James Patterson - Cross Justice

There was a slight clanking noise. The car shuddered.

“That can’t be good,” Bree said. “You better pull over, take a look.”

We were on a 10 percent, maybe 12 percent grade at that point, with low guardrails giving way to sheer banks and trees. Ahead, there was a scenic lookout. I put on my blinker, tapped the brakes. Nothing. I pumped the brakes. The car slowed only slightly, then gave another clank and shudder.

Then the vehicle seemed to break free of all restraint and we went into an accelerating, pell-mell, runaway descent.

We hurtled down the road. Ahead of us, it veered sharply left, and all you could see beyond it was pale blue sky.

“Alex!” Bree screamed as I clawed at the wheel and stomped vainly on the brake pedal.

I grabbed the shifter, tried to slam it into low. The arm wouldn’t budge.

“Jesus, Alex, we’re—”

With my left foot, I stabbed at the emergency brake pedal but did not put it to the floor for fear we’d be thrown into a spin. There was a screeching noise as the tires caught, leaving smoke rising off the rubber-blackened road.

The Explorer lurched to one side and then another, but I managed to keep it from going sideways and then, just before that hard left turn, I slammed the shifter arm down, and the engine braked us some more.

I spun the wheel hard and got the front end around. The rear quarter panel of the car slammed into the guardrail, which tore off the bumper and flung it into the other lane and behind us.

The rest of the ride down the plateau was marred only by the smell of burning brake pads, the roar of a straining engine, and the sweat pouring off both our foreheads. When we reached flatter land, I threw the shifter in neutral and turned the car off. We coasted to a stop on the shoulder, and I put on the hazard lights, laid my head back.

“You should call Pinkie,” I said. “Tell him to make room in the truck.”

“Aren’t you going to see what happened?” Bree asked.

“I’m not a car guy,” I said. “We’re going to have to have it towed somewhere and looked at.”

“You’re going to have to file an accident report,” she said, digging out her phone and punching in Pinkie’s number.

“I’d miss Jannie,” I said. “I’ll leave a note with my name and number.”

“That’s called leaving the scene of—”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Just call him before he gets too far down the road.”

When they came back, we intentionally understated the situation, saying only that it seemed something was wrong with the brakes, but we were fine. I used my phone to find a towing company that agreed to get the car and take it to a dealership in Winston-Salem, and then I sat back, put my arm around Bree, and closed my eyes.

I fell into one of those strange, buzzing sleeps that follow stressful experiences. I didn’t remember a minute of the hour-and-a-half drive to Duke.

We blundered around before we found the track. Even with the close call, we were early enough that Jannie was able to start jogging before any of the other athletes arrived. They were all there by eleven, however, along with Coach Greene, who smiled as she came over to me.

“Glad you made it,” she said, shaking my and Bree’s hands.

“Jannie was so excited she was up before dawn,” I said.

“No way we weren’t making it,” Bree said.

The coach’s grin disappeared. “Just to follow up. Those blood and urine tests?”

“Haven’t heard yet,” I said. “But again, innocent until...”

“Of course,” she said, and then she handed me another waiver and apologized for my having to fill another one out. “This will be interesting, though.”

“How’s that?” Nana Mama asked.

The coach gestured to three women doing ballistic jumps and skips along the track to warm up. “Alice and Trisha are here at Duke. Dawn’s over at Chapel Hill. All three were second-team all-Americans this past season.”

“Jannie know that?” Bree asked.

“I kind of hope not,” Coach Greene said, and she trotted off. “What’s an all-American?” Ali asked.

“They’re among the best in the whole country,” I said.

“Is Jannie?”

“Course not,” Nana Mama said. “Your sister’s only fifteen, but it will be a good experience for her.”

As I’d seen her do twice before, Coach Greene led the girls through a series of exercises designed to get their quick-twitch muscles warmed up, loose, and firing. When they were ready, she broke them into squads of five and ran them through an Indian drill, where they ran at 40 percent unless they were at the rear of the pack. Then they had to sprint to the front.

They did this twice at four hundred meters. Jannie seemed to have no problem coming from behind in those long, fluid strides and then taking her place at the lead. After a five-minute break for water and more stretching, Greene made some switches, bringing my daughter over with the all-Americans in their early twenties and another girl who was at least four years older than Jannie.

They were watching my daughter out of the corners of their eyes. As I’d seen again and again since earlier that year, Jannie seemed unfazed by the age and experience differences.

“They gonna race now?” Ali asked, standing on the bleacher next to me.

“It’s just practice,” Bree said. “Not for Jannie,” I said.

“Let’s take it to seventy-five percent, ladies,” Greene said when they were lined up shoulder to shoulder. “Three, two, one, go.”

The older girls took off in short, choppy strides that soon opened into longer bounds and a less frenzied rhythm. Jannie seemed to come up to speed effortlessly but lagged a few feet behind the nineteen-year-old and was two yards behind the all-American trio entering the backstretch.

Jannie stayed right there until she’d rounded the near turn, picked up her pace slightly coming down the stretch, and finished just off the shoulder of the nineteen-year-old. She was four paces off the older girls, who were breathing hard. Two of them looked at Jannie and nodded.

No smile from my daughter, just a nod back.

The second quarter mile, at 85 percent, finished much the same way. Then Greene called for 90 percent effort.

Something about the way Jannie rolled her shoulders back and down let me know that it had become serious now, and even though there were fewer than fifteen people scattered across the bleachers watching, I couldn’t help but stand.

For the first time, Jannie adopted that same chopping fast gait off the line and stayed right with the elite bunch as they rounded the first turn. The older girls picked up the pace down the backstretch. Jannie stayed just off the shoulders of the all-Americans. The nineteen-year-old faded.

My daughter made her move coming into the second turn. She accelerated right by the three and was leading as they entered the stretch.

Even without binoculars, you could see the disbelief on the faces of the older girls, followed by the grit and determination that had gotten them close to the pinnacle of their sport. They poured it on, and two of them ran Jannie down and passed her before the finish. But my girl was a stride behind them and a stride ahead of one of the national-class athletes coming across the line.

“That was a race!” Ali said.

“Jannie made it a race,” Pinkie said, smiling. “Oh my God, she’s good.”

“Dr. Cross?” a man said, coming across the grandstand toward us. Clad in unmarked gray sweats and a blue hoodie, he was in his fifties, a welterweight redhead with a rooster’s confident manner. “I’m Ted McDonald. To be honest, I came here to watch one of the other girls, but I’d very much like to talk to you about Jannie.”