Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

That’s when Pierce began shrieking at the top of her lungs, drowning him out.

“Oh, God, oh, God, don’t let him kill me, please! You have to do something!” She kept screaming as loud as she could.

Beck tried to bellow to be heard above her, but it was no use.

No one could hear a thing he said.

Beck wanted to scream in frustration. He knew he was much more vulnerable. Any second, a sniper could shoot him.

He was out in the open now.

An easy target.

Chapter 47

Morrison turned on his laser sight. Ordinarily he never needed the damned thing, but this would be a tricky shot even for him.

He looked over the edge of the roof at the back of Beck’s head.

He’d found the entrance to the roof and got here as quickly as he could, once he’d heard over the radio that Beck demanded a limo.

Now he was half-hidden by the air-conditioning unit, his rifle propped on the roof’s edge, trying to get a clear angle on Beck without also killing his boss. With all the chaos down on the street, no one was even looking up at the roof.

Beck kept bobbing in and out of his line of sight, however.

It would help a lot if Pierce would just stop screaming, too. Morrison understood that it was meant to keep anyone from hearing Beck. But it was giving him a migraine.

He tried to focus down the barrel. Pierce kept screaming. Beck kept moving. And there were a half-dozen other armed men and women who might open fire at any moment.

He reached for his phone in his jacket pocket. All it would take was the tap of a few numbers on the screen. Then the bomb would go off.

The problem was, that would kill Pierce, too. And he was pretty sure that would mean the end of his meal ticket.

Morrison clicked his radio back to the secure channel.

He needed some backup. And Howard was in just as deep as he was, which made him almost trustworthy.

“Howard.”

Nothing.

“Howard, come on, are you there?”

Still nothing.

“Dammit, Howard, I know you can hear me—”

Finally, with a small snap of static, Howard’s voice returned through his earpiece. “Shut up.”

“What? I’m in position. I need to know—”

“Shut up, Morrison,” Howard said. “It’s over. Believe me.”

What? That couldn’t be right. Howard was like a pit bull chomping on a bone. He never gave up.

“What are you talking about?”

“The woman. Carpenter. She’s with a reporter now. I’m out.”

Morrison was not a coward. He’d fought in Iraq. Walked into rooms where people were waiting to kill him. Stood next to presidents and presidential candidates in the middle of thousands of people, knowing that any one of them could be aiming a gun at his head.

But now he felt his stomach clench and his head spin. Somehow Susan Carpenter had made it to the media.

They were screwed. Even if no one believed her. Even if she was completely discredited, he was going to be investigated. The clues would start to add up.

It didn’t take him long to do that math. He was about to become a liability to Damocles. And he knew what the company did with liabilities. He’d done some of that wet work himself.

“Jesus,” he said quietly. “Howard, what are we going to do?”

“What’s this ‘we’ shit, Morrison?” came the reply. It sounded like Howard was laughing now. “You never thought I was that bright, but I know when it’s time to cut my losses. Good luck, pal.”

The channel went dead.

Morrison was on his own. Even if he got out of here and started running, his life expectancy could be measured in days now. Weeks at the outside.

Unless he could somehow prove his loyalty. Show the company that he would not talk. No matter what. If he could show them that he still had value.

He still had his rifle. He could do Damocles a big favor right now by removing the main witness against the company.

Beck had given him a death sentence.

Morrison put his eye back to the sight and squinted.

Maybe he could return the favor.

Chapter 48

Beck knew that Pierce was a politician, and that politicians were nothing if not long-winded. But he still couldn’t believe how long she could go on screaming.

She had been yowling at the top of her lungs nonstop, making it impossible for him to say a single thing. The FBI, the police, even some of the Damocles guards had all tried to speak above her. They were trying to open negotiations, to get Beck to let her go.

She wouldn’t let them. She was using the last tactic she had left. She wouldn’t allow anyone to talk to Beck, for fear of what he might say.

But sooner or later, it had to end. Beck hoped he could wait it out. Unfortunately, he really was at the end of his endurance. His head felt like someone was crushing it in a vise, and the pressure only kept ratcheting up. His vision would go blank for seconds at a time, and despite all the guns pointed at him, his attention kept wandering. His body felt like it belonged to someone else. He almost felt like he was floating in the ocean.

A calm, clinical part of his mind made the diagnosis. Detachment. Exhaustion. Fatigue. Drowsiness. Altered perception.

Any first-year med student would be able to recognize the signs. He was going to lose consciousness soon. He wondered if they’d still shoot him.

Or if Morrison or Howard would take the opportunity to trigger the bomb.

His whole life, he’d believed he could control everything. That if he just worked hard enough, thought quickly enough, he could save people from the demons inside their heads.

Now he had to face it. This was all out of his control. And he couldn’t save himself.

Something was different. It took Beck a full second to realize what it was.

The reporters, the media—there was something different going on behind their lines.

Most of the cameras were still pointed in his direction. But some had turned. Some were clustered around a reporter at the back of the mob.

Their lights shone down, and the crowd parted, and he saw her.

Susan.

Despite everything she’d been through since this morning, she looked magnificent. She was talking to a reporter, and there were a dozen other microphones shoved toward her face.

Senator Pierce stopped screaming. Beck realized she could see the whole scene unfolding right in front of them, too.

She was watching all her lies unravel, right before her eyes.

In the sudden silence, Beck could hear Susan clearly. She was in the middle of a sentence. “Yes, I am saying I watched them kill a police officer—”

Beck could just imagine what was scrolling on CNN right now:

SENATOR ACCUSED OF MURDER AND COVER-UP BY MAN HOLDING HER HOSTAGE.

Beck realized it didn’t matter what happened to him anymore. Susan was safe. It was out of his hands now.

So he dropped the gun. Raised his hands, as high as he could.

“I surrender,” he said as loud as he could.

Pierce looked at him, trying to comprehend what had just happened, the horror only growing on her face. Beck smiled at her.

“I surrender,” Beck said again. “I will tell you whatever you want to know.”

The police and the other gunmen began moving forward, cautiously. Beck had put the jacket back on so that they would think he was still wearing the vest. He hoped his ploy was going to work.

Then Pierce screamed again. But now it was a completely different message coming from her mouth.

“It wasn’t me!” she said. “It wasn’t me! It was Damocles! They forced me to—”

Beck was distracted from what she said next. A red dot struck him in the eye, and he blinked and staggered back.

He realized that it was a laser sight. Someone had just turned him into a target again.