Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

Beck felt sweat trickling down his sides and stinging a cut he didn’t know he had on his forehead. He imagined Morrison and Howard driving up the street any second. The world seemed to spin for a moment. He took a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm.

Louis finally came back with his phone and a small, thin strip of metal. “Turn around,” he said, and then Beck felt him tugging on the cuffs. Louis suddenly pushed one of the cuffs tighter. Beck felt the metal sink deeper into the skin of his wrist. “Hey!” he said.

“Just hold on, I won’t hurt you any worse than your girlfriend,” Louis said. And then Beck felt the cuff pop open.

A second later, Louis did the same thing on the other wrist, and Beck was free.

He turned around, and Louis was holding the cuffs and the metal strip and grinning. “All done,” he said.

“How did you do that?” Beck asked, genuinely amazed.

“The shim undoes the ratcheting mechanism of the cuffs,” Louis said. “Saw it on YouTube.”

He put the cuffs and the strip of metal into Beck’s hand. “Here,” he said. “You keep these as a souvenir. And you should probably watch the video yourself, in case you have any more problems with any other girlfriends.”

“I owe you,” Beck said as he pocketed the cuffs.

Louis grinned again. “No charge,” he said. “It was worth it just to meet a man with worse luck with women than me. Now, I suppose you’ll be wanting to use the phone?”

Beck took a moment to assess the situation. He was alone, with two killers after him. One man was already dead, and it was clear he was supposed to be next. He couldn’t risk going to the police, who might hand him back over to the killers. He had no idea what he’d fallen into, and no idea how to get out of it.

But he knew who he could trust.

He took Louis’s phone and dialed.

Chapter 9

Susan looked at him from the driver’s seat. Her voice was full of concern when she spoke.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked.

Beck restrained the urge to shout at her. He’d probably ask the same thing if one of his patients came to him with this story.

And she was the only person he could turn to right now.

She’d picked Beck up at Louis’s shop after he’d called her. She looked over his injuries—a cut on the forehead, bruises, and scrapes—and put him into her car. All he’d told her over the phone was that he’d been in a car accident, and now he was stranded without his car or cash.

Louis hadn’t said anything about the handcuffs, which were still in Beck’s jacket pocket. He just muttered quietly to Beck, “Don’t see why you’re running around if you’ve got that at home.” Then he grinned and waved as Beck and Susan pulled away in her Volvo.

Susan wanted to take him to the hospital, immediately. And so Beck told her what had happened.

She’d pulled to the side of the road and parked her car. Then she looked at him, and began speaking to him in the same tones that she’d use to talk a jumper off a ledge.

“I’m sure you believe this is what happened, Randall,” is how she began.

He saw the sadness in her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. She believed that he’d finally begun to unravel, that the tumor was eating away at his ability to think, and he was suffering from delusions.

He was almost flattered that she seemed so moved. But the rest of him was angry and impatient. He didn’t have time for her sympathy. He needed to find out why someone wanted him dead.

Beck wanted to have her drive back to where the SUV wrecked to see the damage, but he didn’t want to take the chance that they were still there.

And after a few minutes, she lost her therapeutic voice and her temper, and they were both yelling at each other in the car.

“Just a minute,” Susan said. She picked up her phone and tapped the screen. A news app brought up headlines for Washington, DC. “There’s nothing here about a shooting anywhere near your office.”

“Then they must have told the police to keep it quiet.”

Susan gave him another skeptical look.

“I know how paranoid that sounds,” Beck said. “But I know what happened.”

“Do you?” she said. “Think of all the times you’ve had patients convinced that someone was out to get them. Think of how they acted. Do you see any resemblance?”

“Look, if I’m making this up, then where did I get these?” Beck snapped, and showed her the handcuffs.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Susan snapped back. Then she got her temper under control. She breathed deeply and started again. “Please. We should at least get your head looked at. An MRI or PET scan. Maybe the car accident shifted the tumor, or increased the pressure on your brain. You could have a blood clot. You might stroke out at any moment.”

“I feel fine,” Beck said, although he didn’t. He felt tired and dizzy, but he wasn’t about to tell Susan that. “Listen to me. My patient is dead. And they want to kill me, too. I know it sounds paranoid, but you know me. You know the difference between people who are crazy and people who are not. You’ve spent your whole life doing this. Look at me: am I crazy?”

Susan took a long look at him. “All right. Let’s say this is true. Let’s go to a lawyer. I have a friend, she’s a former assistant US attorney, she could—”

“No,” Beck said flatly. “No lawyers.”

Susan threw up her hands. “You won’t go to the police, you won’t go to a lawyer, you won’t go to the hospital. So what are we supposed to do, Randall? How are we going to find out what’s happening to you?”

Good question, Beck had to admit. Then he remembered something that had been nagging at him since he got into the SUV with Morrison and Howard.

“Oh, my God.”

Susan looked alarmed. “What? What is it?”

“Scott’s wife. Jennifer.”

“You think she can help you?”

“No,” Beck said. “Think about it. If they are willing to kill me because I spent a few minutes with Kevin Scott, then what are they going to do about her?”

“Randall, for God’s sake.”

“Susan, think about it. If I’m wrong, I’ll go with you to the hospital. Quietly. I’ll get help. But if I’m right, then a woman’s life is at stake, and we’re the only people who can help her right now. They will kill her, Susan.”

Susan thought about that for a moment. Then she cranked the engine back to life. “Do you have her address?” she asked. Beck didn’t.

“Look it up on my phone,” she said, tossing it to him, then pulled out into traffic. A horn blared as she cut another driver off. Susan ignored it as the phone began giving them directions to the house of Kevin and Jennifer Scott.

Susan’s grip was tight on the wheel. For the first time, Beck thought, she looked like she believed him.

Because she looked scared.

Chapter 10

Morrison and Howard were in no mood for bullshit by the time they rolled up to the tiny auto repair shop.

The last hour had been the most humiliating of their careers.

First, the firefighters had to use pry bars to open their SUV and free Morrison. A paramedic put his arm in a sling. Then she plucked safety glass from an open wound on Howard’s scalp and stuffed cotton up the other agent’s nose before putting a brace over his face to keep the broken bones in place.

The agents had to call headquarters for another vehicle, which was delivered along with the tow truck that took away the SUV.

And while they waited, they had to call the Client and report what had happened.

There was disbelief and scorn in her voice. “A goddamn psychiatrist got away from you? Are you kidding me?”