The October List

minded investments, did you?’
    ‘You’re insane,’ he whispered. Panic was gone, anger had taken its place. And fast. ‘You fucker. You do this in front of my daughter? Who are you working for?’
    ‘Thomas, you don’t have much time. I’ll shoot your daughter first, because I need you alive to give me—’
    ‘All right. Don’t even mention that! Don’t even say it! All right, I’ll give it to you.’
    Daniel placed a call.
    ‘Hello?’ came the low, melodious answering voice.
    ‘Andrew.’ He handed the phone to Thomas and instructed, ‘Give him the information.’
    ‘I don’t have it memorized!’
    ‘She gets shot first and—’
    ‘I just mean it’s in my phone! It’s encrypted. It’ll take a minute.’
    Daniel said into the phone, ‘He’s got to decrypt it.’
    Andrew Faraday said through the tinny speaker, ‘Okay. But hurry.’
    Daniel glanced into the Jeep. The girl seemed irritated that she couldn’t find a song on her playlist.
    With Daniel watching, to make sure that Thomas didn’t hit 911, the businessman began typing on his mobile. He lost his place. He took a deep breath. Daniel told him, ‘Stay calm. Take your time.’
    ‘He said hurry!’
    ‘Calm,’ Daniel said.
    Thomas started over. He nodded at the screen and took the phone from Daniel’s hand. He began reciting numbers.
    Daniel took back the iPhone. ‘Well?’ he asked Andrew.
    He heard keyboard taps. A delay. ‘It’s good.’ The phone disconnected.
    The whole incident from car tap to confirmation had taken four minutes, just the time for two drivers to good-naturedly swap insurance info and agree there’d be no point in calling the police.
    ‘Now get in your car and drive home. It’s okay. You gave us what we wanted. It’s all over with now. Just go home.’
    Thomas turned and reached for the Jeep’s door with shaking hands. When he’d opened it, Daniel took a paper towel from his pocket and, wrapping it around the grip of the gun, drew the weapon and shot the businessman twice in the back of the head. He leaned down and looked in the passenger compartment, where blood flecked the dashboard and the windshield and the face and hat of his daughter, who was screaming as she stared at her father’s twitching body. She was clawing frantically at the door handle.
    Daniel held up a reassuring hand. She froze, uncertain about the gesture, he imagined, and turned slightly toward him. He shot her once in the center of the chest. As she slumped back, staring up, he shot her twice more, in the mouth. For the brain stem. This emptied the five-round cylinder.
    Daniel dropped the gun on the seat and pocketed the paper towel. He returned to the Prius and pulled around the Cherokee slowly. He drove out of the neighborhood, occasionally checking the rearview mirror, but saw no lights, no emergency vehicles. He noted only a few SUVs, two, coincidentally, with nearly identical infant seats affixed in the backseat.
    He took a direct route to the parkway and then headed into the city. Eventually he ended up in the South Bronx. GPS sent him to an intersection, near one of the better – or at least cleaner – housing projects. He drove to where a Taurus sat idling in a parking space. He eased up behind it and flashed his lights, though the driver had already seen him, he’d observed. When the Ford had pulled out of the space, Daniel parallel parked, wiped the interior for fingerprints, then climbed out and dropped the keys on the floor of the car, leaving it unlocked. He got into the Taurus’s passenger seat.
    Daniel nodded to bald, fit Sam Easton, behind the wheel, and Sam lifted his foot off the brake and sped down the street.
    ‘Heard it went good. Andrew called.’
    ‘Fine. And no tail,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m ninety-nine percent sure.’
    Sam nodded, though – as Daniel would have done – he continued to check the rearview mirror more frequently than a prudent driver might.
    Before the Ford turned onto the street that would take them into Manhattan, Daniel glanced back and noted two young men slow as they walked past the Prius, looking around, then easing closer, like coyotes sniffing out wounded prey.
    Daniel read a text. The cash had been drained from the Aruba account and was already laundered, scrubbed clean.
    ‘You want to go home?’ Sam asked. ‘Or drop you at the usual place?’
    ‘Downtown. The club.’
    Daniel invariably spent Friday afternoons swimming at his health club in Battery Park, then would