Shiver

knife—one of those small, Swiss-army-type pocket knives with a million gizmos attached, from the feel of it—into his palm. There wasn’t much room, but difficult as it was he managed to stretch down enough to start hacking away at the ties binding his ankles. The blade was small, the movements required to cut through the hard plastic ties accompanied by a thousand different versions of pain. Through it all, he was supremely conscious of a fresh upsurge of blood oozing from his thigh.
    Got to stop the bleeding. That was the next item on his survive-the-night list.
    “How sure are you that they’re going to kill us?” The girl’s voice was breathier than before. Probably because she now had enough of a handle on the situation to be really, truly frightened. His initial instinct was to reassure her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right. Under the circumstances, though, his initial instinct was shit. Truth was what she needed to hear.
    “One hundred percent. I’d be dead already if they hadn’t gotten interrupted.” The question was, who, exactly, had interrupted them: Crittenden and the cavalry, or more of the contingent of hapless U.S. Marshals out of whose custody he’d been snatched, or someone else hunting Marco? Or even a new player whose moves he wasn’t yet trying to follow around the board?Answer: impossible to know. As Danny assessed the truth of that, he sliced through the first tie, and was on to the second. It wasn’t his imagination: the car was definitely slowing down.
    The sudden crunch of gravel under the tires acted on him like a warning siren: wherever they were going now, it was somewhere off the public roads. Which meant they might very well be nearing Veith’s killing ground of choice. Because of course Veith was on his way, planning to rendezvous with Torres and finish the job.
    Under those conditions, the sudden turn onto gravel could not be good.
    He would be a fool to assume anything other than that they were approaching their destination.
    “Hear that gravel? I think we’re just about to get where we’ve been going.”
    “We’re probably in the scrap yard,” she said.
    “Scrap yard?”
    “For old cars and things. They recycle scrap metal. It’s not too far from where I found you. It’s all gravel.”
    That made sense. A scrap yard in the middle of the night sounded like Veith’s kind of place. He knew it was probably a waste of time, but still he tried to identify any source of possible help.
    “An attendant on duty? Anything around, like a bar or an open-all-night convenience store or something?” Someplace she could head for when she bolted.
    “No.” The tempo of her breathing had slowed down, likeshe was deliberately calming herself. He succeeded in cutting through the second tie: hallelujah, his feet were free.
    As soon as he moved his cramped legs, pain shot through his body like a thousand flaming arrows. He felt the hot slide of more blood leaving the hole in his thigh. Who was he kidding? He was going to fight off Veith and his thugs with a pocket knife? In the shape he was in? Hell, he was surprised he wasn’t already unconscious from blood loss. Chalk it up to adrenaline, he thought. Forcing himself to concentrate, he moved on to item two on his survive-the-night list and started tugging his belt from its loops.
    “What are you doing?” she asked, clearly having felt the change in his movements. There was definitely fear in her voice now: it was sharper, more tightly wound. Well, he thought as he pulled his belt free, if she wasn’t scared she would have to be brain-dead.
    “I’ve got a bullet hole in my leg. I’m going to use my belt to put a tourniquet on it.”
    “They shot you.” It wasn’t a question. “That’s where all the blood came from.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What, is this like a hit on you or something? Who are they?”
    “Again, you’re better off not knowing.”
    A long, harsh grinding sound from outside, from somewhere toward the front of the car, made Sam inhale sharply.
    “That noise you’re hearing? That’s the brakes on the towtruck,” she told him, even as the car lurched and rocked in a way that was different from before. “We’re stopping.”
    Queasy and light-headed, sucking in the too-hot, oxygen-deprived air like they weren’t making it anymore, knife tucked carefully away into his T-shirt pocket so there was no danger of him losing it in the dark, Danny was already wrapping his belt around his