Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (45 page)

Kevin nodded miserably. “Yes, I do.”

She didn’t fire him. At least not on the spot. But she told him she needed time to figure out how to handle the situation, and that the best way to create room for negotiations with Mr. Feeney would be to send Kevin home for the day. Immediately.

“Come back first thing in the morning,” she said to him. “We’ll figure it out. You might need to do some serious ass-kissing, but there are worse things.” Her voice was gentle and understanding, and Kevin wanted to pound his head into a wall. He had endured enough sympathetic understanding for one day.

But he also knew she was right
, s
o
he
simply headed down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.

There were three white vans parked on the street this afternoon, but Kevin barely noticed them. There always seemed to be white vans on this street, after all. Lots of painting to be done somewhere.

They Both Had Knives

If Andrew was surprised to see his employer home so soon after lunch time, he didn’t show it. He took his suit jacket from him, folded it over one arm, and followed Kevin into the living room.

“How was your day?”

Kevin grunted.

“Sir?”

“Didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”

Andrew gave him space. In ten minutes he was back, doing his best to cheer Kevin up by stuffing him with good food and reminding him, with a little nod in the direction of the book case, that he had now officially gone through all the reading material in this room. “You’ll have to start on the bedroom collection now,” he said, sounding impressed.

“Right,” Kevin said, without much enthusiasm. He got up from the table, thanked Andrew for the food, and headed for his bedroom. “I’m going to try to rest all the way until tomorrow morning,” he announced.

Andrew glanced at his watch. “It’s only one in the afternoon.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you all right?”

Kevin sighed. He turned around to face him. “Hard to say, Andrew. I don’t know what I’m getting ready for.” He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Ready,” he repeated, uttering the word as if it had dark and mystical properties. He was talking to the ceiling now. Talking to the sky. “Ready for
what
? What am I supposed to be
doing
?”

Andrew kept quiet.

“Petak tells me the answer is
nothing
,” Kevin went on. “He says it’s just residual nonsense.”

“Who’s Petak?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “I swear, if someone would just give me a job, something incredibly difficult, I could – ”

He stopped. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“You
have
a job, don’t you?”

Kevin almost laughed. “For the moment,” he said. “I might get fired tomorrow, though. And even if they keep me around, I seem to be getting worse at teaching every day.”

“That can’t be true.”

Kevin didn’t answer. He turned around and headed back toward his bedroom. He could feel the urge to read – to absorb, to get
ready
– building in him, and he didn’t want to wait for that pestering voice to start squirming its way into his head. This day had been frustrating enough already.

“Tomorrow will be better,” Andrew called after him.

“I agree,” Kevin called back. “It can’t be much worse.”

Kevin sat up quickly in bed, and he took a very deep breath. A book was on his lap, but it was turned to the last page. A blank page. He looked to his right; there was an enormous pile of discarded books there, perhaps half the contents of his bedroom bookcase.

He could barely remember lying down.

What time is it?

He glanced at his windows and saw only darkness at the edges of the pulled shades.
Which meant
he
had made it all the way
to Tuesday morning
,
and that
was a relief. He wanted that
Monday
as far behind him as possible. His cell phone was lying on the dresser, and he got out of bed to check it. As he rose, he was pleased to notice that his legs seemed to be recovering nicely from his ill-advised (and fruitless) sprint after the doorman the day before.

The cellphone’s digital clock showed 3 AM.

Still too early.

He didn’t want to read anymore. Or rest anymore. The need was gone; the urgency had left him, and he could tell that the voice wouldn’t be bothering him for a while now. Instead, he could feel himself wanting to stay up.

To go out and run, of all things.

Again? I’m not supposed to be doing this. Normal people don’t go out and exercise at three in the morning.

But his body didn’t listen to him. Or
it
simply didn’t
want
to listen. He could already feel his heart starting to pump faster, as though it had needed only to hear the mention of a run. And now it had simply decided to begin jogging without him.

“
Relax
,” he whispered.
“H
old on a second
.
”

In ten minutes he was dressed and out on the street, heading for the park. He wasn’t running yet, no matter what his hyped-up heart seemed to want.

Let’s give the hamstrings a second to catch up
, he thought.

By the time he had reached the park he felt loose enough, warm enough, and he started jogging slowly. It was okay. His legs didn’t seem to mind. There was almost no one on the loop this time – 3 AM on a Tuesday morning, it seemed, was a witching hour even for New Yorkers – so there was nothing to distract him. Even the homeless guy on the grassy spot behind the Metropolitan was asleep.

Kevin didn’t let himself speed up. He ran steadily once around, a complete loop in a little less than an hour, and everything was feeling good.

I can go again
, he thought.

It was closer to 4 AM by now, and a few people had begun emerging onto the roadway with him. The super-early risers. All of them were thin and focused, their eyes fixed on a point before them or hidden under the brims of white exercise hats. They were in their routines. Nothing to see here.

But this was New York, after all. Central Park at night. It was a city – and a place – that favored the unexpected.
S
o as if to reassert this spirit of unpredictability, the park itself seemed to step forward. To shift, and to
shatter
that routine.

And something happened.

Kevin was on a deserted stretch of road north of 110
^th
street when a pair of men running together on a neighboring path caught his eye. They were quicker than most, but they weren’t wearing the standard little shorts and shirt outfit that was typical of other fast runners Kevin had seen. Their clothes were darker. Heavier-looking. He wondered how they could possibly keep up such a pace while wearing clothes of this kind. Kevin was in a rhythm now, enjoying the slow but steady cadence he had established for himself, and he stared after the two quick men as though he were watching them on television. My God, they were fast. The path they were running on was covered mostly by trees, and in a moment they’d be in the darkness again, out of Kevin’s sight, hidden from the lamps on the main road by the thick foliage. They were running even faster now, as if they were not just running but
chasing
something. Within seconds they were going to catch up to that small woman ahead of them, and –

Everything came together at once.

They didn’t see me.

They think they’re alone.

Alone with that woman.

They’re not runners.

They’re going to catch her.

They’re going to –

He had been wrong about Connor Feeney, but this time Kevin’s instincts were right on-target. Whatever he had been reading for the last several nights, it had apparently not prepared him for detecting grade-school bullies. When it came to matters of life and death – or rape – however, he could see clearly enough.

Not that it would have been so difficult for
anyone
to read these men’s intentions.

Kevin bent to scoop up a small orange traffic cone that was guarding a pothole, and then he went darting to the side, through a copse of trees and over a small mound of grass and roots and then he was through, he was over, and now he was running along the path just a few yards behind the men. It was nearly pitch black on this path; light from the lamps on the loop could barely penetrate this far into the trees.

“Right here, guys,” Kevin called.

They were mere feet from the woman in front of them, but when they heard Kevin’s call the two men stopped in their tracks. They turned to face him. In the semi-darkness Kevin couldn’t make out the expression on their faces, but he didn’t need to. He had ruined their evening’s entertainment, and for this there would be consequences.

Had Elias Worth been there, he might have tried to explain to Mr. Brooks that these were men who should not be bothered. Like Jimmy Fleiss and Connor Feeney, these were men to be avoided. They were
bad
men
,
and trying to understand why they were bad would have been a waste of time. They were part of the mystery of things. Some days you got your head bashed in by a bully and a lunch table, and some days you got to sit in the library with Ms. Beck. You took the good with the bad; part of this was simply accepting that men such as these existed.

But for the love of
God
, you didn’t talk to such men. You didn’t
interrupt
them in the middle of whatever evil mischief they were busy making. If you saw them doing something, you ran and told a teacher. Or any adult.

“You’re about to be in
pain
, you know?” one of them called out to him. The man’s voice was hard. Agitated. They began walking toward him.