James Patterson - Step On A Crack

“Please,” Mary said with a wink. “Father Seamus did most of it. Wait, I hear the children. Take that tray out. I poured the hot chocolate, and your coffee is there on the island.”

I did as I was told and headed back to the living room. I thought everyone would be tearing into the gifts like wolves on a heifer by this point, but they were just standing there. What was up?

“You didn’t have to wait for me, guys,” I said. “Merry Christmas. Let the wrapping paper fly!”

“Well, Dad,” Brian started. “We had a kids’ meeting and…”

“What Brian is trying to say,” Julia said, “is that we decided that we don’t want to open our gifts until we see Mom. We know you have to go back to work, but we’re willing to wait until you get home so we can all go over and see Mom together.”

I stepped over and wrapped as many of my kids into my arms as I could.

“Game over,” I said, closing my eyes tight in the center of the scrum. “You guys are the best kids who ever lived.”

After I ate my egg pancakes, I reluctantly hopped in the shower and got changed. The last thing I saw after I hugged my way to the front door of my apartment was Mary Catherine charging the video camera battery. How I was ever going to repay this girl, I couldn’t begin to fathom.

I almost knocked down Seamus, who’d gone home early to shower and change, as he stepped out of the elevator. He was dressed all in black, with his Roman collar tight at the neck. Damn if he didn’t look holy and pious and very nice.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “Off to work, are we? That’s a fine, fine job you have for yourself there. Real conducive to family life, it is.”

“Oh, ’tis, ’tis,” I said in my grandfather’s brogue.

Right. As if I wanted to go to work. I almost laughed after I took a breath. It wouldn’t have been a holiday without my grandfather busting my chops about something.

“Hey, thanks for what you did for the kids, you nasty old bat,” I said with a smile. I stopped the door as it started to slide closed. “Oh, and bah humbug to you, too.”

INSIDE THE semidarkened cathedral, Eugena Humphrey woke on a hard wooden pew. She sat up, rubbing the cold out of her arms. She widened her eyes reluctantly and let out a breath of disappointment as she eyed the cathedral’s all-too-familiar stark stone. Finally, she turned her head toward the votive candles that had given her a sense of peace and hope over the last forty-eight hours.

The rows of golden light were gone, she saw immediately. Every flame completely snuffed out.

She’d had some pretty bad Christmases before, she thought, closing her eyes again. But this was worse than getting regifted.

Though she knew it would be painful, she couldn’t help thinking about what she would have been doing back home at this very moment.

She could almost see her husband, Mitchell, coming into the bedroom of her cozy penthouse apartment above Wilshire Avenue with a heaping breakfast tray just for the two of them. Because of the occasion, the chef and nutritionist would have the day off, and Mitch’s diet be damned. Blueberry pancakes, apple-smoked sausage, pecan bacon, oversized mugs of Kona coffee. After they ate heartily, they’d do their exchange . Because they had unlimited resources, it had come to pass over the years that even very expensive gifts, such as diamonds and new cars, had become-impossible to believe as it was-well, boring. She and Mitchell had come up with a new strategy that had proved to be joyful and meaningful for them both. They were each allowed to spend up to one hundred dollars, and the idea was to purchase the most beautiful or meaningful objects they could find.

It stressed simplicity. Got them back down to the basics. Plus, it was just fun.

One year, he had bought her a dozen perfect red roses. The effect was to make her really look at the flowers. Actually see their elegance and richness and fleeting beauty in a way that she hadn’t since she had received her first bouquet.

This year, she’d gotten him a twenty-one-dollar watch she’d found at a pharmacy she’d done some stealth shopping in. It was a retro design. Quite simple. A circular white face with regular black numerals. She thought that it was simple in an eternal way, though. The kind of watch God might wear if he needed to, and it seemed to her, at least in a profoundly understated way, to represent the preciousness of time, of life, of love with someone like Mitchell.

Eugena opened her eyes as something hard speared into the back of her neck.

“Hey, lucky you, Eugena. Santa got you a cheeseburger this year,” Little John said as he dropped a greasy paper-wrapped bundle in her lap.

Maybe the other hijackers were doing this for money, but that son of a bitch, Eugena thought, glaring at the back of the gunman’s hood, got off on inflicting pain. He was the one who had walked up and killed John Rooney in cold blood.

An overwhelming sense of despair threatened to overtake her.

Who was she kidding? How in the name of God could she take another hour of this? Another minute?

She moved her “Christmas breakfast” to the bench beside her and tried to start up her yoga again to calm herself down, lift her spirits. A growl came out of her with the first exhale.

No! she thought, searching around hatefully for the gunman. Enough damn tolerance. It was time to get pissed off.

But didn’t other people feel this way all the time? came an errant thought. Cold, angry, depressed, dirty, in need of just about everything. So many around the world suffered so much harder on a day-to-day basis. Who was she to complain?

Even if she was a celebrity, she was a goddamn person, too! And one who wasn’t going to take it anymore.

There’s no use talking to these evil bastards, Eugena could see now. No way to resolve this thing peacefully. She sat up, clenching and unclenching her fists. She finally decided that if she got the opportunity, she was going to fight for her life.

ACROSS THE AISLE from Eugena, Charlie Conlan checked his watch, then checked it again. He looked up as the skinny hijacker who liked Mercedes Freer came strolling past, doing his rounds.

Conlan turned and saw a lone hijacker sitting on the rear rail. He watched as the punk put his shotgun in his lap and took something out of the pocket of his robe. It was a jeweled cell phone he’d grabbed from one of the celebrities. Was he making a call? Who would he be calling now?

No, Conlan realized as the hijacker stared at the screen and started pressing buttons with his thumbs. He was playing a video game.

Conlan coughed twice. His signal. Todd Snow at the front pew sat up and shot him a look. Conlan nodded as Mercedes, sitting at the end of one of the middle pews, tugged the passing hijacker’s robe.

Let’s roll.

When the hijacker turned, Snow bolted over the front pew, hopped silently over the rail, and disappeared under the skirt of the altar.

Conlan swiveled his head to see if the hijacker at the rear had noticed. Nope, still into his game.

Conlan could hear Mercedes chatting up the other punk.

“I’m going a little crazy,” Mercedes hissed. “C’mon, you and me. I’m serious. Give me a kiss at least.”

The hijacker’s Adam’s apple bulged. He glanced back at his partner, then leaned down and started tongue kissing the pop singer through his mask. His hands were all over her chest.

“Not here in front of everybody. Behind the altar,” Mercedes whispered breathlessly.

The hijacker squinted back at his partner.

“What? I’m not worth it?” Mercedes said. She walked her fingers down the gunman’s robe. Stopped right above his crotch. “Believe me, I’m worth it.”