Run: A Novel (21 page)

I’d aimed high, and judging by the pitch of his scream and the volume of blood that sprayed in all directions, I must have hit something important. He released the faucet and staggered back, howling. I didn’t
see what happened next. All I heard was a hollow thud, then silence. I sat up cautiously, still gasping for breath, and peeped over the edge. The guy was sprawled out on his back, one leg—the one I hadn’t stabbed—tucked awkwardly beneath him, his arms pointing straight out, and a crimson halo of blood crowning his head.

I had no medical training. I didn’t physically examine him. But there was no doubt in my mind. He was dead. He had the same subtly relaxed contortion I’d seen once before, in the body of a guy who’d thrown himself on some electrified train tracks.

There was only one difference. The other time, the cause of death was suicide.

This time, the cause of death was me.

I
T HAD NO LOCKS OR BARS, BUT FOR THE NEXT HALF HOUR THE
bathtub held me as securely as any jail cell could have done.

In the end it was the relentless dripping of the water that forced me out. I’d turned my head to stop the drops from hitting my face, but the sound—one splash every second, like clockwork—was driving me crazy. So I stretched up to turn off the faucet, and whether it was the movement, or the sudden silence, the spell was broken. I climbed over the side and, stiff from the beating and the cold, I hobbled away from the bathroom.

I’d gotten almost to the front door when one of my senses finally returned. I couldn’t go outside in those clothes. They were sprayed with blood, soaked in water, and covered with fragments of glass.

I returned to our bedroom and pulled on clean clothes, not really concentrating, just grabbing whatever was closest to the front of my closet and transferring my few remaining possessions. But before I could leave again a strange force drew me back to the bathroom door, like I was a mawkish spectator at the scene of a grisly car wreck.

I looked in at the body, steeled for a wave of revulsion, but it never came. The guy’s remains no longer looked like a
he
. More like a thing. And then a practical, dispassionate voice started to whisper inside my brain.
Things can be useful, Marc. Turn over a rock, and you never know what you might find
.

I didn’t take the dead guy’s gun. That would be like inviting the police to shoot me, if I did get caught. I did take his wallet, though. There was no ID, but he wouldn’t be needing the cash anymore. And
his credit cards would be safer to use than mine, if I needed access to more funds.

Rifling through his jacket was one thing—I could lift it up, away from his body—but his jeans were another proposition altogether. Sliding your hand into another man’s pocket seemed way too intimate. Inappropriate, even. More so when you’re the one who just killed him. In fact, I nearly walked away without doing it. I would have, if it weren’t for one more insistent thought at the front of my mind. I needed transport. Especially now that a man was dead. The stakes had skyrocketed. I couldn’t risk using my Jaguar, even though it was sitting invitingly in the driveway. And this guy must have had wheels, to follow me here.

My hand hovered above his hip for a moment, then shot forward to grab his keys. He had two sets, clipped together. One was from a rental car company, with a logo I’d never seen before. The other bunch was bigger. And very familiar.

Because it belonged to Carolyn.

A
LL THE FIGHT HAD GONE OUT OF ME, WHICH LEFT ONLY ONE
option. Flight.

The last thing I did before running out of the house was grab my passport from the downstairs safe. South America. Europe. Australia. I didn’t care. I just knew I had to get far, far away.

IF THERE’D BEEN ENOUGH
gas in the dead guy’s car to take me all the way to JFK, maybe I’d have gone through with it and tried to get on a plane. To put the maximum distance between me and his corpse and Carolyn and whoever else she was hooked up with. But when a little red light started flashing on the dashboard, that brought me back to my senses. Not all the way, but enough to persuade me to pause. So when I neared the next intersection and saw signs for accommodation, I pulled off the highway. I found the smallest and drabbest of the motels that were clustered around the sprawling cloverleaf. And I let the dead guy’s credit card stand me a night’s room and board.

I had no desire to eat or watch TV or even to get undressed. I just threw myself down on the bed. On top of the covers. The light was off. The curtains were open. My mind was still blank. But sleep refused to wash over me, so I lay still and stared up at the ceiling. It was stained. Maybe from a water leak. The line of vaguely round marks looked like the instrument panel in the dead guy’s car. They reminded me of my first product. My life had seemed on such a promising track, back when I was developing that. How on earth had it led me from there to here?

Despite all the miles I’d driven that night, I felt like I was only going backward. I couldn’t see the way ahead at all. And that made me think of something Roger LeBrock had said, a hundred years ago, back on Monday morning. He’d justified his decision to fire me by claiming I focused only on the past. That I had no eye for the future. I could have punched him for it, at the time. But now I was wondering if he had a point. Because my entire career was based on understanding what people did. Not who they were. Like myself. Was I a criminal? A thief? A fugitive? A murderer? I had no idea what the truth was anymore.

MY BODY HADN’T MOVED
by the time my eyes opened the next morning—sleep having crept up on me at some stage—but my brain had been busy. It was telling me that things were nowhere near as hopeless as they’d seemed in the wee small hours. Because I had a key advantage. The memory stick. It was still safely tucked away in my pocket. And assuming the virus was on it—and it had survived the ordeal in the bathtub—that meant my lifeline was still within reach. The drawback was, I’d need help making sense of the secrets it held.

Asking for that kind of help wouldn’t be easy. And wouldn’t come cheap. I had to call Information to get the number I needed, because it wasn’t a friend’s. What would have been the point? And it wasn’t a colleague’s, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have the stomach for what I had in mind. Greed can only take you so far. Instead, I asked the operator to connect me with a guy who’d be motivated by something else. The chance to step out of my shadow, once and for all.

The number I asked for was Karl Weimann’s. I’d used him before, to torpedo Carolyn’s career change. It seemed poetic to use him again now. And if Carolyn got caught in the crossfire, so be it. All was fair, after I’d almost been killed in our own bathroom.

“Karl?” He took an eternity to pick up. “Marc Bowman. Got a minute to talk?”

“A minute for you, Marc. Then I have to run.”

“I’ll keep it brief. The deal is, I’m working on something new. It’s big.”

“The Supernova?”

It was interesting he should ask that. The Supernova was the idea I’d had on the back burner when I started at AmeriTel. The one I’d been talking to Carolyn about, right around the time the photo of her and Weimann must have been taken.

“No.” I forced myself to stay on track. “Something else. The Nova was going to be big. But the new thing—it doesn’t even have a name yet—it’s going to be massive.”

“Sounds interesting. But why are you telling me?”

“Because I’m offering you a slice.”

“How big of a slice?”

“Say, twenty-five percent?”

“What would I have to do?”

“Meet me. We’ll talk about it.”

“OK.” He paused. “Where and when?”

“Today. My hotel. The Buckingham. In Harrison, just off the 684. Let’s say, noon?”

“No can do. Too short notice.”

“Well, it has to be today. It’s a limited-time offer. Other people are interested. This thing’s going to be huge, and you’ll kick yourself if you snooze and lose.”

“OK.” He paused for longer. “You’ve got me. I’ll be there. What room number?”

“I haven’t checked in yet. I’ll text you as soon as I do.”

“I’ll be watching my phone. Ciao,
partner
.”

C
AVEAT EMPTOR
.

Buyer, beware. The oldest rule in the book when it comes to business. And however you chose to read my proposition—whether Weimann was buying a slice of my product, or I was buying a piece of his expertise—I was going into the deal with my eyes open.

I called the Buckingham and reserved two rooms in the dead guy’s name, then I left the motel. I hadn’t formally checked out, but since I was wearing the sum total of my possessions, and I had no wish to run the gauntlet at reception again—dopey as the clerk had seemed the night before—I didn’t waste the time.

I recalled passing a giant Target store on my crazy drive from home, so after a brief stop at a gas station—one with a pay-at-the-pump option—I set off to find it again.

I parked close to the entrance and headed for the electronics aisle. First into the cart was a pair of Sony laptops. I didn’t need the bells and whistles, but when you’re shopping with a dead guy’s credit card, why hold back? My next pick was a handful of memory sticks—the same brand I’d been using at AmeriTel. Then a few changes of clothes, in a variety of colors. Three baseball caps. A pair of reading glasses—the weakest they had. And finally a suitcase, to carry everything in.

THE HOTEL WASN’T QUITE
where I thought it was, but after five minutes of rising anxiety I tracked it down. I found an out-of-the-way
space to leave the car, put on the glasses and one of the hats, and made my way to reception. The clerk looked surprised when I asked for the rooms I’d booked to be at least four floors apart, but when I mentioned teenaged kids and stopping en route to an anniversary getaway, he grinned and said no more.

The higher room was on the twelfth floor, so I texted its number to Weimann and took an elevator to the seventh. That’s where my second room was, all the way at the end of the corridor. Once inside I unpacked the new laptops, got them running—not hard, when you work with computers for a living—and set up a video link between them using the hotel’s free wireless. Then I picked up the nearer one, slipped one of the new memory sticks into my pocket, and headed to the stairs.

The room on the twelfth floor had exactly the same layout as the one I’d just left. A pair of twin beds against one wall, with gaudily patterned covers and giant heaps of unnecessary pillows. A wardrobe, dresser, and desk against the other wall, in some kind of pale, fake wood. A doorway to a small bathroom. An uncomfortable-looking couch beneath the window. All perfectly functional, but nothing you’d miss—or even remember—five minutes after you left. Typical of a place designed as a stop along the way to somewhere else, not a destination in its own right. Appropriate in more ways than one, I thought, as I positioned the laptop on the corner of the desk and made sure its built-in camera had a good view of the entrance. Then I sat the memory stick on the other corner of the desk and left, careful not to let the door close all the way and lock itself behind me.

Back in my room on the seventh, I set the camera to privacy mode and checked the screen of the second laptop. The view was perfect. When Weimann arrived, I’d see him without him ever knowing I was watching. I’d see how he reacted to finding the memory stick. I’d see if he wasn’t alone. I’d see if he’d sent anyone else in his place. And I was five floors closer to the exit. If I wasn’t one hundred percent certain everything was the way it should be, I’d be out of the hotel and back on the highway before anyone even knew I’d been there.

All I had to do now was wait.

——

I’M NOT USUALLY ONE
for changing horses mid-race, but after ten hour-long minutes it dawned on me that I was missing an opportunity. I’d left the fresh memory stick displayed prominently for a reason. It was a tell. If Weimann came because he wanted to work with me, it wouldn’t mean anything to him. He’d ignore it. But if he came because he was already working with the crooks Carolyn was mixed up with, getting his hands on my memory stick would be his goal. He’d pounce on it. As would anyone else he sent. And if that did happen, wouldn’t it be better for me if they were satisfied with what they took? The only guy whose face I’d seen was dead. What good would it do them to waste time trying to find me once they’d recovered their prize?

I took a deep breath and plugged the original memory stick and another new one into the laptop and set the contents to copy between them. I figured the laptop would get infected in the process, but I wasn’t too worried. The one I’d used at AmeriTel had still worked fine, even once the virus had taken hold.

The file transfer took four minutes. That left eleven minutes before Weimann was due to arrive. Not much time to run to the other room, switch sticks, and get back to safety. I was wondering if I should just content myself with the original plan when my phone received a text.

Traffic brutal. ETA now 12:15. Sorry! KW.

I took that as a sign, said a silent prayer, and set off down the corridor with the freshly filled memory stick in my hand.

T
HE DOOR SWUNG OPEN, FIVE FLOORS ABOVE ME, AND A FIGURE
appeared on my computer screen. Tall. Skinny. Slightly stooped. Shorter hair. But definitely Weimann.

And he was on his own.

He walked forward hesitantly, looking around, puzzled to find no sign of me. I could see his mouth moving, as if he was calling out, but no sound made it through to my computer. He shrugged. Then stepped over toward the desk. Stopped. And picked up the memory stick.