Харлан Кобен - Win

I stay still. I try to clear some of the cobwebs, but it really isn’t happening. I feel lost, adrift.

Then the big man on top of me surprises me with a kidney punch.

The blow lands like an explosion, a bomb going off, shards of hot razors slicing through my internal organs. The pain paralyzes me for a moment. Every part of me hurts, wants to cover up and find relief.

The big man hops off me and lets me writhe in pain. I roll up against the divider between the front seats and the back. I look back toward my two abductors.

When they both take off their ski masks, two thoughts — both bad — hit me at once.

First, if they are letting me see their faces, they don’t plan on letting me live.

Second — no doubt because I can see the resemblance — these are the brothers of Teddy “Big T” Lyons.

I try to stay put because every move is agony. I try not to breathe because, well, the same. I close my eyes and hope they think I’ve passed out. There is nothing to be done right now. What I need most is time. I need time without suffering further injury so as to recover enough to counter.

What that counter might be, I have no idea.

“End this,” the larger brother, the one who’d straddled my back, tells his well-trained sibling with the gun.

The smaller brother nods and aims his gun at my head.

“Wait,” I say.

“No.”

I flash back to another time, when Myron was in the back of a van, similar to this, when he too asked someone assaulting him to wait. That man had also said no. I, however, was following them in a car and listening in via Myron’s phone. When I heard that, when I heard the perpetrator say no and thus realized that Myron would not be able to talk his way out of it, I hit the accelerator and smashed my car into the back of the van.

Odd what memories come to you under duress.

“A million dollars for both of you,” I blurt out.

That makes them pause.

The larger brother says in a semi-whine, “You hurt our brother.”

“And he hurt my sister,” I reply.

They share a quick glance. I am lying, of course, unless you are one of those Kumbaya types who believe that in a larger sense, we humans are all brothers and sisters. But my lie, like my million-dollars offer, makes them hesitate. That’s all I want right now. To buy time.

It’s the only option.

The larger brother says, “Sharyn’s your sister?”

“No, Bobby,” the gunman says with a sigh.

“She’s in the hospital,” I say. “Your brother has hurt a lot of women.”

“Bullshit. They’re just lying bitches.”

Gun Brother says, “Bobby...”

“No, man, before he dies, he should know. It’s bullshit. All these bitches, they come on to Teddy. He’s a good-looking guy. They want to close the deal with him, you know what I’m saying? Lock him down, get married. But Teddy, he is — or he was before you blindsided him like a chickenshit — he’s a player with the ladies. He doesn’t want to settle down. When the bitches don’t get the ring, suddenly they’re all complaining about him. How come they don’t complain right up front? How come they go out with him voluntarily?”

“I didn’t blindside him,” I say.

“What?”

“You said that I — and I quote — ‘blindsided him like a chickenshit.’ I didn’t. We went man-to-man. And he lost.”

Big Bobby makes a scoffing sound. “Yeah, right. Look at you.”

“We could settle it that way,” I say.

“What?”

“We stop this van somewhere private. You know I’m unarmed. You and I go at it, Bobby. If I win, I go free. If you win, well, I die.”

Muscled Bobby turns to Gun Brother. “Trey?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Trey. Let me rip his head off and shit down his neck.”

Trey’s eyes stay on mine. He isn’t fooled. He knows what I am. “No.”

“Then how about that million dollars?” Bobby asks.

My vision is still blurry. I am dizzy and hurting. I am no better off than I was a few seconds ago.

“He’s lying to us, Bobby. The million dollars isn’t real.”

“But—”

“He can’t let us live,” Trey says, “just as we can’t let him live. Once he’s free, he will hunt us down. Forget the police — we would have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulder for him. He’ll come after us, with all his resources.”

“We can still try to get the money, can’t we? Let him wire or some shit. Then we shoot him in the head?”

When Trey shakes his head, I realize that I am out of time and options.

“This was all decided the moment we grabbed him, Bobby. It’s us or him.”

Trey is, of course, correct. There is no way we can let the other side live. It is too much of an unknown. I will never trust that they won’t come back for me. The same, Trey has realized, is true for them.

Someone has to die here.

We cross the George Washington Bridge and are now picking up speed where Route 80 meets up with Route 95.

I truly wish I had a better plan, something less guttural and primitive and ugly. The odds of this working are, I admit, slim, but I am seconds from death.

It’s now or never.

I slump my shoulders as though defeated.

“Then let me just confess this to you,” I say.

They relax just the slightest bit. I don’t know whether that will help. But at this stage I have but one option.

If I go for Bobby, Trey will shoot me.

If I go for Trey, Trey will shoot me.

If I surprise them and go for the driver, I just may have a chance.

Out of nowhere, I let loose a bloodcurdling scream. It sends hot jolts of agony all through my skull.

I don’t care.

They both, as I anticipated, startle back, expecting me to jump toward them.

But I don’t.

I spin toward the driver.

My plan is crude and base and not very good. I am going to get hurt badly no matter what. I could bring out the broken-eggs-omelet metaphor again, but really, is there a point?

Trey still has the gun. It hasn’t magically vanished. He’s startled, yes, but he recovers fast. He pulls the trigger.

My hope is that the suddenness of my move will throw off his aim.

It does. But not enough.

The bullet hits me in the upper back below the shoulder.

I don’t stop my spin. My momentum carries me through. I keep a thin razor blade in the cuff of my right sleeve. Bobby didn’t notice it as he searched me. Almost no one does. It shoots out now at the wrist and into my palm. I have the razor blade in my right hand, and while the driver is going at seventy-one miles per hour — yes, I see the numbers lit up large on the dashboard — I slice his throat to the point of near decapitation.

The van lurches hard to the side. Blood sprays from his artery, coating the inside of the windshield. I feel the warm contents of his neck — tissue, cartilage, more blood — empty out onto my hand. My left arm snakes through his seat belt harness so I can be somewhat braced for the upcoming collision.

I hear the gun go off again.

This bullet only grazes my shoulder before shattering the windshield. I grab the steering wheel and spin it. The van jerks off the road and teeters onto two wheels.

I close my eyes and hold on as the van flips, then flips again, then crashes hard into a pole.

And then, for me, there is only darkness.

All superheroes have an origin story. All people do, when you think about it. So here is the abridged version of mine.

I grew up in privilege. You know that already. What you may consider relevant is that every human being is snap-judged by their looks. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering observation and no, I’m not comparing or saying I had it worse than others. That would be what we call a “false equivalency.” But the fact is, many people detest me on sight. They see the towheaded blond locks, the ruddy complexion, the porcelain features, my haughty resting face — they smell the inescapable stink of old money that comes off me in relentless waves — and they think smug, snob, elitist, lazy, judgmental, undeservedly wealthy ne’er-do-good who was born not only with a silver spoon in his mouth but with a forty-eight-piece silver place setting with a side of titanium steak knives.