James Patterson - The Quickie

I couldn't stop staring at the mattress. Or remembering the attempted rape arrest on Victor's rap sheet.

Should I just grab for Scott's gun? I wondered. How many rounds were left? Four? Double-tap Victor, go for a head shot on the behemoth, then get out the same door I came in.

"What's this?" Victor said, picking up Scott's.38 before I could.

I almost panicked. I had an open mike, and I couldn't let the team hear about the gun. I thought quickly. "That looks like a code red," I said casually.

"What do you mean, 'code red'?" he asked.

"That. The gun you pulled and have pointed at me. That looks like a code red !" I said in a loud voice, hoping my mike had picked me up.

My knees stung as Victor suddenly threw me to the floor.

"Shut up, you bitch! Who are you to come into my place, shouting your head off at me?" he yelled.

" Coño ! Don't you see?" the bouncer behind me said. "That's a cop gun. She's a fucking lady cop. And Pedro already sold to her!"

"Shut up, you useless hump, and let me think!" Victor screamed.

My face went numb as the younger Ordonez suddenly pointed the gun at me. I stared into the black barrel. Instead of seeing my entire life, everything that had happened since I'd decided to be with Scott flashed before my eyes. In high-definition clarity, I saw every misstep that had led me from two nights before to here and now.

Wait a second, I thought. Where are the troops? I looked at the thick walls. These damn basements! I must have been in a radio blind spot.

"Code red!" I screamed as I scrambled for the door.

The bouncer was surprisingly quick for a mountain. I made it only halfway before he grabbed my ankle and almost tore off my entire left foot.

Then there was a scream – and the door exploded!

Pounding dance music instantly flooded the room. My eyes – tearing in the dust and splinters – were greeted with hands-down the most satisfying sight of my life to that point.

My partner, Mike, shotgun to his shoulder, was riding the knocked-down door into the room like it was a surfboard.

MIKE CRUSHED THE BOUNCER'S ugly face with a shotgun butt to the nose before the monster could even form his first curse word.

"Where's Victor?" Mike then said, tossing me my Glock and cuffs. "We lost your transmission outside. Trahan's informant told us Victor brought you in here."

"I don't know where he went, Mike," I said, searching behind me. "He was right here a second ago."

"Cuff that one to something and give me some backup," Mike said. He leveled his shotgun toward the dark passageway where the mattress lay and then rushed toward it.

I cuffed the unconscious bouncer to one of the boiler's pipes. His glasses were shattered and his leaking face was now the color of his suit. Just a little cop humor, I felt like telling him as I ran into the corridor after my partner.

I heard the sound of a door slamming ahead of me.

Where the hell had Mike and Ordonez gone? I banged my shin on some unseen stairs and jogged up them, my Glock leading the way.

The door I finally found, pretty much with my face, exited onto a field with high weeds and garbage and broken glass. Now where was I?

I blinked in the sudden, blinding daylight. I saw Mike already halfway across the abandoned lot. A half block in front of him, a figure in a white suit was sprinting along 140th Street. It was either Victor Ordonez or an ice-cream man training for the marathon.

I began closing the distance as Mike chased Victor east for two blocks. At the end of the third intersection, they went under an el and in through the gate of a junkyard. Would Ordonez get away? I guess I hoped so. If it were up to me, he could keep running until he got back to Santo Domingo.

Unfortunately, Mike kept up his pursuit, rushing hell-bent for glory around an obstacle course of crushed boxes and piled metal. All Ordonez had to do was wait and fire, and Mike would be toast. But it didn't happen that way.

Approaching a rusted tin wall at the rear of the junkyard, I heard a loud metal screech. Then a metal-on-metal boom. What the hell was that ?

Half a block away in the farthest corner of the yard, I spotted Ordonez scrambling off the forklift he'd just crashed into the fence.

He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled out of sight through a crack that he'd made in the fence.

A second or two later, Mike appeared from a wall of pipes and dove through the same hole in the fence, still chasing Ordonez.

When I finally got there, huffing and puffing, I could see trains. Lots of trains. Ordonez had fled from a junkyard into a subway rail yard.

And I forgot to fill my MetroCard, I thought as I crawled through the fence, keeping my eyes peeled for the deadly third rail.

I WAS RUNNING through a narrow space between two parked number 4 trains, searching frantically for Mike and Ordonez, when I heard a sharp crack. Shit! The window above my head shattered. "Hey, white girl! Catch !"

I turned in time to watch Victor Ordonez, who was leaning out the conductor's window two cars away, fire again. I felt something zip past my ear and then heard a sound like thin ice breaking.

I started emptying my Glock in Victor's direction.

I ejected the empty clip before I realized something warm was running down my neck. My legs dematerialized suddenly, and I found myself lying on gravel. There was something wrong with the side of my face.

God, I'd been hit! I felt dizzy. Like I was sliding out of myself, watching myself from a distance.

Don't go into shock, Lauren. Move! Do something! Right now! I scrambled upright and began retreating as fast as my shaky legs would carry me. I pressed the sleeve of my jacket to my head where it was bleeding.

I fell to my knees one more time and had to pick myself up again before I reached the end of the train.

I spotted an open door at the end of the last car. I climbed up, pulled myself inside on my stomach, and rolled under some seats.

That's when the shooting really got started! Two or three cars away, a shotgun blasted three times in quick succession. Then it went off again almost on top of me, and the window glass of the car I was in shattered.

I was lying there, curled up on the filthy floor, bleeding and shivering, when I suddenly heard Ordonez scream in the next car. I couldn't see him from where I lay, but I could hear him as clearly as if he were in the same room.

"Okay! Okay! I give up!" Victor Ordonez yelled at somebody.

There was the sound of something heavy dropping against the floor. Scott's gun?

"I want my lawyer," Ordonez said.

For a second, everything was quiet. Too quiet. What was happening now?

Then a shotgun was jacked.

Click-clack.

"Only thing you're going to need, you cop-killing piece of shit," I heard Mike say, "is an undertaker."

No! I remember thinking. Dear God, Mike. What are you doing? No!

I spun onto my stomach, struggled to stand, my mouth gaping to shout at Mike.

"Cop killer?" I heard Ordonez say with confusion in his voice.

Then the shotgun exploded one last time.

I MUST HAVE PASSED OUT for a little while, because the next thing I heard were the cries of somebody asking, " Where the fuck are you ?" The words were coming out of Mike's radio, which lay beside my head. Mike was on the subway car floor, cradling me in his lap.

"You're going to be all right, Lauren," Mike said. He had a smile on his face, and there were tears in his eyes. "Your head got nicked. Flesh wound. Honest to God. You're going to be fine."

"I'm not dying?" I asked Mike.