Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

Time was wasting.

Chapter 4

I WALKED quickly back to my bike. Running would’ve been too obvious. The helmet went on, and the license plate got ripped off and stuffed inside my jacket.

I flipped on the petcock, checked the kill switch, turned the key, squeezed the clutch, and started her up. One quick zig to the left, a sharp zag to the right, and I had the clear path I needed. Now I just needed the speed.

Jamming the throttle, I was redlining again within seconds.

The first cop didn’t know what the hell was happening as I blew by him. The second cop, the one I had spoken to, knew exactly what I was about to do but couldn’t do anything about it. He looked at me in utter disbelief before turning to the pile of torn up pavement about ten feet in front of the cruisers blocking my way.

One man’s rubble is another man’s ramp.

I hit the pile hard, pulling up on my handgrips even harder. There would be no style points. It was ugly. Steve McQueen made it look so easy on the same bike in The Great Escape.

My back tire barely cleared the hood of the first cruiser, and I could hear my axle practically snapping as the front tire slammed the pavement. I nearly wiped out—I should’ve wiped out—but somehow I kept my balance.

There was no need to look over my shoulder as I raced onto the deserted lower deck of the bridge heading into Manhattan. Those two cops weren’t going anywhere. I was already too far gone. At most, they were radioing ahead to wherever the roadblock was for the northbound traffic, but that would only be to cover their collective ass instead of catching mine.

At the first exit, I peeled off the parkway onto Dyckman Street and into the Upper West Side. Tracy, Annabelle, and I called the neighborhood home. All along, I couldn’t stop thinking the unthinkable, that the two most important people in my life—the two I could never imagine living without—were suddenly gone. Christ, this can’t be happening.

The rest of the ride was a blur as I shot between all the traffic while completely ignoring red lights. In the distance I could hear a slew of ambulances, each one louder than the next, and all of them echoing in my head. It was the soundtrack of a living nightmare.

Finally I reached the front of our apartment building, ditching my bike in the middle of the sidewalk. I sprinted into the lobby and straight for the elevator with no intention of stopping until I saw the doorman, Bobby, sitting on an upholstered bench along the wall. He was completely engrossed in his cell phone. I could tell he was watching news coverage of the bombings.

“Have you seen them?” I asked, half out of breath.

He looked up at me, confused. “Who?”

I would’ve been confused, too. “Tracy and Annabelle,” I said. “Have you seen them this morning?”

Bobby—who everyone called Lobby Bobby, albeit not to his face—acted as if I’d just asked him to explain quantum physics. The fact that I was so panicked only made him more flustered.

“Oh. Um…no, I haven’t seen them,” he said. “No, wait, I did see them . They went out earlier this morning, before the first—”

“Have you seen them since? Did you see them return?” I was talking a million words a minute.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

But by then he was talking to my back. I was halfway to the elevator. I needed to see for myself. I needed Bobby to be wrong. He was distracted. He usually was, after all. He was often talking to some other tenants or signing for a package. That’s what happened.

Tracy and Annabelle had returned home. They were safe. I was going to open the door to our apartment and call out as I always did, Where’s Anna-banana? Then I’d wait and listen for that glorious sound, the pitter-patter, her little feet shuffling along the floor around the corner of the foyer as she came running into my arms.

But there was no sound when I opened the door. No pitter-patter. The apartment was empty.

Tracy and Annabelle were gone.

Chapter 5

“WHAT THE hell are you doing here, Needham?”

Elizabeth stared back at Evan Pritchard, wondering if perhaps she’d misheard her new boss of only two days amid all the chaos. No such luck. The guy was actually pissed off to see her.

“I’m here to help,” answered Elizabeth. What the hell do you think I’m doing here?

“If you wanted to help me,” said Pritchard, “you’d still be up in Boston, where you’re supposed to be. Where I sent you.”

Is this guy serious?

Elizabeth turned slowly to look at the devastation surrounding the two of them in Times Square as if maybe that might knock some sense into the guy or at least make him ease up. This was the worst attack on US soil since 9/11 and it happened in the same city—their goddamn backyard, for Christ’s sake.

Times Square was no longer Times Square. It was a war zone. A coordinated series of C-4 explosions had reduced the stores and theaters to hollowed out shells of twisted metal and shattered glass. It had taken hours to tend to and clear the hundreds of wounded, which meant the dead were still everywhere, covered with bloodstained white sheets. There were too many to count, and yet that’s exactly what needed to be done. That and a gazillion other things as part of the investigation. Surely it was all hands on deck for the elite New York–based field unit of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Including its newest pair of hands, Special Agent Elizabeth Needham.

“Sir, as soon as I heard the news I just assumed that—”

“Of course you did,” said Pritchard. “You thought you knew best. That’s the rap on you, Needham. You always think you know best.”

For a split second, Elizabeth regretted the last three and a half hours of her life, or roughly how long it took her to drive like a maniac from Boston down to Manhattan. But it took only another split second to realize that she’d do it again if given the chance, a hundred times out of a hundred.

This wasn’t about her. It was about Pritchard. The guy was bitter. Big time. Six feet plus and roughly 220 pounds of resentment. Worse, he wasn’t trying to hide it, not even on the heels of a massive terrorist attack. Her new boss wanted her to know that she wasn’t wanted. His elite field unit was handpicked by him, always and without fail. That is, until the mayor got on the phone and told him that the FU, as they loved to call themselves, was being assigned someone new. Detective Needham was now Agent Needham. Pritchard had had no say in the matter. It was a done deal, and Elizabeth knew the guy couldn’t stand it. So naturally he couldn’t stand her. It was as simple—and effed up—as that.

But Elizabeth held her tongue and the dozen or so jagged-sharp comebacks that were on the tip of it. She knew what she had to do with Pritchard. Go along and get along, or at least get the hell through this miserable, horrible, tragic day. Tell the prick what he wants to hear and then figure out a way to help. Do anything. Do something. Search for survivors. Search for bomb fragments.

“I apologize, sir,” said Elizabeth. “All I wanted to do was—”

“I get it,” said Pritchard. “But look around you, Needham. Look at all the Bureau and Task Force agents who are already here. They’re all trying to figure out the same damn thing: Who did this? And do you know what they all have in common? Not a single one of them was able to prevent it, including me. So if you really want to help, go back to Boston. Even if there’s only a one percent chance your investigation leads to something, it would at least be something we might actually be able to prevent.”

Elizabeth hated to admit it, but Pritchard sort of had a point. Still, why couldn’t she do both? She could help here today and return to Boston tomorrow. But before she could put that thought into words, Pritchard had already turned his focus to an evidence bag filled with some charred wires that had just been handed to him. He had moved on. His newest agent, courtesy of the mayor, was now supposed to do the same.