Bloody River Blues

was a lifter , hired to extract information from me. Of course: about the organized crime case I’d just worked. I knew the new identities of the five witnesses who’d testified at the trial. I knew where Witness Protection was placing them.
    Gasping for breath through the tears, Alissa was saying, “You told me . . .”
    But the lifter was ignoring her, looking at his watch and placing a call, I deduced, to the man in thedecoy car, followed by my protégé, fifty miles away. He didn’t get through. The decoy would have been pulled over, as soon as our crash registered through the mobile phone call.
    This meant the lifter knew he didn’t have as much time as he would have liked. I wondered how long I could hold out against the torture.
    “Please,” Alissa whispered again. “My mother. You said if I did what you wanted . . . Please, is she all right?”
    The lifter glanced toward her and, as an afterthought, it seemed, took a pistol from his belt and shot her twice in the head.
    I grimaced, felt the sting of despair.
    He took a battered manila envelope from his inside jacket and, opening it, knelt beside me and shook the contents onto the ground. I couldn’t see what they were. He pulled off my shoes and socks.
    In a soft voice he asked, “You know the information I need?”
    I nodded yes.
    “Will you tell me?”
    If I could hold out for fifteen minutes there was a chance local police would get here while I was still alive. I shook my head no.
    Impassive, as if my response were neither good nor bad, he set to work.
    Hold out for fifteen minutes, I told myself.
    I gave my first scream thirty seconds later. Another followed shortly after that and from then on every exhalation was a shrill cry. Tears flowed and pain raged like fire throughout my body.
    Thirteen minutes, I reflected. Twelve . . .
    But, though I couldn’t say for certain, probably no more than six or seven passed before I gasped, “Stop, stop!” He did. And I told him exactly what he wanted to know.
    He jotted the information and stood. Keys to the truck dangled in his left hand. In his right was the pistol. He aimed the automatic toward the center of my forehead and what I felt was mostly relief, a terrible relief, that at least the pain would cease.
    The man eased back and squinted slightly in anticipation of the gunshot, and I found myself w—

JEFFERY DEAVER, a former attorney and the New York Times bestselling author internationally hailed as “the best psychological thriller writer around” ( The Times , London), has most recently added to his myriad literary achievements as the author of the newest James Bond adventure, Carte Blanche . He is the originator of the acclaimed detective hero Lincoln Rhyme, featured in nine hit novels, including The Bone Collector —which became a Universal Pictures feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His numerous stand-alone novels include the page-turner Edge ; The Devil’s Teardrop , which became a Lifetime Television movie; and The Bodies Left Behind , winner of the 2009 Best Novel of the Year award from the International Thriller Writers organization.
    He’s been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony Award, and a Gumshoe Award, and was recently short-listed for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Best International Author. He is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year for Garden of Beasts and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association. The Cold Moon won a Grand Prix from the Japanese Adventure Fiction Association and was named Book of the Year by the Mystery Writers Association of Japan.
    Visit www.jefferydeaver.com .

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A LSO BY J EFFERY D EAVER
    Carte Blanche
    The Burning Wire*
    Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)
    The Watch List ( The Copper Bracelet and
    The Chopin Manuscript ) (Contributor)
    Roadside Crosses**
    The Bodies Left Behind
    The Broken Window*
    The Sleeping Doll**
    More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two
    The Cold Moon*/**
    The Twelfth Card*
    Garden of Beasts
    Twisted: Collected Stories
    The Vanished Man*
    The Stone Monkey*
    The Blue Nowhere
    The