“If I may say so,” Terezin continued, “you have taste, but lack the means to afford fine things. The result is an earnest but tacky attempt at interior design. Your parents have resources. Why didn’t you reach into their pockets?”
“Their money is theirs. I’ll make my own.”
“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. We have found the two hundred forty-eight pages of the novel you’re currently writing, which we’re taking, along with your computer. We will destroy both.”
Bibi glanced at the laptop lying on the passenger seat. The 248 pages were duplicated in its memory.
“We’ll also get the laptop,” Terezin said.
Bibi wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting to that lame attempt to make her think he could read her mind.
“And if you should copy the pages onto a flash drive, we’ll get that as well. And smash it.”
On the sidewalk, a man approached through pools of lamplight and lakes of sycamore darkness. He was walking a German shepherd.
To her caller, Bibi said, “What do you want from me?”
“Only to kill you.”
Man and dog passed the Explorer. She watched them recede in the passenger-side mirror.
Terezin continued, “I’d rather it wasn’t something as common as a bullet to the head. Too banal for a writer whose short stories have appeared in such esteemed magazines. Death by a thousand stab wounds would be nice, especially if we used a thousand sharpened pencils and left you bristling like a porcupine.”
The response that occurred to her was straight out of a low-rent TV drama, so she remained mute.
“We believe in justice, Bibi. Don’t you think all living things deserve justice?”
“You do,” she said.
“Cancer cells are alive, Bibi. Did you ever stop to think about that? They are so enthusiastic about life, they grow far faster than normal cells. A tumor is a living thing. It deserves justice.”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” she said, being careful not to whine and thereby suggest weakness.
“You offended me. You deeply offended us when you allowed your ignorant masseuse to demand answers. Why was Bibi Blair spared from cancer? The answer is simple, as simple as this—so that she could die another way.”
Bibi had no hope that conversing reasonably with a homicidal fanatic would convert him to clear thinking, and there was a chance that she would stoke the fires of his madness and make him more dangerous than he already was.
Neither could she survive by hanging up on him and pretending that he didn’t exist. She went to the quick of it and said, “Who is Ashley Bell?”
The worm of condescension, turning in his voice, was almost as loud as his words. “You aren’t taking this pathetic quest seriously, are you?”
“Why do you care if I am or I’m not?”
Rather than answer her, Terezin said, “To us, you’re just a worm, a pissant, something we step on without noticing. You don’t have a hope of finding her. We’ll find you first and put an end to this. Did you know, lovely Bibi, that every smartphone is also a GPS? Everywhere you go, the traitorous phone reports your whereabouts in real time.”
She knew this, of course, but never imagined that she might be quarry.
“Anyone who has the right connections with the police or with certain tech companies can find you at any moment of any day. And anyone with the ability to hack their systems can find you, too, my lovely pissant.”
The phone felt alive in her hand.
“And your three-year-old Ford Explorer,” Terezin said, “bought without your parents’ money, a proud statement of your independence—of course it has a GPS. You can be followed by satellite anywhere you go. And by the way, if you go to Mom and Dad for help, we’ll kill them, too.”
She switched off the phone and dropped it on the floor, but she knew that wasn’t good enough. Its perpetual signal would still locate her. Although she killed the engine of the SUV, that wouldn’t be good enough, either.
She zippered open her purse, crammed into it the slim book with panther and gazelle, zippered it shut, and grabbed her laptop and, with it, the sole remaining 248 pages of her unfinished novel. She threw open the door and got out of the Explorer.