James Patterson - Tick Tock

I was still so dead to the world that when I tried to answer it, I actually hung it up instead.

I wiped my eyes as I yawned. No wonder I was out of it. Mary Catherine and I had gotten back pretty late from the concert. If that wasn't bad enough, MC, Seamus, and I had stayed up watching a hilarious eighties Brat Pack-era comedy called Heaven Help Us about a Catholic boys high school in 1960s Brooklyn. I shared many of the same sorts of friendships and screw-ups and absurdities at Regis, a Catholic boys school in Manhattan. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed that hard.

The phone rang again as I was getting back into the bed. I managed to actually answer it this time.

"Bennett."

"It's three o'clock. Do you know where your children are?" a voice said.

That sat me straight the hell up.

"What?" I said.

"Dad?" Ricky said a moment later. "Dad, I'm sorry."

At the sound of Ricky's scared voice, I shot out of bed as if I'd been Tasered. A bunch of books and a radio flew off a shelf as I crashed my shoulder into it, blundering around in the dark.

Was this a dream? I thought, staring at the moonlit window in shock. No. It was a nightmare. I could hear the phone being taken from Ricky.

"Who the fuck is this?"

"You know who this is," the voice said. "And you know what you have to do. Lawrence taught me. Now I'm going to teach you."

Apt!

"Carl," I said. "Please, Carl. I'll do anything you want. Don't hurt my son."

"Come down to the beach due east of your house, Bennett. No cops, no gun. You have three minutes before I cut his throat. Three minutes before you'll be down on your knees, trying to get his blood out of the sand."

"I'm coming, I'm coming!"

I dropped the phone, trying to think. What could I do? The son of a bitch sounded absolutely fucking insane, and he had Ricky. I pulled on my shorts, looked for a shirt, then stopped looking. There was no time.

"Mike? What is it? What's going on?" Mary Catherine called after me as I banged open the front door.

I decided I couldn't tell her. Apt had said just me. He sounded way too crazy to mess with.

"Nothing, Mary. Go back to bed," I hissed.

"What do you mean nothing?" she said, coming out after me. "It's three in the God-loving morning! Where are you going?"

I didn't need this shit. Not now. She started following me. I didn't have time to explain. How could I stop her?

"Do I have to say it? I'm going to meet Emily, okay? Are you happy now?"

Mary stopped dead-still on the porch steps. It killed me to hurt her like this, but I didn't have a choice.

"How could you?" she said very quietly as I started to run.

"Just get back in the house!" I yelled.

Please, God, I said as I sprinted. Please, please, please, let my boy be okay.

Calm, calm. I can handle this, I thought, trying to relax myself as I huffed. I could talk to Apt. Get him to release Ricky. God had given me that gift, the power to talk to folks, to calm them down, especially people who were hurt in some way. People with sick minds.

I'd negotiate for Ricky whatever it was Apt wanted. It was what I did. I had no choice.

Tears in my eyes, my lungs on fire, I crossed over the concrete path of the boardwalk onto the dark sand. I spotted a quarter moon out over the water. On the horizon were red lights, tiny ship lights, so far away.

I was panicking, thinking I'd come to the wrong place. Then I spotted some movement by the lifeguard chair where Mary and I had made out.

Oh, my God! It was them. There was a man standing next to Ricky. He had a Mohawk and was wearing an army jacket and aviator sunglasses. Not only that, but he was holding a knife to Ricky's throat!

I couldn't really tell if it was Apt. He was just a crazy man. A crazy, evil man with my eleven-year-old son's life in his hands. Ricky was actually taped to the chair, I realized. Black electrical tape crisscrossed over his arms and legs, over his neck.

"I'm here," I said, falling to my knees about twenty feet away. My whole body was covered in sweat. "You win, Carl. Let's talk, okay?"

Apt cocked his head at me, his mouth tight and angry.

"Get up, Bennett! Get up, tough guy. Mr. Badass. Stand up like a man!" he said.

I slowly stood. "We can work this out, Carl," I said.

"Oh, we're gonna work this out, all right," he said. "What are you waiting for, Bennett? Come and get me!"

I stood there frozen.

That's when I noticed he had a baseball bat in his other hand. Ricky screamed as Apt turned and hit him in the back with it.

"You want me? Then come and get me!" he screamed.

I ran at him. It wasn't a conscious decision. Some force sent me hurtling forward through the darkness, my feet flying, my toes digging, kicking back sand. Both of my feet were off the ground when I dove at him. I don't think he expected me to reach him from so far away. I know I didn't. I saw shock in his face before I plowed into him as hard as I could, sending the bat flying.

We both scrambled back up. I got up first and swung as hard as I could at his face. It was a good right. It felt the way it does when you've swung a golf club perfectly, two hundred yards pin straight down a fairway.

It would have probably ended things right then and there, but my swing was too high, and I heard my pinkie snap as I punched him in his thick-skulled forehead. I screamed as I hit him with my broken right hand again. I made contact with his glasses and nose this time. He screamed as I felt something squish.

I really thought I had him again, but then he was on me like some kind of wild animal, shrieking as he thumbed at my eyes and grabbed my face. His hands were like steel. He got his fingers deep into the muscles of my cheeks. It felt like he was tearing my jawbone off as he pushed me back.

A second later, as I was about to try another swing, Apt slammed into me, and I felt something punch quickly into my right side.

I looked down. There was a knife in me. I stared down at the steel blade, embedded through the waistband of my shorts just above my right hip, as blood began to pour out.

I fell to my knees in the sand again. My whole body began to tingle painfully. I felt a stinging like pins-and-needles, only sharper, like a low-level electric current was running through me.

I had trouble thinking, trouble seeing. The surf was crashing behind me. I knelt there, afraid to touch the knife, beginning to shake as I bled.

Before I could form even the semblance of a thought, Apt kicked me in the side of the head. He was wearing steel-toed combat boots, and I immediately went down, my skull ringing.

"That's all!" he screamed as he reared back and kicked me full in my unprotected balls.

I threw up then. I was leaking from every orifice. Pain was arriving from all points at once.

I don't know how I got to my feet, but I did. I started running down the beach. I was the one he wanted, and I wanted him to follow me. I needed to get this fucking maniac as far away from my son as possible.

I didn't make it twenty feet before I was tackled from behind. I screamed. The knife had opened me up even deeper as I landed. It was in deep, the blade now scraping on bone.

"This all you got?" Apt said, turning me over and pinning my shoulders with his knees.

"You know what I'm going to do now?" he said. He went into his pocket and brought out something orange-tinged and gleaming.

No. Please, no, I thought. It was a pair of brass knuckles.

I went out when he hit me in the side of my face. When I came out of it, the bone near my eye didn't feel right. The eye itself felt like it was hanging wrong.

"This is what Lawrence wanted. Not for me to shoot you. Not for me to knife you, but for me to beat you to death. He wanted you to feel it, he said. What he wanted was for a hero, a truly good person, to feel what it felt like to be him, to be on the bottom, to be nothing. So don't blame me, Bennett. Remember, I'm just the errand boy."