Cat & Mouse - James Patterson [58]
Right when your life seems so promising. Your young children growing up. And your beautiful new lover.
Because that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to die for what you did to me. You can’t stop it from happening.
Alex Cross kept walking toward him, parading across the concrete train platform. He didn’t look afraid. Cross definitely walked the walk. That was his strength, but it was also his folly.
Soneji felt as if he were floating in space right now. He felt so free, as if nothing could hurt him anywhere. He could be exactly who he wanted to be, act as he wished. He’d spent his life trying to get here.
Alex Cross was getting closer and closer. He called out a question across the train platform. It was always a question with Cross.
“What do you want, Gary? What the hell do you want from us?”
“Shut your hole! What do you think I want?” Soneji shouted back. “You! I finally caught you.”
CHAPTER 62
I HEARD WHAT Soneji said, but it didn’t matter anymore. This thing between us was going down now. I kept coming toward him. One way or the other, this was the end.
I walked down a flight of three or four stone steps. I couldn’t take my eyes off Soneji. I couldn’t. I refused to give up now.
Smoke from the hospital fire was in my lungs. The air in the train tunnel didn’t help. I began to cough.
Could this be the end of Soneji? I almost couldn’t believe it. What the hell did he mean he finally caught me?
“Don’t anybody move. Stop! Not another step!” Soneji yelled. He had a gun. The baby. “I’ll tell you who moves, and who doesn’t. That includes you, Cross. So just stop walking.”
I stopped. No one else moved. It was incredibly quiet on the train platform, deep in the bowels of Grand Central. There were probably twenty people close enough to Soneji to be injured by a bomb.
He held the baby from the bus up high, and that had everybody’s attention. Detectives and uniformed police stood paralyzed in the wide doorways around the train tunnel. We were all helpless, powerless to do anything to stop Soneji. We had to listen to him.
He began to turn in a small, tight, frenzied circle. His body twirled around and around. A strange whirling dervish. He was clutching the infant in one arm, holding her like a doll. I had no idea what had become of the child’s mother.
Soneji almost seemed in a trance. He looked crazy now—maybe he was. “The good Doctor Cross is here,” he yelled down the platform. “How much do you know? How much do you think you know? Let me ask the questions for a change.”
“I don’t know enough, Gary,” I said, keeping my answer as low-key as possible. Not playing to the crowd, his crowd. “I guess you still like an audience.”
“Why yes, I do, Dr. Cross. I love an appreciative crowd. What’s the point of a great performance with no one to see it? I crave the look in all of your eyes, your fear, your hatred.” He continued to turn, to spin as if he were playing a theater-in-the-round. “You’d all like to kill me. You’re all killers, too!” he screeched.
Soneji did another slow spin around, his gun pointed out, the baby cradled in his left arm. The infant wasn’t crying, and that worried me sick. The bomb could be in a pocket of his trousers. It was somewhere. I hoped it wasn’t in the baby’s blanket.
“You’re back there in the cellar? Aren’t you?” I said. At one time I had believed Gary Soneji was schizophrenic. Then I was certain that he wasn’t. Right now, I wasn’t sure of anything.
He gestured with his free arm at the underground caverns. He continued to walk slowly toward the rear of the platform. We couldn’t stop him. “As a kid, this is where I always dreamed I would escape to. Take a big, fast train to Grand Central Station in New York City. Get away clean and free. Escape from everything.”
“You’ve done it. You finally won. Isn’t that why you led us here? To catch you?” I said.
“I’m not done. Not even close. I’m not finished with you yet, Cross,” he sneered.
There was his threat again. It made my stomach drop to hear him talk like that.