James Patterson - Run For Your Life

The Teacher took a seat, with the bouquet in his lap. His hand edged inside his jacket to the small of his back, where both of his pistols were holstered inside his belt. He chose the.22 Colt and eased it around to his front.

Less than five minutes later, a musical ding signaled an arriving elevator, and one of the gleaming brass doors opened. The Teacher stood as five stewardesses stepped out, all with Air France logos on their knotted blue silk scarves. They could have been models. Or maybe actresses from the kind of movies the hotel made you pay extra for.

The sight of them made him feel like his stomach was filled with helium. He was dizzy at the thought of what he was about to pull.

Martine Broussard was in the lead. Six feet tall, aggressively beautiful, with long hair trailing behind her like blond satin as she strode, preening, out onto the marble as if it were a Victoria’s Secret runway.

The Teacher stood and rushed to meet her, thrusting the flowers forward.

“Martine! Here, I got these for your birthday!”

The statuesque blonde stopped, eyeing the bouquet in confusion.

“My birthday?” she said, pronouncing it ‘birzday.’ “What are you talking about? That is not for three months more.” Her gaze shifted to the Teacher’s face. “Do I know you, monsieur?” But a flirtatious look came into her eyes. Same as the desk clerk, she liked what she saw.

The Teacher held his breath while his hand snaked the.22, barrel-first, into the bouquet. Everything was suddenly quieter, slower, incredibly peaceful. Had he ever felt this untroubled? This free? He felt like a fetus floating weightlessly in its mother’s womb.

Flower petals exploded into the air as he squeezed the pistol’s trigger. The bullet hit her just below her left eye. She dropped to the marble floor without even a twitch, blood pouring down her face.

“Did I just say your birthday?” the Teacher growled. “I’m sorry. I meant your funeral.” He fired twice more into her exquisite bosom.

The other flight attendants stampeded away, screaming. He tossed the flowers onto Martine’s corpse, reholstered the.22, and backed toward the lobby door.

The hotel doorman, at his post outside, actually held the door open as the Teacher strode through it. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the muffled shots, but now he paused and stared in at the panicked, screaming Frenchwomen.

“Call the cops quick!” the Teacher yelled at him. “Some nutcase in there has a gun.”

The doorman took off running into the building. The Teacher walked fast but smoothly, covering ground but not attracting attention. As he passed the fountain outside the hotel, he took the Treo from the pocket of his jeans and brought up his list.

“Air France Stewardess” disappeared with a peppy little press of his thumb.

Then, out of nowhere, he heard the shriek of brakes behind him. Car doors thunked open, along with the unmistakable static burst of police radio chatter.

Don’t even turn around, he told himself. Keep moving. Blend with the crowd. No way could the cops have a description of him yet.

“That’s him!” somebody screamed.

The Teacher tossed a quick glance over his shoulder. Across the plaza, the hotel doorman was pointing directly at him. The two uniformed NYPD cops climbing out of their radio car drew their guns.

Damn! He’d figured the doorman, like all the others, would be too stunned to move that fast. Okay, no biggie. Escape Plan Two coming right up – the Rockefeller Center subway entrance at the southern end of the block. He broke into a sprint.

Suddenly, from everywhere at once, dozens of police vehicles were converging, cutting off both ends of the street. Off to his right, a heavy Emergency Service Unit truck slammed, fishtailing, up onto the sidewalk. A SWAT cop jumped out and dropped to one knee, throwing his M16 to his shoulder.

Son of a bitch! It was like they were appearing out of thin air. Then he suddenly realized it was because of 9/11. He’d never thought about how much that had changed cop response.

He forced his pumping legs to their maximum speed and did the only thing he could – dove headfirst right into the pit of the subway stairs.

Luck was with him. Instead of landing on the concrete stairs, he collided with an elderly couple who were coming up. His momentum flattened them to a backward sprawl, and he used them like a human toboggan to ride to the bottom. He got up running, grinding his boots into their wailing, pathetically thrashing bodies as he took off. He rounded a corner, hopped a turnstile, and sprinted across a platform.

The Rockefeller Center station, one of the largest in the entire subway system, was a virtual catacomb of passageways and exits. It had four tracks, two island platforms, and more than fourteen exits to the street. As a special bonus, there were also entryways into the Rockefeller Center concourse, an underground maze lined with shops that stretched for blocks in every direction.

As he ran, the Teacher yanked his T-shirt out of his jeans to cover his pistols, then ripped off his Tucci jacket and tossed it by one of the exits. There was no worry about leaving a trail – someone would grab it and be gone within seconds. He hit another flight of stairs and lunged down them four at a time, racing toward the metallic screech of an approaching V train.

He got to the second car just as the doors bonged open. Yes! he thought, jumping on.

But a sudden thunder of footfalls down the stairwell he’d just exited made his head swivel.

“Stop that train!” he heard a cop yelling. More voices joined in. “Yo! Yo! Driver, stop! Stop!”

Bing bong. The subway’s driver, sitting in his compartment at the front of the train, closed the doors as if absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. You had to love this goddam city. Everybody was insane. The train pulled forward, humming.

The Teacher wiped sweat from his eyes and looked at the passengers in the half-full car. They all had their heads buried in a newspaper or a paperback. Never get involved. Damn right. He turned to stare at the tunnel lights that flashed outside the windows as the subway whizzed past, constellations of blue shooting stars.

Unbelievable – he was free again. Unstoppable! The hand of Destiny itself really was guiding him. There was simply no other explanation.

Just as he’d decided that, the door at the rear end of the car rattled opened. Two transit cops stood there, breathing heavily. One was a heavyset, older white man, the other a black female so young she had to be a rookie. Both had their hands on the butts of their Glocks, but the weapons were still undrawn.

“Freeze!” the old flatfoot yelled, but he still didn’t draw. What the hell was he waiting for? An engraved invite?

It took the Teacher less than a second to draw both of his own guns simultaneously from the small of his back, the.22 in his right hand and the.45 in his left.

Now the passengers paid attention to him. Wide-eyed, some shrieking, they flattened themselves down onto the seats or dove to the floor.

“Listen to me,” the Teacher yelled across the car. “I like cops, I swear. I’ve got no beef with you, and I don’t want to hurt you. Let me go. That’s all I want.”

The train was coming into the 51st and Lex station. Maybe the driver finally realized that something was up, because it made a sudden lurch. Thrown off balance, the two uniforms reacted by finally going for their Glocks.

“I said no, damn it!” the Teacher roared. Left-handed, with the.45, he shot the male officer in the knee, then the groin, and then the head. At the same time, with his right hand, he emptied the last four rounds of the.22 into the space just above the female cop’s Sam Browne belt. Had to get around those pesky Kevlar vests.