Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

“Madame, Hans Schultz. Der Spiegel. It is said that you are here today for a personal reason. Is that correct?”

Before I could answer, another reporter backed into me and shoved a microphone in front of Joe’s face.

“Nigel Warwick, sir. BBC. I’ve followed your career, Mr. Molinari. FBI, Homeland Security, CIA. Are you representing government interests today?”

Cameramen moved in.

“My wife and I are here as private citizens,” Joe snapped, turning his back, putting his arm around me, and sheltering me from the rain.

We pressed on toward the entrance and had almost reached it when I felt a hand on my sleeve. I turned, prepared to shake off a reporter, but it was Anna. Her face was shadowed by the hood of her coat, but I could see that her eyes were swollen from crying.

My eyes watered, too.

I reached out to her, and she hugged me very hard, then hugged Joe.

When they separated, I said, “Trust me. This is the right thing to do.”

She said, “I do trust you, Lindsay, and I trust Joe. But I know the system. Even in this courtroom, justice will not be done. This has been my experience. Americans put faith in justice. We do not.”

The mob of press, along with dozens of other interested parties, closed in and pushed us forward. Joe gripped my hand.

I said to my husband, “If this goes wrong, it’s going to break my heart.”

Five Years Earlier

Chapter 1

Anna zipped up a lightweight jacket over her sweater and slacks, wrapped a scarf over her hair, and tied it under her chin to hide the hand-size burn scar on the left side of her face.

She had to shop for dinner before it got dark, and if she went by bike, she could slip through the rush-hour traffic. She slung her backpack across her shoulders, locked the door behind her, then bumped her bike down two flights of stairs from her studio apartment and out the front door into a mild sixty degrees. She carried the bike across the stoop to the street, where she mounted it and pushed off.

As she always did, she took in the beauty of the vast greensward of Alamo Square Park across from her apartment on Fulton Street and felt truly lucky to be alive and here in America.

It never got old.

She passed the lovely old Victorian houses, San Francisco’s Painted Ladies, and turned right onto Fell Street, the straightaway that would take her to the grocery store. She rode several blocks before pulling up at an intersection. Waiting for the light to turn green, Anna saw something that she knew just couldn’t be.

A large, florid man smoking a cigar was coming down the steps of one of the Victorian homes. The sight of him was like a body blow, as if she’d been struck by a car.

Everything went black. Anna’s knees buckled, but even as the blood left her head, she dug deep, gripped the handlebars, and steadied herself.

When she looked again, he was still there, pausing on the steps to relight his cigar, giving her seconds to make sure that she wasn’t hallucinating or having a psychotic break with reality. She could be mistaken.

Anna fixed her gaze on the devil puffing on his cigar. His hair was gray now. But his face hadn’t changed at all: same full lips, broad unlined brow, thick neck. And she would never forget the shape of his body, the way he walked—stiff and deliberate, like a bear on its hind legs.

It was Slobodan Petrović, a man seen in her night terrors and, before that, in real life.

Anna’s brain was on fire. Flickering images came into her mind: Petrović standing on the rubble of what had been an apartment house. He bent to hug a little girl, wrapped his arms around her before raising his beaming face to the crowd and the cameras. His voice was enthusiastic and kind.

“If you put down your weapons, we will protect you. I promise this to you.”

This speech was accompanied by the ongoing racketa-rack-rack sound of gunfire, the screams of babies, the air-shattering explosion of bombs. She remembered another promise Petrović had made: “We will shell you to the edge of madness.”

In that, he had kept his word.

Anna locked in on the present: Petrović, walking down steps on Fell Street in his fine American clothing, smoking a cigar, alive and well in San Francisco.

Not seeing her at all.

A horn blew impatiently behind her, breaking her concentration. The light had turned green. Petrović opened the door to his Jaguar and got inside.

He didn’t wait for the slow stream of traffic to pass. He wrenched the wheel, gunned the engine, and cut off the car just behind him.

Horns blew furiously, and Anna watched the Jaguar gathering speed. She gripped the handlebars of her bike and shoved off, following Petrović, trying to shut out the overlapping memories of his brutality—but she could not.

Those images still lived inside of her.

Petrović wouldn’t get away with what he had done.

Not this time. Not again.

Chapter 2

Anna knew cars.

Her father and brother had been mechanics before the war, and from them she had picked up a lot of knowledge about engines. That Jaguar, she knew, could go from zero to sixty in about six seconds, but not without a clear lane on a straightaway.

Petrović’s car was immediately mired in the evening rush hour, traffic moving at a stop-and-go speed averaging about twenty miles per hour.

Advantage, Anna.

Petrović wouldn’t notice a cyclist two cars back. She would follow him for as long as she could.

Traffic unlocked and Anna slipped behind an SUV on the Jag’s tail, where she was hidden from Petrović’s rear view. The pedaling was easy on the downhill, but the inevitable incline made it a struggle to keep up.

She put her whole self into the climb, stood up on the pedals, and forced the bike forward.

How long could she keep up? Petrović was driving a well-tuned sports car, while she worked her spent muscles on a twelve-year-old bike. A car honked and then passed her, too close, the compressed air shaking her bike, almost costing Anna her balance.

But she steadied her wheels and pressed on, fixing her gaze on Petrović’s car just ahead of her, now coming to an intersection. The light was yellow, but as it turned red, the Jag shot through the cross street and continued on the one-way street leading toward Golden Gate Park.

Anna followed him, ignoring the shouts of pedestrians on the crosswalk, flying through to the other side of the intersection, and pedaling full bore like a madwoman.

She was a madwoman.

As drivers leaned on their horns, Anna kept her eyes on the Jaguar, but an ironic thought intruded.

After all these years she could still get killed by Petrović.

Quickly she murdered the thought. If there was any righteousness in the world, she would hunt him and put him down.

Anna was tailing a silver SUV, now four cars behind the Jaguar and losing ground, when the SUV slowed and, without signaling, peeled off onto Cole Street. Up ahead, cars filled in the gap between her and the Jag as Petrović pulled even farther away from her.

Anna had memorized his license plate number, but she no longer remembered it. Her chest hurt. Her legs burned. Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes and streamed across her cheeks. Sweat rolled down her sides. And the terrible slide show of cruelty and death flashed behind her eyes, keeping time with the racketa-rack-rack of artillery.

She refused to quit, pedaling slower but still moving forward, and finally, as the road veered at the end of the Panhandle, leading to JFK Drive, she picked up speed. She could do this. She was winning.

She would find out where Petrović was going and she would make a plan. He wouldn’t get away again.

Anna was coasting at a good speed on JFK Drive when a car honked behind her and then zoomed ahead and cut her off. She swiveled the handlebars toward the curb, lost her balance, tipped, and crashed.