“Who the fuck is this,” Larkin demanded.
“What’s going on?”Doyle asked.
“Greetings from Adam Worth,” the man said, almost like he was reading from a script.“They say you’re the best detective the NYPD has ever seen.Now you must prove it.Decode the following in thirty seconds, or I shoot Mr.Rider in the head.”
And as if on cue, Larkin heard the hammer get cocked on a revolver and Noah’s muffled scream, raw and primal and real, echo from farther away.
“Zero, five, three, two, across the grid.”
Larkin looked at Doyle.“Zero, five, three, two across the grid.What’s it mean.”
“I—I’ve no idea,” Doyle stammered.
“Twenty-five seconds,” the man said.
“A grid like—like Manhattan?”
Larkin said into the phone, “Manhattan’s grid system.”
“Are the numbers supposed to be streets?”Doyle continued.
“Are they cross streets,” Larkin asked into the phone.
“Twenty seconds.”
“No, that doesn’t work,” Doyle said.“There’s no Thirty-Second Avenue in Manhattan.”
“It’s a permutation,” Larkin said suddenly.“Fuck.Four times… twelve… twenty—twenty-four.There’re twenty-four different combinations.”
“Most of those aren’t going to be in Manhattan,” Doyle countered, and despite being unclear as to what was being said on the other end of the call, he was reacting to Larkin’s frantic energy accordingly.“Assuming we’re talking street first, avenue second.”
“Ralph Noonan is a native New Yorker,” Larkin said, speaking into the phone.“He knows how to correctly give cross streets, don’t you.”
There was a split second of hesitation, before the voice said, “Ten seconds.”
Got you, you sonofabitch.
Larkin closed his eyes and laid out the urban map of Manhattan in his mind.His Rolodex brain spun through each cross-street combination at lightning speed, putting mental markers on each location relevant to the island—two each on Fifth, Third, and Second Avenues.
“Five seconds.”
“There are six possible addresses in Manhattan,” he answered, and the silence that followed was so profound that Larkin could hear a distant and distinctpop,pop,crackunderfoot as Noonan paced.
“You have thirty minutes to find Mr.Rider.If you use lights, he dies.If you use sirens, he dies.If you call for backup, he dies.Choose wisely.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Take the Harlem River Drive,” Larkin ordered.
Doyle flicked on the blinker and tore around the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, deftly moving in and out of rush hour traffic as they headed uptown in order to swing back down.Hundred-year-old, six-story multiuses in the distinct “H” shape whizzed by the left side of the road in a blur of sun-faded awnings and colorful graffiti sprayed across rolled-down security gates, while the greenery and rocky outcroppings of Highbridge Park kept pace on the right.
Both of them were compartmentalizing.Doyle had dragged himself free from all his anguish—but it was like a black muck that’d been dredged from the bottom of a lake, so thick and so concentrated that if he stopped struggling against it, he’d be sucked right back in—and Larkin had neatly tucked away the reality of their situation—that thirty minutes was not enough time to traverse Manhattan Island, that this was a hunt for the proverbial needle in a haystack, and that he would not see his ex-husband alive again.
In this moment,this second, there was only seeking a solution against the backdrop of a sputtering flame and grains of falling sand.
Twenty-eight minutes left.
“You showed Bridget the composite sketch I made.”
