Jake carefully clamped the bit of the computer stick between his

  F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

  teeth. Turning the machine on again, he pecked his way back to the Internet, the Writers Corner—

  And there it was, beside his sign-on code: Someone had answered his query already. A guy who'd researched plants in the Amazon for a pharmaceutical company. Claviceps cyanidus: death by heart attack. The right dosage was all but untraceable at autopsy. It would be a painful death. But Jake was not afraid of pain.

  At least he would go out feeling something.

  "So how's it hangin,' sport?"

  Waiting for Angel to come in and start his biofeedback session, Jake feh a second of shocked disorientation at the voice. In the next instant, rage swept him. Fredo! The son of a bitch actually had the gall to come here.

  Jake rolled his head over. Fredo was holding a huge vase of red roses. His eyes held a mixture of fascination and revulsion; his olive complexion had lightened a shade.

  "Come to take my place.>"

  "Now Jakey, don't be bitter."

  Jakey.> Fredo had never called him that when he could move. Never would have dared.

  He set the flowers on top of the computer monitor. Jake envisioned the water slopping into the computer, cutting off his most important link with the outside world. The thought sent a cool flood of alarm through him.

  "Not there," he said as casually as he could. "Over on the windowsill."

  Fredo waited long enough to show Jake he would put the flowers where he damn well pleased, then moved them to the bed table.

  F. PAUL WILSON .AND STEVE LYON

  "What's this?" he asked, poking at the snakelike hump of the catheter line under the covers.

  "When you're paralyzed," Jake said, "you don't make piss anymore, so they have to pump it into you from that bag there."

  "No shitr" Fredo's eyes narrowed as he realized Jake was pulling his chain. "Real smart-ass, aren't you.' So if you're so fuckin' smart, how come I'm standing here and you're lying there like a carp somebody dragged up on the beach.'"

  "You teU me."

  Jake could not take his eyes ofFFredo. The tailored Armani suit didn't conceal the fact that he'd got a bit plumper around the middle since their last meeting. His dark hair arched straight back in stiff, shiny grooves left by the broad-toothed comb Fredo favored. Jake could smell his hair spray, a tack^-sweet odor that he now realized had always clung to Fredo. His sense of smell had become much more powerful during the months he'd lain here. But not powerful enough to snort a bullet into Fredo's low forehead.

  "You want I should tell you.'" Fredo asked. "Okay, I'll tell you. I think you got careless, old buddy."

  Jake was suddenly conscious of the bit of his computer stick lying on its pad inches from his cheek. Could he get Fredo to bend over the bed.' Then grab the stick, jab it into one of those black button eyes. A scream from Fredo would be the sweetest sound in aU the world.

  And then Fredo would kill him with the hogleg he always packed under his coat.

  Jake imagined Angel coming in to start his rehab session, finding him with a hole blow^n in his forehead and a greasy guy in an Armani suit with a thick gold chain around his neck staggering around bleeding from one eye. A great picture, except for one thing: Angel was already a minute or two overdue for the session, a rarity. She was probably coming down the hall right now. If so, she would hear the shot and come running, and Fredo would have to kill her too.

  NIGHTKILL

  139

  Hell with it. He'd never get the stick into Fredo's eye anyway. That was just dreaming. He gave Fredo a cool, inquisitive look.

  "How's your boy Danziger.> Bet he misses his job on the police force. Who'd you get to replace him.^"

  A disbelieving smile twisted Fredo's lips. He leaned over the bed. Jake saw rather than felt him prodding his body through the covers. His teeth clenched in outrage. What did the slimy bastard think he was—.>

  A wire. The idiot thought he was wired!

  Jake almost laughed. "I never realized you felt this way about me, Fredo. Are you one of those fancy boys.>"

  Fredo jerked his hands back and glared at him.

  "Usually the DA only wires guys who can walk," Jake said. "When you're paralyzed, they just hide the microphone in your hospital room and wait for the sleazebags to come to you."

  Fredo glanced around before he could stop himself "Asshole," he growled. Fredo had never been good at snappy repartee.

  "Red roses," Jake said, glancing at the vase on the bed table. "I'm touched."

  "Mr. C wants you to know his regard for you and the way you've taken this," Fredo said. His voice was flat and emotionless. He'd been sent to say it, but he didn't have to sound like he meant it.

  Interesting, Jake thought. Mr. C is thanking me for not ratting him out. What am I supposed to do now, thank Mr. C for sparing my life.^

  "Tell Mr. C I'm a stand-up guy," Jake said.

  "Is that supposed to be funny.> The way I hear it, you won't be standing up no more."

  "Anymore."

  "Huh?"

  "You've got to watch those double negatives, Fredo. Unless you mean to say that I will be standing up."

  Fredo's lip curled. "You may be flat on your ass, but you still look down on me, don't you. You always did think I was too dumb

  I4U F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

  to pick that up, but I knew how you felt from day one. I'm some dumb Guinea and you're what, Joe Camel? Let you in on a little secret, Jakey: You were never anything but a common whacker, dime a dozen, selling yourself like a gigolo. And you know what I like, Jake.> After all your whacking off, you just got five times as much for being the whackee. You ain't a gigolo no more. You're a whore. Maybe you should of tried it sooner."

  Five times more.^ What was Fredo talking about.> Ah, the settlement, right. The papers had picked it up two or three days ago. The $5.2 million the city was giving him not to take it to court, where only God knew what a jury might award him. He wouldn't even have to go to court. Whoopee.

  "So what you going to do with all that money?" Fredo asked. "You going to hire some girls to come in here? Yeah, have some girls in, give you a nice rubdown. But you wouldn't feel a thing, would you? Hmmmm." Fredo made a show of thinking. "Maybe you could buy one of those yachts, get a crew, have 'em sail you around the world. They could put you in the dinky and row you to shore, have a wheelchair waiting. ..."

  Fredo droned on. Jake wished he'd finish gloating and get out. Angel would be hurrying in any second and he did not want Fredo to see her. He'll leer at her, Jake thought. He'll try and put a hand on her, and I won't be able to do a damn thing about it.

  Whafll she think of me?

  Jake, I don't understand. How did you come to know a slime-ball like that? Why did you ever have anything to do with him?

  Angel was no fool. Fredo had mob written all over him, wore it like a badge. When Angel was first put on my case, Jake remembered, she asked me. Did you shoot at Senator Weingarten? Fredo will bring back all of her suspicions.

  Anxiety surged through him. He had to get Fredo out of here.

  "... could hire a guy to move your arms and legs for you," Fredo was saying. "Be the first paralyzed guy to dance the herky-jerky."

  "Maybe I'll hire someone to blow you away," Jake said.

  NIGHTKILL 111

  Fredo's eyes narrowed again; then he smiled. "Right. Just dial up the yellow pages under whackers. I don't know about piss, but they sure don't have to put the shit back in you, do they.>"

  This time Jake said nothing. It was as close to a score as Fredo would ever come—the perfect motivation to walk out now, before Jake topped him again.

  Sure enough, Fredo sauntered toward the door.

  "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Jakey."

  Jake focused all of his mind into the middle finger of his right hand, visualizing it lying there on the covers. Was it palm up.> Jake rolled his head to peer down along his arm. His palm was up. Middle finger—just raise it up two inches. Come on, come on. He could almost feel the finger moving, rising. But his eyes told him otherwise. His hand lay limp and still on the blanket.

  It didn't matter. Fredo was gone.

  Jake heard himself chuckling. A dry, terrible sound. He wanted to stop, but he was having trouble. He visualized Fredo's face as seen through a Redfield variable power scope. Centering the crosshairs in the middle of his forehead, making an extra black eye there.

  With an eflfort, Jake stopped. His throat burned. Pains shot up from his jaws to the side of his head. How had this curse fallen on him? To see Fredo only a few feet away, to have to exist on the same planet with him and not be able to kill him.>

  I need to die, he thought. I've £fot to die. Got to get out of here, just . . . get . . . out.

  He lay for a while, eyes closed, tr^dng to empty himself of all feeling. Where the hell was Angel.> He needed her. Focusing his mind on her, he felt calmness returning. She was the one bright thing in his life, the one thing he actually looked forward to each day. Angel had thrown herself into bringing him back, knowing it probably couldn't work, but trv'ing any^'ay. The way she talked to him, not just mindless inanities like the other nurses, but deep and straight from the shoulder, about whatever was on her mind—or his.

  F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

  The way she looked at him.

  Angel felt something for him. It was more than nurse and patient, more even than casual liking. He had never been so sure of anything. He almost wished she didn't care about him. It would be easier for her to keep her end of the deal when the time came. And easier for her to forget what she'd done. He did not want her living with the guilt of killing a man who was totally dependent on her.

  I asked her, Jake thought. I begged her.

  But he knew it would haunt her anyway.

  He ought to wish she did not care.

  "Jake!"

  He turned his head as she skirted his bed, smiling. Picking up his hand, she pressed her palm against his, watching his eyes to see if he felt it.

  "Nothing," he said. "Maybe you should get one of those handshake shockers like they sell in novelty shops ..." He trailed off as she held her hand up and he saw the small round shocker in her palm. "That's right," he groaned, "break it to me gendy."

  "It's probably not working." She inspected the gadget with a baleful eye.

  He caught a sudden, crushed-grass whiff of chlorophyll. "You're wearing different shoes."

  "Huh.>" She looked down. "Oh, yeah. My running shoes. I was late, so I decided not to change." She turned toward the door and motioned Mustaf in. The cart with the biofeedback machine rolled around the foot of the bed.

  "For me.>" Angel said.

  Jake saw that she was looking at Fredo's roses. His heart sank. Before, on the rare occasion he'd gotten flowers—that arrangement from his lawyer, and the ones Caidin had sent after her visit— he'd given them to Angel right away. But these ... he couldn't. Not flowers that had had Fredo's hands on them.

  "I'd better not," he said. "They're from my boss, and he said he was coming back tomorrow."

  NIGHTKILL

  143

  I

  "Your boss?"

  "Ex-boss." He grinned, hoping it looked sincere. "Marsh Management in Paterson, New Jersey. Bernie Marsh. He's in the city on business. You know, the guy whose buildings I used to guard."

  "They're beautiful."

  Jake cringed inwardly as Angel leaned into the roses, inhaling. Mustaf moved his computer aside and started hooking up his fingers. For a second their eyes met and Jake glimpsed his disapproval. Mustaf must have a pretty good bullshit detector.

  Angel flipped on the machine. "Today, let's work on some of the other fingers," she said as Mustaf walked out.

  "I didn't know you ran," Jake said.

  "What.> Oh, the shoes. Actually, I don't. I just wear them instead of tennis shoes when I'm doing something outside."

  He noticed that the freckles stood out on her face. Her skin had the dark, honeyed tone of someone who has just spent a few hours in the sun.

  "Picnic.>" he said. "In November.^"

  "Yup. It's been a warm fall."

  Her gaze slid away and a sudden suspicion struck him.

  Angel had been with a guy.

  Weil, of course she had. No ring on her finger, but a woman so beautiful, so wonderful, must date. She'd never mentioned it, but it had to be. Jake tried to let the idea die stillborn, but instead it sank its vicious litde milk teeth into him.

  The thought of Angel having a guy had crossed his mind before, but had never seemed real, as though this room were the only place in the universe for everyone else as well as for him. But Angel had an existence—a life —outside of here. She had other people to talk to. Other men's hearts swelled under that direct, gold-flecked gaze; other men felt the intoxicating fullness of her attention.

  Men who could touch her.

  The thought became a jab of pain beneath Jake's breastbone, as though he had taken the drug he'd researched on the Internet. A

  F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

  close botanical relative of Claviceps cyanidus, only not from the Amazon, but from the dark jungles of his own mind.

  "Okay," Angel said. "Ready.>"

  He realized she'd put the electrode discs under his neck already. He had a dim, echoic awareness of her lifting his head, of the cool slide of electrode paste over his skin. He turned his head toward the monitor screen where the flat green line jumped, then subsided. "Fire away."

  The line jumped.

  "Which finger.>"

  "What.>"

  "Come on, Jake. Which finger did I tickle.>"

  "Sorry. Hit me again."

  The line jumped. "Middle.>" he asked.

  She sighed. "I told you, we're going to work on some of the others today."

  "Oh, right. Sorry." He squinted at the screen. "Go."

  The line jumped. He felt nothing. He shook his head.

  "That's all right," Angel soothed. "Let's take a minute." She gazed at him. "You all right.>"

  "Sure." He smelled the grass again . . . crushed grass. It must have gotten on the sides of her shoes. He pictured her sitting down, her feet out to the side, blanket spread on the ground. In the picture, she was not alone, but the man with her refused to come into focus.

  "Central Park.>" he asked.

  She nodded. "Over by the Sheep Meadow."

  "Hope you didn't have mutton."

  She smiled. "Fried chicken and potato salad. It's required."

  He studied her. This time she did not let her gaze slide away, though she looked like she wanted to. The silence grew and took on weight, like a stalactite hovering over them. If it fell, it might skewer them both.

  "Okay," he said, "I'm ready."

  "No you're not. What's on your mind, Jake.>"

  NIGHTKILL

  m

  "Nothing. What do you mean?"

  She blushed slightly, the fresh tan darkening. "You just seem preoccupied."

  A queasy feeling spread through him. She wasn't going to risk being wrong, but she wasn't going to let it go, either. And she wasn't wrong. "I guess you didn't go by yourself"

  "No-o-o-o."

  "What's his name.>"

  "William Fitzpatrick. He's an aide to Senator Harrison."

  Jake looked at her, trying to think of something to say. Her reticence told him everything. This was not just some casual date; this guy was important to her. They'd managed to tiptoe around the subject, but she'd gotten grass on her feet and here they were. He wished he could put his hands under the covers and clench his fists, do something to draw off the pressure that swelled in his throat, making him want to shout at her.

  This was crazy. What was happening to him?

  "An aide to Senator Harrison," he repeated. His voice felt like it was being pushed out through a sieve.

  "Yes," she said brightly. "He gets up to New York every so often. He never gets any sun, so I made him go out to Central Park with me today. He got the sunburn of his life. . . ." She trailed off, shrugging an eyebrow.

  "So, are you engaged or what?"

  "Not officially."

  Not officially. Jake felt the weight of dead air pressing on his chest. The light seemed to drain from the room. "Would I like him?" nat was insipid. And Vllget an insipid answer.

  But he didn't. Angel cocked her head, looking past him for a minute. "I don't know," she said.

  "William Fitzpatrick."

  "William Fitzpatrick."

  I wouldn't like him, Jake thought. I don't like him. I've never met him, and I'm never going to. I never had a chance with Angel—didn't want a chance. I want her to kill me, for Christ's sake.

  F. PAUL WILSON AND STEVE LYON

  So how could I be feeling this way? He mustered a smile. "Well, William is lucky to have you." It sounded self-pitying. He suppressed a groan. "Let's try with the machine again."

  "Jake. . . . Okay." She drew herself up with a sigh, obviously knowing, as he did, that there was no point letting this get any more absurdly excruciating than it already was.

  "Ready.>"

  "Go."

  He felt nothing in his fingers. He wished he could feel nothing anywhere.

  After she was gone, Jake booted up the computer and signed on. He stared at the quill-and-inkwell icon for Writers Corner, where he had learned about Claviceps cyaniduSy the Amazonian poison that stopped the heart.

  What had him stumped was how to get some.

  He'd been letting that question slide, but it was time to get serious. Because, in four more weeks. Angel was going to kill him.

  At least he didn't have to worry that it would ruin the rest of her life. William Fitzpatrick, aide to Senator Harrison, would be there to take her mind off it.

  II

  Januaiy

  Knowing it was the last night of his life, Jake felt a vast relief He had expected excitement, but no, only relief Sweet oblivion was rolling toward him like a soft black cloud.

  Lying with the utter stillness he hated, Jake watched shadows slide across the curtains at the end of his room as people passed in the halls. Around nine, he heard the squeak of a wheelchair tooling past his door. He realized he'd been hearing it ever}^ night lately about this time—one of the ward's paraplegics making his resdess rounds up and down the hall. Jake wondered how the man—if it was a man—felt. Probably devastated that he had lost the use of his legs. No doubt he cursed the fate that had confined him to a chair, forcing him to strain and pull just to make headway. He'd have calluses on his fingers from pulling at the wheel. Right now, his biceps probably burned with exertion.