Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

Carla and I run on our toes to the fire escape.

We freeze when we hear two quick pops, look at each other until we’re sure it was the start of the fireworks, not gunfire. The noise will cover us, but still, we gotta be quiet as mice climbing this fire escape.

And quick, too.

“Ready?” she whispers.

I nod to her. “Don’t forget the First Commandment.”

Thou shalt not get dead.

I try to move past Carla, but she whispers “Ladies first” and flies up the first set of stairs, again on her toes. She’s lighter and nimbler than I am, and it’s all I can do to keep up without pounding the stairs and risking announcing our presence.

We’re both out of gas after a quick climb up three stories, but the adrenaline is boosting us like a drug. More pops from the fireworks in the park across the street, plus the guy on the rooftop shouting something I can’t make out.

The pounding of my pulse drowning out much of the sound.

Carla climbs up the final half set of stairs, crouched low. Looks at me below her, nods. Peeks up over the roof’s concrete abutment, pops back down. Nods to me again. It’s clear. He’s not looking our way.

More pops from more fireworks.

Carla pulls out her sidearm, peeks back up, then hauls her leg over the concrete abutment and disappears from my view onto the roof. A nice fluid movement, better than I could manage.

As I bound up the stairs to follow her, gun drawn, I hear a loud thump —

“Motherfuck! Loco, loco! ” a man’s voice cries.

And I know everything’s gone to shit.

Chapter 66

“ORANGE ON the roof! Orange!” I yell as I raise my head and Glock over the concrete abutment. From the other end of the roof, the lookout is running toward me, a Tec-9 in one hand, a phone in the other, trying to dial, trying to tip off his colleagues inside. When he sees me, he drops the phone and stops, using his second hand to brace the extended magazine of his semiautomatic pistol.

I put two bullets in his chest, center mass, putting him down as a spray of gunfire from his weapon shoots upward at the sky. Then I hike a leg up and jump over the embankment, a fall of a good five feet, more than I’d expected. I land hard, a sharp pain in my shoulder, but bounce up and pivot behind me.

In my ear: “Unit 4 to the roof! All other units, we are green! We are green! We are green!”

In front of me: the end of a struggle between Carla and another lookout—a second one on the roof, one we didn’t fucking expect. The man, bodybuilder huge, a meaty bicep wrapped around Carla’s neck, lifting her off her feet, a gun planted against her temple. Carla half dazed, a bloody gash on her left cheek, blood streaked down her face.

“Drop it!” I shout, getting to a standing position. “You got nowhere to go!”

“Drop the gun or I kill her, poli !” He’s scared, his eyes searching around, realizing there is no way off this roof other than the fire escape by my position. Scared and cornered, in this situation, isn’t good.

And I don’t know whether this guy’s clean or hyped up on something. Too dark to get a good look at his eyes.

Best move he could make: shoot me, knowing how hard it would be for me to return fire with Carla in the way.

I have a head shot, though. He’s taller than Carla by a foot. Am I confident enough in my shot in the half darkness?

My pulse rocking so hard, the pop-pop-pop from the fireworks lighting up the sky, adding just enough light for me to see his face for a second, scared and scary, and Carla trying to squirm, the intensity in her eyes.

“Drop your fuckin’ gun or I’ll do her!” he spits.

“There’s no way off this roof!” I yell. “Look around you. Where you gonna go?”

“You want me to do this bitch? Huh! You want me to?”

Below us, the squeal of brakes, flashing of police lights. If he thought he was trapped before, now he knows it for sure. He’s not getting off this roof. He could surrender or he could go out shooting.

Surrender. Give it up.

He looks over the roof down at the parking lot, panicking, his gun wavering off Carla’s temple—

Carla’s left hand flies up, pushing his forearm, moving the gun away from her head. His gun goes off, a flash, a bullet whizzing past me.

I fire once, twice, blowing off the top of his head.

Chapter 67

THE EMT closes the back door. The ambulance takes off.

Carla’s on the bed but sitting up, holding gauze to her face, though it’s been taped on. They’ll stitch her up at Stroger, which is where we’re heading.

“How ya doin’?” I say.

She closes her eyes, angles her head. “Throat hurts more than my face.”

We roll along, the siren blaring, slowing at times but never stopping.

“Something for the pain,” says the EMT, holding a needle.

“No,” says Carla. “No painkillers.”

“No?”

“No. I’m fine.”

Maybe it’s a thing with the cancer medication, some worry about drug interaction. Or maybe she’s trying to be tough. If it were me, I’d take all the Demerol they’d give me.

“Sosh says sixteen arrested,” I say. “Over eight kilos. About six hundred thousand in cash on hand.”

“Sosh said only one lookout on the roof, too.”

Apparently, when Carla looked over the embankment, she saw only the one lookout, as promised, standing at the opposite end of the roof, gawking at our eye-candy undercover down on the sidewalk. What she couldn’t see, and what we weren’t told, is that a second guy was sitting against the back embankment. She all but fell on top of him when she jumped over, and he skulled her with his Ruger, opening a huge, gushing wound on her cheek and nearly knocking her unconscious.

I’m impressed she held him off at all, keeping him from shooting her, wrestling with a guy who could bench-press four of her, all while suffering a concussion.

“That guy was gonna do me,” she says, her chest suddenly heaving. “Holy fuck, I thought I was gonna die.”

“It’s okay; it’s okay.” I pat her leg. “Relax. We had a happy ending.”

Is she right? Hard to say. That guy wasn’t getting off that roof. He had to know that. Would he have given up, dropped the weapon? A lot of people would in that situation. But I didn’t give him that opportunity. Carla took her chance to knock away the gun from her temple, and I didn’t hesitate to fire. It’ll be righteous on review, I’m sure, especially because his weapon discharged in my direction, but I’ll always wonder if I could’ve talked him down.

“No maybe about it, Harney.” Her momentary panic attack subsiding. “I couldn’t breathe. He cut off my oxygen. He had me off the ground. That arm of his was like a noose to me. I had maybe thirty seconds.”

“I didn’t know. Couldn’t see well enough.”

Her hand flails out toward me. At first I don’t get it, I don’t understand, like she’s trying to signal me or something.

Then I realize. I reach for her hand. She holds mine tight.

I look at her. Her eyes misty. Her lips trembling.

“Kept thinking of…”

“Samuel,” I finish.

“Who’d take care of him, if I died.”

I thought she’d mentioned something about a grandmother. “Not his father?”

She makes a noise, not a pleasant one. “Not the child-raising type.”

“Right.”

“He’s an asshole,” she says. “Can’t have a single thought for anyone but himself. Presents on Samuel’s birthday if he remembers. Sometimes Christmas. He wouldn’t take him. He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Well—”

“His mother, my mother-in-law, or ex, I guess—she stays with us. But she’s seventy-nine. If I went down…”