Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

Beck realized they were really going to do this—just drag him off to jail, or some locked room, and interrogate him. Unbelievable.

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “This is basic doctor–patient confidentiality. Any judge is going to laugh you out of court.”

“Shut up,” Howard said as he dug around in Beck’s jacket and removed his wallet. Then he slammed the door in Beck’s face.

The window was still open, however. Beck looked at Morrison, who seemed slightly more reasonable.

“Look. If you’re really going to take me away, someone needs to tell Scott’s wife,” Beck remembered. “Her name is Jennifer Scott. Someone needs to tell her about her husband.”

“Yeah, we’ll take care of it,” Morrison said. He nodded at Howard, who took out his own phone and dialed a number, then stepped away to talk.

Morrison got in on the driver’s side and used the button there to roll up Beck’s window. He looked at Beck across the backseat. “Now do as you’re told: shut up.”

Beck sat and stewed. This was really going to happen. He shook his head. Well, at least I get to cross being arrested off the bucket list. He wondered what would happen to his afternoon patients. He had no secretary who could call them to cancel. They would just show up at his office, and they’d wait. Some of them wouldn’t handle it very well if he wasn’t there.

It made Beck angrier. But there was nothing he could do about it now.

Howard got into the front passenger seat, and then, without a word, Morrison started the engine and drove away from the scene.

At first, Beck didn’t pay attention to where they were going. He was too busy trying to think of an attorney he could call. He had a couple of acquaintances who were lawyers, but they did mostly lobbying and corporate work.…

Then Beck saw that they’d crossed the river and were headed into Southeast DC. Morrison turned off the main avenue and began going down side streets, deeper and deeper into some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital.

“Where are we going?” Beck asked.

Howard and Morrison ignored him. Morrison was driving too fast. He ran yellow lights and cut off other drivers. Both he and Howard sat in the same grim silence, eyes fixed ahead.

There was no partition between Beck and the two agents. He knew they could hear him.

“Where are we going?” Beck asked again, louder.

“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Morrison said, sounding bored.

“Then why are we driving away from H Street?” Beck asked. H Street was where the Secret Service’s headquarters was located.

“Branch office,” Howard said, still not looking at him.

The civilized part of Beck’s mind told him that this could all be normal. That he should be polite, and wait to call a lawyer, and this whole mess would get straightened out. That was the part of him that had been a good boy his whole life, the part that told him, like his mother always did, to sit up straight and behave.

But there was another part of his brain talking to him as well—the part that seemed to have woken up since he was diagnosed with cancer. It was like some survival instinct had kicked in since finding out he was going to die.

And this part of his brain screamed at him that something was very wrong here.

Beck looked out the window. The streets were uglier. These were places Beck had only seen in the background on the TV news, usually with a reporter describing the latest gang killing or drug deal gone wrong.

“Where is this branch office?” Beck asked.

Morrison looked back at him in the rearview.

“Just relax, Doc. We’ll be there before you know it.”

And Beck suddenly knew he was in serious trouble.

Memory is a tricky thing, Beck knew. Stress affects the brain and interferes with the transfer of images from short-term to long-term memory. And then, sometimes, those same memories can return in an instant.

At that moment, Beck remembered the color of the gunman’s eyes.

Because he was looking right into them again.

Chapter 6

Beck was handcuffed and trapped in the car with Kevin Scott’s killers.

He had no idea what to do.

He tried desperately to think. He looked out the window again. They seemed to be driving into the very worst section of town—probably so that when Beck’s body turned up, it wouldn’t be considered unusual. Maybe they’d say he was here to buy drugs. Or maybe they’d say he was shot trying to escape.

Beck knew Kevin Scott had been hiding something. But now he knew it was something worth killing for.

And these two federal agents—if they were federal agents at all—wanted to find out if Beck knew it, too.

Beck tried to measure his own pulse. His doctors had told him stress was bad for his condition. His body was working hard enough to regulate itself with the interference of his brain tumor. He could suffer dizzy spells or weakness or seizures if he pushed himself too hard, they’d told him.

And there was also the chance that he was suffering a paranoid delusion. It happened with his condition. People stopped thinking normally as the tumor increased pressure and swelling in sections of the brain. Was it possible that he was just imagining the danger he was in?

Beck didn’t think so. He didn’t feel crazy. He knew psychotic patients rarely did, but he was pretty sure he was still firing on all cylinders. Surprisingly, he felt almost calm. Even though these two men wanted to kill him, it didn’t scare him as much as he thought it would. Beck already knew he was going to die—soon. He’d made his peace with that.

But these men were probably going to torture him as well. They wanted to know what was in his head, and what Kevin Scott had said in his last hour on earth. They would do whatever it took to get that information out of Beck, even though Scott had not told him anything but the word “Damocles.”

Even if Beck told the agents that now, they wouldn’t believe him. They’d hurt him until they were satisfied he wasn’t lying.

Beck could handle the idea of dying. But these men were going to subject him to agonizing pain.

Was he going to let that happen?

Hell, no . If he had to die, it was going to be on his own terms.

That made his next decision easy.

Morrison was still driving too fast. Beck waited for the next yellow light. Predictably, Morrison gunned the engine to barrel through the intersection.

And then Beck flung himself into the front seats via the space between them, and landed on Morrison, knocking his arms away from the steering wheel. Beck began kicking and biting and flailing, his own hands still bound behind him.

Morrison shouted an obscenity. Howard began to scream something, then caught one of Beck’s knees on his mouth.

Beck felt the steering wheel spin and the car tipped crazily.

There was a blaring horn, and then Beck was flying into the air as something hit the SUV like a fist.

Beck saw shattering glass. He felt the airbags explode all around him, burning him with white powder as they deployed. The SUV whirled like a top, and then came to an abrupt, crunching halt.

Chapter 7

Beck blinked and sat up. His side hurt like hell. He shook a little bit and safety glass fell from his face, his clothes, his hair.

He was still in the front seat. The windshield and passenger windows were broken. Deflated airbags sagged from every surface along the dashboard and interior. Morrison groaned underneath him.

Howard was still in the passenger seat. Blood trickled from his forehead where he’d cracked his skull against the doorpost. He looked at Beck, momentarily dazed. His lip was split where Beck had kneed him before.

Howard’s eyes snapped to focus on Beck. He didn’t speak. He growled. And without hesitation, he went for his gun, which, lucky for Beck, he couldn’t whip out with no trouble because Beck was half lying on top of him.