Annihilate Me (Vol. 3) (The Annihilate Me Series) (15 page)

Alex’s team came up beside us and I could see his car
double-parked ahead of us, which no one was having.
 
Horns blared.
 
People shouted from their cars to get it the hell out of their way.
 

As we moved toward it, everything shifted into slow motion when
one of three men walking toward us removed a gun from his jacket.
 
A ripple of fear went through the
people on the sidewalk.
 
The two
men standing on either side of him followed suit.
 
With a frightening brazenness, they quickly lifted their
guns and trained them on Alex even as Alex’s team, including Tank, removed
their own guns.

But all were a millisecond too late.
 
Lasers now cut the distance between these men and Alex.
 
The lasers hovered over his forehead
and spiraled around his heart, confirming my worst fears.
 
Whoever was behind this wasn’t going
away.
 
They were serious.
 
For whatever reason, they were going to
kill him.

 
“Put away your
guns,” the man standing in the center of the group said to Alex’s men.
 

I committed his features to memory.
 
He was somewhere in his thirties, blond hair, light skin,
dark clothing, cleft in his chin, clean-shaven.
 
His voice was so cool that there was no question that he
knew that, right now, he had the upper hand.
 

“It’s your choice,” he said.
 
“Lower your guns or we kill him.
 
You know we’ve got this.
 
Just do what I ask and he might survive.
 
But only if you cooperate.”

“Do it,” Alex said.

Terrified, I looked at him.
 
“Don’t,” I said.
 
“They’ll kill you.”

“They already would have.
 
They want something.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Be calm, Jennifer.”

I looked beyond the men and saw that the people on the street a
moment ago had dispersed.
 
Was
someone calling 911?
 
Somebody had
to be calling 911.
 
These men
didn’t look like fools.
 
They knew
they didn’t have long before the police arrived.
 
Their jaws were set.
 
Their hands were steady.
 
They reminded me of Alex’s team.
 
These weren’t ordinary men.
 
They were professionals.

Whose professionals?

A car that resembled Alex’s brute of a Mercedes pulled up in
front of it.
 
There was something
about it that made it look newer to me.
 
The long slope of the hood?
 
The detailed headlights?

The man with the cleft in his chin said to Alex, “Tell the
driver to get out of your car.”

Alex turned to the car and waved his hand.
 
“Get out.”

Slowly, the driver stepped out of the car and onto the
sidewalk.
 
Cars sped by on the
street.
 

“Get rid of your gun,” Alex said.

The driver threw his gun on the sidewalk.
 
When he did, the front passenger door
on their car shot open, followed by the rear passenger door.
 
I looked inside and saw the
driver.
 
Dark hair, full beard
clipped close, early forties.
 
He
looked directly at me, and I instinctively looked away.

“Get in,” the man with the cleft said to Alex.

“Don’t,” I said.

Alex turned to me with a mix of intensity and sadness.
 
Was this the last time we’d see each
other?
 
I couldn’t imagine the
thought and pushed it from my mind.

“What choice do I have?” he asked.
 
“If I resist, they shoot me.
 
If I don’t, I might stand a chance.”

The lasers spread out to include one for Alex, one for Tank,
and one for me.
 
Apparently, Lisa
was too small to be considered a threat.
 
And with only three of them, they had to choose who the biggest threats
were.
 
Time was running out for
them.

One of the men came forward.

“Drop your gun,” he said to Tank.

“Do it,” Alex said.

Reluctantly, Tank did.

“Get in the car,” the man said to Alex.
 
“Back seat.
 
Just you.”
 
He
looked at Tank.
 
“If you follow us,
we will kill him.
 
It’s that
simple.
 
Your choice.”

Before he was taken from me, Alex held up his hands to show the
men that he had nothing in them, and then he leaned in to kiss me on the
lips.
 
It was a hard kiss, one
filled with love and depth.
 
It was
the sort of kiss that said goodbye.
 
“They won’t win,” he whispered to me.
 
“You’ll see.”

I started to tear up.
 
“Please don’t go.”

But within moments, Alex was in the back of the Mercedes along
with the rest of the men, and they sped away from us into the night.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I ran to Alex’s Mercedes, only to be stopped by Tank.
 

“Jennifer!” he yelled.
 

I opened the rear passenger door and swung around to look at
him.
 
He was picking up his gun.

“We wait two minutes,” he said.

“Why?
 
We’ve got to
follow them before we lose them.”

But Tank shook his head.
 
“If we follow them right now, especially in this traffic, they’ll see us
and they’ll kill him.
 
Don’t think
they won’t.
 
Alex was correct.
 
They want something from him.
 
Otherwise, they would have shot him
here in the street.”
 
He pulled out
his phone and turned it on.
 
“Alex
has a chip in each pair of shoes he owns.
 
We’ll be able to track them through this.”

He held up the phone for me to see the screen.
 
There was a small, pulsing red dot
moving through a map of the city.
 
Looking at it, I realized that, with the exception of Lisa, everything I
held dear was reflected in that dot.

“They’re moving down Fifth now,” I said.

“Two minutes.
 
I
need you to listen to me.
 
I need
you to stay here with Lisa.
 
Let us
take care of this.”

“Absolutely not—”

“I’m giving you a directive.
 
It’s my job to keep you safe.”

But there was no way I wasn’t going to be there for Alex.
 
I turned to one of the men standing
behind Tank.
 
“Stay with her,” I
said, pointing to Lisa.
 
“Drive her
home.
 
Don’t let anything happen to
her.”

“Jennifer,” Lisa said.

I got into the back of the Mercedes before Tank could stop
me.
 
“I’ll be fine,” I called out
to her.
 
“Just get home.
 
Keep him with you until you hear from
me.
 
Under no circumstances are you
to leave that apartment.”
 
I looked
at Tank, who appeared furious with me.
 
But so be it.
 
Alex came
first.
 
“We’re now at three
minutes,” I said to him.
 
“Get in
the car before something happens to him.
 
All of you.
 
Move!”

*
 
*
 
*
 

They moved.

Tank took the front passenger seat.
 
The driver picked up his gun and stepped inside.
 
Two other men got on either side of me,
leaving me pressed between them in the middle.
 
There was no room for anyone else, which left Lisa with two
men to protect her.
 
That gave me a
trace of relief.

We cut into traffic, nearly striking a cab as we did so.
 
Car horns sounded.
 
Our driver jolted forward only to press
hard on the brakes so he wouldn’t hit the car in front of him.
 
The traffic wasn’t moving fast
enough.
 
I could see the green
light that would allow us to turn right onto Fifth and follow them ahead of us.

Then it turned yellow.
 
And then red.

“They’re moving east on Forty-First Street,” Tank said.
 
“Once we get on Fifth, things will open
up.”

After a moment, the light changed, the cars ahead of us lurched
forward, and finally, by some miracle of God, we were able to at last cut right
onto Fifth and race down the street to hook a left onto Forty-First Street.

In a city consumed by traffic, even at this time of night, and
with rows of uncooperative traffic lights, which our driver busted through
whenever he could, I feared that we were too far behind them to do much
good.
 
I leaned forward and saw
that there was another dot on the map.
 
It was blue, and on this tiny, illumined map, it didn’t appear to be too
far behind the pulsing red light.

“Is that us?” I asked.

“That’s us.”

“We’re close.”

“It’s an illusion.
 
They’re way ahead of us.”

“How far ahead of us?”

“Three blocks.
 
They’re at Third.
 
We’re at
Madison.”

“Three blocks doesn’t seem—”

“Look at the traffic, Jennifer.
 
It’s not moving any faster, is it?
 
It could get better or worse.
 
Pray that it doesn’t get worse.”

“Should we call the police?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“They’ll kill him.
 
We handle this ourselves.”

The car jerked through traffic and sailed across Park Avenue’s
wide thoroughfare.
 
Pedestrians
walked in front of us, and then sprinted to the curbside and cursed at us when
they realized that we had no intention of slowing down.
 

But then we had no choice but to slow down.
 
We were held up again by traffic and
had to come to a complete stop, which nearly drove me out of my skin because I
knew we were losing time.

“They’ve stopped,” Tank said.

I leaned forward.
 
“Where?”

“Between Second and First Avenue.”

“What could be there?”

“I don’t know.
 
It’s mostly residential there.”

“Where does Gordon Kobus live?” I said.

“Who?”

“Gordon Kobus.
 
Kobus Airlines.
 
Where does
he live?”

“That’s a random question, but Google it,” Tank said to the man
at my left.
 
Then, to me, he said,
“What’s your interest in Kobus?”

“Wenn is entering into a hostile takeover with him.
 
It’s just a thought, but I know Kobus
is furious and ready for a fight.
 
How far will he take that fight?
 
How far will he go to protect what he built?
 
All of the threats Alex and I have received began not long
after Kobus learned that Alex was going after Kobus Air.
 
It’s all I’ve got—unless
Immaculata is behind this, which we both know is a stretch.”

“Kobus lives on Park Avenue,” the man next to me said.
 
“Sixty-Seventh Street.”

“Then it’s not Kobus,” Tank said.

“Unless he owns property down here.
 
Is there any way to find out?”

“Make the call,” Tank said to the man.

But before he could, far ahead of us came an explosion that was
so intense, I could see a fireball roiling up from the center of the
street.
 
It was like something out
of a movie, a fiery mushroom cloud that boiled toward the heavens and turned
inward on itself until the fire inside evaporated in orange plumes of
smoke.
 
The sound wave was so
strong that it literally shook our car and stopped every car in front of us.
 
There was an eerie moment of what seemed
like absolute silence in a city that eschewed silence before people either
started to get out of their cars and run toward the explosion, or move away
from it all together, likely believing it was a terrorist attack.

Horrified, I looked over Tank’s shoulder at the cell phone in
his hand.
 
Unmoving, he stared down
at it.
 
I leaned forward and looked
at the screen myself.
 
My stomach
sank at what I saw.

The blue blip that was us remained, but the pulsing red blip
that had represented Alex was gone.