A pause; then his voice, soft as a blessing and hard as a calculation.“You will leave the hospital now.Walk out of the doors you came through.Take the first right.Walk to the third lamppost.Take a left at the florist.Then take the third right.Walk to the bus-stop and take route 414 towards Manhattan.Do not try to deviate.Keep your phone on this line.Follow my voice and you will eventually arrive at a place where you will find what you need to know.”
He spoke with the unruffled composure of a man setting out chess pieces.The list of directions came like those long lists in Genesis—and Mahaleel begat Jared— precise, unemotional, judicial.The ridiculousness of sticking to them in the warren of an abandoned hospital was part of the design: it compelled obedience.
“No,” she said, bitter and quick.“Why would I follow your directions?”
“Because you will do anything to know,” he said.“You are the sort of person who will step into a trap if she believes the trap holds an answer.That is why I have called you.The choice I give you is the one you always make.”
The corridor blurred at the edges as her muscles remembered other fights—other times when he’d been the architect of her fear.She steadied herself.“My colleagues are going to be looking for me.”
“Andmycolleagues will be looking at them.”
“You’re bluffing.”Kate’s jaw clenched.“What guarantee do I have that this isn’t a setup?”
His laugh this time was small and approving.“You always ask for guarantees.I do not offer them.Guarantees are for the faithless.I deal in options.”
“You’re not giving me an option,” she said.“You’re giving me a command.”
“Language matters,” he said.“I will speak it plainly: do as I ask and forfeit nothing but the illusion of control.Disobey me and I will end the illusion entirely.”
There was a long, white silence.Somewhere in the hospital, a window rattled.A pigeon startled, its wings like a small, black flag.
“You’re blustering,” she said finally.“You’re trying to frighten me.”
“Am I?”He coughed; it sounded painful."Listen carefully, Kate.This is the part you must know."His voice narrowed; he removed the rhetorical flourish and left only the essential."There is a watcher at your mother's home in Portland.He is my disciple.He understands what must be done and what must not be done.He is patient.He is calm.He is not you.If you are followed at any point on this walk, if you make any attempt to elude him, or if you signal for help, I will give him the instruction to act.I will give the instruction to end the life of the person who loves you the most.”
Kate felt her stomach turn over as if a punch had landed beneath her ribs.She’d thought this had something to do with her father: the hospital, the photos, the reference to Jephtha.And she’d thought the danger to her mother was over.Because, of course, Cox had wanted her to think that.He’d steered in one direction, in order to haul her suddenly in another.The Master rears the spotted calf.She had a sudden image of herself being led by the nose and she flushed hot and cold at once, anger and shame slugging it out.She thought she saw through him.But the bastard was still playing her.
She wanted to curse, to tell him to shove his worship somewhere it could not spit on the living.Instead, she asked hoarsely, “If I do what you want, what then?”
“You will come,” he said.“You will be alone.You will be on this line.You will follow the route precisely.You will not look at windows, you will not approach vehicles, you will not talk to anyone but me.”
“You sound like God in the Old Testament,” she said.“But you’re not God.”
“I am not,” he conceded smoothly.“But I ask the same relentless questions.”His voice softened, a thread of something like pity in it.“Do not think I relish this.I would rather not have to instruct pain.But the world will not be instructed without demonstration.”
The practical part of her mind filed the constraints as a separate truth: no backup, no witnesses, the risk to her mother.The rest of her, the part that had learned to obey for the sake of keeping a thing alive, made the calculation that had been practiced behind a thousand desks in a thousand cases: you trade one certainty for the chance of a greater one.
“All right,” she said at last.Her voice was a dead thing.
“I knew you would make the right choice.”
She took a breath, and a memory flashed: a little girl under a treehouse, a father who had promised a sign.Green Gables.The image of the treehouse slid through her like a shard.She remembered the way his hands had been on the saw, the way he had taught her to nail a board straight.The things a man teaches are sometimes the last things he leaves you.
“First right, third lamppost, left and third right.I’ll stay on the phone.”
“Good.”A beat.“Walk now, Kate.”
She turned, the telephone tight in her grip.In the corridor the shafts of light were like prison bars.She moved as if underwater—slow, deliberate, counting steps more by a rhythm in her head than by the hard evidence of ground underfoot.She obeyed his directions to the letter, not because she trusted him but because she did not trust what might happen otherwise.
Outside, the world smelled of wet tar and something metallic—the city’s blood, sweeping back into its pipes.The first right took her onto a street of mostly shuttered shops, though a little Korean store was just opening up.She pondered, briefly, rushing up to the man as he laid out fruit and vegetables on the fake grass shelving of his storefront, telling him everything, getting him to call Marcus on her phone.The man looked kind; a Good Samaritan type, the sort who’d help…
Hope rose and died as she walked right past him; it was futile, too great a risk. Sure, Cox could be bluffing about the disciple watching her mother, but her experience reminded her that he’d followed through on his promises, just as often as he’d bluffed and pretended.
She passed a florist whose window held a single dead rose.Lampposts counted themselves off in the wet dark, and she kept her phone to her ear, hearing him like a metronome.She passed a parked van with a dented bumper and a familiar graffiti tag; her breath came shallow.At the third lamppost, she turned left, and she kept walking until she reached the bus stop, where she waited for the next move.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The precinct was half-asleep, the sour smell of reheated coffee and burnt dust hanging in the air.Torres sat with Marcus in the incident room, a halo of reports and maps spread across the desk between them.She rubbed her temples, staring at the frozen CCTV feed on the monitor—a grainy intersection in lower Manhattan, timestamped 03:42.The city’s digital eyes were blind.
