James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

“Party starts tomorrow, Mitchie. Promise.”

Denny put Mitch on the bottom bunk for a change and took the top for himself so he could keep an eye on things from the bird’s nest.

Sure enough, not long after lights-out, Mitch was back up. Now what?

“Where you going, man?” he whispered.

“Gotta piss. I’ll be right back.”

Denny wasn’t feeling paranoid exactly – just extra cautious. He sat up and waited a minute, then followed Mitch just to make sure.

It was quiet in the hall. The place used to be a school, and these lockers were originally built to hold little kids’ lunches and book bags and whatnot. Now grown men used them to hold on to everything they owned in the world.

And what a fucked-up world it was! No doubt about that.

When Denny got to the bathroom, he found all the showers running with no one in them. Bad sign. This wasn’t good at all.

He came around the corner to where the sinks were and saw that two big guys had Mitch pushed up against a wall. He recognized them right away – Tyrone Peters and Cosmo “the Coz” Lantman. Exactly the type of scumbags who kept decent people sleeping on the street rather than risking a bed in one of these shelters. Mitch’s pockets were turned out, and there were still a few quarters on the tile floor around his feet.

“What seems to be the problem here?” Denny said.

“No problem.” Tyrone didn’t even turn around to look at him. “Now get the fuck out!”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Cosmo eyeballed him now and hunkered on over. His hands looked empty, but he was obviously palming something.

“You want in? All right, you’re in.” He put a thumb and forefinger around Denny’s throat and held up a sickle-shaped blade until it was just under his nose. “Let’s see what you got to contribute–”

Denny’s hand clamped down on the asshole’s wrist in a flash and twisted it almost three-sixty, until Cosmo had to double over to keep the arm from snapping in two. From there, it was nothing to stab the Coz with his own blade, three times fast into the ass, and even that was just a warning. The liver would have been just as easy to hit. Already, Cosmo was down and bleeding all over the floor.

Meanwhile, Mitch had gone ballistic. He got his arms around the much bigger Tyrone’s waist and pile-drove him straight into the opposite wall. Tyrone got off two fast jabs – Mitch’s nose exploded with blood – but the asshole left his own jaw wide open. Mitch saw this and drove the heel of his hand straight up into it, until Tyrone went spinning. Just for good measure, Denny grabbed him on the fly and whipped him around once so his face caught some sink on the way down. A few teeth got left behind, and also a thick red smear on the dirty porcelain.

They retrieved Mitch’s cash and took whatever else Tyrone and Cosmo had on them. Then Denny pulled the thugs back into a couple of stalls.

“Punks don’t know who they’re messing with!” Mitch crowed in the hall. His eyes were practically shining, even with blood running down over his lips and onto his shirt.

“Yeah, well, let’s keep it that way,” Denny said. He’d wanted them to be seen at the shelter tonight, but at this point they’d more than accomplished their mission. “You know what? Grab your stuff. Let’s get you that bottle of Jim Beam.”

LIKE A LOT of the law enforcement brotherhood, FBI Case Agent Steven Malinowski was divorced. He lived alone – except when his two daughters visited, every other weekend and one month out of the summer – in a decent-on-the-outside, kind-of-pathetic-on-the-inside little ranch in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Accordingly, there wasn’t much to come home to, and he didn’t pull into his driveway until just after eleven thirty that night. His gait, when he got out of his Range Rover, had at least a few beers in it, a shot or two as well, but he wasn’t drunk. More like out-with-the-boys tipsy.

“Hey, Malinowski.”

The agent’s whole body jerked, and he reached for the holster under his jacket.

“Don’t shoot. It’s me.” Kyle stepped around the corner of the garage and into the light of the streetlamp just long enough to give a glimpse of his face. “It’s Max Siegel, Steve.”

Malinowski squinted hard at him in the dark. “Siegel? What in Christ’s…?” He let the flap of his jacket fall back again. “You almost gave me a damn heart attack. What the hell are you doing here? What time is it anyway?”

“Can we talk inside?” Kyle asked. It would have been three years since Malinowski and Siegel had spoken; the voice had to be good but not perfect. “I’ll go around back, okay? Let me in.”

Malinowski looked up and down the street. “Yeah, yeah. Of course.” By the time he let Siegel in through the sliding-glass door to the kitchen, he’d turned off the lights in front and pulled all the shades. There was just the hood light on over the stove.

He dropped his weapon into a kitchen drawer and pulled two longnecks out of the fridge. He offered one to Max.

“Talk to me, Siegel. What’s going on? What are you doing here at this hour?”

Kyle refused the beer. He didn’t want to touch anything he didn’t have to.

“The op’s completely blown,” he said. “I don’t know how, but they found me out. I had no choice but to come in.”

“You look like shit, by the way. Those bruises around your eyes–”

“Should have seen me a week ago. A couple of Arturo Buenez’s boys worked me over pretty good.” Kyle patted the army-green duffel on his back. Inside was the liquid stun gun and water pack, wrapped in a thick blanket. “This was everything I managed to get out with.”

“Why didn’t you signal?” Malinowski asked, and that was the one thing Kyle had never been able to figure out – how Max Siegel was to have made contact with his handler in an emergency.

“I was lucky to get out at all,” he said. “I’ve been lying low in Florida until I could get up here. Fort Myers, Vero Beach, Jacksonville.”

Maybe it was the beer, but Malinowski didn’t seem to notice that Kyle hadn’t actually answered the question he’d been asked. How could he? He didn’t know the answer.

“So, who else should I be talking to?” Kyle asked.

The agent shook his head. “Nobody.”

“Not DEA? Anyone in DC?”

“There’s no one, Siegel. You were out there on your own.” He looked up suddenly. “Why don’t you know that?”

“Give me a break, man. I’m all messed up. Look at me.” Kyle took a step closer to where Malinowski was leaning back against the range. “Seriously, really look at me. What do you see?”

Malinowski smiled sympathetically. “You definitely need some rest, Max. It’s good you’re here.”

The guy didn’t have a clue, did he? This was just too much fun to stop.

“I’ve seen Kyle Craig, Steve.”

“What? Hang on – the Kyle Craig?”

Kyle spread his arms and smiled. “The Kyle Craig. In the flesh.”

“I don’t understand. How the hell does that figure in…?”

It was like watching numbers add up across Malinowski’s face. And just when he seemed to come up with the right answer, Kyle made his move. His Beretta was out and pressing into Malinowski’s chin before the guy even saw it coming.

“Amazing what they can do with plastic surgery these days,” he said.

Malinowski’s half-finished beer clunked to the floor. “What are you talking about? That’s… impossible!”

“I’m 99.99 percent sure that it’s not,” Kyle told him. “Unless I’m imagining all this. Consider it in an honor, Steve. You’re the first and last to know what I look like now. Are you honored?” Malinowski didn’t move, so he pushed the Beretta a little deeper into his face. “Are you?”