Game (Jasper Dent #2)(116)

Is Kevin Costner a serial killer? Yeah, right.

She inspected the bag, even turned it inside out, but found nothing else. Nothing but the note and the gun and the clipping. Remembering how the bell clue had actually been a part of the lockbox, she scrutinized the bag for markings of any sort, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

What about the note itself, though? She thought of the note that the Impressionist had carried in his pocket, how there had been a simple acrostic UGLY J encoded into it. She studied the note, but found nothing of the sort. The opening letters of each paragraph, of each word, of each sentence, spelled nothing sensical. Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t some sort of clue embedded in the note itself, only that she couldn’t figure it out. But didn’t the FBI have, like, a whole division of people who did stuff like this? Codebreaking? Deciphering experts? Cryptographers?

Maybe she could get Jazz to give the note to the FBI agent he knew. Maybe…

She sighed and stuffed the gun and the note and the clipping back into the bag, then left JFK, following signs that directed her to a taxi stand. The driver, a Sikh with a Bluetooth earpiece, nodded and smiled at her, shrugging with one shoulder when she said, “Brooklyn,” and the address of Jazz’s hotel.

“How you want me to go?” he asked.

Connie had no idea. She didn’t think he would appreciate if she said, “Maybe with a car? On the road?”

“Whatever’s fastest,” she said.

“BQE?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The cab took off. Connie laid her head back, letting lamppost light wash over her in staccato waves as they pulled away from JFK and onto a highway.

It started to rain, a cold, ugly rain that made Connie shiver just from the sound of it on the roof of the cab, the silver slash of it in the headlights.

Connie thought that she couldn’t have summoned by most ancient witchcraft a more perfect and more hideous night for what she had to do.





CHAPTER 53


Before they went any deeper into the storage facility, Morales popped the trunk of her car and hauled out a bulletproof vest. She strapped it on and then pulled her blazer on over it. She looked almost comically top heavy and squarish.

“I have another one,” she said, indicating the trunk. “It’s a little small, but it’ll probably fit you.”

“These guys don’t shoot people,” Jazz said.

Morales shrugged. “Protocol.”

I like how it’s so important to you to follow protocol while breaking the law with me, Jazz thought, but did not say.

With Jazz in the lead to scout out the cameras and guide Morales—now suited up and armed again—around them, they made their way to unit 83F. It was deep within a maze of tight, narrow corridors lit sporadically by overhead fluorescent tubes that seemed to spasm on and off of their own accord. The unit was on the second floor of what seemed to be a ten-story building, a concrete-and-metal bunker housing endless identical doors, differentiated only by the varying locks and the fading numbers etched onto their faces.

As they rounded a corner that would reveal 83F to them, Morales paused to draw her backup weapon. Her poise with the smaller Glock 26 was plenty intimidating—Jazz could only imagine how she would look with the bigger 22 in her grasp.

“What are you doing?” Jazz asked.

“You should have bought bolt-cutters at the damn hardware store. Now I’m gonna have to shoot off the lock,” she said. “This ought to do it.”

Jazz groaned. “Put that thing away,” he said. “I can pick the lock.”

“What if it’s a combination lock, smart-ass?”

“I’m not bad with them, either.”

Moot point.

As they came within sight, they saw that the lock was already unfastened, hanging loose in the open hasp of the door to unit 83F.





CHAPTER 54


Howie stood at the front door to the Dent house. The stars still hid beyond the blanket of clouds. He tried not to take that as an ill omen, but it wasn’t easy.

Just go on and do it, he told himself. And who knows? Maybe a hundred years from now, some dumb futuristic hemophiliac kid’s dumb futuristic parents will be all like, “Buck up! Did you know that the famous Howie Gersten also had hemophilia?” Beats the living hell out of Genghis Khan, right?

He had a key, of course, so he let himself in. The house was quiet. Too quiet, some idiot in a movie would say, then go in anyway.

Howie shrugged and went in anyway. He knew something that random movie idiots didn’t know—where the shotgun was. He recovered it from behind the big grandfather clock. The barrels were plugged and Jazz had removed the firing pins, but Sam and Gramma didn’t know that.

I’m going to cut the knot and figure this out one way or the other, he thought. And then, resolute, he stepped into the living room, where Sam lay on the sofa, watching TV.

“Howie?” she asked, startled. “What are you—” She broke off as she realized he was pointing the gun at her. “Howie!” Her voice cracked. “What the hell? Are you nuts?”

“That’s exactly what I was gonna ask you!” he said, astonished. “Wow. We’re totally on the same wavelength. Please don’t be a crazy serial-killer person.”

“What are you talking about?” She drew her legs up onto the sofa, hugging her knees as though she could shrink into a space where a shotgun blast couldn’t find her. “What are you doing? Point that thing somewhere else.”