She nodded weakly.
“Okay, good,” he said. “Here.” He took four hundred dollars from his wallet and put it in her hand. “If you need anything, don’t use your credit card. Don’t bring your phone. Call me from their house phone in two hours so I know you’re safe.”
“Wait, Dad!” she said. “Let me go with you. I can help!”
“You’re going to help me by being safe.”
“Dad, I need to do something!”
“I said go! Now, Alex!” He realized immediately that he’d spoken too gruffly, and softened his tone. “They already have your mother. I need to know that you’re safe while I get her back. Okay?” He hugged her, holding and comforting her for a minute. “Can you do that for me?”
“Yes,” she said weakly.
“Okay,” he said. He got back into the Shelby, which he had parked askew on the curb. He backed up, then peeled out, moving back along the dark suburban streets. His phone rang.
“Cobra, I got the vehicle,” said Shepard. “Black van, getting onto I-93 South thirty minutes ago.”
“Then that’s where I’m going,” said Morgan.
He was speeding back down to Boston when his phone rang.
“Hello, Daniel Morgan.” It was cold and cruel. The voice of a stone cold killer, a man with no heart. The voice of Nikolai Novokoff.
“You bastard,” he said.
“Come down to the city, Danny Boy,” said Novokoff. “And turn the radio to the local news. I’ve got a surprise for you. And I guarantee you’ll find out where your wife is very soon.”
CHAPTER 52
Boston, February 27
Morgan drove blindly down Storrow Drive, not knowing where to go. The urgency of finding Jenny, of rescuing her from the madman Novokoff, spurred him to accelerate, but it was, of course, useless. He had no idea where to go. The radio was tuned to a local station, but the anchor was giving a traffic update.
“Do you have anything for me yet, Shepard?” he asked, with his cell on speakerphone.
“I’ve tracked him down as far as getting to the city half an hour ago, but that’s it.”
“Keep looking!”
Morgan switched between radio stations until he came to another local news station.
“—we turn now to one of our citizen journalists, who just called in about something strange going on downtown. Sir, just what is happening?”
“Yeah,” said a man’s voice with a Southie accent, “there’s someone hanging from the crane here at that big construction site—”
“That would be the future Dwight Tower,” said the anchor.
“Oh no,” Morgan said to himself. “No.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Dwight. Anyway, they’re just hanging there, squirming. It’s a mob thing, if you ask me.”
“Thanks, sir. Well, there you have it, folks. We’ve got Steve going down to get a look at it himself—”
Morgan switched off the radio, then clutched, white-knuckled, at the wheel and sped off, grazing cars as he wove through the tight traffic, past the Common. He reached the block of the new skyscraper. A crowd was already forming, blocking his car’s access. He screeched to a halt and left the car, leaving the door open behind him.
Morgan ran down the street, barreling through the crowd, and looked up. By the skeleton of the rising skyscraper, already some thirty stories high, the huge yellow arm of the crane swung over the street. Hanging from its hook was a figure, tiny so far above the ground, contorting itself and swinging precariously. Her body was covered in what looked like a very heavy winter coat and pants. She was far enough above the street that all he could make out was her hair. The short, straight brown hair.
His phone rang and he put it to his ear. “Did you figure it out yet?” asked Novokoff’s mocking voice.
“Let her go,” he said. “Set her down right now, or I swear to you that I’ll—”
“You will do what? You have nothing to offer me and nothing to threaten me with. I am a dead man already. Courtesy of the savage beast you let loose on me. But I intend to go out in style, Mr. Morgan! And I intend to break you in the process.”
“What do you want?” Morgan asked. “What the hell do you want?”
“I want you to suffer.”
He pushed his way through the crowd, elbowing his way through where it was thickest. Four policemen had arrived at the scene, and were trying to keep an area clear underneath the crane. Morgan ran toward them.
“That’s my wife!” he said.
“We’ve got this under control, sir,” a policeman told him, holding up a hand to hold Morgan back. “We are going to get her down as soon as we can. We’re getting someone who can operate the crane to come down here right away.”