Tell No One by Harlan Coben Read Free Book Online Page A

him pause. One hundred thousand dollars. He had one hundred grand in cash. Hot damn.
    He’d leave right away. Take this money and head out to Arizona. He had a friend out there, Sammy Viola. He and Sammy were going to start their own business, maybe open a restaurant or nightclub. Vic was tired of New Jersey.
    It was time to move on. Start fresh.
    Vic headed up the stairs toward his apartment. For the record, Vic had never carried out his threats. He never sent out any letters to anyone. If a mark didn’t pay, that was the end of it. Harming them after the fact wouldn’t do any good. Vic was a scam artist. He got by on his brains. He used threats, sure, but he’d never carry through with them. It would only make someone mad, and hell, it would probably expose him too.
    He’d never really hurt anyone. What would be the point?
    He reached the landing and stopped in front of his door. Pitch dark now. The damn lightbulb by his door was out again. He sighed and heaved up his big key chain. He squinted in the dark, trying to find the right key. He did it mostly through feel. He fumbled againstthe knob until the key found the lock. He pushed open the door and stepped inside and something felt wrong.
    Something crinkled under his feet.
    Vic frowned. Plastic, he thought to himself. He was stepping on plastic. As though a painter had laid it down to protect the floor or something. He flicked on the light switch, and that was when he saw the man with the gun.
    “Hi, Vic.”
    Vic gasped and took a step back. The man in front of him looked to be in his forties. He was big and fat with a belly that battled against the buttons of his dress shirt and, in at least one place, won. His tie was loosened and he had the worst comb-over imaginable—eight braided strands pulled ear to ear and greased against the dome. The man’s features were soft, his chin sinking into folds of flab. He had his feet up on the trunk Vic used as a coffee table. Replace the gun with a TV remote and the man would be a weary dad just home from work.
    The other man, the one who blocked the door, was the polar opposite of the big guy—in his twenties, Asian, squat, granite-muscular and cube-shaped with bleached-blond hair, a nose ring or two, and a yellow Walkman in his ears. The only place you might think to see the two of them together would be on a subway, the big man frowning behind his carefully folded newspaper, the Asian kid eyeing you as his head lightly bounced to the too-loud music on his headset.
    Vic tried to think. Find out what they want. Reason with them. You’re a scam artist, he reminded himself. You’re smart. You’ll find a way out of this. Vic straightened himself up.
    “What do you want?” Vic asked.
    The big man with the comb-over pulled the trigger.
    Vic heard a pop and then his right knee exploded. His eyes went wide. He screamed and crumbled to the ground, holding his knee. Blood poured between his fingers.
    “It’s a twenty-two,” the big man said, motioning toward the gun. “A small-caliber weapon. What I like about it, as you’ll see, is that I can shoot you a lot and not kill you.”
    With his feet still up, the big man fired again. This time, Vic’s shoulder took the hit. Vic could actually feel the bone shatter. His arm flopped away like a barn door with a busted hinge. Vic fell flat on his back and started breathing too fast. A terrible cocktail of fear and pain engulfed him. His eyes stayed wide and unblinking, and through the haze, he realized something.
    The plastic on the ground.
    He was lying on it. More than that, he was bleeding on it. That was what it was there for. The men had put it down for easy cleanup.
    “Do you want to start telling me what I want to hear,” the big man said, “or should I shoot again?”
    Vic started talking. He told them everything. He told them where the rest of the money was. He told them where the evidence was. The big man asked him if he had any accomplices. He said no. The big man