Dryden sat still for another ten seconds, taking deep breaths, letting his heart rate slow.

The gaunt man’s back was facing him. Three of the bullets had passed all the way through, centered high in the torso. Dryden slid down the incline and pressed a finger under his jaw for good measure. No pulse in the carotid artery. Dead.

He checked the man’s pockets. No ID. No wallet at all. He found the car keys he’d seen before, and a cell phone—undamaged.

A second later it began to ring.

CHAPTER FOUR

The phone’s display showed the caller’s number. The area code was 110, a prefix Dryden wasn’t familiar with.

He knelt there next to the body, thinking hard as the ringtone continued.

He had heard the dead man’s voice, up in the motorcourt. There had been nothing unusual about it—no especially high or low pitch, no particular accent or cadence. A normal voice, for lack of a better term.

But answering the phone and trying to mimic the gunman wasn’t going to work. Not a chance. Though Dryden’s own voice was also more or less normal, he sounded nothing like the guy.

The ringtone cut out.

Dryden waited thirty seconds for a voicemail notification.

None came.

He opened the phone’s call log and saw only four other calls on the entire list, all from the past twenty-four hours. All from the same number—the one that had just called. The phone was probably a burner, a cheap model meant to be used for a short time and then thrown away, for the sake of anonymity.

Whoever had just called was almost certainly the person who’d sent the gunman after him. Or some go-between. Somebody who was directly involved.

Dryden closed the call log and opened the phone’s text message app.

There were no previous texts, either sent or received.

Dryden tapped the icon to compose a new text. In the TO: field he entered the number that had just called this unit.

He typed: Can’t talk out loud, close to Dryden, plan to move on him in 10 to 15 min. Why the call?

He tapped SEND.

Ten seconds later a symbol appeared on the display, indicating that the other party was typing a reply.

Dryden waited.

Another ten seconds.

Then the message appeared: theres something else I need you to do as soon as you have him.

Almost immediately the message-in-progress symbol showed again. Dryden waited for the second part of the response.