The Tin Man (38 page)

“
And editor,” he reminded her, hoping she’d pick up on the warning tone in his voice (and that Ivan wouldn’t).

“First floor,” she told him. “Turn right. I’m at the end of the hall.”

The door buzzed. He yanked it open and stepped into the foyer, which was long, dark, and narrow. At the far end was what looked like a hallway with striped wallpaper over darkly stained wainscoting. To the right, a stairway with a heavy oak banister led to the second floor. He did his best to act casual despite his sweating palms and racing pulse. He headed past the stairs, hanging a right when he reached the hall. A long floral runner covered the floorboards, cushioning their footsteps. The apartment doors, each crowned by a stained-glass transom, were the same tawny oak as the wainscoting. Letter E was the last one on the left. Stopping before it, Buchannan rapped three times.

T
he door opened, revealing a woman in a t-shirt, jeans, and white trainers. She wore very little make-up and had her honey-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked so different, it took him a moment to reconcile her with the waitress from the diner. From inside, he could hear the sound of a television.

“Hi,” he said,
forcing a grin.

“Hi yourself,” she said, flicking a glance behind her. “
I hope you don’t mind—but one of my neighbors stopped by. There’s a game on he was dying to watch and his set’s on the blink. So, I told him he could watch it over here.”

Buchanan
, shrugging, threw a glance over his shoulder at Ivan. “This is my editor, Mr. Wint.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr.
Wint,” Judy said, offering her hand.

As
Judy and Ivan shook, Buchanan observed them checking each other out. She must have decided Ivan was okay because she threw open the door and invited them in.

They followed her into the living room, comfortably furnished with an overstuffed sofa, matching club chairs, a leather recliner, and a monolithic entertainment armoire that housed an equally monolithic flat-screen
Sony. The furniture flanked a fireplace whose mantle was lined with what he guessed were family photos, some vintage, others more recent.

In the recliner, eyes glued to the
game, was a fifty-something man. Buchanan gave him the quick once-over as Judy made the introductions. “Jack,” as she called him, was a Harrison Ford type with short graying hair and a slight paunch. He was casually dressed in a beige polo shirt, faded blue jeans, and white trainers very like Judy’s. He gave them a smile and a little wave, but didn’t bother saying hello or getting up.

Buchanan
stared at him longer than was strictly polite. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. Was it the shape of the mouth or maybe something around the eyes? Was he an actor? Maybe he’d seen him in an advert on the telly. Unable to place “Jack,” the journalist shook it off and returned his eyes to Judy.

“The McGuffin’s in the kitchen,” she said
, moving toward a doorway at the far-end of the room. It led into a hallway with several closed doors and one of the swinging kind. She pushed through it and he followed her into a spacious eat-in kitchen.

“You want anything?” she asked, gesturing toward a monstrous stainless-steel refrigerator that looked strangely out of place.
“Coke? Bottled water? A beer, maybe?”

“Just what we came for,” Ivan said impatiently.

“That’s right,” Judy said, rounding on them. “Alex said you were in a hurry.”

“I do not mean to be rude,” Ivan put in, his tone
a trifle less harsh. “It is just that we have a deadline and must be getting along. I am sure you understand.”

“Of course,” she said, moving to a bank of drawers. She opened the top one and started rifling noisily through its contents. “I’m almost sure I threw it in here. I call this my junk drawer. It’s the place I throw all the crap that doesn’t
quite belong anywhere else.”

Buchanan
couldn’t help noting she was rambling. Did she sense that she might be in danger? He wondered if Good Neighbor Jack was there to do more than watch football. Perhaps she’d asked him to come by just in case there was trouble. Not that her friend could do much to protect her if Ivan started shooting.

Judy
, still rummaging, appeared to be having trouble locating the disk. Let her take all the time in the world, Buchanan thought. When he was done here, he reckoned he was done for good. So why rush? Ivan, on the other hand, was growing agitated.

Buchanan
looked around the room. The bay window he’d seen from outside formed an alcove for her kitchen table—a sturdy oak set he knew to be an English antique—the kind where the leaves pulled out from underneath. The seats had been recovered in a cheerful floral. There were more flowers on the clock on the wall, which ticked loudly. A glance at the decorative black hands told him it was nearing five o’clock.

“I’m just sure I put it in here,”
Judy said, drawing his attention back to her rifling. 

“I take it you did not listen to what is on the tape,” Ivan said beside him.

Buchanan, aware that her life depended on the answer, prayed she hadn’t played the “McGuffin”…or at least had the good sense not to admit that she had.

“I was curious,” she said with a shrug, “so I listened for a few minutes, just to see if it was really an interview.” She glanced toward
Buchanan, who felt the color draining from his face. “No offense, but you haven’t exactly been honest with me. So, I was afraid you might be lying about what was on the disk, too, and that maybe I should turn it over to the police. And I have to tell you, after I heard what those two men were talking about, I thought seriously about doing just that.”

Ivan, hand on the gun in his pocket, took a menacing step toward her.

Buchanan grabbed his arm. “You promised.”

Ivan, shaking him off,
pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed its nose right at Judy’s heart.

* * * *

Thea lay in the corner of the dark cell, shaking with cold, exhaustion, and the knowledge that she had come within a breath of being savagely raped. Mr. Kidd had just finished tying her to the platform bed in Tartarus when he got the phone call. After hanging up, he hovered over her for an excruciatingly long moment, seeming to fight an inner demon. His better angels must have prevailed, because he proceeded to untie her, after which he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the room. She’d felt clumps of follicles ripping out as he towed her down a long concrete corridor, which was rough and cold. Finally, he threw her in here, ominously proclaiming, “This will be your tomb.”

No more than a few minutes had passed since and she
could still hear him moving around somewhere else in the space. She prayed that whatever he was doing had nothing to do with her. She also prayed he would leave. She would rather spend her last few minutes in this life alone, making her peace with Allah, than churning with dread, imaging all the sick things Mr. Kidd might yet try.

Besides, she was still clinging to the hope
Buchanan would somehow miraculously return to rescue her. Not that she relished playing the part of the damsel in distress. In truth, she loathed the idea. She’d always resented all those sexist fairy tales in which some hapless princess waited around to be rescued. As far as she was concerned, the only one worth any salt was
The Little Mermaid
, whose message to girls was “don’t sacrifice what’s special about yourself for some sweet-talking guy.” Still, she could think of worse things right now than having Buchanan ride in on a big white charger. In fact, she was hard pressed to think of anything better—apart from kicking Mr. Kidd to death with her boots.

She struggled to sit up, pressing her back into the corner. The cold of the stone sent a chill through her body. Pulling her legs against her chest, she wrapped her arms around her shins and set her head on her knees. The cell was so
dark, she couldn’t see the walls that confined her, though she sensed they were close. The space, she estimated, was no bigger than the kitchen in her apartment. Five by five at the most. And it was quiet now. Deathly so.

This will be your tomb.

Fear dragged its icy talons across her insides. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she took a deep breath, counting slowly to five as she blew it out. She needed to stay calm. Dissolving into hysterics, tempting though it may be, wasn’t going to solve anything. Buchanan had been gone a long time, but he still might come back. There was a chance. Infinitesimal perhaps, but still a chance.

A scene from
the movie
The English Patient
started playing in her head. Katharine, critically wounded in the plane crash, lying in that desert cave, clutching Count Almasy’s hand.

“Promise me you’ll come back for me.”

Almasy, desperate to save her, vowed he would return before venturing into the desert on foot. He would have kept that promise, too, had it been within his power, but poor Katharine perished alone.

Thea
felt the strangling hands of terror tightening around her throat. Twisting around, she struggled to stand, pressing her fingers into the mortar joints in the wall to pull herself up. The surface was rough and pitted. Was it brick or chiseled rock? And which way was the door? In the darkness, she had lost her sense of direction.

She ran her fingers along the joints, moving down them like trails.
Just as her fingertips touched metal, she heard something. A soft hissing sound, like air escaping from a tire. Now she smelled something, too—an unpleasant sulphuric odor. Was it rotten eggs? She took a deeper whiff and started to cough.

This will be your tomb.

Panic exploded like a bomb, shooting red-hot shrapnel through her system. She knew that smell. A story she’d covered ten years ago—a gas leak at an electronics factory on Long Island—came rushing back. Seven workers, as she recalled, ended up in the hospital. The attending physician told her methane gas wasn’t poisonous, but caused asphyxia by depleting the oxygen supply. Gas, he also explained, was heavier than air, so anyone trapped in a gas-filled space should stay as high as possible.

Choking back her
fear, she pressed her hands against the wall, rose up on her toes, and lifted her face for a breath. The hissing continued. The sulphuric smell grew stronger. Her head started to pound, her pulse to race like a rabbit’s. Numbness crept across her limbs. It was getting harder to breathe, to think, to stand.

“
Tin Man,” she whispered in a voice like sandpaper. “Come back for your paper ballerina.”

* * * *

“Drop it, asshole.”

The
deep, commanding voice came from behind him. Buchanan spun around, jolting when he saw two men in the doorway, handguns fixed on Ivan. It took him a minute to put it together. Blue windbreakers. Baseball caps. Three bold yellow letters. Relief coursed through him in warm waves.

“You heard the man.”

Judy’s voice made him turn back. He was stunned to see that she, too, had a gun. He looked at Ivan, who still had his gun fixed on the waitress, but now his eyes were darting around like a cornered animal.

Before any of the
m could give another order, the Bulgarian spun around and broke toward the table. He grabbed one of the chintz-covered chairs and threw it at the bay window. Even as the glass shattered, he leapt through. The agents in the doorway looked at one another in stunned disbelief before taking off after him.

Buchanan
, mind reeling, turned back to Judy, mouthing questions that refused to come.

“I’m a detective,” she said.
“Vice. The waitress gig was part of an undercover sting operation. There’s a prostitution ring running out of the motel next door. We’ve had them under surveillance for weeks now. You’re just lucky it was me who was working the counter that morning.”

Buchanan
didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He needed a minute to get his head around what just went down. Judy was a cop? The FBI was now involved? And who was Jack? Not just a neighbor, obviously.

“
I’m Jack Hamilton,” a voice behind him said, right on cue. “Department of Justice.”

Buchanan
spun around as Jack took a step into the room and stuck out his hand.

“
It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Finally?”
Buchanan managed.

The journalist
, looking the attorney over, shook the offered hand. Again, there was that baffling glimmer of familiarity. It was in both the eyes and the smile.

“
I’m Lapdog.”

Buchanan absorbed the shock
, but continued to scowl at Jack Hamilton. “You seem so familiar. Have we met before?”

“No,” Jack replied, “but
I believe you know my daughter.”

The pieces snapped into place
with the sting of shock. Bloody hell. Jack Hamilton was Thea’s father. “She’s still in Tartarus,” he blurted, grateful finally to have help. “With one of Sterling’s goons. We need to get her the fuck out of there.”