James Patterson - Tick Tock

The dining-room table was packed full with my family having dinner. It was silent as a graveyard as I came through the kitchen door. I stepped down to the end of the table and checked out Ricky's chin and Eddie's shiner.

While I was carrying out the dead, some sick kid had savagely beaten up my ten- and eleven-year-old sons. This was my sanctuary, and even this was under siege. Nowhere was safe anymore.

"What happened, guys?"

"We were just playing basketball at the court by the beach," Ricky said.

"Then that Flaherty kid came with his older friends," Eddie jumped in. "They took the ball, and when we tried to get it back, they started punching."

"Okay, guys. I know you're upset, but we're going to have to try to get through this the best we can," I said with a strained smile. "The good news is that everyone is going to be okay, right?"

"You call this okay?" Juliana said, pointing at Ricky's chin. She made Eddie open his mouth to show me his chipped tooth.

"Dad, you're a cop. Can't you just arrest this punk?" Jane wanted to know.

"It's not that simple," I said, my voice calm, and a convincing fake smile plastered on my face. "There's witnesses and police reports and other adult stuff you guys shouldn't worry about. I'll take care of this. Now, until then, I want everyone to lay low. Stick around the house. Maybe stay away from the beach for a few days."

"A few days? But this is our vacation," Brian said.

"Yeah, our beach vacation," Trent chimed in.

"Now, now, children. Your, uh, father knows best," Seamus said, sensing how I was about to snap. "We need to be Christian about this. We need to turn the other cheek."

"Yeah," Brian said, "so the next time we get socked, the first stitches don't get reopened."

Brian was right. We were getting our asses kicked, and I was too drained to come up with some good bullshit to bluff them that everything was fine.

That's when Bridget started crying from the other end of the table, followed almost simultaneously by her twin, Fiona.

"I want to go home," Fiona said.

"I don't like it here anymore," Bridget added. "I don't want Ricky and Eddie to be hurt, Daddy. Let's go to Aunt Suzie's for the rest of our vacation." Aunt Suzie lived in Montgomery, New York, where she and Uncle Jerry owned a mind-blowingly fabulous restaurant called Back Yard Bistro. We had vacationed at nearby Orange Lake the previous summer.

"Girls, look at me. No one's going to get hurt again, and we can still have fun. I really will take care of this. I promise."

They smiled. Small smiles, but smiles nonetheless.

I couldn't let them down, I thought. No excuses. New York City under attack or not.

I'd have to think of something. But what?

It was dark when Berger crossed the Whitestone Bridge. He buzzed up the hardtop as he pulled the Mercedes convertible off 678 onto Northern Boulevard in Flushing, Queens.

Traffic, crummy airports, an even crummier baseball team. Was there anything that didn't suck about Queens?

He slowly cruised around the grid of streets, trying not to get lost. It wasn't easy with all the small, tidy houses and low apartment buildings set in neat, boring rows everywhere he looked. Thank God for the car's navigation system.

After five minutes, he finally stopped and pulled over behind a parked handicap bus near a wooded service road alongside the Cross Island Parkway. He turned the Merc's engine off but left the radio on. He listened to a talk show for a bit, then found a soothing Brahms concerto.

When it was over, he sat silently in the darkness. Just sitting there waiting was torture when there was still so much to do. He'd seriously debated contracting this part out, but in the end he had decided against it. Every small thing was part of the effort, he reminded himself. Even Michelangelo, when painting the Sistine Chapel, built the scaffolds himself and mixed his own paint.

It was almost half an hour later when a new Volvo Crossover passed him and turned off the road onto the secluded lover's lane that ran up the wooded hill alongside an electrical tower cutout.

He waited ten minutes to let them get going. Then he slipped on his trusty surgical gloves, got out his new black, curly wig, and grabbed the sack.

Fireflies flickered among the weeds and wildflowers as he stepped up the muggy deserted stretch of service road. It could have been upstate Vermont but for the massive electrical pylon that looked like an ugly, sloppy black stitch across the face of midnight blue sky at the top of the hill.

Even though the parked Volvo's lights were off, Berger caught a lot of motion behind the station wagon's steamed windows as he approached. If the Volvo's a rockin', don't come a knockin', Berger thought, taking the heavy gun out of the paper sack.

He arrived at the passenger-side window and tapped the snub-nosed chunky.44 Bulldog against the glass.

Clink, clink.

"Knock, knock," he said.

They were both in the lowered passenger bucket seat. The young lady saw him first over the guy's shoulder. She was pretty, a creamy-skinned redhead.

Berger took a few steps back in the darkness as she started to scream.

As the man struggled to pull up his pants, Berger walked around the rear of the car to the driver's side and got ready. The Weaver shooting stance he adopted was textbook, two hands extended, elbows firm but not locked, weight evenly distributed on the balls of his feet. When the guy finally sat up, the Bulldog was leveled exactly at his ear.

The two huge booms and enormous recoil of the powerful gun were quite surprising after the light, smooth trigger pull. The driver-side window blew in. So did most of the horny middle-aged guy's head. The girl in the passenger seat was splattered with blood and brain matter, and her sobbing scream rose in pitch.

With the elbow of his shirtsleeve, Berger wiped cordite and sweat out of his eyes. He lowered the heavy revolver and calmly walked around the front of the car back to the passenger side. In situations like this, you had to stay focused, slow everything down. The woman was trying to climb over her dead lover when he arrived at the other side of the car. Berger took up position again and waited until she turned.

Two more dynamite-detonating booms sounded out as he grouped two.44 Bulldog rounds into her pale forehead.

Then there was silence, Berger thought, listening. And it was good.

Recoil tingling his fingers, Berger dropped the gun back into the paper sack and retrieved the envelope from his pocket.

He flicked the envelope through the shattered window. There was something typed across the front of it.

MICHAEL BENNETT NYPD

Humming the concerto he'd just been listening to, Berger tugged at a rubber glove with his teeth as he hurried back down the hill toward his car.

"Going out for ice cream," I said, getting up from the game of Trivial Pursuit that we started playing after dinner. Mary Catherine gave me a quizzical look as I was leaving. Her concern only seemed to increase when I gave her a thumbs-up on the way out the screen door.

But instead of getting ice cream, I hopped into the Impala and called into my squad to get the address for the Flaherty family in Breezy Point. Was that a little crazy? It was. But then again, so was I by that point.

Their house was on the Rockaway Inlet side of the Point about ten blocks away. I drove straight there.

They really did have a pit bull chained in their front yard. It went mad as I stepped out of my car and made my way up the rickety steps.

It wasn't madder than me, though. I actually smiled at it. After today and everything that I had seen, I was in a man-bites-dog sort of mood.

I pounded on the door.