The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls) (37 page)

“I heard,” I said.

“Everybody’s got problems,” he said offhandedly. “And you’re my latest one.” He looked at the way he had instructed me to cuff myself. “I screwed that up, didn’t I? I should have had you put both hands around the leg and hooked them up together. You have another cuff?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Take it out of your pocket.”

“I can’t reach it with this hand. It’s in my other pocket.” Walden sighed. “Try.”

I attempted to reach across my body into my opposite pocket, but I was like O. J. trying on the glove. I made it look a lot harder than it actually was.

“I can’t do it,” I said.

“Okay, don’t try anything funny,” he said. “Shift over that way.”

I rolled back onto my other side to allow Walden to get into my pocket. My free hand went under my body, where I’d kept the item my hand had brushed past while he’d been talking to Don.

He still had the gun in his hand, but it was pointed at the toilet and not at me. He fumbled around in my pocket with his left hand.

I rolled.

I rolled fast, and hard, and brought up my free hand, with the six-inch nail file clutched in my fist.

I swung my arm with all the strength I had left in me and plunged it into Walden Fisher’s neck.

Walden screamed and tumbled, then hit his head on the sink. The gun fell out of his hand.

“Jesus!” he shouted.

I pulled the nail file out and jammed it into him again, this time catching him at the base of his neck, just above the rib cage.

And again.

And again.

Walden keeled over, his head hitting the opposite wall, a hand to his throat, his mouth wide, blood coming from everywhere. He stirred slightly, made one feeble attempt to grab for the gun that was just out of reach, made a noise that sounded like nuts and bolts rattling around in a can, and then he was gone.

I lay there for several minutes, catching my own breath, waiting to see if he’d take another.

He was dead.

I shifted over as close as my tethered arm would let me, patted him down, trying to find my phone. As best I could tell, it wasn’t on him. So I crawled back to my original position, laid out on the floor on my back, one arm stretched out above my head, still attached to the sink.

Someone would come, eventually. Or maybe, once I had some strength back, I’d yank that sink right off the goddamn wall.

I closed my eyes, listening to my own breaths and the pulsing of my heart in my temples.

Thought about Maureen. Thought about Trevor.

Thought about cake.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank Carol Fitzgerald, Amy Black, John Aitchison, Kristen Cochrane, Michele Alpern, Louisa Macpherson, Helen Heller, Kara Welsh, Danielle Perez, Paige Barclay, Bill Massey, Ashley Dunn, Juliet Ewers, Spencer Barclay, Brad Martin, Eva Kolcze, Loren Jaggers, Sam Eades, and Heather Connor.

And, as always, booksellers.

ALSO BY LINWOOD BARCLAY

No Safe House

A Tap on the Window

Never Saw It Coming

Trust Your Eyes

The Accident

Never Look Away

Fear the Worst

Too Close to Home

No Time for Goodbye

PROMISE FALLS TRILOGY

Broken Promise

Far From True

Copyright

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books

Copyright © NJSB Entertainment Inc. 2016

The right of Linwood Barclay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters in this book, with the exception of those already in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 4091 4653 7

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