The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [97]
Sarah couldn’t control her breathing. She could hear the amplified pounding inside her chest. She had a sudden urge to double over and throw up.
She almost began to scream for help. For a second, she was absolutely going to scream, but Stef had told her to wait, to stay quiet until they actually tried to come into the bathroom.
Sarah stood very still. She waited. A wave of exhaustion rolled over her. It was instantly followed by another wave.
Outside in the apartment hallway, the unidentified noises had stopped. There were only honking car horns, and the acceleration of buses out on Madison Avenue.
Stefanovitch was certain that one or more hit men were outside the bedroom door, listening before they crashed inside—before the insanity began.
How many of them would there be? Was there anything he could do to stop this from happening? He knew there wasn’t. That was the worst part.
Had Alexandre St.-Germain come himself? That was the question he needed answered.
Stefanovitch wished it weren’t pitch-black inside the bedroom. He thought about pulling the window drapes back, but it was too late for that. He didn’t dare make a noise and lose his advantage: that they didn’t know he was up, waiting for them.
Another floorboard creaked.
His heart boomed against his chest; it felt as if it were physically exploding.
There was a loud click.
The bedroom door opened. They were coming in.
94
STEFANOVITCH RAISED HIS revolver until it extended straight out in front of his face.
Fleetingly, he thought that he hadn’t fired a gun at anybody in nearly two years. He had never gotten used to shooting at another person.
Both his arms were rigidly straight. These could be the same men who hit Trump Plaza with submachine-gun pistols, he was thinking. There was no hope, no way out if they had machine guns. There was no hope for either him or Sarah.
Alexandre St.-Germain had started out working the streets himself, Stefanovitch was thinking. He had done much of the early killing in Marseilles, in Paris, in a place called Long Beach. He seemed to enjoy it, to thrive on wet work. Would St.-Germain have come himself?…Would he take that risk? What drove the bastard to do anything that he did?
A single light flared—a powerful search lamp was shining into the room.
Stefanovitch tried desperately to grab hold of his mind. Concentrate, he urged himself. Focus.
Instinctively, he wanted to jerk back, to move farther away from the probing light, but there was nowhere to go.
He heard the distinctive snick of a pistol action working across the bedroom. Definitely a pistol.
How many of them are there? he wondered again. Unanswered questions. The most important ones of his life. Of Sarah’s life, too.
Were they all inside the bedroom now? They were as quiet as rats working in the darkness. Spasms of fear twisted through his body.
A second flashlight blinked on. Its beam revealed an empty bed. No one sleeping there. Now they knew…
Suddenly, John Stefanovitch fired at the lead flashlight. He aimed half a foot above the source of its piercing ray.
A man screamed, wounded and shocked by the unexpected ambush. A body hit the floor with a hollow, sickening thud.
The second flashlight blinked out instantly.
There was the sound of muffled voices, of men speaking in a foreign language.
Stefanovitch couldn’t be sure of anything that was happening in the pitch-darkness.
He thought they were moving farther into the bedroom, though—not back into the hallway. Rats rushing into a dark hole at night. He and Sarah trapped in the hole.
He could hear their shoes, vague shuffling sounds on the carpet, their clothes brushing against furniture.
Then the eerie silence took over the room again. As if no one were there.
The bedroom was near-total darkness, but his eyes were finally adjusting to the scene.
He thought he could make out vague, subtle shapes. That shape over there was—Sarah’s vanity table? Or was it that he knew where the vanity table was? Was he seeing, or remembering? The distinction was