James Patterson - Truth or Die

“Hey,” I tried whispering, which was pretty much a lost cause given the cacophony of horns still blaring. The entire street had become a parking lot, an exceedingly angry one at that.

“Hey!” I tried again, louder.

Finally, he turned around and I motioned with both hands for him to get down. That immediately got me a look suggesting I should mind my own effin’ business. Then he saw the gun in my right hand. That did the trick. He ducked back into his seat so fast he literally banged his bald head on the top of the car.

Any other time, any other place, that would’ve been funny.

I wasn’t laughing.

All I could do was keep looking left and right as I approached the other sidewalk, my head on a swivel. Forget my trigger finger, the slightest movement anywhere in front of me had my entire body twitching. Throw in some self-doubt, and I was close to drowning in my own sweat. Did I really need to go after a trained CIA field agent head-on?

Too late.

It was like lightning before the thunder. I first saw a flash in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly to look, squinting for focus, and heard a booming voice right behind it.

The voice was saying something. He was saying something. But he was too far away; I couldn’t make out the words.

The voice, though... I knew the voice. It was familiar.

It was Owen.

He was sprinting toward me on the sidewalk, his cell phone lit up with one of those flashlight apps. Damn, those things are bright. He was close enough now, the words beginning to come together.

“You!” he was screaming. “Find you!”

Find me? No.

Behind me!

I spun around, hands out front, my eyes blowing up wide with panic as I looked out over the barrel of my pistol to see another gun already lined up with my chest. Somehow he’d gotten behind me.

Now he was right in front of me, dead center. All Gordon’s partner had to do was pull the trigger. But he suddenly had a problem...

He couldn’t see me.

The light from Owen’s phone hit his face so fast I could practically see his pupils snap shut. He raised his arm to shield his eyes, but it was the other arm I was watching. The one with the gun. He was swinging it right at Owen.

There was no thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. And maybe a little trace memory thrown in for good measure in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

In other words, I aimed a little bit higher.

I got off two shots. I couldn’t tell if the first one hit him, but there was no doubt about the second. Let’s just say it was going to be a closed-casket funeral, and leave it at that.

“C’mon,” said Owen. “Let’s go.”

That was all he said. Or maybe that was all I heard.

For sure, it was more than I was able to say, which was nothing. I could barely breathe, let alone talk. But I was keenly aware. The kid came back for me.

Later, I would thank him. The heart rate would slow; the thoughts and words would come. I’d point out that this was the second time he’d saved my life. I’d even crack that I’d never been so happy to have someone ignore what I asked him to do. If Owen had fled back to the hotel from Lamont’s car as I’d asked — as he’d told me he would — I would’ve been the one lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.

But he hadn’t. So I wasn’t.

Yes. Later, I would do all this. When there was time to think and sort things out. But the moment after I pulled the trigger was no different than the moment right before.

No thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. The same instinct Owen had.

Let’s go.

I went to sleep having killed a man. I woke up thinking I’d at least find out who he was.

It didn’t matter if he wasn’t carrying ID. There were other ways. So many other ways. Fingerprints. Dental records. Facial recognition software. If ever there was a job for CrackerJack...

“What time is it?” I asked Owen with my one good eye open off the pillow. My head was killing me. The rest of me wasn’t faring much better.

Owen was sitting on the edge of the other queen bed in our two-room bunker at the Stonington staring intently at the television and the start of the local morning news. He could’ve been a statue if it hadn’t been for his hands. They were doing that dry wash thing again. What’s the deal with that?

“It’s six,” he answered.

That explained the hint of daylight along the perimeter of the drawn curtains, not to mention why I still felt so tired. It was barely dawn, and I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. Longer than Owen, though, apparently.

There’s one exception to the age-old maxim about news reporting — if it bleeds, it leads — and that’s the early-morning broadcast. At the start of the day, one thing trumps everything else. The weather. Short of an apocalypse, that’s what people want to hear about first. The eternal question? It’s not the meaning of life. It’s Will I need an umbrella?

According to the far-too-chipper weatherman pointing out some incoming clouds on the Doppler radar, the answer was a definite maybe. There was a forty percent chance of showers in the afternoon.

Of course, there was a hundred percent chance of two shooting deaths overnight in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

The weatherman, still grinning, sent it back to the anchor, who did her best to segue into a more somber tone as the words DETECTIVE DEATH appeared on-screen. Next to them was a picture of Lamont. He must have fallen to the ground a thousand times in my mind before I’d finally been able to drift off to sleep.

Now tell us who the goddamn son of a bitch was who killed him. Tell us about “Gordon’s partner.”

As if he could read my mind, Owen stopped rubbing his hands and glanced back over his shoulder at me.

“They’re not going to know,” he said softly.

The second he said it, I knew he was right. Even if the police did know, they wouldn’t be quick to release the name to the press. It would raise more questions than answers.

“At this time, the identity of the second victim, who is believed to be the man responsible for Detective Lamont’s murder, is unknown,” said the anchor, so keyed to her teleprompter that she didn’t seem to even grasp how twisted that sounded.

Even more so because there wasn’t even a mention of the other triggerman. Me.

Was there really no one who saw me shoot him?

The anchor moved on to a fire in a Queens tenement building, prompting Owen to shut off the television. As soon as he turned to me, I knew the question coming, and it certainly wasn’t about how I’d slept.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked.

That was the part we hadn’t discussed after returning to the hotel. The how . Our focus had been the what, as in What do we do now? The night had changed everything.

Detective Lamont was dead, and we knew why. We owed it to him, his family, and everyone he worked with to come forward. Maybe Owen was right. Maybe justice wouldn’t be served in the end. But it no longer seemed like our call to make.

“Lamont’s precinct,” I said. “I think that’s where we begin.”

Owen nodded. “Do you want to call ahead?”

“No. Let’s just show—”

Before I could get the word up out of my mouth, Owen’s phone lit up on top of his backpack by the TV. I thought it was an incoming call at first, but there was no ring, no buzzing or vibrating.

“That’s strange,” said Owen, going over to check it.

“What is?” I asked.

“It’s an e-mail.”

“So?”

“I shouldn’t be getting any,” he said. “The account uses an entity authentication mechanism I designed myself. It’s way beyond the X.509 system.”