The 19th Christmas - James Patterson Page 0,35
one another on both sides of Innes Avenue, their occupants steaming up the windows.
Here inside the van, Corey was in the driver’s seat, fiddling with his playlist, earbud cord dangling from his ear. He was singing along with some vocalist, killing time.
The two of them, waiting for Mr. Loman. Waiting.
Megan had a high idle. She hated to wait.
She climbed up behind the front seat and pulled the bud out of Corey’s ear. He spun around like he was ready to pull his piece.
“What’s the latest?” she asked.
“I told you never to sneak up on me,” he said.
Corey was good-looking for his age and weight. Thirty-eight. Five foot ten. One ninety. A semiretired drug dealer and not a bad bunk buddy. He was also ambitious. He said he was hooked up with a major-league mobster. That big money was in the future.
His future or theirs? Corey kept secrets. And right now he owned her, one baggie at a time.
Megan said, “You told me that he was calling an hour ago.”
“Chill out, will you please. Make coffee. Thassagirl.”
“Make it yourself.”
Megan pulled back one of the blackout curtains and looked out on Donahue. The apartments across the way were lit up. She could see twinkling lights.
A beat-up ’85 Mustang GT parked up the road, and a couple of kids got out. They walked down the middle of the street, smokin’, jokin’, heading in their direction. One was wearing a Santa cap and a fake beard that was pulled away from his face and hanging over his shirt like a bib.
Santa Claus was coming to town. Ha.
The other one—boy or girl, she couldn’t tell—was wearing a flimsy skirt over skinny jeans.
“Corey. Those two look like undercover to you? Corey?”
“What? No. I know the one in the skirt. Calm down, Meggy, will you? You’re driving me crazy. Is that what you want? Me on crazy?”
She blew out a long, exasperated sigh, returned to the rear of the van, and threw herself down in the bunk against the wall.
How was she supposed to calm down?
On the one hand, freedom. On the other hand, jail.
She put a T-shirt over her face and was counting backward from a hundred when Corey thundered down the length of the van.
“Get up,” he said.
“Get up please. Mr. Loman called?”
Corey was standing on the bunk, rummaging in duffel bags in the overhead cabinet.
“Here,” he said, handing her a semiauto pistol. He grabbed one for himself, jammed a second into his waistband. He tugged open the blackout curtain.
A line of vehicles came up the road from behind them, some stopping along the sagging chain-link fencing across the street. An SUV with its headlights off sped up and passed their van. She couldn’t see where it went. A fire truck stopped, backed up, parked behind them.
“What’s happening?” she shouted.
No answer from Corey.
Megan could just make out men in dark clothing clambering out of vehicles. She saw long guns.
Corey’s face was next to hers; he was also looking out at the swarm of activity on Donahue. Then, bellowing commando-style, he ran toward the front of the van.
Had he wigged out completely? What was he doing? Were they going to run?
Glass shattered.
No, no, no, no.
Megan Rafferty’s life wasn’t supposed to go this way. Christ.
Am I about to die?
Chapter 41
“She was crying when I left the house,” Conklin shouted over the scream of the siren.
“Another night and I’m not home for dinner and cannot say when I will be home.”
He was driving.
I was bracing myself against the inside of the door and standing on imaginary brakes in the footwell as we followed Octavia Boulevard onto the ramp for 101 South. The skyline winked on our left, and ahead of us cars peeled off into the right lane, getting the hell out of our way.
He said, “She gets that this isn’t my choice. She respects what I have to do. But she doesn’t like it.”
“Do you need a note? I can vouch for you.”
Conklin laughed. It was an ironic, tired little laugh, but there was mirth in it.
I made a mental note: If Rich and I survived the night, the four of us—Joe, Rich, Cindy, and I—should treat ourselves to a first-class outing. Something to look forward to.
My thoughts jumped back to the matter at hand and the “hot Loman tip” that had launched our Code 3 response out to Hunters Point. Information had come from one of Brady’s own CIs that Loman was sending a caravan of transport vehicles to an unknown target—tonight. That the targeted hit