Dominic's POV
I know the sound of a man who doesn't belong.
It's the footsteps. A hospital has its own rhythm, rubber soles and squeaking wheels and the soft shuffle of slippers. These are leather. Steady. They come down the corridor at the pace of someone who has walked here before, in his head, a hundred times.
I'm at the door before I decide to move.
"Marcus."
"I hear him."
"The cop?"
Marcus glances through the narrow glass panel. The uniformed officer on the door is slumped in his chair with his chin on his chest, a paper coffee cup on its side at his feet.
"Drugged," says Marcus, very quietly.
Behind me, Serena's hand closes on Tessa's.
"Get her up," I say.
"Dom..."
"Get her up. The window. The fire stairs. Go."
"We're on the fourth floor."
"There's a ledge. Marcus, take the bed."
"On it."
I turn the lock.
It's a flimsy hospital lock, a push button and a bar. It will hold for four seconds. I drag the visitor's chair across the doorway and wedge it under the handle and step back.
The handle turns.
A pause.
Then a soft, careful knock. Two taps, as polite as a man at a dinner party.
"Mr Hale?"
Rusk.
I've never heard it before. But Tessa described the man: big, thick-necked, a cut on his cheekbone.
"Go away," I say.
"I'd rather not."
"I've called the police."
"I rather think you haven't." The handle rattles, gently. "Your phone's in your pocket, and mine's in my hand. I'm afraid the hospital's switchboard has been experiencing some difficulties."
I stand very still.
"I just want the girl," says Rusk.
"You can't have her."
"Then I'll take the other one."
My blood stops.
"Mrs Hale. Ms Lowell. Whatever she's calling herself this week." The voice is pleasant, almost gentle. "I've no quarrel with you. I'm only the delivery man. I've got a car downstairs and a message from the chairman, and I'd rather not make a fuss."
"What message?"
"That it's time to come home."
Behind me, the window scrapes up.
A rush of cold air. The distant honk of Second Avenue. Serena's voice, low and urgent, saying, Tess, put your arm round my neck, and Marcus's, saying, Don't look down.
"I'm going to count to three," says Rusk.
"Count to ten."
"One."
"Rusk..."
"Two."
I pick up the IV stand.
It's steel, heavy at the base, with a pole as long as a spear. I hold it across my chest.
"Three."
The door doesn't open.
It explodes.
A shoulder hits it like a battering ram, and the chair flies across the room, and the frame splinters round the lock. Rusk comes through in a cloud of plaster, big as a wardrobe, with a knife in his fist.
I swing.
The pole takes him across the forearm with a crack like a branch.
He roars.
The knife goes spinning under the bed.
He's on me before I can swing again. His shoulder catches me in the ribs, the cracked ones, and the world goes white and silver. I slam against the wall. I taste blood. His forearm comes across my throat.
"Where is she?" he hisses.
"Gone."
"You're lying."
"Look."
He turns his head.
The window is open. The curtain billows. Nobody there.
He swears.
It's the second I need. I bring my knee up, hard, and he folds, and I hit him with the heel of my good hand under the ear, as Marcus taught me in a gym in Brooklyn five years ago.
He goes down on one knee.
I raise the pole.
"Freeze!"
A voice from the door.
I turn.
There are three men in the corridor, in suits, with guns drawn. The one in front is fiftyish, heavy-jawed, with a walrus moustache and a shield on his belt. The gun is pointed at my chest.
"Drop it," he says. "Now."
"He tried to..."
"I said drop it."
I drop the pole.
It rings on the tiles.
"Hands behind your head."
"Detective, this man..."
"On your knees, Mr Hale."
"He's the one who..."
"I won't tell you again."
I kneel.
Rusk, on the floor, is clutching his arm. He lifts his bloody face, and for a second I see it go across his eyes, a flicker of triumph, quickly smothered into a pained and hurt confusion.
"Thank God," he gasps. "Detective, thank God you came. He just went mad."
"What?"
"He attacked me. I came to visit a friend's sister. He started shouting about the family. He had that pole."
"That's a lie."
"Quiet," says the detective.
"He's lying!"
"Mr Hale." The big man comes forward. His gun doesn't waver. He crouches in front of me, and I read the shield. DET. RAYMOND KOWALSKI. NYPD FINANCIAL CRIMES. "I've been looking for you for two days."
"I've been..."
"You're a hard man to find." A faint, flat smile under the moustache. "I've got a warrant. For the arrest of one Dominic Hale, on suspicion of obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence."
"On what grounds?"
"Concealing a witness. A Miss Tessa Quinn, wanted for questioning in a burglary at the residence of Mr Edmund Vance."
My skin prickles.
"She's in the hospital."
"Is she?" He glances at the empty bed. "Doesn't look like it."
"She's a victim."
"Funny. That's what Mr Vance said you'd say."
The detectives haul me up.
The cuffs click round my wrists. The metal is cold. I think, with a strange distant clarity, of my father's handwriting.
I thought I had time.
"I want a lawyer," I say.
"You'll get one."
"I want Judith Weiss."
"I'm sure you do." Kowalski takes my elbow. "Mr Vance has kindly offered to represent you himself."
"I'll bet he has."
"Move."
They march me down the corridor.
Past the sleeping cop. Past a pale nurse in the doorway with her hand on her mouth. Past a long glass window that looks out over the East River, grey and wide and cold, with a tug butting upstream under a low sky.
On the far side of the corridor, in a doorway, stands Marcus.
He's alone.
He doesn't look at me.
He looks at the floor, and then, very slightly, at the ceiling, a flick of the eyes toward the stairwell, and I understand that they're out. That Serena and Tessa are somewhere in the walls of this building, on a fire escape, in the dark.
I let out a breath.
"Don't worry, Mr Hale," says Kowalski, pleasantly. "We'll find her."
"I don't know who you mean."
"Of course not."
"I'd like to make a call."
"At the station."
The elevator opens.
It's empty. A stainless steel box with a mirror panel. I see myself in it between two big men in suits, dishevelled, bleeding at the mouth, with my wrists bound and my shirt torn.
A man who might very well have done it.
I think: That's what he wants.
I think: He wants Serena to watch me go.
And I think, with perfect cold clarity, as the doors slide shut: Let him.
Because Torres said seventy-two hours.
And Edmund Vance has just told me, without knowing it, exactly who he's afraid of.
The doors close.
The elevator drops.
On the third floor, it stops.
The doors open.
A woman in a black wool coat stands on the other side, holding a manila folder, with a pair of reading glasses pushed up into her hair.
"Detective Kowalski," says Assistant United States Attorney Dana Torres.
"Ma'am?"
"I'm afraid," she says, very pleasantly, "that you're holding my witness."