The King of Fear by Drew Chapman

across the hotel parking lot, cursing herself for not bringing a weapon as well as a change of clothes.

P HILADELPHIA , P ENNSYLVANIA , J UNE 16, 9:30 A.M.
    G arrett waited until they were deep into the Walnut Hill neighborhood of west Philly before slotting the battery back into his phone. He and Mitty had slept in the back of the Ford Explorer—or at least tried to sleep—parked on a dirt road outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The night had been long and uncomfortable, but Garrett figured it was better than getting arrested. Or maybe not. Maybe arrested was better. He was exhausted from being on the run and, from his point of view, for being on the run for no good reason. He’d bolted his offices at Jenkins & Altshuler out of fear and panic, but now, forty-eight hours after doing so, he needed to reconsider.
    He was innocent, and people—the FBI in particular—needed to understand that. Also, and this he kept completely to himself—because Mitty could not see or hear a word of it—his hands had begun to tremble. Garrett suspected that was a symptom of withdrawal. He was a goddamned addict, just like some scumbag meth head wandering the South Bronx. Worse still, his brain was cycling through periods of quiet, and then frenzied, chaotic explosions of pain. He’d almost blacked out yesterday in the motel room. Sticking his face under the shower was the only thing that had kept him conscious.
    He had a handful of meds left in a plastic bag, and they were burning a hole in his pocket, but he tried to push that from his mind. He wanted narcotics more than he’d wanted almost anything else in his entire life, and a voice in his head was whispering that no matter how much he tried to rationalize that desire—it was his head pain, it was his grief—the truth was that Garrett likedbeing high and always had. Drugs separated him from the real world; they gave him distance from his troubles; and right now he was in a world of trouble.
    He dialed the central switchboard at his office and asked for Maria Dunlap, the office manager, on the twenty-fourth floor. He waited as she was connected, watching the Philadelphia row houses that lined Market Street. Kids were hanging out on the corners in the early-morning heat. A cluster of young boys smoked cigarettes on the stoop of a liquor mart. A few college students, in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, were making their way east, toward Penn.
    â€œThis is Maria,” chirped the voice on other end of the line. Garrett didn’t know Dunlap particularly well, but he wasn’t crazy about her nonetheless. She was middle-aged and officious, always checking his hours worked—as if the time he spent in front of his Bloomberg terminal had anything to do with how much money he made the firm.
    â€œMaria, Garrett Reilly here.” He heard a sharp intake of breath.
    â€œGarrett, oh, hey, where have you been?” Dunlap asked with a forced casualness.
    â€œLet’s skip the bullshit. You tell the FBI guys who are listening on the line that I need to talk to them.”
    â€œGarrett, I don’t know what you’re—”
    â€œI’m going to hang up in about a minute. I really can’t have them tracking me.”
    A brief silence settled over the phone line. Garrett sank low in the backseat of the Explorer, but he could still see the street around him. They passed an old, brick public library. A mom pushed a carriage up the access ramp.
    A quick beep sounded on his cell phone. “Hello, Garrett, this is Special Agent Chaudry.”
    â€œLook, I’ll just tell you up front that I’m in Philadelphia, but I’m going to hang up and pull the cell battery pretty fast, so please don’t bother sending a million cop cars all running around with their sirens blaring.” The Explorer Mitty was driving belonged to a friend of a distant cousin in the Rodriguez family, an accountant from Tampa. Some law enforcement