SIXTY-FIVE
EAST RIVER, JULY 2
JENKINS FELT THE SHOCK AND heard the rending of metal as the helicopter began to drop. “Hold on,” the pilot screamed.
The impact sent Jenkins’ head crashing into something. She must have blacked out because she came to seconds later with a terrible pain in her skull and the co-pilot slapping her face.
“Come on, move!” the man was saying. “We’re sinking.” He pulled her over to the side door. Water swirled around her ankles. The pilot was already there, but something was wrong. He was bleeding from the head and looked barely conscious.
“I’m going to push you out,” the co-pilot shouted. “You inflate your vest, and when I push him out, you get his. Can you do that?”
She barely had time to nod before he pulled a door lever, and more water rushed into the chopper. The co-pilot threw Maggie out onto the river, and she fumbled with her life vest, found the ring, and pulled. A second later, the pilot was in the water, too, face down. She kicked over, reached his ring, and inflated. By that time the co-pilot was out as well and kicking toward them. Jenkins didn’t even have time to watch as the helicopter disappeared.
Jesus, she thought, what the hell happened? It had all been so fast, there’d been no time to radio their position. Nobody knew they were down. They needed to get out of the river and locate a phone. But how? The current was fast and powerful, and they were being swept with the tide. She couldn’t see a thing. She didn’t know which shore was closer, whether there were bulwarks or whether she could climb out.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the fog. “Can anybody hear me?”
“Over here!” the co-pilot shouted.
Jenkins felt a ray of hope as she heard an engine throttle up and then back. “Hey!” the voice came again, a little closer.
“Keep coming!” the co-pilot shouted.
“Talk to me!”
“Here,” Jenkins shouted.
They kept calling back and forth, and a boat emerged out of the fog, nearly running over them. The person at the wheel reached an arm over the side. “Come on, someone grab on,” he said.
“Take him,” the co-pilot shouted, pushing the pilot forward.
“I can’t get him. I only have one good arm.”
The man was reaching down, and Jenkins grabbed his wrist and let him help pull her aboard. She turned around and they both grabbed the pilot’s life jacket and hauled him up and over the gunwale. Finally they pulled the co-pilot on board.
The pilot lay gasping on the bottom of the boat while the co-pilot tended him. Jenkins looked at their rescuer, noting the face she’d seen on the law enforcement net and the bloody arm.
“You’re Brent Lucas,” she said.
He said nothing.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Looking for Biddle’s boat.”
There was something in his tone that made her guess. “Is DeVito on board?”
He nodded.
“Know what else is on that boat?” she said.
He shook his head as he peered ahead into the fog. “I’ll worry about that after I get Maggie.”
“Where’s your radio?”
He pointed at the hole in the control panel. “Missing.”
She was going to say something else, but he grabbed the controls. “Hold on!” he shouted then pushed the throttle forward and steered toward the right shore.
Jenkins grabbed desperately for the back of a seat as she barely kept her balance. “Stop!”
Lucas ignored her. The boat picked up speed. Jenkins could see only baffles of fog, but the sound of the engine began to echo off the nearby river wall, telling her they were way too close.
“Stop the boat!” Jenkins commanded. “I’m putting you under arrest!”
Lucas shook his head.
Jenkins took her pistol from her holster and put it to the Brent’s back. “Hands in the air! Now!”
Lucas ignored her. He was busy adjusting the radar resolution. “There!” he cried, pointing to the image that suddenly jumped out from the clutter of the shoreline. “Just ahead!”
Jenkins shook her head, knowing she wasn’t going to try and take him down physically, not here. “Shit!” she snapped.
Lucas glanced back. “You steer. Get me close enough to jump on.”
“You’re crazy!”
Lucas smiled as he turned back to the radar screen. “Runs in the family,” he said.
SIXTY-SIX
EAST RIVER, JULY 2
MAGGIE OPENED HER EYES, TRIED to blink away the pain and dizziness and get a sense of where she was. She was on her side, on a large bed, her hands cuffed behind her back, her knees drawn up in a fetal position. She’d been dragged down some stairs, but she couldn’t say how long ago. Ten minutes? An hour? She’d been slipping in and out of consciousness for a while, but she had to find her bearings and make a plan.
A man lay facing her on the other side of the mattress. His eyes were open but glazed over, his mouth slack with either hopelessness or defeat. He was thin with sandy hair, midfifties she guessed. Like her, his hands were bound behind his back. He had to be Prescott Biddle.
At the other end of the room, a woman paced the floor, talking on a cell phone, moving in and out of Maggie’s line of sight. She was surprisingly beautiful, blonde, midthirties, but her mouth was curled in a tight scowl.
Suddenly, Biddle stirred. “Anneliës,” he said plaintively. He rolled over, threw his legs over the side of the mattress, and struggled into a sitting position. “For God’s sake, let us go!”
The woman closed her phone and spun. “Shut up!” she cried with icy fury, and then she stepped over and hit him across the mouth with the back of her hand.
Biddle’s head snapped sideways at the blow. “You told me not to come,” he persisted. “You knew! You’ve always known! How could you do this to me?”
“I’m warning you,” the woman whispered in cold fury. “I will kill you if you say more!”
“Why? You’re afraid I’ll tell Sayeed? Well I will!”
The woman grabbed Biddle by the shirt and jerked him off the bed and onto the floor. She slammed her foot on his chest and stood over him, her back turned to Maggie.
Maggie struggled desperately to remain conscious. Through a fog of pain she watched the woman pull a long folding knife out of her blue jeans, flick it open with a snap of the wrist, and place the point at Biddle’s throat. The woman’s back was still turned as Maggie shifted across the bed.
“Not one fucking word!” the woman was saying to Biddle. The boat hit some rougher water, and she straightened and groped for the bedside table to steady herself. Maggie shifted further and pivoted so her feet pointed off the side of the bed. The yacht shifted again, causing the woman to brace her knife hand against the ceiling. With a furious effort, Maggie rolled onto her back, balancing painfully on her bound wrists, her vision blurred. She brought her knees to her chin then exploded with every bit of strength she possessed, firing both heels at the woman’s kidney.
Even as she struck she knew she would miss. The boat’s roll caused the woman to turn slightly, so that the full force of Maggie’s kick missed the vital kidney and instead exploded against her spine. A dull crack sounded as Maggie’s heels hit full force.
No! Maggie thought. Struggling not to black out, she cocked her legs again, expecting the woman to jump to her feet and attack with the knife. She was about to die, but she would go out fighting.