Three Harlan Coben Novels (49 page)

Field operations had always been her favorite—or at least, the training for them. There had been very few missions that required this sort of cloak-and-dagger reconnaissance. For the most part, stakeouts
were high-tech. You had vans and spy planes and fiber-optics. You rarely found yourself crawling through the night in black clothes and greasepaint.

She made herself small against the back tire. In the distance, she saw Marc heading up the drive. She put the gun in its holster and strapped the night-vision goggles to her belt. Keeping low, Rachel moved up the grass to higher ground. There was still enough light. She didn’t need the goggles yet.

A sliver of moon sliced through the sky. There were no stars tonight. Up ahead, she could see that Marc had the cell phone near his ear. The duffel bag was on his shoulder. Rachel looked around, saw no one. Would the drop take place here? It wasn’t a bad place, if you had a planned escape route. She started to think about the possibilities.

Fort Tryon was hilly. The secret would be to try to get higher. She started climbing and was just about to settle in when Marc exited the park.

Damn. She’d have to move again.

Rachel commando-crawled down the hill. The grass was prickly and smelled like hay, the cause being, she assumed, the recent water shortage. She tried to keep her eyes on Marc, but she lost him when he left the park grounds. She took a risk and moved quicker. At the park gate, she ducked behind a stone pillar.

Marc was there. But not for very long.

With the phone back to his ear, Marc veered to the left and vanished down the steps leading to the A train.

Up ahead, Rachel saw a man and a woman walking a dog. They could be part of this—or they could be a man and a woman walking a dog. Marc was still out of sight. No time for debate now. She ducked low at a stone wall.

Leaning her back against it, Rachel made her way toward the stairs.

Tickner thought that Edgar Portman looked like something out of a Noël Coward production. He wore silk pajamas under a red robe that appeared to have been tied with great care. There were velvet slippers on his feet. His brother, Carson, on the other hand, looked properly ruffled. His pajamas were askew. His hair was all over the place. His eyes were bloodshot.

Neither Portman could take his eyes off the photographs from the CD.

“Edgar,” Carson said, “let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Not jump . . . ?” Edgar turned to Tickner. “I gave him money.”

“Yes, sir,” Tickner said. “A year and a half ago. We know about that.”

“No.” Edgar tried to make the word snap with impatience, but he didn’t have the strength. “I mean, recently. Today, in fact.”

Tickner sat up. “How much?”

“Two million dollars. There was another ransom demand.”

“Why didn’t you contact us?”

“Oh sure.” Edgar made a sound that was half chortle, half sneer. “You all did such a wonderful job last time.”

Tickner felt the tick in his blood. “Are you saying that you gave your son-in-law an additional two million dollars?”

“That is precisely what I’m saying.”

Carson Portman was still staring at the photographs. Edgar glanced at his brother, then back at Tickner. “Did Marc Seidman kill my daughter?”

Carson stood up. “You know better.”

“I’m not asking you, Carson.”

Both men looked at Tickner now. Tickner was not having any of it. “You said you met with your son-in-law today?”

If Edgar was upset about his question being ignored, he did not show it. “Early this morning,” he said. “At Memorial Park.”

“That woman in the pictures.” Tickner gestured toward them. “Was she with him?”

“No.”

“Has either of you ever seen her before?”

Both Carson and Edgar answered in the negative. Edgar picked up one of the photographs. “My daughter hired a private investigator to take these?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. Who is she?”

Tickner again ignored his question. “The ransom note came to you, like last time?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I follow. How did you know that it wasn’t a hoax? How did you know that you were dealing with the real kidnappers?”

Carson took that one. “We did think it was a hoax,” he said. “At first, I mean.”

“So what changed your mind?”

“They sent hairs again.” Carson quickly explained about the tests and about Dr. Seidman’s request for additional tests.

“You gave him all the hairs, then?”

“We did, yes,” Carson said.

Edgar seemed lost in the photographs again. “This woman,” he spat. “Was Seidman involved with her?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Why else would my daughter want these pictures taken?”

A mobile phone rang. Tickner excused himself and put the receiver to his ear.

“Bingo,” O’Malley said.

“What?”

“We got a hit on Seidman’s E-ZPass. He crossed the George Washington Bridge five minutes ago.”

The robotic voice told me, “Walk down the path.”

There was still enough light to see the first few steps. I started down them. The darkness gathered around, closed in. I started to use my foot to feel my way, like a blind man swinging a cane. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. I wondered again about Rachel. Was she near here? I tried to follow the path. It curved to the left. I stumbled on the cobblestone.

“Okay,” the voice said. “Stop.”

I did so. I could see nothing in front of me. Behind me, the street was a faded glow. On my right was a steep incline. The air had that city-park smell to it, a swirling potpourri of fresh and stale. I listened for some sort of clue, but there was nothing other than the distant humming swish of traffic.

“Put down the money.”

“No,” I said. “I want to see my daughter.”

“Put down the money.”

“We had a deal. You show me my daughter, I show you the money.”

There was no reply. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears. The fear was crippling. No, I did not like this. I was too exposed. I checked the path behind me. I could still break into a run and scream like a psycho. This neighborhood was tighter than most in Manhattan. Someone might call the police or try to help.

“Dr. Seidman?”

“Yes?”

And then a flashlight hit my face. I blinked and raised a hand to block my eyes. I squinted, trying to see past it. Someone lowered the flashlight beam. My eyes quickly adjusted, but there was no need. The beam was cut off by a silhouette. There was no mistake. I could see immediately what was being highlighted.

There was a man. I may have even seen flannel, I’m not sure. As I said, it was in silhouette. I couldn’t really make out features or colors or design. So that part could have been my imagination. But not the rest. I saw the shapes and outlines clear enough to know.

Standing next to the man, gripping his leg just above the knee, was a small child.

Lydia wished that
there was more light. She would very much like to see the look on Dr. Seidman’s face right now. Her desire to see his expression had nothing to do with the cruelty that was about to come down. It was curiosity. It was deeper than the slow-to-see-the-car-accident aspect of human nature. Imagine. This man had had his child taken away. For a year and a half, he had been left to wonder about her fate, tossing through sleepless nights, conjuring up horrors best left in the dark abyss of our subconscious.

Now he had seen her.

It would be unnatural
not
to want to see the expression on his face.

Seconds ticked away. She wanted that. She wanted to stretch the tension, pull him beyond what a man could handle, soften him for the final blow.

Lydia took out her Sig-Sauer. She held it to her side. Peering out from behind the bush she judged the distance between her and Seidman at thirty, maybe forty feet. She put the voice changer and phone back to her mouth. She whispered into it. Whisper or scream, it made no difference. The voice changer made it all sound the same.

“Open the money bag.”

From her perch, she watched him move like a man in a trance. He did what she asked—now without question. This time, she was the one using the flashlight. She shone it at his face and then dropped the beam to the bag.

Money. She could see the stacks. She nodded to herself. They were good to go.

“Okay,” she said. “Leave the money on the ground. Walk slowly down the path. Tara will be waiting for you.”

She watched Dr. Seidman drop the bag. He was squinting at the spot where he believed his daughter would be waiting. His movements were stiff, but then again his vision had probably been affected by the lights in his eyes. That again would make it easier.

Lydia wanted a close shot. Two quick bullets to the head, in case he was wearing a flak jacket. She was a good shot. She could probably hit him in the head from here. But she wanted the sure thing. No mistakes. No chance to run.

Seidman moved toward her. He was twenty feet away. Then fifteen. When he was only ten feet away, Lydia raised the pistol and took aim.

If Marc took the subway, Rachel knew that it’d be near impossible to follow him without being spotted.

Rachel hurried toward the stairwell. When she got there, she looked down into the dark. Marc was gone. Damn. She scanned the surroundings. There was a sign for elevators leading down to the A train. On the right was a closed wrought-iron gate. Nothing else.

He had to be in an elevator heading down to the subway.

Now what?

She heard footsteps behind her. With her right hand, Rachel quickly wiped the greasepaint, hoping to make herself look at least semi-presentable. With her left hand, she slid the goggles behind her and out of sight.

Two men trotted down the stairs. One caught her eye and smiled. She wiped her face again and smiled back. The men jogged the rest of the way down the steps and turned toward the elevator bank.

Rachel quickly considered her options. Those two men could be her cover. She could follow them down, get into the same elevator, get off with them, maybe even engage them in conversation. Who’d suspect her then? Hopefully Marc’s subway car hadn’t left yet. If it had . . . well, no use in thinking negative.

Rachel started toward the men when something made her stop. The wrought-iron gate. The one she had seen on her right. It was closed. The sign on it read:
OPEN ON WEEKENDS AND MAJOR HOLIDAYS ONLY
.

But through the thicket, Rachel saw the beam of a flashlight.

She pulled up. She tried to peer through the fence, but all she could see was the light beam. The brush was too thick. On her left, she heard the ding of an elevator. The doors slid open. The men stepped inside. No time to pull out the Palm Pilot and check the GPS. Besides, the elevator and beam of flashlight were too close. It would be hard to pinpoint the difference.

The man who had smiled at her put his hand against the side, keeping the door open. She wondered what to do.

The flashlight beam went out.

“Are you coming?” the man asked.

She waited for the flashlight beam to come back on. It didn’t. She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

Rachel quickly broke back up the stairs, trying to find a dark spot. It had to be dark for the goggles to work. The Rigels came with a built-in overlight sensor system to protect from bright lights, but Rachel still found that the fewer artificial lights, the better. Street level looked down over the park. Okay, the positioning was pretty good, but there was still too much light from the street.

She moved to the side of the stone hut that housed the elevators. On the left, there was a spot that—if she pressed herself against the wall—would give her total darkness. Perfect. The trees and bushes were still too heavy to get a clear view. But it would have to do.

Her goggles were supposedly lightweight but they still felt bulky. She should have bought a model you could just hold up to your face, binocular style. Most have that feature. This model didn’t. You could not just hold it to up your eyes. You had to strap it on as a mask. The advantage, however, was obvious: If you attached it like a mask, you could keep your hands free.

As she pulled them over her head, the flashlight beam appeared again. Rachel tried to follow it, see where it was coming from. It seemed to her that it was a different spot this time. Over on the right now. Closer.

And then, before she could pinpoint it, the beam was gone.

Her eyes locked on the spot where she thought the beam had come from. Dark. Very dark now. Still keeping her eyes looking there, she finished getting the night-vision goggles in place. Night-vision goggles are not magic. They don’t really see in the dark. Night-vision optics work by intensifying existing light, even very small amounts. But here, there
was pretty much nothing. That used to be a problem, but now most brands came with an infrared illuminator standard. The illuminator cast a beam of infrared light that was not visible to the human eye.

But it was visible to the night-vision goggles.

Rachel flipped on the illuminator. The night lit up in full green. She was looking not through a lens, but at a phosphor screen, not unlike the one on your TV set. The eyepiece magnified the picture—you were looking at a picture, not the actual site—and the picture was green because the human eye can differentiate more shades of green than any other phosphor color. Rachel stared.

Got something.

The view was hazy, but it looked to Rachel like a small woman. The woman seemed to be hiding behind a bush. She held something up to her mouth. A phone maybe. Peripheral vision is nearly nonexistent with these goggles, though these claimed to give you a thirty-seven-degree angle. She had to swivel her head to the right, and there, putting down the duffel bag with the two million dollars in it, was Marc.

Marc started walking toward the woman. His steps were short, probably because he was on cobblestones in the dark.

Rachel swiveled her head from the woman, to Marc, back to the woman. Marc was approaching, getting closer. The woman was still crouched in hiding. There was no way Marc could see her. Rachel frowned and wondered what the hell was going on.

Then the woman swung her arm up.

It was hard to see clearly—there were trees and branches in the way—but the woman seemed to be pointing her finger at Marc. They were not far apart anymore. Rachel squinted at the screen attached to her face. And it was then that she realized that the woman was not pointing a finger. The image was too big for a hand.

It was a gun. The woman was pointing a gun at Marc’s head.

A shadow crossed over Rachel’s vision. She started back, opening her mouth to call out a warning, when a hand like a baseball glove covered her mouth and smothered all sound away.

Tickner and Regan hooked up on the New Jersey Turnpike. Tickner drove. Regan sat next to him and stroked his face.

Tickner shook his head. “Can’t believe you still have that soul patch.”

“You don’t like it?”

“You think you’re Enrique Iglesias?”

“Who?”

“Exactly.”

“What’s wrong with the soul patch?”

“It’s like wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I Had a Middle-Age Crisis in 1998.’ ”

Regan thought about it. “Yeah, okay, fair point. By the way, those sunglasses you always wear. I was wondering if they were FBI issue.”

Tickner grinned. “Helps me land the chicks.”

“Yeah, those and your stun gun.” Regan shifted in the chair. “Lloyd?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not sure I get it.”

They weren’t talking about eyewear or facial hair anymore.

“We don’t have all the pieces,” Tickner said.

“But we’re getting close?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Let’s go through it then, cool?”

Tickner nodded. “First off, if the DNA lab Edgar Portman used is correct, the child is still alive.”

“Which is weird.”

“Very. But it explains a lot. Who would be most likely to keep a kidnapped child alive?”

“Her father,” Regan said.

“And whose gun mysteriously vanished from the murder scene?”

“Her father’s.”

Tickner made a gun with his forefinger and thumb, aimed it at Regan, dropped the hammer. “Righto.”

“So where has the kid been all this time?” Regan asked.

“Hidden.”

“Well, gee, that helps.”

“No, think about it. We’ve been looking at Seidman. We’ve looked closely. He knows that. So who would be the best person to hide his kid?”

Regan saw where he was going. “The girlfriend we didn’t know about.”

“More than that, a girlfriend who used to work for the feds. A
girlfriend who would know how we work. How to do a ransom drop. How to hide a child. Someone who would know Seidman’s sister, Stacy, and be able to enlist her help.”

Regan thought about it. “Okay, let’s assume I believe all that. They commit this crime. They get two million dollars and the kid. But then what? They bide their time for eighteen months? They decide they need more cash? What?”

“They need to wait to avoid suspicion. Maybe they wanted the wife’s estate to clear. Maybe they need another two million dollars to run away, I don’t know.”

Regan frowned. “We’re still trying to finesse away the same point.”

“What’s that?”

“If Seidman was behind this, how come he was nearly killed? This was no wound-me-so-it-looks-good injury. He was flatlined. The paramedics were sure they had a goner when they first got there. Hell, we quietly called it a double homicide for almost ten days.”

Tickner nodded. “It’s a problem.”

“And more than that, where the hell is he going right now? I mean, crossing the George Washington Bridge. Do you think he decided now was the time to flee with the two million dollars?”

“Could be.”

“If you were fleeing, would you use your E-ZPass to pay the toll?”

“No, but he might not know how easy it is to trace.”

“Hey, everyone knows how easy it is to trace. You get the bill in the mail. It tells you what time you hit what tollbooth. And even if he was dumb enough to forget that, your federal agent Rachel Whatshername isn’t.”

“Rachel Mills.” Tickner nodded slowly. “Good point, though.”

“Thank you.”

“So what conclusions can we draw?”

“That we still don’t have a clue what the hell is going on,” Regan said.

Tickner smiled. “Nice to be in familiar territory.”

The cell phone rang. Tickner picked it up. It was O’Malley. “Where are you?” O’Malley asked.

“A mile from the George Washington Bridge,” Tickner said.

“Hit the accelerator.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“NYPD just spotted Seidman’s car,” O’Malley said. “It’s parked at Fort Tryon Park—a mile, maybe mile and a half, from the bridge.”

“Know it,” Tickner said. “We’ll be there in less than five.”

Heshy had thought that it was all going a little too smoothly.

He’d watched Dr. Seidman leave his car. He waited. No one else had come out. He’d started down from the old fort’s tower.

That was when he spotted the woman.

He paused, watching her head down toward the subway elevators. Two guys were with her. Nothing suspicious in that. But then, when the woman sprinted back up alone, well, that was when things had changed.

He kept a close eye from then on. When she moved into the darkness, Heshy started creeping toward her.

Heshy knew that his appearance was intimidating. He also knew that much of the circuitry inside of his brain was not wired normally. He didn’t much care, which, he assumed, was part of the wiring problem. There were those who would tell you that Heshy was pure evil. He had killed sixteen people in his life, fourteen of them slowly. He had left six men alive who still wished that he hadn’t.

Supposedly, people like Heshy did not understand what they were doing. Other people’s pain did not reach them. That was not true. His victims’ pain was not something distant to him. He knew what pain was like. And he understood love. He loved Lydia. He loved her in ways most people could never fathom. He would kill for her. He would die for her. Many people say that about their loved ones, of course—but how many are willing to put it to the test?

The woman in the dark had binoculars strapped onto her head. Night-vision goggles. Heshy had seen them on the news. Soldiers in battle wore them. Having them did not necessarily mean she was a cop. Most weaponry and military gizmos were available online to anyone with the proper dollars. Heshy watched her. Either way, cop or no cop, if the goggles worked, this woman would be a witness to Lydia committing murder.

So she had to be silenced.

He closed in slowly. He wanted to hear if she was talking to anyone, if she had some kind of radio control to other units. But the woman was silent. Good. Maybe she was indeed on her own.

He was about two yards away from her when her body stiffened.
The woman gave a little gasp. And Heshy knew that it was time to close her down.

He hurried over, moving with a grace that defied his bulk. He snaked one hand around her face and clasped it over her mouth. His hand was big enough to cover her nose too. Cut off the air supply. With his free hand, he cupped the back of her skull. He pushed his hands together.