Killer Instinct - James Patterson Page 0,4

since I’d had my fifteen minutes of fame by helping to rid Manhattan of a serial killer named the Dealer. In the process, I had gained a couple of nicknames myself, including Dr. Death. For a while I was getting stopped on the street at least once a day. Hey, aren’t you that guy …? Now it was maybe once a month.

All glory is fleeting, said General George Patton.

So much for staring at the cop. He didn’t recognize me. I could’ve tried to refresh his memory or begun pleading my case, telling him about Tracy and Annabelle, but there was no point. He had his orders. The guy was merely doing his job. Besides, I’d already made up my mind on what I would do.

Time was wasting.

CHAPTER 4

I WALKED quickly back to my bike. Running would’ve been too obvious. The helmet went on, and the license plate got ripped off and stuffed inside my jacket.

I flipped on the petcock, checked the kill switch, turned the key, squeezed the clutch, and started her up. One quick zig to the left, a sharp zag to the right, and I had the clear path I needed. Now I just needed the speed.

Jamming the throttle, I was redlining again within seconds.

The first cop didn’t know what the hell was happening as I blew by him. The second cop, the one I had spoken to, knew exactly what I was about to do but couldn’t do anything about it. He looked at me in utter disbelief before turning to the pile of torn up pavement about ten feet in front of the cruisers blocking my way.

One man’s rubble is another man’s ramp.

I hit the pile hard, pulling up on my handgrips even harder. There would be no style points. It was ugly. Steve McQueen made it look so easy on the same bike in The Great Escape.

My back tire barely cleared the hood of the first cruiser, and I could hear my axle practically snapping as the front tire slammed the pavement. I nearly wiped out—I should’ve wiped out—but somehow I kept my balance.

There was no need to look over my shoulder as I raced onto the deserted lower deck of the bridge heading into Manhattan. Those two cops weren’t going anywhere. I was already too far gone. At most, they were radioing ahead to wherever the roadblock was for the northbound traffic, but that would only be to cover their collective ass instead of catching mine.

At the first exit, I peeled off the parkway onto Dyckman Street and into the Upper West Side. Tracy, Annabelle, and I called the neighborhood home. All along, I couldn’t stop thinking the unthinkable, that the two most important people in my life—the two I could never imagine living without—were suddenly gone. Christ, this can’t be happening.

The rest of the ride was a blur as I shot between all the traffic while completely ignoring red lights. In the distance I could hear a slew of ambulances, each one louder than the next, and all of them echoing in my head. It was the soundtrack of a living nightmare.

Finally I reached the front of our apartment building, ditching my bike in the middle of the sidewalk. I sprinted into the lobby and straight for the elevator with no intention of stopping until I saw the doorman, Bobby, sitting on an upholstered bench along the wall. He was completely engrossed in his cell phone. I could tell he was watching news coverage of the bombings.

“Have you seen them?” I asked, half out of breath.

He looked up at me, confused. “Who?”

I would’ve been confused, too. “Tracy and Annabelle,” I said. “Have you seen them this morning?”

Bobby—who everyone called Lobby Bobby, albeit not to his face—acted as if I’d just asked him to explain quantum physics. The fact that I was so panicked only made him more flustered.

“Oh. Um … no, I haven’t seen them,” he said. “No, wait, I did see them. They went out earlier this morning, before the first—”

“Have you seen them since? Did you see them return?” I was talking a million words a minute.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

But by then he was talking to my back. I was halfway to the elevator. I needed to see for myself. I needed Bobby to be wrong. He was distracted. He usually was, after all. He was often talking to some other tenants or signing for a package. That’s what happened.

Tracy and Annabelle had returned home. They