Parallel Lies by Ridley Pearson

Author:Ridley Pearson [Pearson, Ridley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2001-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

An hour later, Alvarez adjusted the doors to the hotel room’s hand-painted armoire, holding one of the doors open with the back of a chair. Opera played from the radio built into the television. Big lungs. He sat back and attempted to enjoy the moment, but the encounter with Jillian had shaken him.

The Plaza Hotel room cost $380, and yet it felt cheap to him. He had a little over three thousand in cash split between two pockets and the sock of his right leg. With everything ready, he waited impatiently as a teen before the prom, sitting first on the edge of the bed, then in the chair at the desk, and finally on the toilet. Dinner hadn’t agreed with him, his nerves were frayed.

He felt giddy with anticipation. If this proved successful, he believed he would gain the leverage to crush William Goheen, whether or not he managed to derail the bullet train.

As a student of science, Alvarez deemed data the most powerful tool, information, the most powerful weapon. This premium on information accounted for his risky forays into Northern Union’s offices, as well as the hundreds of hours he’d spent in surveillance of both Goheen and his daughter, Gretchen. He knew their day-to-day lives as well as they did, their routines, the exceptions to those routines, their preferences for travel, their friends. He checked his watch: she was late. Elation briefly gave way to anxiety. He had severed all ties with his past other than with Miguel. He had no place of his own except a sparsely furnished loft south of the Flatiron Building that he rented by the month. For a while, this nomadic lifestyle had been tolerable, exciting even, his hunger for revenge so overpowering, but now it dragged him down. Jillian’s discovery had shaken him. She knew about him! Knowledge was just as dangerous as it was powerful.

The ringing of the room’s phone jolted Alvarez. He answered it quickly. “Hello?”

“Mr. Cortez?” a woman’s smooth voice inquired.

“Speaking.”

“It’s Gail. May I come up to the room?”

“Twelve-seventeen.”

“Twelve-seventeen,” she repeated. “See you in a minute.”

Alvarez hung up, his chest tight, adrenaline casting aside any lingering fatigue. Gail. Even the sound of her voice gave him a shiver. He had played roles for the past eighteen months, but none as exhilarating as what was required of him over the next hour. This woman, too, was playing roles. He pushed Jillian from his thoughts as he studied the room, reminding himself to keep his back to the armoire and the video camera it concealed. He reminded himself that for this performance he’d have to make demands of this woman that would not come easily to him. Fifteen hundred dollars, and he wouldn’t use a cent. He wondered how far he could go.

He looked into the mirror at the man he had become—the tired eyes, the oppressive sadness, the slightly discolored broken bridge to his nose that was still healing, a few scars that interrupted his own recollection of that face. His body, like the soul inside him, was worse for the wear.

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