Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
PART IV EXITING
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
O mighty lord! O exalted god of battle! Thou art brilliant in the bright heavens! Let me proclaim thy greatness! Let me bow in humility before thee! —Ancient Babylonian prayer
Criminal defense attorney Randall Donovan had really stepped in it this time—was in the shit way over his head and sinking fast. The man in the ski mask would not answer, would not even listen to him.
“I’m begging you!” Donovan screamed. “This hasn’t gone so far that there’s no turning back. I don’t know who you are—who your people are—but your beef isn’t with me. I swear, whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it!”
Nothing. Only the flashing strobe light above his head; only the deafening pump of eighties music and occasionally what sounded like power tools coming from the next room. He recognized the tune from way-back-when in law school—Depeche Mode or New Order or some other shit band like that—but he couldn’t remember the name of the song or the band that sang the cover; didn’t even know there was a cover until he met the man in the ski mask. For the man in the ski mask had been cranking the two versions back to back for days, and now Randall Donovan knew all the lyrics by heart.
“How could you think I ’d let you get away?
When I came out of the darkness and told you who you are.”
He was in the man’s cellar, naked and strapped to a chair. Of that much he was sure. The room was cold, the chair soft and cushiony like a dentist’s chair. Indeed, when he first woke up, Donovan thought for a moment that he was at the dentist’s—his senses dull, his vision cloudy as the steady pulse of the strobe light brought him slowly back to consciousness. Then the smell hit him. Two smells, really. A bitter, chemically smell—close, in his nostrils—and another underneath it: something foul, like rotting garbage.
But now, days later, even though Randall Donovan’s senses were sharp, he could smell nothing but the vague odor of his own feces. His arms and legs were tied down, and there was a strap across his waist. And then there was the pain, the dull, heavy pain in the back of his head that throbbed like the drumbeat surrounding him. Despite the chilly temperature he was sweating badly, and the lines of strange symbols that the man had drawn all over his body were now all runny and drippy-looking.
“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heard me speak.
Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”
“I understand,” Donovan called out. “I get it. You think I’ve wronged you in some way. But I swear to you, on my kids, I don’t know what I did. Let’s talk this out! I’ll give you whatever you want!”
“There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,
From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”
Donovan let out a cry of frustration and struggled against the straps. He could move only his head, but the sharp pain at the base of his skull made him stop immediately. He didn’t remember the man in the ski mask hitting him at home in his driveway. Never even saw him coming. But when he awoke to the music and the strobe light some time later, the man in the ski mask gave him two Tylenols and a glass of water. They did nothing.
That had been days ago now. How many days? He could not be sure. The man had given him Gatorade and some oatmeal to eat. He’d also adjusted the chair a few times so the cushion dropped out from underneath the lawyer’s buttocks. “Move your bowels,” was all he said, and placed a bucket underneath. Donovan tried pleading
