James Patterson - Truth or Die

He coughed, his face contorting with pain. The vest had stopped the shots, but the wind had been knocked clear out of him. He was struggling to catch his breath.

“All good,” he finally yelled. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

I didn’t look away, not for a second, as I leaned down to pick up the duffel with my free hand.

“You have a badge?” I asked, only to see him shake his head. “How about a wallet?”

“No.”

Strange thing was, I believed him. In his line of work you don’t really carry ID around with you. In any event, I wasn’t about to risk searching him.

“I should kill you,” I said.

“But you won’t.”

He was right. Shooting a man in self-defense was one thing. Shooting him in cold blood was something else entirely. Something I wasn’t.

“Who’s behind all this?” I asked. “Who wants the kid dead?”

He just stared at me. If he knew, he wasn’t telling. Where had I seen that before?

Would I really be bothered by the moral implications of an injection that could make him tell me what I wanted to know? Nothing is ever black and white.

Not even the truth.

“Real slowly,” I said, “I want you to pull up your right pant leg.”

If I was ever going to leave that Dumpster alive, I couldn’t risk his having a second gun. He pulled up his pant leg to show me there was no shin holster.

“Now your left one,” I said.

No shin holster there, either.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “I want you to tie your shoelaces together.”

I was expecting him to give me a look that said You’ve got to be kidding me. Instead he just said no.

“No?”

“That’s right,” he said. “No.”

But it was the way he said it. Cocksure. As if he’d suddenly regained all the leverage. Really?

I knew exactly what he was thinking. Forget the shoelaces, if I couldn’t kill him, the only things about to be tied were my hands.

“Fine,” I said.

But it was the way I said it. And had he been paying a bit more attention, he would’ve stopped smiling well before I lowered my aim and fired one shot into his right foot.

“Motherfucker!” he screamed as the dime-sized hole in his black wing tip gurgled blood like a garden hose.

He grabbed his foot and I grabbed the side of the Dumpster, climbing out with my duffel. I walked straight out the basement door to the back of my building, through the alley, and onto the sidewalk. As soon as I turned the corner, I hailed a cab.

Only after telling the driver the address did I lean back in the seat and think about what I’d done, or more to the point, how I hadn’t thought twice about doing it.

Most people will live their entire lives believing they know exactly who they are and what they’re capable of. But that’s only because most people will never have to find out for real.

I ran my tongue over my split lip, tasting the warmth and slight saltiness of my own blood.

This was for real, all right. As real as it gets.

“Jesus Christ, what happened?” asked Owen as he opened the door.

“Oh, nothing really,” I said. “I just beat up a fist with my face, that’s all.”

He leaned toward me for a closer look. The closer he got, the more he winced. “I’ll go get some ice.”

He backtracked to grab the ice bucket near the television and headed off down the hallway while I put down my duffel and made a quick turn into the bathroom. I opened one eye slowly to the mirror. The other eye was already swollen shut. Cut me, Mick...

I washed off all the blood and gave the hand towels a proper burial in the garbage pail below the sink. Housekeeping could put them on our tab, because there wasn’t enough bleach in the world to bring those puppies back to white.

That got me wondering as Owen returned with a full ice bucket. I just wanted to make sure.

“You didn’t check in under Winston Smith again, did you?”

“Of course not,” he said. “Care to guess, though?”

I wasn’t really in the mood. Then again, I was the one who’d brought it up. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll take Fake Names for five hundred.”

Turns out, the kid did a pretty decent impression of Alex Trebek. “Eric Arthur Blair,” he said.

I stared at him blankly with my one good eye. I had no clue.

“What is George Orwell’s real name?” he answered.

Of course. The kid was as consistent as he was clever. That might have explained why he’d chosen to hide out in another hotel, this time in two adjoining rooms at the Stonington down in Chelsea. Frankly, though, I didn’t know which genius to believe.

On the one hand was Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

On the other hand was Owen channeling the Fodor’s travel guide to Manhattan. “There are over two hundred fifty hotels in this city, totaling over seventy thousand rooms,” he informed me. “As long as you weren’t followed here, I think we’re good.”

He looked at me, cocking an eyebrow. That was my cue to assure him that no, I hadn’t been followed to the hotel.

“Besides,” he added, “we’re both in desperate need of some sleep, as well as showers.” He sniffed the air around me. “And one of us is a little more desperate for that shower than the other, if you don’t mind me saying. Where the hell were you? ”

After fashioning an ice pack from the liner bag in the ice bucket, I filled Owen in on where I’d been. The Times Building. The luggage store and the bank. (Hence the duffel and its contents.) Then my apartment and... oh, yeah, did I mention the Dumpster?

I would’ve preferred to leave out the part about Claire being pregnant, but that would’ve left unanswered the only question Owen could’ve had for me when I was done explaining. Particularly about the trip to my apartment. Are you freakin’ nuts?

Maybe I was. But at least he now knew why.

“I’m very sorry,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He was staring at the carpet, a fresh wave of guilt over Claire’s death crashing down on him. “I just feel so—”

“I know you do,” I said. “But don’t. I told you, this will never be your fault.”

“It’s not fair, though,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

I looked at him, with his shaggy hair and baggy jeans, forgetting for a second the incredible intellect he possessed. He truly was just a kid, wasn’t he? Never more so than in that moment.

For everything he knew about the world, Owen was still learning the greatest lesson of them all. Life.

“Your turn,” I said. “Any luck at the Apple store?”

Owen’s update was a lot shorter, as he’d had no luck identifying the two guys who wanted us dead. The fact that I’d learned the first name of one of them didn’t really change anything. But I had an idea what could.

“I need to get ahold of Detective Lamont again,” I said.

“Where is he?”

“Hopefully still at home. His precinct patched me in last time.” I took a step toward the hotel phone before stopping. Thoughts of my home line being tapped had jumped squarely in the way. “Is there any chance they would’ve bugged Lamont’s phone, too?”

Owen didn’t answer. He was suddenly glued to the television. I hadn’t even realized it was on; the sound was down.

“What’s up?” I asked, pulling up alongside him. I literally had to nudge him to respond. “What are you watching?”

“Something pretty strange,” he said.

Next to the CNN logo were the two favorite words of any news network. BREAKING NEWS.