Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(40)

He wasn’t taking my picture. He was just making sure I kept looking in front of me.

“Nice bike,” came his voice behind me.

I turned to look. It was pure reflex and exactly what he was banking on. He was tall, wore dark sunglasses, and never broke stride in his black blazer and turtleneck as his left hand went up. Pzzzz!

The spray hit my eyes like a thousand tiny needles, the sting nearly knocking me to the ground. It was mace. Military grade. The kind that could stop a grizzly dead in its tracks, never mind a person.

My helmet and phone hit the ground as I reached up to my eyes. Again, pure reflex. I was all but blind, blinking furiously to try to keep seeing—if only for a split second at a time. The Glock holstered above my ankle was useless.

That’s when he raised his right hand.

I could just make out the movement. The grip. The steel. The suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. Pffft!

The muffled sound pierced the air with barely a wake. Once, then twice. He’d shot my back tire followed by the front. It was all happening frame by frame, like clicking through one of those old View-Masters. My mind was desperately trying to fill in what my eyes couldn’t see.

He could’ve killed me if he’d wanted to. He didn’t want to. All he was looking for was a captive audience. He had it.

“Is the girl okay?” he asked.

Is the girl okay? You just maced me, my eyes are burning like hell, and you want an update on Elizabeth?

The mere question told me plenty, though. He truly had been trying to help her with the tip about Gorgin and his house up in Pelham.

“She’s okay,” I said.

Two words were pretty much all I could manage. I was bent over in agony, out of breath from the pain. Fine by him. He was there to talk, not listen.

“You don’t know me, and the mayor doesn’t know me. Do you understand? I see everything, Dr. Reinhart, and you clearly don’t. Not any longer. Not these days.”

He obviously knew who I was and what I used to be. He just wasn’t giving me enough credit for it.

All I needed to do was muster three more words.

“Look behind you,” I said.





CHAPTER 55


I WISHED I could’ve seen his face. Hell, I wished I could’ve seen anything.

But I saw enough.

Eli had turned to find the business end of a SIG P226 pointing straight at him. The man doing the pointing was only a set of eyes beneath a John Deere cap, the rest of his face covered by a red bandana. Old school. Like the Old West. Or, more likely, the best he could manage given such short notice. Either way, it worked.

Eli didn’t need instructions. He knew the drill. He laid down what looked to be a Remington R1 Tactical, given the raised sights to accommodate the suppressor. He then spread his arms slightly away from his body. No monkey business.

“About time you showed up,” I said to my cavalry of one. I immediately regretted it. Josiah Maxwell Reinhart suffered sarcasm even less than fools.

“That’s a damn funny way of saying thank you,” he snapped back.

“I could’ve done without the mace, that’s all,” I said. Slowly, I was getting my vision back. If only the pain would go away. “And how did you know he wasn’t going to kill me?”

“Who maces someone before they shoot him?”

Decent point, Dad. Still, “There’s always a first time.”

I walked over and frisked Eli. He had no other weapon. In fact, he had nothing else on him except a pack of Marlboros and a money clip stuffed with hundreds inside his blazer. No credit cards. No ID of any kind.

As soon as I scooped up his gun, my father lowered his. I could tell the old man was exhausted, although he’d never let on. He’d left Concord, New Hampshire, immediately after I called around midnight, arriving in his old, beat-up Jeep Commando at about four thirty in the morning.

“So now what?” he asked. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep the show moving. He’d been up all night.

“Now I talk to our friend Eli here,” I said. “It is Eli, right?”

I wasn’t expecting him to answer. What was I going to do, shoot him if he didn’t cooperate? We both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

No, I needed another form of leverage. Fast, too. The sun was beginning to peek over the building tops. Our dimly lit alley was turning into broad daylight. Last I checked, New York still wasn’t an open carry state.

Eli raised a hand, although not to ask a question. He was motioning to the breast pocket inside his blazer. “I’m going to smoke.”

That settled why Elizabeth couldn’t originally peg his accent. His voice was so gravelly in person it sounded as if he’d been born with a cigarette in his hand.

The hell you are, I was about to say. He was no longer in charge.

Turns out I wasn’t either.

“Jesus Christ,” said my father. “Is that you, Elijah?”

My father lowered his bandana. Eli—make that, Elijah—lowered his sunglasses. They both smiled.

“It’s me,” said Elijah.

“I thought you were retired,” said my father.

“Yeah, and I thought you were dead, Eagle.”





CHAPTER 56


HE CALLED my father by his old code name, the Eagle. They obviously had history. A somewhat complicated one, I was about to learn.