James Patterson - Cat & Mouse

“Then he’s going to Grand Central,” I told Groza. “I’m sure of it. This is the way he wants it. In a train station!” Another cellar, a glorious one that went on for city blocks. The cellar of cellars.

Gary Soneji was already out of the bus and running on Forty-second street. He was headed toward Grand Central Station, headed toward home. He was still carrying the baby in one arm, swinging it loosely, showing us how little he cared about the child’s life.

Goddamn him to hell. He was on the homestretch, and only he knew what that meant.

I MADE MY way down the crowded stone-and-mortar passageway from Forty-second Street. It emptied into an even busier Grand Central Station. Thousands of already harried commuters were arriving for work in the midtown area. They had no idea how truly bad their day was about to become.

Grand Central is the New York end for the New York Central, the New York, New Haven, and Hartford trains, and a few others. And for three IRT subway lines. Lexington Avenue, Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle, and Queens. The terminal covers three blocks between Forty-second and Forty-fifth Streets. Forty-one tracks are on the upper level and twenty-six on the lower, which narrows to a single four-track line to Ninety-sixth Street.

The lower level is a huge labyrinth, one of the largest anywhere in the world.

Gary ’s cellar.

I continued to push against the densely packed rush-hour crowd. I made it through a waiting room, then emerged into the cavernous and spectacular main concourse. Construction work was in progress everywhere. Giant cloth posters for Pan Am Airlines and American Express and Nike sneakers hung down over the walls. The gates to dozens of tracks were visible from where I stood.

Detective Groza caught up with me in the concourse. We were both running on adrenaline. “He’s still got the baby.” he huffed. “Somebody spotted him running down to the next level.”

Leading a merry chase, right? Gary Soneji was heading to the cellar. That wouldn’t be good for the thousands of people crowding inside the building. He had a bomb, and maybe more than one.

I led Groza down more steep stairs, under a lit sign that said OYSTER BAR ON THIS LEVEL. The entire station was still under massive construction and renovation, which only added to the confusion. We pushed past crowded bakeries and delis. Plenty to eat here while you waited for your train, or possibly to be blown up. I spotted a Hoffritz cutlery shop up ahead. Maybe Hoffritz was where Soneji had purchased the knife he’d used in Penn Station.

Detective Groza and I reached the next level. We entered a spacious arcade, surrounded by more railway-track doorways. Signs pointed the way to the subways, to the Times Square Shuttle.

Groza had a two-way cupped near his ear. He was getting up-to-the-second reports from around the station. “He’s down in the tunnels. We’re close,” he told me.

Groza and I raced down another steep deck of stone steps. We ran side by side It was unbearably hot down below and we were sweating. The building was vibrating. The gray stone walls and the floor shook beneath our feet. We were in hell now, the only question was, which circle?

I finally saw Gary Soneji up ahead. Then he disappeared again. He still had the baby, or maybe it was just the pink-and-blue blanket puffed in his arms.

He was back in sight. Then he stopped suddenly. Soneji turned and stared down the tunnel. He wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. I could see it in his eyes.

“Dr. Cross,” he yelled. “You follow directions beautifully.”

SONEJI’S DARK secret still worked, still held true for him: Whatever would make people intensely angry, whatever would make them inconsolably sad, whatever would hurt them-that’s what he did.

Soneji watched Alex Cross approaching. Tall and arrogant black bastard. Are you ready to die, too, Cross?

Right when your life seems so promising. Your young children growing up. And your beautiful new lover.

Because that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to die for what you did to me. You can’t stop it from happening.

Alex Cross kept walking toward him, parading across the concrete train platform. He didn’t look afraid. Cross definitely walked the walk. That was his strength, but it was also his folly.

Soneji felt as if he were floating in space right now. He felt so free, as if nothing could hurt him anywhere. He could be exactly who he wanted to be, act as he wished. He’d spent his life trying to get here.

Alex Cross was getting closer and closer. He called out a question across the train platform. It was always a question with Cross.

“What do you want, Gary? What the hell do you want from us?”

“Shut your hole! What do you think I want?” Soneji shouted back. “You! I finally caught you.”

I HEARD WHAT Soneji said, but it didn’t matter anymore. This thing between us was going down now. I kept coming toward him. One way or the other, this was the end.

I walked down a flight of three or four stone steps. I couldn’t take my eyes off Soneji. I couldn’t. I refused to give up now.

Smoke from the hospital fire was in my lungs. The air in the train tunnel didn’t help. I began to cough.

Could this be the end of Soneji? I almost couldn’t believe it. What the hell did he mean he finally caught me?

“Don’t anybody move. Stop! Not another step!” Soneji yelled. He had a gun. The baby. “I’ll tell you who moves, and who doesn’t. That includes you, Cross. So just stop walking.”

I stopped. No one else moved. It was incredibly quiet on the train platform, deep in the bowels of Grand Central. There were probably twenty people close enough to Soneji to be injured by a bomb.

He held the baby from the bus up high, and that had everybody’s attention. Detectives and uniformed police stood paralyzed in the wide doorways around the train tunnel. We were all helpless, powerless to do anything to stop Soneji. We had to listen to him.

He began to turn in a small, tight, frenzied circle. His body twirled around and around. A strange whirling dervish. He was clutching the infant in one arm, holding her like a doll. I had no idea what had become of the child’s mother.

Soneji almost seemed in a trance. He looked crazy now-maybe he was. “The good Doctor Cross is here,” he yelled down the platform. “How much do you know? How much do you think you know? Let me ask the questions for a change.”

“I don’t know enough, Gary,” I said, keeping my answer as low-key as possible. Not playing to the crowd, his crowd. “I guess you still like an audience.”

“Why yes, I do, Dr. Cross. I love an appreciative crowd. What’s the point of a great performance with no one to see it? I crave the look in all of your eyes, your fear, your hatred.” He continued to turn, to spin as if he were playing a theater-in-the-round. “You’d all like to kill me. You’re all killers, too!” he screeched.

Soneji did another slow spin around, his gun pointed out, the baby cradled in his left arm. The infant wasn’t crying, and that worried me sick. The bomb could be in a pocket of his trousers. It was somewhere. I hoped it wasn’t in the baby’s blanket.

“You’re back there in the cellar? Aren’t you?” I said. At one time I had believed Gary Soneji was schizophrenic. Then I was certain that he wasn’t. Right now, I wasn’t sure of anything.

He gestured with his free arm at the underground caverns. He continued to walk slowly toward the rear of the platform. We couldn’t stop him. “As a kid, this is where I always dreamed I would escape to. Take a big, fast train to Grand Central Station in New York city. Get away clean and free. Escape from everything.”