Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [129]
He reached out suddenly for Caitlin. He held her narrow shoulders. “Listen to me. Listen closely.” He whispered something hopeful, something so innocent it started tears in her soft brown eyes. “I love you so much, Caitlin. Everything has to be all right”.
“Oh, Arch, why now? Why now?”
Then Carroll pushed her away. He sent Caitlin and his sister and the tangle of children in the opposite direction.
Up 72nd Street. Away, far away from him.
“I’m going down Columbus! Take them! Take them away, please! Caitlin! Take them now!”
“Daaa-ddy! … Daa-ddy!”
The final thing Carroll heard was his babies’ cries as he raced away.
As he put his head down, chin into his heaving chest.
As he started to run as fast as he could along the clogged sidewalk.
Suddenly, powerful arms grabbed him, wrenched him to a spinning stop. A hand clamped down hard, twisting into his face. Searing pain ripped through Carroll’s eyes.
His mind was racing: they were attacking him in the middle of New York City, in one of the most crowded, residential areas of the city. They had come for him in full view of a hundred witnesses …
They didn’t even care about the witnesses anymore.
“Get the hell off me! Get off me, you pieces of shit!” Carroll’s shouts rose like fighting kites above the honking horns, above the city’s deafening street rumble. “Somebody, please help!”
They were giving him a needle! Some kind of long, terrifying needle pierced through his trousers into his leg.
They were giving it to him right out here in the open.
Right on West 70th Street in New York City.
“Somebody help! Somebody fucking help!”
There were obviously no secrets anymore. There was no bullshit pretense that this was a police bust, that they were New York detectives.
“Get off! … no needle … nooooo!”
Carroll roared his last words savagely. He screamed and he fought back. He clawed at them with his remaining strength. He broke a jaw with a short, powerful punch. His elbow smashed hard into a forehead. A bone snapped loudly. His?
Everything was unreal. Everything was impossible to comprehend, or slow down even a fraction.
Carroll was being dragged into a dark blue sedan. He was being held upside down!
He looked back as they pulled him off Columbus Avenue, out of the crowds.
As he was hanging upside down, he saw the second car arrive!
He saw Caitlin and his sister and the kids being snatched away.
“Not the kids! You goddamned bastards! Not my kids, not my kids! … No, please, not my kids!”
Chapter 102
THOMAS MORE ELLIOT’S palms were dry and cold. He suppressed a nervous tic which was starting to pulse in his throat.
He finally stepped out of the dark blue stretch limousine and into the chill Virginia winter air. Dead trees hung against the gray skyline and in the distance there were the gunshots of bird hunters.
He turned and walked up the fieldstone steps that led to the large double doors of an imposing, thirty-room country house. He paused at the top of the steps and sucked air deeply into his lungs.
Inside, the cavernous front hall was badly overheated. He felt a trickle of sweat run along his collar with the stealth of an insect.
His footsteps echoed on marble as he crossed to a great curving flight of stairs that led upward to the floors above. It was not a house that Elliot enjoyed. Its very size, but more, its history made him uncomfortable.
When he reached the landing he came to a door ornately carved out of walnut. It shone so deeply from years of meticulous care that he could see his own indistinct reflection in the wood.
He opened the door and entered the room beyond.
A group of men sat around a long, polished oak table.
They were dressed mostly in dark business suits. Some of them, including General Lucas Thompson, were retired military and naval commanders. Some ran large