The Betrayer (20 page)

“Does your sister know?”

“Not yet.”

“When will you tell her?”

“When we’re safe. After we get new phones.”

Haley nodded. She glanced at the three passengers as she discreetly shut down Johnny’s phone and disconnected the battery. Then she slid those two pieces into her pockets as well.

“Will you be able to make it all the way to Jersey?”

“Yeah.”

“We can find a place to stay in Manhattan.”

“No. We stick to this plan, okay?”

“Okay.”

Cat was on her side on the hard gravel. Though it was a June night, the stones were cold, and she felt her body heat draining away.

She faded in and out of consciousness, lost all track of time. At one point a man — the man who had knocked the wind out of her, then broken her arm — was helping the woman in the black field jacket. Cat could not see the man. She could see no details at all, really, just shadowy shapes and, in a vague way, the motions they made. The man guided the woman — she could barely walk on her own — toward the yard, then they disappeared from Cat’s line of sight.

Cat heard and saw nothing for what felt like a long time. She was wondering if this was how she was going to die — her very life force drawn out of her by the cold earth. She knew enough about wilderness survival — she was the daughter of a former LRRP — to know that a person could die of hypothermia even on a fifty-degree night, if the conditions were right.

And the conditions seemed right to her.

Do I want to die here? she thought. I’ve become so good at surrendering. Should I just surrender now? Slip in and out of consciousness knowing that any one of these lapses could be my last? How easy would that be?

And then she remembered something her father used to say.

Something he used to tell all his children.

Don’t look for a way out, because you’ll use it.

The moment you even consider quitting, the moment you start looking for a reason to quit, you’ve lost.

She was on her left side, and she knew she would have to roll onto her right before she could even attempt to stand. She waited a moment, then proceeded, and the instant her right arm came in contact with the gravel, a blinding pain tore through every inch of her, just as she knew it would.

She bore it and, when it passed, she placed her left hand onto the cold, sharp stones, then pushed herself to a seated position. She took a moment to survey the empty driveway and make sure that she was in fact alone. That unknown man could be on his way back to finish her off. But around her were only silence and stillness. She looked toward the garage, where the Sig had fallen. She wanted to get to it, picked this as her immediate goal — another survival technique.
Set one goal you can reach, accomplish it, then set another.
She was bracing herself for that, summoning what it would take to stand, when something caught her eye through the border trees.

The flickering headlights of a vehicle as it moved along the road.

But not only headlights — flashing red and blue lights, too.

The cop car slowed, then made the turn into the driveway and followed it toward the house. It picked up speed, kicking gravel, moving fast. It wasn’t long at all before its headlights found Cat, seated not far from the garage. The lights blinded her, and she raised her left arm to shield her eyes. The vehicle stopped, but its headlights remained on and aimed at her. The driver’s door opened, and a figure emerged and carefully approached her.

When it got close enough, Cat saw that it was a state trooper.

Before he could speak, she said, “I could do without that light in my eyes.”

Fifteen minutes later, Cat was sitting in the back of an ambulance. She watched as yet another vehicle turned into the driveway. A second state trooper had arrived shortly after the first, and at some point a Chappaqua cop had showed up, too, but Cat had a feeling that this newest vehicle didn’t belong to another local authority.

She watched as the vehicle followed the long drive, then rolled to a stop. It was an unmarked sedan, but she recognized it by its license plate.

The markers of a New York State prosecutor.

Donnie Fiermonte emerged from behind the wheel. A trooper approached him, and Fiermonte held up his prosecutor’s badge. As the trooper studied it, Fiermonte’s eyes found and fixed on Cat.

A look of relief crossed his face.

The trooper let Fiermonte pass. Heading straight for Cat, he moved with determination.

She had to admit to herself that she was glad to see him.

A loyal family friend — the only
remaining
family friend — coming once more to rescue one of John Coyle’s children.

Jeremy was dreaming of the last time he’d seen his father, hearing once again the last words the man had spoken to him.

Stay out of sight. Don’t make a sound, no matter what happens to me.

It was a memory of that night, the one he had
not
managed to forget, the one he couldn’t seem to forget no matter how hard he tried, how deeply into addiction he burrowed.

Even in his most numbed state, his senses softened by heroin, his mind adrift and his heart rate dangerously slowed, Jeremy could never escape that memory or the crippling guilt it wrought.

He had never shared it with anyone — therapist or family member or drug-friend. It was his secret, his shame. If he had what it took to kill himself, he would have done so. But he was a Coyle, and Coyles endure.

Never shared it with anyone until he met Elizabeth, that is. He had revealed it to her over the phone, during their last week “together”; he had needed that long to build up the nerve to say it aloud. Their calls were the only intimacy she allowed, and yet that intimacy was nonetheless real. Maybe even more real because it was free of the physical. A
pure
connection — he sitting in the dark in the apartment on West Tenth Street, she lying on her lonely bed in the bedroom of her Chappaqua home, their voices and the words spoken the only things they had.

Jeremy finally regained consciousness, breaking free of the memory that haunted him, but he quickly realized that he was in a room he didn’t recognize, in a building he had no memory of entering.

This was strangely familiar, all too similar to that night three years ago, that night he hadn’t been able to recall fully till recently.

From one nightmare into another.

There was a difference worth noting, however. He hadn’t taken a beating prior to his being brought to that room three years ago. But he had been beaten in the van on his way here, and then once again shortly after his arrival — that much
he could remember. No questions had been asked of him during that second beating — it was just a beating for a beating’s sake, the Russian going to town on him seemingly for sport, a simple case of that fucker doing what he did best.

But Jeremy had taken beatings before, plenty, and he withstood that one. Afterward, he’d been left to lie on the floor and drift in and out of consciousness in a small room with no window.

Alone — another difference here; he had not been left alone that night three years ago.

He had been watched over by a Russian — a different Russian, an older Russian.

A man who had made plenty of phone calls as he guarded Jeremy.

And, at some point prior to the arrival of John Coyle Sr., received one visitor.

None of his hypnosis sessions helped Jeremy recall the face of the visitor. But what he had said to the Russian — that was a different story.

I need you to kill my friend.

Jeremy was thinking of that when the door opened. The light that spilled in looked to him like the muted light of predawn. The Russian entered, and Jeremy braced himself for another beating, but the Russian wasn’t alone this time.

Another man was with him.

This man was dressed in a pair of mechanic’s coveralls. That was all that Jeremy could see before the Russian pinned him to the floor and turned Jeremy’s head away so he could not see the man’s face, or what was about to happen.

But Jeremy could smell, and that second man reeked of cigarette smoke.

Smith.

The two men moved quickly, Smith taking the Russian’s place and pinning Jeremy down as the Russian grabbed Jeremy’s arm.

For a few terrifying seconds Jeremy didn’t know what to expect, but then he realized that the Russian was rolling up his sleeve.

Jeremy fought back then — it was the reflex to recoil — but Smith and the Russian were too strong.

“Hold him,” the Russian snapped.

“I am,” Smith snapped back.

The Russian applied an arm lock, did so expertly. He was an expert, too, Jeremy noted, at handling a syringe with one hand.

Jeremy felt a familiar pinch as the tip of the needle pierced his skin and slipped at an angle into his brachial artery.

Then he felt the warm rush of heroin entering his bloodstream.

Straight to his heart, and from there to his brain.

His last thought was that these men were staging an overdose. He felt for a quick moment sorrow at the idea that his death would be seen as that last, sad act of a wasted life.

He wanted to fight back, felt the urge to do so rise in him.

But the heroin moved fast, and that urge, along with everything else, simply dissipated.

He felt himself being lifted, then being carried. He was outside briefly, then once again in the back of that van.

He had no idea how long the ride lasted. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours.

All he knew — all he could perceive when the van stopped moving — was that it was dawn.

The Russian opened the rear door and pulled Jeremy through it, dropping him onto the sidewalk like a bundle of trash.

He stood over Jeremy, said something Jeremy couldn’t hear, then dropped something onto Jeremy’s chest.

It rolled off and landed on the sidewalk.

Jeremy looked at the item as the van drove away. It was the cell phone he had bought last night, the cell phone that had slipped from his hand when the Russian had sacked him hours ago.

Jeremy lay there and looked at it. He listened to silence for a long time before he was finally able to roll his head and take a look around. He needed to know where the hell he was — the place to start, no?

He realized he was back at McCarren Park.

A junkie, lying in the gutter.

He knew then that he was in over his head, had been all along. He needed to make a call, the very call he had put himself through hell to avoid having to make.

If she wouldn’t have believed him yesterday, when he was straight, would she believe him now that heroin was once again in his blood?

Jeremy reached for his cell phone. It was powered up. He rose from the gutter — it took him a while, thanks to the state of his mind and the beatings he had taken. Once he was standing, he wandered on weak legs till he found the side of a building to lean against.

There, in the dawn light, he entered Cat’s number.

If half their force advances and half retreats, they are trying to lure you.

— Sun Tzu

Cat was in Fiermonte’s apartment — not the apartment Fiermonte had shared with his wife for nearly twenty years on a quiet cross street in Gramercy, but the one he had moved into recently, a small loft in the East Village.

She had almost forgotten that he was currently separated.

She had also almost forgotten their conversation over drinks last week.

I have feelings for you, Cat
,
he had confessed.

There was, she told herself, no way he could confuse this circumstance as romantic, or anything even close to romantic.

He had picked her up at the hospital in White Plains, where her broken forearm had been set and placed in a nylon cast and sling. From there they made the drive back into the city in his car. When Cat realized they weren’t heading for her apartment in Long Island City, she didn’t bother to say anything; she was tired, just wanted to lie down and didn’t care where.

And anyway, maybe it would be best if she weren’t alone for the next day or two.

No pharmacies were open yet, so Cat’s prescription for painkillers had yet to be filled. Fiermonte had assured her, though, that he had a few pills left over from a recent oral surgery. Upon their arrival at his place, he had sat her on his platform bed in the middle of the brightly lit room, then retrieved a pill from the bathroom.

He was handing it to Cat now, along with a glass of water.

“You’re going to take advantage of me once I pass out, aren’t you?” she joked.

“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” Fiermonte said. “But now that you mention it…”

“This has been your plan all along, right?”

Fiermonte smiled. It was a patient smile. “You see right through me.”

Cat shrugged. “I see through men. It’s my special gift.”

He nodded toward the pill. “Take the thing, Cat. You look like you need it.”

“Flatterer.”

“And maybe it’ll shut you up for a while.”

Cat downed the pill, then handed the glass back to Fiermonte. He placed it on a table next to the bed.

“So how much trouble am I in?” she asked.

He removed Cat’s cell phone from his jacket pocket and placed it next to the glass. Then from the other pocket he took out Cat’s Sig. He must have gotten it from one of the troopers, she thought. Fiermonte removed the clip and pulled back the slide, expertly catching the chambered round as it was ejected.

Cat saw this and was more than a little impressed. “Fancy,” she said.

“I’m full of all kinds of tricks,” Fiermonte replied. “To answer your question, I know the Westchester County DA. Better yet, he owes me a favor. I’ll talk to him later today and straighten everything out.” He paused, then said, “How’s your throat?”

“Hurts.”

“How good of a look did you get at the woman who attacked you?”

“I can pick her out.”

“And she’s definitely the woman you saw at the coffee shop when you were talking to the Hall woman?”

“Yes.”

Fiermonte thought about that for a moment. He seemed to be bothered by something.

“What?” she said finally.

“A garrote is the tool of a pro, don’t you think? And I don’t imagine there are a lot of professional female killers out there. Maybe we can get lucky with a composite sketch. You feel up to doing that? Making a description to a tech?”

Cat nodded.

“If she’s in the system, maybe we can find out who she works for,” Fiermonte said. “Or has worked for in the past. I’ll make a few phone calls. In the meantime, you should probably get some sleep.”

“Actually, what I could really use is a bath,” Cat said.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get one started.”

He crossed the room and entered the bathroom. Cat heard the crash of water falling into a tub.

She tried to think through everything she knew — everything she had learned from Elizabeth Hall, everything she had seen, everything that had been done.

It was a lot to keep track of in her current state. And it would be even more difficult once the painkiller hit and numbed her brain.

One thing stood out in her mind, though. It was something Elizabeth Hall had said about Jeremy.

He had just transformed before my eyes.

Into?

A man. A man with a purpose.

Cat wondered about him now. Where was he? Was he even still alive? Was all this for nothing? Had whoever sent a killer after her also sent a killer after him?

She wondered, too, about Johnny. She should have heard from him by now, no? She reached for her phone and picked it up, noticing right away that it was lighter than it should be. Turning the phone over, she saw the reason why.

The battery had been removed.

She called to Fiermonte. He stood in the bathroom door.

“The battery is missing from my phone. Do you have it?”

He checked his pockets. “No.”

Cat thought for a moment. The effects of the painkillers were on their way.

“Could the troopers have taken it?” she asked.

Fiermonte shrugged. “Why would they?”

Cat thought for a moment more. “Could
she
have?”

“Maybe. If she didn’t want you making any calls.”

“But why would she do that if she was trying to kill me? And when would she have had the chance?”

Fiermonte shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ll get you a new battery when I’m out getting your prescription filled.”

“Could you maybe do that now?”

“Nothing’s open yet. It’s only seven.”

“Oh yeah.”

“You need to rest, Cat. You’ve done all you can for now. I’ll take it from here, okay?”

She nodded. A warmth was spreading through her chest. “Okay.”

“I’ve put some towels by the tub. If you need anything, just ask.”

“And I’m sure you’ll bring it in to me, right?” Cat said.

Fiermonte’s only response to her teasing was to offer a half smile. Cat knew he was losing his patience, but she didn’t care about that.

If a man didn’t eventually grow impatient with her, she grew impatient with him.

Two means to the same inevitable end.