The Right Hand Read Online Free Page A

position, and he rested a moment with one hand on the wooden headboard.
    Nelson took a few quick breaths, building up oxygen in his lungs for the effort, and then pushed up with his hand. He put all of his weight on his right leg, using the casted left only for balance. A new wave of vertigo hit him, but he held the position until it passed. Could he get to the bathroom? The window?
    He did neither and was standing there stupidly when he heard clapping behind him.
    A fat-faced man with a shaggy white beard spoke in Russian. “Awake and upright, I see. Good, good.”
    Nelson started to talk, then just fell backward onto the bed.
    The Russian clucked his tongue. “Too much too soon, Mr. Nelson. There’s no need to overexert yourself. Where could you possibly go?”
    Nelson answered in English. “I won’t belittle you by saying there’s been a misunderstanding.”
    In his peripheral vision, he could vaguely see the Russian smile.
    “I assume negotiations have begun.”
    “To the contrary,” the man said in husky English. “Why don’t we just talk for a bit first?”
    The smile widened and the man approached the bed, staring down at Nelson the way a father gazes down on a baby in a crib—but that wasn’t right. The stare was more like the look of an exterminator who finally catches a rat in his trap.
    “I need to use the—” But Nelson didn’t get the words out before the smiling man pushed down with the palms of both hands on his cast.
    He might have screamed, but the blackness rose quickly to cover him.
     
    Michael Adams parked his Range Rover on the street and rose from the driver’s seat. He looked over the field and saw the team with the lime-green uniforms, the fierce name MERMAIDS printed on the front. They were just getting into their starting positions; the referee hadn’t yet blown his whistle, and he could see both of his daughters, Kate and Grace, set in their positions on either side of the ball at the center line. They were a year and a half apart, eight and seven, but Michael had requested they play on the same team to avoid doubling the drives to soccer fields every Saturday.
    He nodded at a couple he recognized but whose names he couldn’t remember, climbed the stands, and sat down next to his wife. She leaned in for a kiss and took his hand just as the whistle sounded and the game began.
    “Let’s go, Kate and Grace!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, and both girls looked up and beamed.
    “Sorry I’m late.”
    “I’m just glad you made it at all. This is a nice surprise.” He’d first met his wife, Laura, in college when they were both nineteen and she drew eyes in any crowd. Twenty-six years later, she still did.
    “They got you working this weekend, Michael?” The question came from a guy who lived five houses over from theirs on Las Palmas in Hancock Park. What was his name? Chris? Craig?
    Laura turned and answered for him, smiling. “They have him working every weekend.”
    “I’m not complaining,” Michael added. “It’s good to be busy.” He didn’t feel that way at all, but it seemed necessary to say.
    On the field, the Mermaids were successfully attacking but couldn’t seem to put the ball in the net. Michael stopped for a moment and thought, When did they get good? It seemed like yesterday when they would cluster in circles around the ball until it would suddenly shoot out from the pack like an escaping animal. Now they were passing, moving, setting up plays. And his daughters seemed to be leading the charge.
    Laura leaned her head on his shoulder. “The girls have next Thursday and Friday off.”
    “Why?”
    “Teacher work days or something like that.”
    “I swear they have more days out of school than they do in.”
    His daughters went to a pricy private school near Beverly Hills. He wouldn’t have minded their going to the public school down the street, but the subject was nonnegotiable. He might run some things at his office, but Laura ran the