Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

I sat up, found Meyer’s eyes in the rearview, and shook my head.

“Never happen,” I said. “You want me to go with you, fine. But she stays here.”

“Don’t leave me, Daddy,” Chrissy pleaded.

“What kind of mean father are you, Bennett?” Meyer said. “See, she wants to come.” That ugly mockery was back in his voice again. He must have been feeling confident, now that he’d gotten this far. “Or would you rather I finish you both right here and now?”

“You’re talking like that cop’s the only one at this airport,” I said. “Pull that trigger, and he’ll call in the cavalry before the sound fades. You know damn well they’ve got a SWAT team here. M16s, sniper rifles, flashbangs, lots of drill practice. You’re good, Billy, but you’ll never get past them.”

Meyer was quiet for several seconds. “I hate to admit it, Bennett, but you make a good point,” he finally said. “That’s another favor you’ve done me, so I’ll do you another one back. We’ll leave her here. It’s just you and me now.”

Chapter 89

OUTSIDE THE CAR, my sweat felt even colder, maybe because of the fresh air or maybe because I seemed to be running a fever now. On top of that, my stomach told me it wasn’t completely done heaving up its inventory.

The roar of another plane screaming skyward drowned out everything else for a few seconds. As its echo faded, my heart was cut by the sound of Chrissy, crying in the backseat.

The Port Authority cop stepped out of his booth and came walking toward us. His hand was on the butt of his pistol and his face looked wary.

“Just got off the phone with the sarge,” he said. “He’s on his way over here.”

I was opening my mouth, trying to come up with another quick lie, when Meyer shot him. No indication, no warning—just boom. The bullet hit the officer in the cheek, blood sprayed out the back of his head, and he dropped like a soup tureen that had been pushed off a table.

“No shit,” Meyer said, crouching to take handcuffs off the downed cop’s belt. “What did the sarge say?”

“You son of a bitch,” I yelled, and I leaped on Meyer, swinging. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I didn’t think, I just reacted. I hit him as hard as I ever hit anyone in my entire life, a right hook to his ear that knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling over the cop’s body onto the asphalt.

But goddammit, he got up with his gun clenched in his hand. I was shaking as he placed the still warm barrel in the soft spot under my chin, but he seemed amused instead of angry. He was actually grinning.

“Not bad, copper, but that’s the only one you get,” he said. “You gonna behave now? Or do I have to go back and see how your little girl’s doing?”

“Sorry,” I muttered, lowering my eyes.

“No, you’re not,” he said, then gave me a vicious kick in the rear, aiming me toward the private airport’s main building. “But you will be.”

The reception area inside looked like the lobby of a four-star hotel. Walls paneled with gleaming wood, leather furniture, marble coffee tables fanned with Fortune, BusinessWeek, Vanity Fair. The tarmac was visible beyond the windows.

A pretty, obviously pregnant receptionist was talking into a phone, but when she saw us she froze in place, gaping. The phone dropped from her hand, clattering on her desktop.

“Sorry to barge in unannounced,” Meyer said airily, pointing the gun at her swollen belly. “We’re just going to head out to the tarmac, okay? Don’t bother us, and we won’t bother you.”

There was an empty executive waiting room through a door on the left. More leather chairs and a hundred-inch wide-screen TV blaring ESPN’s top ten.

I jumped about five feet in the air as Meyer suddenly swung his gun around and blew a hole through the screen.

“Why should Elvis have all the fun?” he yelled, shoving me into another corridor. “-Fifty-seven high-def channels now, and there’s still nothing on.”

He kicked open a door marked PILOTS’ LOUNGE. We passed workout equipment, showers, a small kitchen.

Then the cold hit us again as we went through another door into a brightly lit hangar. Wind whipped through the building, across a steel walkway and stairs. There were tool carts, a portable crane, a mobile scaffold, but no people, thank God. Was he looking for a plane? There were none of those, either. Thank God again.

“Move it, Bennett,” he said, yanking me out the huge double doors toward the string of blazing runway lights.

“We’re going out there?” I said. “Looks kind of dangerous.”

Meyer sneered. “Come on, cop, show some balls.”

Striding toward the runway, we saw a plane approaching slowly down the taxiway from one of the other private hangars—a small orange-and-white Cessna, with a loudly buzzing propeller engine on each wing.