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“What thing?”

“The face.”

I did not know what my face was doing. I stood, slowly, with the ruined phone in my hand, and I saw her look at me, and saw her flinch.

Behind us the warehouse door banged open. A man came out, a huge one, a boxer with a face like a battered church, bleeding from the lip and holding a towel to his jaw.

“You the Russian?” he said.

“I am.”

“I’m Ozzy. I fought the kid tonight.” He looked past me at the gravel, the phone, the tire tracks. His face changed. “Ah, hell. They got him.”

“Who?”

“Four guys. Big ones. Black van. They came in by the service entrance twenty minutes after he did, said they were with security.” He swore. “Vic’s boy tried to stop them. They laid him out with a stun gun. I called the cops, but they’re twenty minutes away, and nobody’s gonna get here in time.” He glared at me. “You know him? Lex?”

“Yes.”

“You the one he was fighting?”

I opened my mouth. I had no answer.

“He was hitting me like I was you,” said Ozzy, quietly. “I could see it. He kept swinging at somebody who wasn’t there.” He wiped his mouth. “I said to him, call whoever it is. I said, talk. I think he was going to. He’d got his phone out. I saw.”

“He was?”

“Yeah. He was standing right here. Looking at it. Like it was a lifeboat.”

The words went through me like a wire.

I closed my eyes, and for one bright moment saw him: standing in the cold under a thin moon, with his head tipped back, breathing, and the phone in his hand, the screen glowing, a message from me at the top. And a man’s hand closing on his shoulder.

Nineteen minutes, I thought. I was nineteen minutes late.

“There’s more,” said Sabine.

She was crouched by the wall, on the far side of the lot. She had a scrap of white in her hand, a bit of card, no larger than a playing piece. She stood and held it out to me.

It was a business card on heavy cream-colored stock, with a name in gold, G. ROAKE, M.D., and below it, in the neat surgeon’s script I had seen on a hundred file labels, an address: Harbor Road, No. 7. Cold Storage. Come alone.

On the back, one more line.

Bring nothing. I do not need to tell you why.

I read it four times.

Then the phone in my pocket buzzed. It was not the broken one. It was my own. A number I did not know.

I lifted it to my ear.

“Mr. Volkov,” said a voice.

It was low, cultured, unhurried, with the trace of a New England vowel in it. A doctor’s voice. The voice of a man who has told hundreds of people the worst news of their lives and learned to do it gently. I had heard it once, in a crowded arena, across a hundred feet of air, when its owner inclined his head to me like a courtier.

“Dr. Roake,” I said.

“You are prompt. I appreciate that.” A quiet pause. “I have someone here who would like to speak with you. But he is a little groggy. You must forgive it. The current is difficult on a human system.”