James PATTERSON - Cross Country

Someone stepped out of an adjoining hallway. I turned to see Ian Flaherty there in the farmhouse.

“I don’t think he knows anything. You can kill him,” he said to the Tiger. “Then he can be with his family. Go ahead. Get it over with.”

A terrible look crossed my face. “So the CIA was in on this from the beginning?”

Flaherty shrugged. “Not the agency, no. Just me. Kill him now. Get it over with.”

Then another voice was in the living room. “You get to die first, asshole.”

Sampson stepped into view. The car I drove had a tracker on it. John had followed the signal all the way down into Maryland. And he wasn’t alone.

“It will be a dead tie,” said Bree. She came up alongside Sampson. “You and the Tiger both die. Unless you start talking to us. Where are Nana and the kids?”

The punk in the Houston Rockets shirt pumped his gun. Bree shot him in the left cheek under his eye. He screamed, then dropped.

The Tiger dove back out the front door.

“I’m not armed,” said Ian Flaherty and raised both hands in the air. “Don’t shoot me. I don’t know what happened to your family. That wasn’t my doing, none of it. Don’t shoot me!”

I drove my shoulder hard into Flaherty’s chest and then ran past him after the Tiger. Sampson threw me a gun on the way out.

“Use it!” he yelled.

IT WAS DARK outside, scarily black, and cold as the middle of winter. Just a sliver of moon was visible, with low clouds sliding fast across the night sky. I didn’t see the Tiger anywhere.

But then I caught a wisp of movement to the right of the dirt trail we’d taken to the house.

“Alex!” I heard Bree call behind me. I didn’t call back to her. I ran ahead and hoped she wouldn’t follow, that she couldn’t see me in the darkness. I wanted to get to the Tiger first, just me and him.

“Alex!” Bree shouted again. “Don’t do it this way. Alex! Alex!”

I continued to track movement, the faint outline of a man running up ahead. Or just noise sometimes, the rustle of branches. I was concentrating on that when a shadow flew at me out of the brush.

I spun sideways and fired a shot into the chest of a killer in a white tee and white baseball cap. One of the boys! He grunted and fell over in a heap. I kept on running after the Tiger.

He was moving fast, but so was I. Two downhill skiers on a dark slope. I was gaining on him a little but not enough. I didn’t call out. I just ran with everything I had in me. There was nothing in my mind except catching him. No caution, not anymore. No fear for myself.

I could hear his heavy footfall, and his breathing, which sounded ragged. Still, I didn’t call to him. I held my gun out and I fired twice. I fired low so I wouldn’t kill him by mistake. I needed to keep him alive so I could find out where my family was.

I didn’t think I hit him, but he turned his body, and that caused him to stumble. I put on an extra burst of speed. I was gaining on him now. I could make out more details, see him clearly.

Then I dove for his legs!

I nearly missed, but I caught him around the ankles and he crashed down on his chest and face and hit his head hard on a rock.

I crawled over him on my hands and knees. Then I went up on my haunches and punched down with all my strength.

My fist connected with his jaw. Sweat and blood flew out to the sides.

“Fucker! Traitor!” he yelled at me, growling like a jungle cat under attack.

“My family – where are they? What happened to them?” I shouted.

Then I punched him again, with everything I had, all the anger and rage living inside. This time he lost a tooth, but he was strong, even hurt like this, and he finally threw me off.

Then he was on me! I shielded my head with my arms and he struck my wrist, perhaps breaking it, I thought. But I didn’t make a sound. I arched my body several inches. I managed to grab him around the neck and hold on. I didn’t know where the strength was coming from, or how long it would last.

I tried to head-butt him, and because of the odd angle I was at, I connected with his Adam’s apple. He gagged, then spit phlegm and blood.

“My family!” I yelled again.

“Fuck your family!” he cursed. “Fuck your kids! Fuck you!”

Then he got to the hunting knife. I was still thinking that I had to keep him alive – not that I had to survive this, but that he did. I held his knife hand at the wrist, but I was losing my grip. The fight was turning his way. This was it; this was how I died. I would never know about Nana, Ali, Jannie. That was the worst part, not knowing.

A shot rang in the night.

The Tiger straightened up, but then he came back down at me with the knife. “Die!” he yelled. “Like your family died!”

A second shot struck where his right eye had been glaring at me a second before.

“Where are they?” I yelled again. “Where is my family?”

He didn’t say another word. His good eye was all hatred. The rest of his face was a bloody mess. The Tiger couldn’t answer. He collapsed on me, dead.

“Where are they?” I whispered.

BREE CAME RUNNING up as I pushed the massive corpse away from me. Even now that he was dead, I still hated the bastard with all my heart and soul. Bree knelt on the ground and hugged me. “I’m sorry, Alex. I’m so sorry. All I saw was the knife. I had to shoot him.”

I kept holding on to her and rocking. “Not your fault. Not your fault.” But then I began to shudder and shake. I knew what I had lost here, knew that the Tiger had been my last chance to find my family.

We left the body and trudged back to the farmhouse. Police cars from the neighboring towns were arriving, and the trees were lit with a crimson-and-blue glare from their domes.

Sampson came out of the farmhouse as we approached. “I’ve gone through every room. There’s no one here. I don’t see any sign of them either, Alex. No blood anywhere, nothing obvious anyway. I don’t think they were ever here.”

I nodded, trying to register crime scene facts and to comprehend their meaning. “I want to look again anyway. I need to look for myself. What about Flaherty?” I suddenly thought to ask.

“The state police have him for now. He showed them he was CIA. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t think they can hold him.”

WE SEARCHED THE house and a nearby work shed, and a barn – until first light of day.

Then we began to comb the surrounding grounds. At this point there were more than thirty police officers and FBI agents searching at the scene, but it still didn’t seem like enough manpower to me.

Everything was feeling even more unreal now. I was here, but I wasn’t. I had no idea about the passage of time either; it seemed as if I could have been at the farm for a couple of days or for just a few minutes.

Proof of life, I thought. That’s what I want, isn’t it? And if not that, then proof of death.

We found a Nissan minivan that had to be the vehicle the Tiger and his killer thugs had come to the farm in. The van held small arms, clothing, and video games in cardboard boxes.

But there was no sign of blood inside, no rope to tie anyone up with. Nothing to make us believe Nana or the kids had been inside the vehicle.

There were more tire tracks up near the house, but nothing seemed unusual. Judging from the look of the place, I figured it hadn’t been a working farm for at least a couple of years. Town records showed that it belonged to a Leopoldo Gout, but we hadn’t been able to contact the owner yet. Who was Leopoldo Gout? What did he know about what had happened here?

Finally, at around four that afternoon, Bree walked me to my car. Then she drove me home to Fifth Street. I was in no shape to continue looking, she said, and she was right.