with a lock screen featuring a picture of the girl. Everything about this was good news except for the last.

“How do you unlock it?” Gerry said.

“Either with facial recognition or a code name.” Dax leaned laconically against the counter. “But does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why?”

Gerry lifted his head and stared at the kid. He was standing there in the shadows, slouching and wearing his hoodie and the dumb friggin’ baseball cap, same as always.

“If you can’t open it, then it’s not worth a shit.”

“Were you hired to open it?” Dax said. “Or just provide it to your client? My understanding was that he wouldn’t even want you to wonder too much about it.”

Gerry’s angry rebuttal died on his lips. It was a fair point. He could do more harm than good if he even told the German about the lock screen. Let the German deal with it.

“I do think it could change your price point, perhaps,” the kid said.

“Change my price point.”

“Sure. The girl is alive. If your client wants us to bring that phone to her, I can do it. We can unlock it, which I’d assume is your client’s desire. But that’s above and beyond the initial job, isn’t it? Value added should not be free.” He shrugged. “At least, not in my opinion. But it’s your show.”