Killer Instinct - James Patterson Page 0,7

commander yelled out, chopping his hand through the air. The rest of his team held their fire. Everyone else with any ammo left followed suit.

All eyes remained looking up. Ten seconds became twenty, then thirty. It seemed like forever.

One by one, shoulders began to relax. Guns were holstered. The barrels of the SWAT team’s Heckler & Koch UMPs were lowered.

Elizabeth felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. An EMT was talking to her, but it was nothing more than his lips moving. She still couldn’t hear. Slowly, she began making out some of the words. The rest she could fill in. He was asking her if she was okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Elizabeth lied. She really didn’t know for sure. Every part of her hurt.

He pointed to a row of medical tents set up along the nearest cross street. He was saying she needed to be looked at by a doctor.

Elizabeth nodded. It was the most her body could muster. That and hopefully putting one foot in front of the other. At least as far as those tents. She gently pulled up her pant legs, the bloodied fabric of her slacks sticking to her skin. Some of those cuts from the falling glass were well beyond Band-Aids.

She wanted to thank whoever had saved her life, but all the SWAT team members looked alike, as they always did in their combat gear, and now they all were doing the same thing—trying to clear the area. Just because a second-wave attack had been thwarted didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a third.

They were ushering any nonessentials down the stairs of the subway entrance at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. All press and any onlookers were getting the hook, even the uniformed cops who weren’t part of the investigation. Elizabeth watched for a moment before spotting Evan Pritchard moving against the flow like a salmon swimming upstream. He was talking on a satellite phone, oblivious to anyone and anything. It figured.

Elizabeth shook her head and began walking toward the medical tents when she stopped on a dime. The sound was faint. A sort of revving. Like a tiny lawn mower that wouldn’t start.

Her eyes darted, searching for what was making the noise. She kept looking and looking until—there, in the middle of Broadway—she spotted one of the drones that had been shot down. The bomb it was holding was still intact. It was live.

The rush of adrenaline pushed away the pain as Elizabeth started running. Not away from the bomb but toward it.

“Pritchard!” she yelled. He was walking straight for the damn thing and had no idea. “PRITCHARD!”

Others could hear Elizabeth. They could see her waving her arms frantically for everyone still in the street to get back. The SWAT team was now running for cover, corralling the last of the civilians down the stairs to the subway.

For Christ’s sake, Pritchard!

Elizabeth ran past the drone, picking up as much speed as she could before barreling into her boss. Never mind that he was built like a brick house. She knocked him clean off his feet, wrapping her arms around him as they rolled toward the curb. He didn’t know what the hell was happening, only that he was severely ticked off.

But there was no time for her to explain. Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, pulling Pritchard toward the subway entrance and literally pushing him down the stairs with her.

“What the hell are you doing, Needham?” barked Pritchard as they slammed into the concrete landing ten feet below. He was grabbing Elizabeth with both hands. He was practically shaking her. “Are you insane? You could’ve killed me. You could’ve goddamn ki—”

BOOM!

CHAPTER 8

I FRANTICALLY tried again to reach Tracy on his cell. There was still no service.

Pacing back and forth alone in the apartment just made the pain worse. I had to do something, and the worst part was that I knew exactly what I had to do.

Still, I stalled. I turned on the TV to watch the news coverage as if, what? I forgot where Times Square was?

Wait. Hold on. A second-wave attack? When? How? Christ …

The image of Lobby Bobby downstairs came flooding back to me in an instant. I had spoken over him in my haste to get answers. I couldn’t help it—I was so desperate to know where Tracy and Annabelle were.

Before the first, he’d said before I cut him off. Before the first attack, he’d been trying to tell me.

There was no thinking as I turned away from the TV. One