James Patterson - Truth or Die

“Thirty feet!” shouted Owen with the update, the distance before we’d hit another car. Or anything else, for that matter.

By now it had stopped raining shards of glass over my head. We were out of range. Time to get a better view.

I pulled myself up by the steering wheel, immediately spinning us into a one-eighty that nearly flipped us over and had Owen practically doing a somersault across the backseat.

“Jesus!” he yelled.

“Sorry!” I yelled back.

The second we were on all four tires again, I grabbed the rearview mirror, twisting it into my eye line to see what Gordon’s partner was doing behind us. Instead, I should’ve been looking straight ahead.

“Car!” said Owen. “Car!”

I looked just in time to see a white BMW swerving up on the curb to avoid us. So did the taxi behind it. Now we were the asshole who didn’t get the memo. We were going the wrong way.

The chorus of horns kicked in, but the only car that really mattered was still behind us. Glancing into the rearview mirror again, I could just make out Gordon’s partner getting back behind the wheel. For the first time, I could see what he was driving. A Jeep Wrangler.

I killed the cherry and made the first turn possible, onto Twenty-First Street. We were finally going the right way, but it was clear we were about to have company.

Just how fast can a Buick LeSabre from the early eighties go?

My right foot was like a cinder block on the gas, while my head was like a bobble doll, bouncing all around as I tried to see through the shot-up windshield. There were so many cracks and jagged edges, I might as well have been looking through a prism.

I blew through one red light and then another without a scratch, a double dose of lucky on our way to the West Side Highway. More lanes, less traffic, better chance of losing him. Or so I was thinking.

“He’s gaining,” said Owen, looking out the back while I frantically weaved in and out of the cars around us.

“How many behind?” I asked.

“Five cars,” he said. “Shit, make that four.”

We were a block away from the highway, but suddenly that idea wasn’t looking so good. I couldn’t shake him. Four cars back would become three and then two and then one, and he’d be right on my tail, shooting out my tires.

I glanced back at Owen. “Time for plan B,” I said.

“I didn’t know we had a plan A.”

“Good, then you won’t fight me on this.”

He fought me anyway.

“Hell, no,” he said after I told him what I wanted him to do. “It’s two against one.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got only one gun,” I said. “That makes it one against one.”

“Then I’ll be the decoy,” he said. “I’ll distract him.”

“Yeah, right before he puts four bullets in your chest.”

It wasn’t just what I said, it was the way I said it. Angry. Pissed.

Guilty.

All I could see was Lamont falling to the ground. It was playing in my head over and over, a vicious loop.

And as Owen went silent, it was as if he knew exactly how I felt. He’d felt the same thing with Claire.

I need you to run with this story, kid. Literally...

“Okay,” he said, relenting. “But you better know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” I assured him. And with any luck, that wouldn’t be a lie.

Flipping the cherry back on, I looked up ahead to the end of the block about fifty yards away. I was straddling both lanes as parked cars dotted each side of the street like Morse code. What I needed was two cars lined up opposite each other like gateposts. Because I was about to close the gate.

The sound of my jamming the brakes was immediately drowned out by everyone else’s brakes behind me. Not only was I stopping on a dime, I was stopping on an angle to block both lanes. Instant chaos.

No one was going anywhere... except Owen.

“Now!” I told him.

He hesitated for a split second, but that was it. He burst out of the backseat, dashing around the corner and out of sight as fast — and as low — as he could.

Now it was my turn.

Only, I was heading in the opposite direction. Suddenly, my life had become an existential fortune cookie.

Man chased too long must find new path.

With the cherry still flashing on the dash, there came an eerie silence as I all but crawled out of the front seat on my hands and knees to avoid being seen.

New York drivers have a well-earned rep for impatience, but even they know when to lay off their horns. You honk at a cop and you’re likely to see some real impatience, and that old Buick LeSabre blocking traffic was an unmarked police car, as far as everyone could tell.

Everyone, that is, except the guy at the wheel four cars back who wanted me dead.

Quickly, I made my way behind a Prius parked along the curb. The angle was wrong, though. I couldn’t see well enough up the street.

So much for the gift of silence, too. The line of cars now stretched all the way down the block, well beyond sight of the flashing red and blue. Any driver bringing up the rear had no idea why he was stopped. The horns began kicking in, one louder than the last.

Fine by me. I was banking on the confusion.

As fast as I got to the curb was how slowly I began moving alongside the parked cars, peering over the hoods until I had a clean line. But it wasn’t happening. The headrest of a seat, a side-view mirror — something was always in the way.

I should’ve been able to spot him by now.

Finally, there came a good angle. I was maybe twenty feet away, sidled up next to the back tire of a MINI Cooper. Looking through the glass of the rear hatch, I had the perfect view.

Of nothing.

I could see the Jeep, but the driver’s seat was empty. The engine was running, and I couldn’t suppress the immediate thought that maybe I should’ve been, too.

Gripping my pistol with both hands, I was whipping it around like a pointer. Where are you? Over here? Over there?

I didn’t know whether to move or stay put. People were starting to get out of their cars. Some were yelling, others walking ahead for a closer look. No one knew what was happening. Including me.

Then, with one glance to the left, I saw him.

He poked his head out from behind the Prius back where I’d started. I’d gone to him; he’d come to me. We’d missed each other. He had no intention of letting that happen again.

Like a bull out of the gate he came at me, running with his arm raised. His first shot caromed off the sidewalk mere inches to my left, the sound setting off screams up and down the block. People were scattering everywhere as I bolted around the next car at the curb, just barely eluding the second shot. Had the MINI Cooper been any less mini, I would’ve been nailed in the back for sure.

Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA...

Immediately, I spun around with my arms locked, the inside of my index finger flush against the trigger. Once again, I had the perfect view.

And once again, it was of nothing.

The sidewalk was empty. He wasn’t there.

But he was far from gone.

I’ve never cracked the cover of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It’s never even made the to-read pile next to my bed. But I had to believe that somewhere buried in the book was a rule that said if the enemy knows where you are but you don’t know where the enemy is... move.

As fast and low as I could, I zigzagged across the street, stopping only when I saw some bald guy in a suit halfway out of his shiny red Cadillac. He was crouched, looking through the window with his entire head exposed as if he’d somehow missed that physics class in high school explaining the effect of a speeding bullet on a piece of glass. This just in, pal, the bullet wins...