James Patterson - Truth or Die

“And yours?”

“Twenty feet at two.”

He lit the bottom of his sock and tossed me the lighter. “I’ll throw first, then you,” he said.

“Fine. Age before beauty, dude. ”

I flicked my thumb. The sock caught fire immediately. I’d say the feeling was like holding a live grenade, but it wasn’t like that. It was that.

Spinning around again, I sprayed bullets back and forth like a windshield wiper before stepping aside so Owen could throw. I was giving him light from my Glock the best I could. As soon as he released his sock, he unloaded the rest of his magazine and peeled to the side.

My turn.

There was no time to aim, but there was also no time to think about it and choke. I just let it fly.

It was the second little fireball tossed through the air. Who knows what they must have thought? Maybe nothing at all. They were too busy trying to gun us down as we dove back out of the doorway.

I tossed another magazine to Owen, who quickly reloaded. There was one thing he’d forgotten to mention. When this CTF stuff mixes with water, how long does it take before—

BOOM!

The explosion shook and shattered everything around us. Every wall, every nearby window. Suffice it to say, anyone standing outside was no longer on their feet. The proverbial rug not just yanked out from beneath them, but incinerated.

But how long until one of them got back up? Good question.

Run! Right now!

Owen and I did our best Butch and Sundance, launching out of the building with guns blaring. We were sprinting as fast as we could, hoping against hope that we’d bought ourselves enough time. That made for an even better question.

Was that boom the result of one sock or two?

That was when I saw him. Looking over my shoulder — it was one of the shooters. A clone of the two guys up in New York. Was there a factory somewhere?

Dazed but clearly determined, he was staggering to his feet with his arm raised, and it wasn’t to wave hello.

Thank God it was only one sock.

BOOM!

Owen and I caught the edge of the second blast; it seared our backs and sent us hurtling forward across the pavement for the Evel Knievel of road rashes. It hurt like a son of a bitch, like I was being skinned alive.

And I’d never felt luckier in my life.

As we helped each other up, we looked back to see we were the only ones still standing. Not that we were about to linger.

“I’d high-five you, but I have no skin left on my palms,” said Owen.

“Me, neither,” I said. “C’mon, I know a doctor we should see.”

There’s angry. Then there’s smoldering. And then there’s literally smoldering.

“What’s that smell?” asked the cabdriver. “It’s like something’s burning.”

“It’s just our clothes,” I said matter-of-factly. The smell was also our singed flesh, but I didn’t feel the need to mention that.

Either way, that little tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the guy’s rearview mirror didn’t stand a chance.

We’d been burned, all right. Set up big-time.

And now it was time for a little follow-up visit with Dr. Douglas Wittmer. No appointment necessary.

He was so convincing in his kitchen. Of course he was. He was telling us the truth. The only lie was his allegiance. Who the hell did he call after we left him?

We had the taxi drop us off one block down from his town house. There was no telling if Wittmer was still alone, but first we had to see if he was there at all.

Maybe he’d gone to church for confession.

If he had, he’d walked. His black Jaguar was still there, parked in the driveway as when we’d first approached him.

Too bad he hadn’t given us a second key, the one to his front door.

“How soon before a neighbor calls nine-one-one?” I whispered to Owen, only half joking as I peered inside one of the windows.

With our tattered, bloodstained clothes and shredded hands, knees, and elbows, the two of us looked like we’d just wandered off the set of The Walking Dead. At best, we were a couple of burglars. At worst, it was the zombie apocalypse.

I turned back to Owen when he didn’t respond. He’d been right behind me.

Now he wasn’t anywhere.

Finally, I found him back down by the street. He was staring up at a telephone pole.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the camera.”

“What camera?”

“They were watching from either inside or outside. Actually, probably both,” he said. “Inside, though, gave them audio.”

I stood there trying to reverse engineer what he was saying. If we were being watched when we first showed up to see Wittmer, then that meant...

“Jesus, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “We were coming here to confront him; he ratted us out.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. It was a given,” I said. At least, I thought it was. “You mean, he didn’t tip them off?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“Then why are we even here?”

Owen was still staring up at the pole. “To search for more evidence,” he said. “Stuff he didn’t share with us.”

“What, you think he’s going to let us just waltz right in and take what we want?”

Finally, Owen turned to me. “We’re hardly going to need his permission,” he said.

Before I could ask why not, he was already halfway back to Wittmer’s town house, heading up the steps.

Once again, the best I could do was try to keep up with him.

There was zero hesitation, none whatsoever.

In fact, Owen had already taken off his T-shirt — what was left of it — and wrapped it around his hand by the time he reached the top step. I was only a few feet behind him, but I could see what was coming next a mile away.

What’s a little breaking and entering among friends?

With a quick right jab, the window to the left of Wittmer’s front door all but disappeared. Working clockwise, Owen knocked away the few holdout shards until we could both climb through without donating any more blood for the evening.

Just a guess, but being two pints down on a cavernously empty stomach is probably not recommended by the American Medical Association.

Owen put his T-shirt back on, entering first. I followed. And at no time did I bother asking him what he wasn’t telling me. I figured I’d know soon enough.

Even sooner, as it turned out, when our arrival in Wittmer’s foyer was greeted with nothing and no one. Just a dead silence.

The proverbial “bad feeling about this” was suddenly spreading fast from my gut.

“Upstairs,” said Owen.

He might have just been talking to himself. I couldn’t tell. Either way, there was no sign of the doctor on the first floor.

If “sparsely furnished” was the polite way of describing the downstairs of Wittmer’s home, the upstairs made the first floor look like an episode of Hoarders . Of the first three bedrooms we looked into, only one actually had a bed. And by bed, I mean a queen-sized mattress on top of a box spring on top of a Harvard frame. No sheets. No pillows.

And still no Wittmer.

Which only made it worse, that feeling of dread. The tightening of the chest muscles. The extra pull on the lungs with each breath.

The inescapable truth of something inevitable.

Because at no time — not for one fraction of a second — did I think there was a chance that Wittmer wasn’t there in his home. The only question was where.

“Here,” said Owen.

This time, he was definitely talking to me. Pointing, too. He’d turned the corner into the master bedroom.