The Givenchy Code (8 page)

S
tryker got us into Todd’s apartment—I didn’t ask how—but I couldn’t bring myself to follow him in. I also couldn’t handle waiting in the hall by myself, so I ended up just inside the door, my back pressed against the wall, as Stryker crossed the short distance to the sofabed.

I realized that something was wrong about the time Stryker lifted the sheet, and when he turned back to look at me, I already knew what he was going to say.

“The sheets are clean. Someone’s done a number on this apartment.”

I checked the trash can and the table, but the crumpled message wasn’t there. Neither was the menu with my decoded message.

The situation was surreal, and part of me expected Todd to walk in at any moment and ask what the hell we were up to.

Please, please, please let him walk in….

He wasn’t going to, though. I knew that. And reality tugged at me like the tide. I held on tight to the back of the kitchen chair and just breathed, waiting for my equilibrium to return.

“You doing okay?”

“I’ve been better.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

I liked that idea. Liked it a lot, actually, but first I had to do one thing. I took a deep breath and circled the bed. Sure enough, my clothes and my new red Givenchy shoes were still in the tangled mess I’d left before falling into bed with Todd last night. I grabbed them up, then followed Stryker back out onto the street. I eyed the passersby while he hailed a cab. No sign of the messenger, though, and I wasn’t certain if that made me feel better or worse.

I
did
know that I was exhausted. I collapsed gratefully into the cab, and when Stryker put an arm around me and told me to lean back and relax, I didn’t argue. I liked the feel of him next to me, and I liked that he was there to protect me. I didn’t know him—not really—but I was grateful not to have to go this alone.

He smelled like safety, all soap and fabric softener, and for the first time since I’d seen Todd on the bed, I relaxed. I closed my eyes and faded into that familiar half-sleep that comes from riding in one too many unair-conditioned taxicabs.

All too quickly the lulling bounce of the shock-absorber-less cab ended, and we screeched to a halt in front of my building. I knew we were there even without Stryker nudging me. That’s the sign of a true Manhattanite—knowing the cab’s arrived at your apartment even from the depths of a catnap.

Stryker paid the driver, and we headed into the building. As we were about to step into the stairwell, I noticed an envelope shoved into the space between my mailbox and the mailbox for 4E, the same place where Mr. Abernathy leaves the overdue rent notices.

“Stryker…”

He turned in the direction I was looking, then crossed to the row of mailboxes and plucked up the envelope. Even from that distance, I could see that my name was printed across it in neat block letters. He handed me the envelope, and I slipped my finger under the flap, breaking the seal. I peered inside. The note. “Play or Die.”

“He’s giving you a second chance,” Stryker said.

I nodded, not sure how I felt about that. Angry. Bewildered. Grateful. Not to mention incredibly confused.

Right then I was sure about only two things: that I wanted to nail the son of a bitch who’d done this to me, and that I was glad Stryker was there. Maybe I was being stupid and naïve and he was going to blow a hole through my head, too. But I didn’t believe it. There was too much comfort in his touch, and when I pushed away, my skin was hot and my movements awkward.

“Looks like we’re back to square one,” I said, holding up the envelope. “Let’s go figure out what this message means.”

PLAY

OR

DIE

***

PRESTIGE

PARK

39A 89225

Stryker and I stared at the paper now lying on my kitchen table. “The ‘Play or Die’ part I think we’ve figured out,” I said. “I’m not sure about the rest of it.”

“Well, it’s a park, right?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never heard of it.” Jenn and I have a tourist map of New York pinned to the back of the front door, and I marched over to it, my eye drifting first to Central Park and then to all the other little dots of green across the map. I frowned. “There’s a lot of them. And we don’t even know if it’s in Manhattan.”

He moved to stand beside me. “It probably is. PSW is set here. I’d bet we’re playing the game here, too.”

“Shouldn’t there be a list of parks? I don’t see a list.” I started poking at the tape that held the map down, trying to slide my fingernail underneath. “Maybe there’s a list on the other side.” I gave up on the tape and just yanked the damn thing down. It ripped at the bottom corner, leaving a tiny bit of lower Manhattan taped to the back of the door.

Stryker took the map from me and spread it on the table. We both leaned over, concentrating on the tiny printed lists. Hotels, Restaurants, Museums,
Parks.
I ran my finger down the column, squinting as the letters seemed to swim in front of my eyes. I didn’t see Prestige Park, but I wasn’t trusting myself at the moment. I scanned the list again. “I don’t see it.”

“Me either,” he said, then pushed back from the table. “Got a phone book?”

I shrugged. I rarely know if there’s food in the apartment. The odds that I’d know where to find a phone book were slim. “I can look.”

The place isn’t overflowing with space or storage capabilities, so it didn’t take me long to check all the various nooks and crannies. “No luck,” I said. “Why would it be in the phone book, anyway?”

“Maybe it’s not a park,” he said. “Maybe it’s a parking garage.”

“Well, duh,” I said. “We should have figured that right off the bat.”

He tilted his head and smiled—he had a really nice smile. “It’s been a rather unusual day. I think we can cut ourselves some slack for not thinking completely clearly.”

He had a point. “Okay. So, should I go ask my neighbor for a phone book?”

“Let’s try the Internet first.”

He tugged Jennifer’s laptop over and hit the power switch. While the machine booted up, I pulled my feet up on the chair and hooked my arms around my legs. I propped my chin on my knees and voiced something that had been bugging me. “Why clean Todd’s apartment?”

“Maybe it’s like you said. Keep the police out of it. Even if you had decided to run to the police, think what it would look like if there’s no body, no sign of a struggle…”

“They’d just think I’m a kooky ex-girlfriend.”

“Maybe.”

I didn’t like this (okay, that’s pretty much a given, but I
really
didn’t like this). I snatched up my phone and called Todd’s direct dial at the office. His secretary picked up.

“Hi, Jan. It’s Mel. Can I talk to Todd?”

“Well, a blast from the past. How’ve you been?” I closed my eyes, fighting frustration. Jan is a few years past sixty and has mentally adopted Todd. I think she was more distressed than either Todd or me when I pulled the plug on the relationship.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But I’m in a bit of a rush. Is he available?”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m afraid he’s not in today.”

“Oh.” I realized then that I’d really expected to hear his voice. Jan hadn’t spouted gloom and doom, and I’d immediately latched onto that as good news. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Actually, I don’t. He was very vague. Frankly,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’m a little concerned. It’s not like him to just take off like that.”

“He was vague?” I repeated, hope swelling. “You
talked
to him? When?” I’d seen Todd myself, all bloody in the bed. But I’d been freaking out, too. Had I seen someone else? Had it all been some horrible joke?

“This morning,” she said, and just as I was about to fall to my knees and thank God, she added, “Well, I didn’t actually speak to him. He sent an email.”

“An email?” I closed my eyes, certain I knew the end to this story. Stryker reached out and touched my arm. He was only getting my side of the conversation, but I was pretty sure he’d clued in to the more salient points.

“Apparently he was heading off to catch a plane. Some sort of family emergency. Douglas was
not
happy,” she added, referring to the firm’s senior partner.

“No,” I said. “I bet he wasn’t.”

Jan chattered on a bit more, but I’d quit listening. When she paused for breath, I made the appropriate good-bye noises, then hung up the phone.

“He’s gone home,” I said, my voice tight. “Family emergency.”

“I’m sorry, Mel.”

I felt hollow as I crossed to the sink. I turned on the cold water, then shoved my wrists under the stream. I don’t know when I’d first picked up that habit, but it never failed to calm me. And right then, I felt remarkably calm, all things considered.

As I stood there, another thought occurred to me, and I turned around, my hip pressed against the countertop as I faced him. “Have you checked your message log?”

“That’s how I knew about the money, remember?”

“I meant recently. In the game, sometimes the assassin will send a message. At least, that’s how it was set up when I played.” Actually, all the players communicated by sending messages among themselves. Getting a message from your assassin psyched some players out. And if you were playing the assassin’s role, getting a message from your target could be just as unnerving.

“Shit,” he said. “We should have looked hours ago.”

“Sorry.”

He held out a hand, urging me toward him. “Not your fault,” he said. “Like I said, I’m not totally ignorant about how the game is played, and I didn’t think of it, either.”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s not a rule, or even anything that you’d find in the FAQs. It’s one of those things you have to actually play to learn.”

I’d moved beside him, but I hadn’t taken his hand. Now he took mine, his expression serious. “I may not know the ins and outs of PSW, but I do know the real world. More important, I know how to fight. And how to kill if it comes to that. Don’t doubt me, Mel. I promise I won’t let you down.”

“I believe you,” I said. And it was true. I might not know him, but I didn’t doubt him.

He’d said his piece, and now he concentrated on the computer. I pulled one of the chairs over beside him so that I could see the screen, too. As he typed, his arm brushed against mine. He was solid and warm, a man’s man kind of guy. The kind of man I’d pretty much avoided in my dating life, tending more toward the guys I could talk numbers with. The jocks always bored me to tears. Now, though, I wasn’t interested in brains. I wanted brawn, and lots of it. What can I say? I’m adaptable.

He typed in his login information, then entered the site and navigated to the message center. Two messages. Stryker looked at me, then clicked the icon to open the first one. The sender was someone named Lynx—and it didn’t take long to realize that Lynx was the assassin, and that he’d started the game by killing Todd.

And that he’d been watching me.

“Eavesdropping equipment,” I said with a shudder. I remembered making love to Todd, sickened at the thought of someone listening in on our private moments. “Bastard.”

To say I didn’t like being a victim was putting it mildly. I’d been in control my whole life—graduating as my high school valedictorian, organizing the first-ever science fair at my school, finding my own tuition help for college since the high school counselor was such a twit, making my own way in New York since my parents refused to toss any cash my way, and on and on and on. The only possible exception was my relationships with men. There my confidence lapses. But even so, I’ve never been a
victim.
Any asshole creep of a guy treats me badly, and I’m out of there in a heartbeat.

With this asshole, there wasn’t any place to go.

“I hate this,” I said.

“I know,” Stryker said. He moved to the television and turned it on. Loud. Then he came back and leaned in close to my ear. “It gets worse, too. If he eavesdropped on you and Todd, who knows what he’s doing now.”

Well, hell. Stryker was right. The killer could be listening to us right then. The idea gave me the shivers.

“He definitely knows we’re together,” Stryker said. “The message came to me, not you.”

“What’s the other message say?” I asked, over the din.

Stryker clicked on it, and a new screen popped up showing nothing but a hyperlink.

Stryker clicked on the link. The page came up, and I gasped as I saw the image….

MEL
—
NO COPS

PLAY THE GAME

24 HOURS FROM OUR SWEET MEET.

OR DIE.

“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone in my life,” I whispered.
“But I want him dead.
I want to find him, and I want him dead.”

“So do I, kid,” Stryker said.

I leaned over him and grabbed a piece of paper, then started drawing out the pigpen again. I might be pissed, but I wasn’t stupid. I had twenty-four hours to figure out this Prestige Park bullshit. (I didn’t know what would happen in twenty-four hours, but I really didn’t want to learn the hard way.)

I started with the symbol at the very top of the screen and dutifully wrote
N
on my pad. Not very illuminating, but it was a start.

Beside me, Stryker was staring at the screen, a finger tapping against his jaw.

“What?” I asked him.

He looked up at me, a question in his eyes.

I made a production of tapping my own finger against my jaw. “You were thinking. What?”

“The website. I’m wondering if we can track him. Figure out who our enemy is.”

“But if he realizes, that will just piss him off.” I glanced around, nervous. We were speaking softly and the television was loud, but I was still afraid he could hear. I lowered my voice even more. “If he gets pissed off, he’ll just kill me straight away.”

“Won’t happen,” he said. “Qualifying round, remember?”

“Oh, that makes me feel better.”

“If we want to win, we need to get the advantage here.” He nodded toward the computer. “We need to figure out how he posted that message. It could lead us to him.”

“If we want to win,” I countered, “we need to play the game. I can do that. I can win.” I hadn’t lost this game yet, and I didn’t intend to start now. Not with the stakes so high. And how did Stryker plan to find the guy, anyway? He was a ghost. No, playing was my only option. I was certain.

“I’m not saying don’t play. All I’m saying is that you need every advantage you can get. You can’t afford to lose this game.”

“No shit,” I said. “Rebooting isn’t an option.” And then, because I knew that I was talking from somewhere in hysterical-land,
“I know.
Really. I just…” I let it go.

“What?”

I shook my head, tightening my arms around my frame.

“Mel.” His voice was gentle this time. “What?”

I closed my eyes. “I’m scared, okay? And I don’t like it. I started college when I was sixteen. I’ve won math tournaments where I have to stand up on a stage and solve equations in my head. The pressure is intense, and I thrive on that shit. I don’t get scared. But I’m scared now. I know how to play PSW. But what if I don’t know how to play
this?”

“Then let’s try to end it. Let’s track down the bastard. Let’s get him first.”

“What if it doesn’t end it? What if it only escalates it?”

“He won’t know we’re looking. Not until it’s too late.”

“He could be listening right now,” I said. “Even over the TV.”

“I know.” Frustration flashed in his eyes. “I think we’re okay for the moment, but we need to move soon.”

I nodded. I didn’t like the idea of leaving. My apartment might be tiny, but at the moment, it was the only place in all of Manhattan that I felt safe. We had to go, though. We couldn’t risk having the killer listening to our every word. “Where?”

“Not sure. Right now I just want to find the next clue. We’ll worry about the other details after we know you’re safe.”

I licked my lips, realizing what had been bugging me. “But I won’t be safe. Not if we’re really playing the game. If you’re right about the qualifying round, then as soon as I solve the clue, I’m a walking target.”

Once the target solved the qualifying round clue, the game was truly under way. The assassin could pick a target off at any time after that. Of course, in the cyberworld, certain actions could provide you with a level of security. You could trade the clothes on your back for money and then buy a bulletproof vest, for example. I presumed the same applied in the real world. But since I had no idea where to buy a bulletproof vest—and since Stryker hadn’t suggested it—I wasn’t even worrying about that yet.

“The first clue,” he said. “That’s the Prestige Park one?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Let me see if I remember how this works.” I might not have played in a while, but the idiosyncrasies of the game were coming back to me. “When the game starts, all players get a message letting them know. The target also gets a coded message telling her what to do.”

“That’s the Prestige Park message.”

“Right,” I said. “That message will lead somewhere in the cyberworld where the target will find
another
clue. That’s the qualifying clue. As soon as the target solves that qualifying clue, then the assassin is free to cut her down.”

“So what’s our second message? The one in my inbox about twenty-four hours? Could it be the qualifying clue?”

“I don’t think so. The intro message always
leads
to the clue. That message just came out of nowhere.”

“Any ideas?”

“One,” I said. But I didn’t much like it. “The bit about twenty-four hours makes me think it’s a warning.”

“I’m listening.”

“PSW’s whole shtick depends on people getting in there and really playing the games, right? Finish one game, start another. That kind of thing.”

“So?”

“So Grimaldi wanted to guard against people who log in, get assigned the role of target, and then spend weeks and weeks trying to figure out the first clue. Speed is the name of the game.”

“What did he do?”

“He put in a twenty-four-hour kill switch.”

“Right. I remember now. If the target doesn’t solve the introductory code in twenty-four hours, the target is terminated and the players can move on to a new game.” He met my eyes. “So much for my theory that you’re safe until we hit the end of the qualifying round.”

I pointed to the message still on the laptop screen. “I think that message is telling us that the twenty-four-hour kill switch applies in the real world.”

“Translate the rest of the message and maybe we’ll know for sure.”

“I will.” I sat in front of the computer and grabbed my pen. “The thing is, it’s already been well over a day since he gave me the envelope. Do you think the time is running from when I ran into him in front of Todd’s apartment?”

“Probably,” Stryker said. “But we’re not taking any chances. We need to get out of here. Go work somewhere where he can’t eavesdrop, and then make sure he doesn’t follow us once we’ve solved the clue.”

“We’ll go as soon as I do this,” I said, tapping the screen.

“We shouldn’t wait.”

“We shouldn’t leave without knowing exactly what we’re dealing with. Five minutes. That’s all I need.”

I thought he was going to argue more, but he didn’t. Instead, he eased into the bedroom, his cell phone at his ear. I could hear the low timbre of his voice blending into the background as I worked the code, the deep rumble providing a soothing counterpart to the frightening message I was slowly revealing.
Antidote. Ricin. Deadly.

I swallowed, staring down at the message I’d uncovered. Not a difficult code, but it hadn’t been meant to be. Whoever had sent this had wanted me to uncover the message, and fast. This was a message meant to keep me alive. At least for a little while.

“Stryker.” The word barely slipped past my lips. I cleared my throat and tried again.
“Stryker.”

He burst back into the room, his hand on his gun. I’d scared him, but I didn’t bother to apologize. I was pretty terrorized myself.

“Here,” I said. I pushed the paper with my translation toward him.

I watched as his gaze drifted to the paper, then he looked up, meeting my eyes. “Shit,” he said.

I nodded. The man sure had a way with words.