Need You Now

13

S he was alive. He could feel it. With two latex-covered fingers pressed against her neck, he detected a heartbeat. She was unconscious but slowly coming back. He’d taken her to the brink of death, but not beyond.

He hadn’t lost his touch.

Wisely, he’d decided to hang around the riverfront after taking down Patrick Lloyd. The nearby marina offered dozens of hiding places. Himself a sailor-if you called a former Navy SEAL a “sailor”-he’d chosen the fifty-foot Morgan in slip E-35. The lock on the cabin door had been child’s play, and while enjoying some rich investment banker’s twenty-year-old scotch, he had peered through night-vision binoculars-standard equipment in his tool kit-as the park ranger came to the aid of the fallen target. He saw her revive him and watched them have a conversation before Lloyd blacked out again. The only problem was that he hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying. All problems had a solution.

The ranger worked the graveyard shift, which ended at six A.M. He’d followed her to the subway, rode in the car behind hers, and got off the train ten seconds after she did. She’d had no idea he was tailing her, and by seven A.M. she’d unwittingly led him all the way to her apartment in New Jersey. Officially, sunrise was just minutes away, but the overcast sky was black with a hint of purple. Rows of barren elms cast long shadows in the glow of burning streetlights. He had the advantage of darkness, but he needed to be careful as the neighborhood came to life with morning commuters. Pretending to wait at the bus stop across the street, he’d watched the lights inside her apartment switch on and off, a silent trail that broadcast her trip from the front door to the bathroom to the bedroom. He’d imagined her undressing-there was definitely one hot body beneath that unflattering uniform-but he shook off the distraction. That wasn’t what this was about. He’d allowed her forty minutes to fall asleep, then made his move. The window in the alley had been his point of entry.

“What… do you want?” she asked in a voice that quaked.

She was almost completely conscious now, revived if not refreshed, but at least coherent enough to ask a valid question. It amused him that she would even entertain the possibility of a response. He would ask the questions, and having taken her to the brink of death, he was assured of the truth.

He buried his knee firmly into her kidney. She was flat on her stomach, facedown on the bathroom rug, hands cuffed behind her waist, unable to move beneath his two-hundred-plus pounds of sculpted muscle. A man of considerably less strength could have obtained the same results. Control was more about technique than brute force. The strangulation stick was a simple but lethal device, a two-foot loop of nylon rope attached at both ends to a ten-inch wooden handle. It allowed him to twist with one hand and choke his victim, leaving the other free to control her.

Her legs twitched with each futile kick against the white tile floor. Some degree of fight remained inside her, but experience told him that he couldn’t take this one to the edge again and be certain of her return. Three such journeys seemed to be her limit. Each twist of the noose around her neck had made her groan and squirm up until the point of lost consciousness. At precisely the right moment he would release. The loop at the end of the stick would loosen. Her swanlike neck would lose the hourglass effect. Her breathing would resume. Blood would bring oxygen to her dying brain. The purple ring of bruises around her neck would swell, then throb. Slowly, her near-dead body would return to life. As an interrogation tactic, the garrote was riskier than waterboarding, but when done properly it was far more effective.

Again he gave her a moment to catch her breath, then spoke in the stern voice that had elicited secrets from subjects much tougher than this one.

“Tell me what he said to you!”

“What who said?”

“The man you helped in the park.”

“He didn’t tell me anything.”

“I saw you talking before he blacked out. What did he say?”

“I-I don’t remember.”

“Tell me!”

“Honestly, I don’t re-”

A twist of the stick tightened the rope. She gasped, and he released. He leaned closer, breathing his words into her ear. “Tell me what he said. Or you die right now.”

Her body shook, but her feeble resistance concerned him. She should have been pleading for her life. He feared he was losing her. He grabbed her by the hair and raised her head off the floor. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Time was running out. He grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her up against the bathtub. The faucet was close enough for him to soak a bath towel, and he splashed her face. It was like trying to keep a druggie from slipping into a coma, but he was making some headway.

“Tell me what he said. Right now .”

“He, uh…”

He splashed her again with cold water. “He what ?”

“He made no sense,” she said.

“Just tell me what he said, damn it!”

She breathed in and out, but it was beyond a struggle. The wheezing told him that her throat was crushed, and she wasn’t getting enough air.

“He said… his name… Peter,” she said, her eyes closing.

“Peter what?”

She didn’t answer, but he was determined to get it, even if he had to shake it out of her. “Peter what ?” he said, prying her eyes open.

“Mandretti,” she said.

Her voice was little more than a whisper, and he might not have caught it if he hadn’t heard that surname before.

“Like Tony Mandretti?” he asked, but she didn’t answer. Her shoulders slumped, and her chin hit her chest.

Peter Mandretti. Tony Mandretti’s son. It made perfect sense to him. It was as he had suspected: the son was driving the car, but the father was navigating him down the road to Cushman’s money.

He allowed the deadweight of her torso to slide to the right, and her body became a heap of collateral damage on the bathroom floor.

The interrogation was over, successful beyond his wildest dreams.