James Patterson - 11th hour

He paused in the doorway and listened to Becky’s breathing. Then he went downstairs to the garage, where he took his leather jacket off a hook and put it on. He took his gun out of a toolbox and tucked it inside his waistband. Then he exited through the rear door and went down the short flight of steps to the backyard.

There was enough moonlight to see by but not enough to be seen. He crossed the grass and cut around the swing set, disappeared through the gap between the two houses that backed up against his yard and faced onto Golden Gate Avenue.

He turned onto the deserted road with the grandiose name, kept his head down, walked a block past shabby Victorian homes, and found Becky’s Camaro where he’d parked it. He opened the car and got in, put his gun under the front seat, then started up the engine.

A moment later, he was heading east on Golden Gate. He wanted to get this job done before Craig Ferguson started his e-mail segment on The Late Late Show, which would be in about an hour.

If everything went as planned, he was pretty sure he could make it.

Will Randall drove through the light-industrial area in the northern part of the Potrero Hill District as if he had an open barrel of beer in the backseat. He kept an eye on the speedometer, came to full stops at traffic lights, was careful not to attract any attention; he wanted to get this over with and go back home.

He stopped for a yellow light at the intersection of Alameda and Potrero. Then he continued on for another block, turned right onto Utah, a quiet road adjacent to the Jewelry Center and during the day used mostly for local traffic.

At night the area was nearly deserted. The lots were empty, and metered parking was open as far as he could see. Will pulled into a spot half a block from Zeus, a club and restaurant that filled a three-story brick warehouse and had the best sound system in San Francisco.

From where he sat, he could see the 101 Freeway to the north, the newly planted trees up the street, a gang of laughing-out-loud kids stumbling off the wide sidewalk, crossing the street behind him, and heading for the black iron delivery doors that were the unmarked entrance to Zeus.

Will forced himself to watch and wait as he sat in his wife’s car, a loaded gun under the seat. He thought about good and evil, that the purpose of evil was to overturn the world of good. How he’d operated for half his life on that principle and that the distinction between the two had been lost since Link’s brain had flamed out on bad drugs.

Will turned up the volume on the police band and listened to the exchanges between radio cars and dispatch, and when enough time had passed and he was sure there was no activity in the northern part of Potrero, he took his. 22 out from under the seat. He screwed the silencer onto the muzzle, stuck the gun into his waistband at his back, and exited the car.

The interior of Zeus sounded like a stack of bricks going around in a clothes dryer. There was noise, flashing lights, a mass of dancing, shifting youth high on their own chemistry and aided and abetted by alcohol, Ecstasy, coke, and whatever new drug had become novel and available.

Will made his way to the bar under a wall that was illuminated by videos of bolts of lightning flashing over an open field. He ordered a drink, paid for it with a ten, and left the change; he took his drink to the edge of the dance floor. Clubs with live bands attracted kids and night-scene lovers of all ages.

Watering holes brought in gazelles and lions. Where kids congregated, drug dealers followed. Will watched and classified the people in the surging crowd, the schoolkids, rogue males, and out-of-towners, and he saw money changing hands near the bar.

As he watched, a dealer who went by the name of Stevie Blow turned and saw Will staring at him. Blow was one of hundreds of drug dealers on Will’s hit list. He wasn’t number one, but he was up there in the top ten.

Will nodded his head; a signal sent, a signal received. His pulse quickened as the dealer made his way toward him through the throbbing gloom.

The tall kid with pink-blond hair falling over his face and wearing threadbare jeans and a glittering T-shirt came over to where Will was standing with his back to the wall. He asked Will if he wanted to get high.

Will didn’t know this kid personally, but he knew a lot about him. His given name was Steven Sargent, but the name Stevie Blow had stuck. Blow was twenty-five, looked younger, and liked to patrol school neighborhoods during the day and clubs, especially Zeus, at night.

Will said that he wanted to buy some coke, and Blow said sure, and then he wanted to tell Will about his own brand of “bath salts.” This drug was highly addictive; it contained MDPV, a chemical that caused intense hallucinations and sometimes bad trips that made the user violent or even suicidal. Bath salts were generally available but Blow was pushing his own blend, Peach Bliss.

He shouted into Will’s ear, “I guaran-damn-tee you, Peach is a smooth high. Only twenty bucks for a trial sample.”

Stevie reached his hand into his back pocket and Will said, “Not here.”

Some Other Mother was saying thank you, waving off an encore, taking in the storm of applause, and then leaving the stage. The crowd went crazy again as the favorite house DJ took his place in the booth.

Will turned his head once to make sure Blow was behind him, then moved along the fringes of the crowd, looped around to the back, pushed the doors open, and entered the kitchen.

The kitchen was in chaos. Orders were shouted, cooking oil sizzled, pans clashed against the burners, dishes clattered in the large sinks. The rear doors were propped open to vent the hot air outside.

No one looked at them as Will and Blow made a swift exit through the kitchen and out to San Bruno Avenue. There was a gap in a fence leading to an area just under the freeway overpass, where it was dark and noisy.

Blow was saying, “Man, you’re too paranoid. I could sell you this shit inside a police station and there’s nothing anyone could do about it.”

“I like privacy,” Will said.

“To each his own,” said Stevie Blow. “Anyway, you’re gonna love this stuff.”

He was sorting out his packets when Will took his gun from his waistband. He held the gun by the grip, stuck the barrel into an ordinary plastic shopping bag, a plastic sleeve that would contain the shell casings and GSR.

Will aimed and then fired twice.

The sound was muffled by the suppressor; two little puffs, like popcorn kernels exploding in an air popper.

Stevie Blow dropped his merchandise, flattened his palms to his chest. He looked at the blood on his hands, then brought his eyes to Will. He said, “Whaaa?”

“You’re guilty and you’re dead, that’s what. I feel bad for your parents, though. I’m sorry for them.”

Will put a shot into Stevie’s forehead, watched him fall, then dragged the body over to the wall and propped it in a sitting position between piles of bagged garbage.

As he headed toward his wife’s car, Will felt no sadness for Stevie Blow. He was thinking about his own boy, how in twenty minutes he’d be turning off Link’s TV and then getting into bed beside his dear wife.

He wasn’t going to lose any sleep tonight.

I heard a phone ringing from far, far away, then someone was shaking my arm, saying, “Lindsay, wake up.”

I was jerked out of a deep well of sleep.

“What’s up?”

I was in the passenger seat of the unmarked car two hundred yards from Will Randall’s yellow house. The house was dark and Randall’s SUV was still in his driveway.