The Switch

49

Sarah woke him, shaking him by the shoulder.

“Sorry, Tanner, but you have to get up.” He must have dozed off, caffeine notwithstanding. She was naked and had something in her other hand. He could smell coffee.

“What time is it?” He glanced at his watch but his eyes were too unfocused to make out the watch face.

“Six thirty. There’s a seven-thirty showing.”

“Who looks at houses at seven thirty?”

“Extremely serious buyers, I bet.” She handed him an espresso. Her breasts were small and shapely, with light pink areolas, small raised mounds. He remembered a novelist once describing a woman’s breasts as two scoops of the smoothest vanilla and thought that aptly described Sarah’s. “Most of my showings are on weekends.”

“Instant coffee,” he said. “Yum.”

“You didn’t spit it out last time. That’s how I know you like it.”

“Busted.” He grinned, took a sip. His clothes were strewn across the carpet. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For the coffee.” And he grinned again.

Her clothes, too, were arrayed on the floor. She picked up her panties and slipped them on. Then she picked up her bra, black and lacy, clasped it in front of her, and spun it around and into place. “Tanner,” she said, “I’m not going to cash out.”

“Why not?” She was coming back home, he now knew for sure, almost.

She looked at him mischievously, leaned over, and gave him a peck on the lips. “Because I don’t want to lose money,” she said.

“Thanks,” Tanner said with a faux scowl.

“No,” she said. “Because I don’t want to lose you.”

Sarah was out of the house before Tanner, leaving him to straighten the bedclothes on the big inflatable bed and making sure he didn’t have anything in the master bathroom. She’d given him a printout of houses for sale, and next to the first three on the list were scrawled numbers. Codes to their padlocks.

Before he left the house, he peered out the front sitting room window and satisfied himself that there was no one out there waiting for him. There didn’t seem to be.

Then he left through the front door and padlocked the house, looking around as he descended the steps, his gym bag slung over one shoulder. He hadn’t been aware of anyone following him after his escape in Harvard Stadium. No one knew he was here.

He had no car, and without his iPhone — it took him a moment to remember he’d left it in his desk at work — he couldn’t call an Uber. So he walked a few blocks to Beacon Street, where he could flag down a passing cab. But first he got a fried egg sandwich at a deli and a coffee, which tasted burnt. He called Lucy Turton, got her at home, and talked a few minutes, Tanner Roast business. He called Karen, got her in her car on the way to work. He let her vent for a minute or so, then went through a list of potential deals and ones that fell apart and she couldn’t get back together. He thanked her and reassured her, told her everything was going just great.

Then he grabbed a cab.

On the way in to his gym, he bought a bottle of water from the plump Nepalese guy’s fruit stand on Tremont Street.

“Good morning, Ganesh,” he said. “How’s your sister?”

“A gallstone is all it was,” Ganesh replied. “She’s much better.”

“Good.”

He got on the elliptical trainer for an hour. He needed to work out badly, he hadn’t in days, and he thought that maybe a good solid hour of cardio would calm him, make him less jittery.

That it did. When he’d dressed in his street clothes, he put everything back into the locker, including the used workout stuff, and took the gym bag. He clicked the brass combination lock closed and spun the dial.

He came up the steps and pushed open the glass door and came out on Tremont Street.

He felt a little prickle at the back of his head. He was immediately on alert. He didn’t see anyone suspicious, but his subconscious must have picked up something. It was morning rush hour, the street busy with people walking past in either direction. He smelled a passing woman’s perfume.

Then something grabbed his right wrist, and when he whipped around to look, something, or someone, grabbed his left arm too.

Tanner wrenched his left arm free and swung a fist around at whoever had grabbed him. His fist connected hard with a man’s face. He could feel something give way. His knuckles instantly began to throb, but he was sure the other guy’s nose must have hurt a lot more.

Then something stung the back of his neck, like a wasp or a hornet. He winced as he torqued his body around, slammed his right elbow back into whoever had just stung him, and kneed one of his assailants in the groin. But he felt as if he were melting like a stick of butter in the microwave. He could barely summon the strength to fight. He jabbed his fists into his attacker’s abdomen, but he knew it was pointless; he didn’t have the power.

He was trundled to the curb, where an SUV sat parked, rear door open. He yelled, jerked both his arms and his legs, not that he expected to free himself but to signal to passersby that he was being forcibly taken, against his will. He stumbled, feeling molten, and the two men who’d grabbed him lifted him and glided him along without his feet touching the ground again.

Several people stared as they went by, surprise on their faces, but no one shouted out or did anything to rescue him. He probably looked like a drunkard, stumbling around. A mental patient.

He was pulled into the back of that black Suburban, the two guys on either side of him in the row behind the driver. His wrists were zip-cuffed by the first guy, while the guy on his right pulled a set of goggles over Tanner’s head. They were blacked out, like opaque sunglasses. Then he put a pair of acoustic headphones on him, instantly deadening the sound. He could see and hear almost nothing, and he was powerless to do anything about it.

There was a faint high-pitched electronic hum in his ears. Then a man’s voice spoke crisply in his ears.

“Mis-ter Tanner,” said the voice, which seemed to be coming from inside his head. “Michael Evan Tanner.” A southern accent. The words spoken with a formal intonation, as if announcing a dignitary’s arrival at a royal ball. “You are not an easy man to find.”

“But you did,” Tanner said, and he was unsure whether he had actually said it aloud. He tried to locate a calmness inside but was unable to slow the walloping of his heart.

“Oh, we always do,” said the voice.

In a minute or so, the warmth overtook him, and then he felt and saw nothing.