Free Home by Harlan Coben

accent, and intoned in his best Alfred the butler, “Wayne Manor. I’ll summon him, sir.”
    “A Batman reference,” Fat Gandhi said with a chortle. “Who was your favorite? Christian Bale, right?”
    “There is only one Batman, and his name is Adam West.”
    “Who?”
    Today’s youth.
    “Do you see the gray car with the tinted windows?” Fat Gandhi asked him.
    “The Peugeot,” Myron said, showing off his new car knowledge.
    “Yes. Get in.”
    “What about Denise Nussbaum at the bank?”
    Fat Gandhi hung up.
    The car pulled up. The thin black guy from the arcade’s back room opened up the back door and said, “Let’s go, mate.”
    Myron checked the car. One driver. One thin guy.
    “Where are the two boys?”
    “I’m taking you to them.”
    Thin Guy slid over, making room for Myron. Myron hesitated but got in. Next to him, the thin black guy was on a laptop. “Give me your phone,” he said.
    “No.”
    “It won’t do you any good anyway.” He smiled widely. “I got your cell jammed.”
    “Pardon?”
    He smiled at Myron. “This here laptop? I’m using it to scramble your signal. So like yesterday, when you had all that data going back and forth between you and whoever was listening? Well, he can’t hear you anymore. Oh, and if you put any kind of wire or listening device on yourself? Same thing.”
    “Just so I’m clear,” Myron said, “your laptop is cutting off all signals?”
    The guy’s grin grew. “Exactly.”
    Myron nodded. Then he slid open the car window, snatched the laptop from the skinny guy’s hands, and tossed it out the window.
    “Hey! What the—?” He looked out the back window to where his smashed laptop lay, guts split open. “Are you for real? Do you know how much that cost?”
    “A billion pounds?”
    “This ain’t funny, mate.”
    “I’m sure it’s not. Now, enough games. Call Fat Gandhi.”
    The kid looked as though he might cry. “Ah, you didn’t have to do that,” he said in a high-pitched whine. “I was just doing what I was told.”
    “Now do what I’m telling you. Call Fat Gandhi. Tell him I got the money. I want the boys.”
    His shoulders dropped. “You know how much that laptop cost me?”
    “I don’t care. If you piss me off again, I’m going to throw you out that window. Now, call him.”
    “No need to call.” He pointed toward the front windshield. “We’re here. Couldn’t you have just been patient?”
    Myron looked out the window. That same arcade was up the block.
    The Peugeot cruised to a stop. Myron got out without bothering to apologize. Two guys in camouflage pants opened the door. The skinny kid followed, pleading his case. “The bastard threw my bleeding laptop out the window!”
    It felt as though someone had pulled the plug on the entire arcade, which, for all Myron knew, was exactly what had happened. No sounds, no lights, no movement. The entire arcade, so bursting with furious light and color a few hours ago, seemed shades of gray now. With all the machines off, their shadowy outlines felt odd, menacing, grotesque. There was an almost postapocalyptic feel to the whole place.
    “Let’s go,” Pants One said to Myron.
    “Where?”
    “Back room.”
    Myron didn’t like this. “The place is deserted. We can make the exchange out here.”
    “That’s not how it works,” Pants Two said.
    “Then I think I’ll leave.”
    “Then I think”—Pants One crossed his arms and tried to flex his biceps—“the two of us will beat the hell out of you and take the money anyway.”
    Myron’s grip on the bag tightened. He could take them both out, no problem—he was actually rehearsing his first strike in his head—but then what? For better or worse, he had to play it out. So he followed the same path he’d taken the last time he was here, when Dog Collar was with him, and stopped at the exit door.
    There was the surveillance camera by the door again. Myron looked up, gave it a bright smile and cheery thumbs-up. Mr.