James Patterson - Blindside

I studied the two men. They looked so familiar. Then it hit me. They were the shooters from the coffeehouse, Brew, back in New York.

CHAPTER 70

I WASN’T INNew York, where someone might call in the cavalry, or at least the cops. I would’ve loved to see a SWAT team about now. I’d never again make fun of their fixation on tactics and training. In fact, if I got out of this, I had some apologies to make. Maybe to some cybercrime experts in the Intel Bureau as well.

I felt like I was doomed. Henry wouldn’t have called in these two if he was going to let me walk away. These were the kind of men who killed you, then stuffed you in the trunk of a car. The irony of it was, now that I knew Natalie was safe, I would gladly walk away. That is, if I was given a choice.

The guy with the teardrop tattoo and the sleek thug were still on either side of me. I couldn’t just break and run. They’d have no qualms about shooting me in the back.

Still, no one had searched me. That was going to be a hell of a surprise. I calculated the advantages of pulling the pistol now or waiting. The longer I waited, the better chance someone had of discovering the gun. It also gave them the opportunity to bind my hands and keep me from moving.

But if I waited, I could surprise whoever drove me in the car. It would probably be just the three of us. I liked those odds if I had the element of surprise.

I still had hope. That was the key to a happy life. Hope. Just like I hoped to see my children grow up. I still had hope that Brian would get out of prison. I hoped to marry Mary Catherine soon, and I hoped these assholes would be careless enough not to search me.

I looked up at Henry. “You don’t have the guts to do your own dirty work?”

“I see you still haven’t given up. Good for you. I don’t know what kind of trap you’re trying to walk me into, but I already told you I’m too smart for that. No matter what you think you’ve worked out. I’m a step ahead of you.”

I could tell by the way he’d delivered the little speech that he believed it. Absolutely and completely. In his eyes, he was equivalent to Einstein. And that would be his weakness. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually someone with that high of an opinion of himself always got knocked down.

The main problem, at least in my mind, was that if he was knocked down in the future it wasn’t going to help me now.

The two men I’d seen in New York—Christoph and Ollie—stepped closer to me. They spoke English with an accent different from anyone else’s in the room. It sounded German or Dutch. It wasn’t anything I could use at the moment.

I said to the slovenly man in the AC/DC shirt, the one who looked like an Ollie, “I was in the coffeehouse in New York when you and your buddy opened fire.”

He chuckled. “Wild show, eh? Good thing those don’t happen every day, no?”

“I imagine in your line of work they happen more often than most people think.”

It was his buddy, the tall guy—probably Christoph—who answered. “We’re professionals. It depends on the circumstances and what our assignment is. If we don’t want a public shoot-out, we don’t have one. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it wasn’t for Alice and Janos, there wouldn’t have been any problems at all.”

“Are those the other killers you gunned down?”

The neat, well-groomed Christoph smiled. “We’re used for contracts on professionals.”

The heavy, sloppy Ollie added, “And on cops.” He had a breezy, endearing smile. It’d be hard not to like him in other circumstances.

Christoph said, “Aren’t Americans used to public shootings?”

“Not by slipshod amateurs like you. It must’ve been embarrassing knowing you had to use that kind of firepower on two unsuspecting people. Now you had to get extra help just to deal with me. Don’t you have any standards?”

I could tell I was getting to the neat killer. He had an image he was trying to maintain. Just like Henry. The fat one, Ollie, couldn’t have cared less. He said something in Dutch and his buddy didn’t say another word.

From the catwalk, Henry called out, “Enough. You can chat with him on the way. Just get him out of my sight. We have work to do. We need to go to the new office.” He clapped his hands to get everyone moving quickly.

It was more information but nothing that could help me right now. I felt a little desperation creep into my mind. I might have to do something drastic soon.

Then the door behind me burst open, and I turned quickly. The door hung at an odd angle, swaying on broken hinges, as someone began to enter the room. I saw the gun first.

It was the FBI’s finest: Bill Fiore.

CHAPTER 71

ALL EYES WEREon the FBI agent. Fiore looked focused as he stepped all the way into the room. He took a position near a concrete support column close to the door. He showed good tactical sense.

Everyone stood perfectly still. Including me. They just stared at the portly FBI agent with his Glock 9mm held out in front of him. Just as I was thinking, Don’t say something like “Freeze” or “You’re all under arrest ,” Fiore opened his mouth.

He said, “Nobody move.”

Great. That should scare them into submission . I stepped backward until I was close to him. The heavy support column was a few steps to our left. I checked it out because something told me we might need it.

Then the handsome Christoph, the one who’d started shooting in New York, pulled a pistol from behind his back. At almost the same time the “janitor,” Gunnar, did the same thing.

Out of instinct, I yelled, “Gun.” It was the universal signal among police that there was real danger in real time.

Fiore fired three times quickly before we both jumped to our left, behind the column. Before I did, I saw Gunnar go down. His pistol clattered on the hard, tiled floor. Blood quickly leaked into the grout and spread all around him. There was nothing neat or clean about a bullet wound.

I had to ask Fiore, “How’d you find me?”

“You gave me the address, you moron. You said it was across from Toit’s City.”

The FBI agent was starting to impress me.

Now shots echoed as Henry’s people fired on us. Fragments from the column burst into dust, clouding my vision. There was enough dust to make me cough. I still wasn’t going to move from my position.

I crouched next to Fiore as he returned fire, and I drew my own pistol. I wanted a quick shot at Henry. It was the old theory that if you cut off the head of a snake, the rest of the snake is no threat.

When I popped out from behind the support post, no one was on the catwalk. Henry and Natalie had disappeared.

Fiore stopped firing for a moment. I ducked back behind the post. When he looked at me, he was astonished. “Where the hell did you get a gun?”

I shrugged and said, “Just picked it up.”

I heard him mumble something foul about the NYPD. Then he started to shoot again.

I knocked down the guy with the teardrop tattoo. I hit him in the leg and then the pelvis. He flopped down onto the floor, screaming in Estonian. He ignored his gun and desperately tried to stem the bleeding next to his groin. I knew he was out of the fight.

The sound of the gunfire boomed in the big room and shut down my hearing. We still had to deal with the main killers I had seen in action before. I didn’t know where they had dropped back to. I couldn’t get a bead on them.

Then I heard Fiore grunt. I leaned back and saw blood pouring from a bullet hole in his shoulder. It also seeped between his fingers where he was holding the side of his abdomen.