“You’re awful quiet,” Hughes said, edging back into conversation after they’d not spoken for hours. Jazz respected that the detective could recover from being busted before, but he had more important things on his mind. When he didn’t respond, Hughes gave up and left him alone.

They boarded the second plane, and this time Jazz stayed awake, peering out the window, feeling the sudden lurching rush as the plane ramped up and left the ground. It made him slightly dizzy, and it felt like waking up from the dream all over again. He closed his eyes and gripped the armrests and told himself that it would be over soon.

He didn’t mind the landing as much. At first, it seemed almost gentle, but then stabbing pains started in his ears from the change in air pressure and the plane touched down, the cabin roaring with the sudden speed. The violence of it was almost soothing. Distracting.

They gathered up their bags again and emerged into the terminal at JFK. As soon as they walked through security, Jazz froze, unable to believe his eyes.

“What?” Hughes asked. “What’s wrong?”

Grinning, Connie said to them, “What took you guys so long?”

Part Three

5 Players, 3 Sides

CHAPTER 9

The killer sat quietly in his apartment. The walls were thin. Through them, he could hear two different television programs. One, from the sound of it, was some sort of singing competition. The other could have been a movie or a cartoon of some sort—high-pitched zinging noises that were either laser beams or the zip of something moving fast.

Children, in either case.

The killer shuddered.

On the table in front of the killer, there were four cell phones. Cheap. Disposable. The killer did not know which one would ring, so he kept them all charged. They had come to him along with several others in a box delivered from somewhere upstate, with instructions to keep them charged and turned on at all times. “Upstate,” to the killer, might as well be the moon.

New York City was home.

New York City was safe.

New York City was the hunting preserve.

One of the phones rang. Third from the left. The killer let it ring two more times, then snatched it up.

“Hello?” The killer wondered, idly, which voice it would be this time.

“Eleven,” came the response. The new voice again. It had been the new voice for a while now.

The killer did not wonder what had happened to the old voice.

“Eleven,” the voice repeated calmly. “Six and five. Eleven.”

The killer’s eyes flicked to the part of the table beyond the phones. His lips moved silently…. Eight… nine… ten… and…

“Eleven,” he said back to the phone. “Eleven.” In a sudden fit of inspiration, he added, “As the crow flies.”

The voice at the other end was gone already, leaving silence in the killer’s ear.

The killer took the battery out of the phone. Then he put the phone on the floor and smashed it to pieces with a hammer.

“Eleven,” he said again. Well. So it would be.

CHAPTER 10

Billy held a cell phone in one hand and a pair of dice in the other. He tucked the dice into his coat pocket, followed by the phone’s battery.

He looked around. At three in the morning in early January, Union Square Park in lower Manhattan was no one’s idea of a comfortable hangout. Still, there were a few junkies doing their nervous dance over in the shadows, waiting for the connection they prayed would come.

Billy didn’t care about the junkies. He made sure he was out of the cone of light thrown by a streetlight and dropped the phone, crushing it under his foot. Stooping, he picked up the pieces and discarded them in a half-dozen different trash cans as he made his way to the NQR subway entrance.

Eleven, he thought. Eleven as the crow flies…

CHAPTER 11

Before returning to the Dent house the next day, Howie realized he would need armor to deal with Jazz’s crazy grandmother. He had seen her slap and punch Jazz, as well as throw everything from stuffed teddy bears to skillets. She was surprisingly strong for a woman who looked to be five or six inches away from death. Maybe it was some kind of death adrenaline. Whatever the case, Howie didn’t plan on letting her turn his hemophiliac body into her own personal bruise-n-contuse plaything.

Since it was January, he got away with wearing long sleeves—flannel. Nice and thick, for protection. Just in case, he strapped on some wrist guards underneath. They were supposed to be for people who typed a lot, but they had hard steel inserts and would do him well if he had to suddenly protect his face. He also wore gloves, which he promised himself he would leave on even while inside. Heavy denim jeans, of course: That stuff really felt like armor. Howie figured he could go ride out in the Crusades with his heavy-duty Levi’s on. He scrounged around the house until he found his dad’s old hunting cap, right down to the earflaps. Oh, yeah. He would look like a serious dork, but he didn’t care—his skull would be protected.

“I can’t believe the crap I go through for this guy….” Howie muttered to himself as he parked at the Dent house. He had spoken to Jazz’s aunt Samantha briefly over the phone before coming over. She had said little about her flight or rental car drive to the Nod or anything at all, really, despite Howie’s endless, helpful patter. Taciturn ran in the family. Well, except for Billy. Howie remembered hanging out at Jazz’s house when they were kids. Billy never stopped talking. Howie’s mom used the phrase “talk a blue streak” to mean someone who talked incessantly. Billy Dent talked streaks in all kinds of shades of blue: sky blue, navy blue, midnight blue. You name it, Billy Dent said it. The man never shut up.

Howie marched up the front steps, gave a warning knock at the front door, then let himself in with the key Jazz had given him, steeling himself for the crazy that was Gramma Dent.

Instead, he found Gramma Dent and Samantha sitting cross-legged on the parlor floor, playing “patty-cake.”

“Bake me a cake as fast as you can!” Gramma chanted in time with Samantha. “Roll it! And prick it! And mark it with an A. And put it in the oven for me and Sammy J!”

Jazz’s grandmother hooted with delight.