James Patterson: Run For Your Life

“I do what I can,” I said.

“Well, the FBI is actually going to try to charge me with murder. Of course I killed those people. You let off shots in the direction of my men, crowd or no crowd, you’re getting them back and then some. The Feds want to indict us for staying the fuck alive? Screw that. I came back to fight that nonsense. Point out the little fact that we were in a war zone. Cobalt hired a PR group to rep us. We were going to go on the morning shows and talk circuit. It was all set up.”

He paused to take another sip.

“Didn’t work out?” I tried.

“Well, that was before I came home to my apartment here in the city to drop off my bags and found my brother.”

The psychopath suddenly looked down at the floor. A pinched, sad expression clouded his face. I wouldn’t have believed he had that kind of feeling in him.

“My brother blew his brains out, Mike. They were on the coffee table all over my rug. There was a three-page suicide note on the table. Turns out things had totally turned to shit for him while I was away. He’d had an affair with a stewardess, and his wife, Erica, found out and filed for divorce. The big money, the fancy house – all that stuff was hers, so he was out in the cold. Then came the final blow. He got busted for tossing back a few before a London -to- New York run, and bingo, he lost his job.”

This time, I took a sip of my Bud, trying to mask my confusion.

“At the very end of my brother’s note was a list. It was a list of people who had wronged him, the ones who ‘made him do it,’ as he said.”

Billy Meyer let out a deep breath and made a “there you have it” gesture with his gun-free hand, looking at me as if he’d just explained everything.

I nodded back slowly, trying my best to look as if it all made sense now.

“Standing over my poor brother’s body, I had an epiphany. I’d abandoned him when we were little. I never called him, never wrote, always blew him off. I was a self-centered prick. The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d fucking killed him as sure as if I’d pulled the trigger myself. My first reaction actually was lifting the gun. I wanted to kill myself, too. That’s how messed up I was.”

If only you’d gone with that immediate instinct, I wanted to say. Think long, think wrong.

“That’s when I decided it. Screw defending myself in the indictment. Screw my career, my life, everything. All I ever wanted in life was a mission, and I decided that righting the wrong that had been done to my brother would be my last and final one. I decided to give Tommy a going-away present. Maybe he didn’t have the balls to get back at the people who fucked up his life, but I did. I decided to send out the Gladstone brothers with a bang.”

So we’d been right, I thought. The victims were people who had wronged Thomas Gladstone. Only Gladstone wasn’t the one killing his enemies. It was his brother. We’d gotten the sequence wrong, I realized. It wasn’t a murder spree that ended in a suicide, but a suicide that had inspired a murder spree.

“So all that stuff you wrote about society was bull?”

“I believe most of it, I suppose. But it was mainly just smoke to cover my tracks. There were a lot of people on the list. I needed time. I needed you to think my targets were random. Screw with the enemy’s head: Tactics 101. It was working, too, until you came along and stumbled between me and the last two people left on my brother’s note.”

He gestured with the gun for me to stand.

“Which brings us to why I’m here, Mikey. You got in the way of my taking out Erica’s parents. You’re going to have to make that up to me. Fortunately, I’ve come up with an alternate plan, and you’re going to help. So drink up that beer of kings, pal. Last call. We’re going for a little ride.”

Thank God, was my first thought. If we got out of here, my family would be safe. That was all I wanted.

At gunpoint, he walked me out of the kitchen, back into the living room. But then with his free arm he scooped up Chrissy, still in her Barbie pajamas, off the couch.

“No!” I yelled. I managed to restrain myself from lunging for him, afraid he’d start shooting.

But Eddie screamed, “Get off her!” and jumped from the couch, trying to tackle Meyer. He went flying backward even faster as Meyer kneed him in the chest.

“Get your rug rats under control, Bennett, or I will,” Meyer snarled at me.

“Guys, stay where you are,” I ordered the kids, then turned back to the killer. “Billy, relax. I already said I’d help you. We don’t need to bring her. Besides, she’s sick.”

“Her condition’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t do what I say. That goes for all of you. I see a cop car, this family is going to be short two place settings at breakfast tomorrow.” Holding my squirming little girl under his arm, Meyer gestured me back toward the kitchen with his pistol. “Come on now, Mikey. We’re going down the freight elevator.”

I hesitated for the briefest second as we passed the knives, but then kept walking.

“Wise decision, buddy,” Meyer said, jamming the gun barrel against my ear. “I knew we’d start to grow on each other, me and you.”

We went down the back elevator and came out the side entrance of my building on 95th Street. Not a soul was in sight as I led him to my unmarked Impala. He put me behind the wheel and took Chrissy into the backseat with him.

“She’s not wearing a seat belt, Mikey, so I’d drive carefully if I were you. Go to Broadway and head uptown, and do me a favor. Turn that police band up.”

We rolled uptown to Washington Heights.

“Make a left up here,” he said when we got to 168th.

Over the building tops, I saw the steel lattice tower of the George Washington Bridge.

“Find an on-ramp for the outbound side,” Meyer said in my ear. “We’re going across.”

Why were we heading to Jersey? Not to load up on cheap gas, that was for sure. Was this his escape plan? It was impossible to guess what was going on in that crazy mind.

I managed to make eye contact with Chrissy in the rearview mirror. She looked scared, but she’d settled down, and was holding up more incredibly than I could have imagined. I love you, Daddy, she mouthed. I love you, too, I mouthed back. Don’t worry.

I didn’t know much, but I was certain of one thing as I piloted us carefully onto the bridge. This sick bastard wasn’t going to harm my daughter. No matter what.

When Maeve and I had first brought home our oldest daughter, Juliana, I used to have this terrible recurring nightmare. In it, I’d be feeding Juliana in her high chair, and all of a sudden, she’d start to choke. I’d put my finger in her mouth, give her the Heimlich, but absolutely nothing would work. I’d wake up sweating and gasping, and I’d have to go to her room and hold a mirror to her tiny nose and see it fog with her breath before I could let myself go back to sleep.

Because that, without question, is a parent’s greatest fear. To be helpless, not able to do anything, when his child is facing harm.

I glanced in my rearview mirror at Meyer, sitting next to my daughter. At the heavy, oiled automatic pistol he held loosely in his lap.

My dry throat felt like it was caked with dust as I swallowed. My whole body was covered in a cold sweat. The steering wheel was slick with it, practically slipping out of my hands.

You live long enough, I thought as misery shook through me like a low-voltage shock, even your worst nightmares may come true.

I glanced in the mirror again, and this time I saw a pain-filled light in Chrissy’s eyes. It was the same look she’d gotten when I’d read her The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time. She was starting to really understand how wrong this ride was.