Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

Gripping the steering wheel is Stevie Rourke. His eyes gaze straight ahead. A former staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, he’s forty-four years old, six feet six inches tall, and 249 pounds of solid muscle. A man so loyal to his friends and family, he’d rush the gates of hell for them, and wrestle the devil himself.

Hank Rourke, trim and wiry, younger by only a few years, with a similar devotion but a far shorter fuse, is sitting shotgun—and loading shells into one, too.

“We’re less than 180 seconds out,” Stevie says.

Hank grunts in understanding.

The two brothers ride in tense silence for the rest of the brief trip. No words needed. They’ve discussed their plan and know exactly what they’re going to do.

Confront the good-for-nothing son of a bitch who killed their fifteen-year-old nephew.

Stevie and Hank both loved that boy. Loved him as if he were their own son. And Alex loved them both back. Molly’s worthless drunk of a husband had taken off when the boy was just a baby. But no one had shed any tears. Not then, not since. Molly reclaimed her maiden name for her and Alex. The whole Rourke family was already living together on their big family farm, and with no children of their own, Hank and Stevie stepped right up. The void left by one lousy father was filled by two incredible uncles. And Alex’s life was all the better for it.

Until today. When his life came to a heartbreaking end.

Both brothers dropped everything as soon as Molly called them. They drove together straight to the high school, their truck rattling along at over a hundred miles per hour. They were hoping for the best.…

But had prepared themselves for the worst.

The doctors and sheriff’s department are treating Alex’s death as an accident. At least for now. Just two kids being kids, messing with shit they shouldn’t have been.

But it was an accident that didn’t have to happen.

And somebody is going to pay.

Their destination soon comes into sight: a cluster of low-slung wood and metal buildings that seem to shimmer in the still-scorching desert heat. Hank surveys the area with a pair of forest-green binoculars.

“Don’t see anyone on patrol. Maybe we can sneak up on him after all.”

Stevie shakes his head.

“That bastard knows we’re coming.”

The Jeep comes to a stop in front of a rusty padlocked gate on the perimeter of the property, dotted with dry shrubs and scraggly trees. At the end of a short driveway sits a tumbledown little shack.

The man they’ve come for lives inside.

Stuffing his Glock 19 into his belt behind his back, Stevie steps out of the Jeep first—and the blistering desert air hits him like a semi. Instantly he’s flooded with memories of the nighttime covert ops he ran in Desert Storm. But that was a distant land, where more than two decades earlier he served with honor and distinction.

Tonight, he’s in Scurry County, Texas. He doesn’t have an elite squad to back him up. Only his jumpy little brother.

And the stakes aren’t just higher. They’re personal.

“Lay a hand on my gate, Rourke, I’ll blow it clean off.”

Old Abe McKinley is standing on his farmhouse porch, shakily aiming a giant wood-handled Colt Anaconda. With his wild mane of white hair and blackened teeth, he either looks awful for seventy-five, or like total shit for sixty.

But Stevie doesn’t scare easy—or back down.

“I want to talk to you, Abe. Nothing more.”

“Then tell your baby brother to be smart. And put down his toy.”

“If you tell your folks to do the same.”

Abe snorts. Not a chance.

Stevie shrugs. Worth a try. “Then at least tell ’em,” he says, “to quit pretending to hide.”

After a reluctant nod from the old man, Hank tosses his pump-action Remington back into the Jeep. Simultaneously, fourteen of McKinley’s goons, hidden all around the compound, slowly step out of the shadows. Some were crouched behind bushes. Others, trees. A few were lying prone in the knee-high grass that covers most of McKinley’s two dozen acres.

Each man is wearing full hunting camo and a ski mask, and clutching a semiautomatic weapon.

Stevie was right. The bastard sure did know they’d be coming around here.

“Now, then.” Stevie clears his throat. “As I was saying—”

“Sorry to hear about your sister’s boy.” McKinley interrupts. Not one for small talk. He spits a thick squirt of tobacco juice into the dirt. “Tragedy.”

Stevie swallows his rage at the intentional sign of complete disrespect. “You sound real cut up about it. About losing a first-time customer. ”

McKinley betrays nothing. “I don’t know what you mean by that. If you’re implying I had anything to do with—”

Hank’s the one who interrupts now. Can’t keep his cool like his brother.

“You got four counties hooked on the crystal you cook!” he shouts, taking a step forward. McKinley’s men raise their guns, but Hank doesn’t flinch.

“You’re the biggest player from here to Lubbock, and everybody knows it. Means one of y’all”—Hank glares at each of the armed men, one by one, their fingers tickling their triggers—“sold our nephew the shit that killed him. Put a live grenade in the hand of a child!”

McKinley just snarls. Then turns and starts heading back inside his house.

“Stevie, Hank, thanks for stopping by. But don’t do it again. Or I’ll bury you out back with the dogs.”

Like a shot from a rifle— crack! —the screen door slams shut behind him.

4 minutes, 45 seconds

Tomorrow marks ten weeks to the day my son Alex died before my eyes.

I can’t believe it. It feels like barely ten minutes.

I can still remember so clearly the pair of fresh-faced paramedics who rushed into the hallway and lifted him onto a gurney. I remember the breakneck ambulance ride to the county hospital, all those machines he was hooked up to, clicking and beeping, me clutching his clammy hand, urging him to hang on to his life just as tight.

I remember when we arrived and the EMTs slid out his stretcher, I saw the comic book Alex had in his back pocket. It got jostled and fluttered to the ground. As he was wheeled away into the ER, I stopped to scoop it up, and then frantically ran after them.

I screamed and waved it in the air like a madman, as if they were army medics carrying a blast victim off a battlefield and had left behind his missing limb. Of course I wasn’t thinking straight. How could any mother at a time like that? I kept wailing and bawling until finally one of the nurses took hold of those few dozen colorful pages and promised to give them to my son.

“When he wakes up!” I said, both my hands on her shoulders. “Please!”

The nurse nodded. And smiled sadly. “Of course, ma’am. When he wakes up.”

Two days later, that crinkled comic book was returned to me.

It came in a sealed plastic bag that also held my son’s wallet, cell phone, and the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted, including his Converses wrapped in duct tape and his old pair of Levi’s.

Alex never woke up.

My brother Hank suddenly jars me out of my dazed memory—by punching the kitchen wall with his meaty fist so hard, the framed pictures and hanging decorative plates all rattle. He’s always been the hotheaded one. The firecracker in the family. Tonight is no different.

“The Rourkes have owned this land for three generations!” he shouts. “No goddamn way we’re gonna lose it to the bank in three months!”

Before any of us can respond, he punches the wall again—even harder—and an antique piece of china that belonged to our late grandmother Esther Rourke slips off its holder and smashes into pieces.