Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

“Wise decision, buddy,” Meyer said, jamming the gun barrel against my ear. “I knew we’d start to grow on each other, me and you.”

We went down the back elevator and came out the side entrance of my building on 95th Street. Not a soul was in sight as I led him to my unmarked Impala. He put me behind the wheel and took Chrissy into the backseat with him.

“She’s not wearing a seat belt, Mikey, so I’d drive carefully if I were you. Go to Broadway and head uptown, and do me a favor. Turn that police band up.”

We rolled uptown to Washington Heights.

“Make a left up here,” he said when we got to 168th.

Over the building tops, I saw the steel lattice tower of the George Washington Bridge.

“Find an on-ramp for the outbound side,” Meyer said in my ear. “We’re going across.”

Why were we heading to Jersey? Not to load up on cheap gas, that was for sure. Was this his escape plan? It was impossible to guess what was going on in that crazy mind.

I managed to make eye contact with Chrissy in the rearview mirror. She looked scared, but she’d settled down, and was holding up more incredibly than I could have imagined. I love you, Daddy, she mouthed. I love you, too, I mouthed back. Don’t worry.

I didn’t know much, but I was certain of one thing as I piloted us carefully onto the bridge. This sick bastard wasn’t going to harm my daughter. No matter what.

Chapter 87

WHEN MAEVE AND I had first brought home our oldest daughter, Juliana, I used to have this terrible recurring nightmare. In it, I’d be feeding Juliana in her high chair, and all of a sudden, she’d start to choke. I’d put my finger in her mouth, give her the Heimlich, but absolutely nothing would work. I’d wake up sweating and gasping, and I’d have to go to her room and hold a mirror to her tiny nose and see it fog with her breath before I could let myself go back to sleep.

Because that, without question, is a parent’s greatest fear. To be helpless, not able to do anything, when his child is facing harm.

I glanced in my rearview mirror at Meyer, sitting next to my daughter. At the heavy, oiled automatic pistol he held loosely in his lap.

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.”