“Go to the Thirty-fourth Street subway station. Take the Seventh Avenue express line south to Fourteenth Street. You will get further instructions there.” As Jeff took notes on a hotel message pad, the hotel pen kept slipping through his sweating fingers. He stopped and used the top of a city trash bin to steady his writing. The call had come through the new phone, the one they’d said police could not track. As he resumed jostling through the city’s busy streets, new fears gnawed at him. New York was overwhelming. He didn’t know the city, let alone the subway system. What if I can’t find the right train, or get on the wrong one? He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, fumbling with his maps, trusting he was moving in the right direction as another fear bit at him. The plane. God, did I make a mistake?
