Killer Instinct - James Patterson Page 0,71

“worked” together he nearly got killed.

“Glad you could make it,” I said.

“Did I have a choice?” Grimes glanced around. “So what’s with the bomb scare?”

“What bomb scare?” I said.

“Nice try. I peeked on the way in and saw the bomb squad packing up,” he said. “The dogs, too.”

Grimes folded his arms, waiting for me to come clean. When I simply stared back at him, saying nothing, he began looking around at each of us. First at Elizabeth. Then at the others—Pritchard, Foxx, my father—none of whom he’d been introduced to. We were all staring back at him, stone-faced.

“Did you ever do any acting?” I asked. “Drama club in high school? Summer stock?”

Grimes broke into a grin. We both knew his entire life was a one-man show. “Okay, but just promise me one thing,” he said.

We also both knew he didn’t need to spell it out. I knew exactly his one demand. “I promise,” I said. “You get to be the hero in the end.”

CHAPTER 88

WE STOOD watching from behind a window in a small station master’s office on the upper level of Penn Station that acted as a one-way mirror once we turned off the lights.

Grimes was being “escorted” out to the curb, kicking and screaming, by two officers chosen specifically for the task based on having the kind of height and weight typically seen at the NFL Scouting Combine. To say Grimes was getting manhandled would be an understatement. He was being taken out like the trash.

All according to the plan.

“The guy has some lungs on him, huh?” muttered Pritchard.

Grimes was yelling so loudly it didn’t matter that we were easily a hundred feet away and behind thick plate glass that had been designed to drown out street noise. We could hear him perfectly. Hell, there were probably people across the Hudson River in New Jersey who could hear him perfectly.

“I know what I saw!” he kept yelling. “I know what I saw!”

Grimes was selling it, and by the looks of everyone gathering around him, people were buying it. His fellow reporters especially.

Sure, they all mostly hated him. But there was also a begrudging respect. Grimes was good at what he did for a living. Very good. He got stories that they didn’t, and his writing sold papers. A lot of New Yorkers bought the Gazette just for his Grimes on Crimes column. He was known for doing whatever it takes in pursuit of a story, and this seemed to be a perfect example. While the rest of the media accepted their fate—shut out from the station and relegated to the sidelines—Grimes had seemingly figured out a way to sneak in.

So what if he got caught and was now getting his ass kicked out to the curb? He clearly had discovered something.

“Cover-up!” Grimes now yelled. “It’s a cover-up!”

As soon as the cops let go of him with a shove, the circle around Grimes quickly tightened so everyone could hear his story. He was no longer screaming; we couldn’t hear him. But we didn’t have to. He was surely sticking to the script.

It’s never the crime. Always the cover-up.

The bomb scare was a ruse. The real story was far less sexy as headlines go but potentially a political house of cards. That’s what Grimes was telling them.

The station had been closed down due to an asbestos find in an area that still contained remnants of the original Pennsylvania Station built by McKim, Mead, and White. The reason for the made-up bomb scare, Grimes would speculate, was because of the legal liability the city would face given how many people had been exposed to the asbestos on a daily basis. Someone very high up, perhaps as high as the mayor himself, had clearly given the order to see if the asbestos could be removed in secret.

“Do you really think they’ll buy it?” asked Pritchard as we kept watching.

“That’s the best part,” I answered. “They can’t buy it.”

“I thought you told me—”

“I said they’d believe him. To buy it and, more importantly, for their editors to run it they’ll need a second source. That’s something they’ll spend all day trying to get and never will. Without that second source, there’s no story.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Pritchard. “Or rather, don’t see it.”

Tick-tock. “We don’t have that long,” I said.

“He’s right,” said Foxx. He motioned out the window. “If Grimes pulls this off, nothing’s changed. This station is still the next target, and we need to be ready.”

I glanced at