Chapter 47

The biker saw him, nodded, and swung off the road. Eric hopped on without a moment’s hesitation, pulling the coat in so it wouldn’t get caught in the wheels. He extended his hands back to the grab bar and his savior took off. “Where you headed?” the leather-clad biker shouted back against the wind.

“I need a phone,” Eric screamed in return. “Anywhere where there’s a telephone.”

The biker stunned Eric by reaching into his jacket and pulling out his cellphone. He handed it back. Of course, this was a Westchester biker—very twenty-first century. In fact, despite the leather jacket, he did look a bit on the middle-class, middle-aged side, now that Eric thought of it. An Afghan vet, Eric guessed.

The guy pulled off the road again, letting Eric use both hands to hold the phone and push the buttons. He dialed Katherine’s home phone twice. Not only was there not an answer, but her machine wasn’t on. Yet that wouldn’t have anything to do with Morgan and Andrews—they couldn’t have gotten there so quickly. Maybe something else was wrong. Eric was worried. He thanked the biker and handed the phone back. He could feel the blood not only running down his leg but soaking into Finnigan’s expensive coat.

“Wait,” Eric told the guy urgently as the cyclist gunned the bike. The biker looked back, surprised. Eric watched his rescuer’s face, calculating his probable reaction to an outrageous request. “I have to get to Larchmont quick. Like by helicopter. I know the back roads. I can get there faster than on the expressway, if you let me drive.” The words rushed out of his mouth. He flushed, but the truth was, he was prepared to throw the guy off his own bike in order to get to his sister and son before Morgan and Andrews did.

“Can you operate this thing?” the motorcyclist asked, incredulous, his eyes open wide at the request. But rather than anger at the unreasonable demand, the biker seemed engaged by the idea of a rush through the night in order to urgently reach some undefined destination for some unnamed purpose.

Eric nodded in the affirmative and they jumped off and changed places. But had he answered honestly? Not one hundred percent, perhaps. The last time he had ridden a motorcycle was a few years ago when he and California had rented bikes and had taken off across the Georgia plains. They hadn’t been killed, so he must be an expert.

He got on, gunned the motor and was off. It felt weird as hell, driving this strange machine and being right out there only inches from the road. He looked down. The blacktop was still frigging icy.

He wove through traffic, veering to the right so he could get off the throughway as soon as possible. He cut into the exit lane, escaping death by a fraction of a second when a car failed to notice their presence and nearly rammed into the bike. The passenger/bike owner uttered a guttural shout in Eric’s ear.

Eric hastened off the expressway with relief and streaked through a nearby residential district, wondering if he was going to be chased by a local patrol car on the prowl. This was sort of fun, to be totally honest. If it weren’t for the fact that he was terrified of what the two Brits were going to do to his family, he would actually be enjoying himself.

He sped through Pelham Manor and his hometown of New Rochelle, zipping through streets he had known all his life and dodging cars that were probably being driven by people he had gone to school with—ordinary people who wouldn’t believe it was their old high school pal, Eric Ryder, who was the nut screeching around corners on some guy’s bike, bleeding from a gunshot wound, and racing to prevent two maniac industrial spies from killing his sister and his son. Life had as many peculiar twists and turns as these familiar streets.

He could feel the damage he was doing to the tires and probably to the motor as well. The owner of the vehicle was no doubt wincing with every frenetic turn. The driver of a Chevy Eric cut off leaned out the window and cursed at him. The words were lost, however, in the roar of the Kawasaki engine and the wind in his ears.

If he could have gone on like this forever, he almost would have. This test of nerves and concentration was easier than facing what might lie at the end of the journey, if it turned out he hadn’t been quick enough.

He careened around a corner, in Larchmont now, short-cutting over the still-slippery walks alongside the golf course directly across from his sister’s home.

Eric spotted the Lincoln parked on the street in front of Katherine’s house. His escape from the two men earlier had not only failed to accomplish anything but had meant that he was too late to handle the situation as it occurred. He drove the bike up, onto the sidewalk, and braked, hopping off as quickly as he could despite his seriously aching and stiffening hip.

No barking greeted him. That was a bad sign. The dog must be dead. They had shot the animal—Eric’s one hope of his family’s safety. “Do you have a gun?” he asked his passenger, who looked more than a little nonplussed at the question.

“No,” said the guy. Then, helpfully, “I have a boot knife.”

Eric shook his head. He had a knife, too, but that might not be enough. He hurried to the door, taking his keys out as he moved, but then he saw that he didn’t need them. The door stood open—another sign that some tragedy had already ensued.

He bent and pulled the knife from its leg sheath, then stepped inside, quietly. He looked down to see if he was dripping blood. He mustn’t get blood on the recently replaced carpeting; that stood second in importance only to saving his sister and David. The bleeding seemed to have stopped and the blood that had dripped down his leg had been absorbed by his clothing.

He walked quietly into the house, then heard sounds in his sister’s den. Someone was shuffling through her papers and books, but the only voices were Morgan’s and Andrews’, not his sister’s answering words. And she was always home at this hour, ready to oversee David’s evening wash then tuck the boy into bed.

He hobbled from room to room, looking for Katherine and David, not knowing what to expect—their bodies, or two captives tied and gagged. He even went into Katherine’s closet and lifted up the top of the cedar chest. He called quietly to his son, but received no response, saw no movement.

Katherine and David were nowhere to be found.

Loud shouting in the living room startled him and he hurried forward, hoping his wound wasn’t going to reopen. He stopped short in the hallway, so that he could listen before leaping into battle. “What the hell do you want?” Morgan was yelling at someone.

“I just…” The person answering halted mid-sentence, confused. Then Eric understood. Morgan was talking to the biker, who must have all-too-bravely followed Eric.

Eric stepped into the living room behind Morgan. “You don’t mind that I brought a friend to the party, do you?” he asked, grabbing the spy and placing his knife at the man’s throat. He flashed on the scene in this very house, only a few weeks before, when he had slit two throats with his own hand. Cutting throats was a bad habit to get into. “Where’s my sister?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” answered Morgan, enunciating carefully, as if the knife hampered his free expression. “She wasn’t here when we got here.”

Well, if she was in trouble, at least it wasn’t because of something Eric had done. And he was gaining control of the situation, irrespective of his own mistake in jumping out of the car. He began to feel a while lot better than he had five minutes before.

Then he saw the expression in the biker’s eyes change and felt the barrel of a gun at his head. It didn’t do to feel too self-satisfied before the mission was over. “Just kidding,” he said, releasing Morgan. He didn’t turn around. “If you’re going to shoot me, not on the new carpet, please,” he begged Andrews. He looked down. The carpet was dark, but not dark enough to cover stains from pieces of her brother’s brain. His brain, that was.

The gun held dead range at his head didn’t worry him as much as might be expected. Andrews might be an experienced spy, but he was letting Eric stay on his feet. That wasn’t the way they handled it where Eric came from—the U.S. Army. In his particular culture, the first thing you did was get a prisoner down on the ground. For good reason. As things stood, it was a toss-up as to whether Andrews could shoot Eric faster than Eric could disarm him. Because it was a toss-up, however, Eric didn’t yet move. When the odds turned in his favor—say fifty-two percent—he would risk it. Fifty-one percent didn’t quite cut it.

“You wanted that flash drive, I believe,” Eric reminded the two, in order to redirect their attention. Their guess actually was as good as his as to where the thumb drive was.

“I think we’ll wait until your sister gets home and ask her about that,” replied Morgan. “Why don’t we all sit down in the meantime?”

“I can’t sit down,” said Eric. “I’ll get blood on the sofa.”

“That sort of thing worries you a great deal, doesn’t it?” Morgan remarked.

“Concerns of that kind are the price one pays for the shelter of civilized society.” That seemed the sort of comment Morgan himself would make.

In fact, Morgan smiled. “I thought only we British were civilized.” He grabbed inside Eric’s coat, seizing hold of Eric’s shirt, Morgan’s own shirt really, obviously intending to push Eric into a chair. Eric gave way, but instead of winding up seated on a piece of furniture, he deflected his course somewhat and knocked the gun out of Andrews’ hand with a hard block. He brought his knee into Andrews’ groin, then turned to kick Morgan in the shin with his other leg. His hip wouldn’t cooperate in the venture, but that wasn’t the problem it might have been. Eric’s biker friend had distracted Morgan seriously by punching him in the jaw. Eric took the extra seconds to pick Andrews’ gun off the floor.

However, as is sometimes the way, Morgan had reacted quickly enough to pull out his own gun and before Eric had Andrews’ pistol firmly in hand, he was staring down the barrel of Morgan’s own weapon. “Just joking,” Eric said. He placed the weapon back on the floor where Andrews might retrieve it once he recovered from the very unpleasant sensations he was now experiencing from Eric’s groin kick.