Run for Your Life - James Patterson [79]
My dry throat felt like it was caked with dust as I swallowed. My whole body was covered in a cold sweat. The steering wheel was slick with it, practically slipping out of my hands.
You live long enough, I thought as misery shook through me like a low-voltage shock, even your worst nightmares may come true.
I glanced in the mirror again, and this time I saw a pain-filled light in Chrissy’s eyes. It was the same look she’d gotten when I’d read her The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time. She was starting to really understand how wrong this ride was.
The last thing we needed was for her to start crying, and irritate the human time bomb sitting next to her. When I’d attended the FBI Academy in Quantico, I’d learned that when you’re kidnapped, you want to be as unobtrusive and cooperative as possible.
“Chrissy?” I said, struggling to keep the fear out of my voice. “Tell us a joke, honey. I didn’t hear today’s joke.”
The sad light in her eyes diminished, and she cleared her throat theatrically. As the baby of the family, she knew how to perform.
“What do you call a monkey after you take away his bananas?” she said.
“I don’t know, honey. What?” I said, playing straight man.
“Furious George!” she yelled, and started giggling.
I laughed along with her, watching Meyer’s eyes for his reaction.
But they had nothing in them. They were the glazed eyes of a man buying a newspaper, or riding an elevator, or waiting for a train.
I glanced back at the road just in time to see that the tractor trailer in front of me had come to a dead stop. My heart locked as the huge truck’s blood-red brake lights and sheer steel wall seemed to rush at us, filling the windshield. I mashed the brakes, with rubber squealing and smoking.
That the car came to a stop inches before decapitating me under the tailgate was a miracle. Add hysterical cops to the list of people God looks out for, I thought, wiping my sweating forehead.
“Get it together, Bennett,” Meyer warned me harshly. “You get us in trouble, I’ll have to shoot my way out of it. Starting right here.”
Yeah, sure, my bad, I wanted to snap back. It’s a tad hard to focus when your nerves are stretched past the snapping point.
“Take the next exit west off the interstate,” he ordered. “Time to get off this road, anyway, the way you drive.”
We pulled onto Route 46, a run-down industrial strip. I stared out at the old motels and warehouses, with patches of deserted desolate Jersey swampland in the spaces between them, trying to assess whether the slower speed and lack of traffic might work in my favor. If I jammed the car into a fishtailing spin, would that throw Meyer off balance long enough for me to grab Chrissy and run? It’s hard to hit a target, especially a moving one, with a handgun.
But this guy was incredible with a pistol, there was no doubt about that. Just my luck.
Run or fight—both bad choices, but the only ones I had. Oh, God, help me save my daughter, I prayed. What the hell do I do?
“Look, Daddy,” Chrissy said, and an instant later, a violent roar shook through the car. Stunned, I thought maybe I’d actually hit something this time. For an insane instant, the thought of a roadside bomb even flitted through my mind.
It took me a couple more seconds to realize that the noise was from a plane coming in low over our car. As it dropped into sight ahead, I saw that it was a small, sleek corporate jet, landing on a runway behind the high chain-link fence on my left.
What the hell was an airport doing here? Newark was miles farther south down 95. Then I realized that this was Teterboro, a small private airport that a lot of corporations and jet-setters used when coming into New York. It cost a fortune, but it was only twenty or so minutes into the city, and there were no strip searches or waiting in line.
“Slow down and turn in here,” Meyer said as we approached a stoplight.
I made the turn carefully, swiping again at the cold sweat now stinging my eyes. Whatever this son of a bitch had in mind, the addition of an airport somehow