Читать онлайн «Killer Instinct»
Автор Джозеф Файндер
Joseph Finder
Killer Instinct
Copyright © 2006 by Joseph Finder
For Emma, my baseball fanatic
When the student is ready, the Master appears.
– Buddhist proverb
Prologue
I’d never fired a gun before.
In fact, before this evening, I’d never even held one.
It was a Colt. 45 semiautomatic pistol, and it felt heavy and awkward in my hand. Its grip was rough. I couldn’t steady the weapon. Still, I was close enough to him now to put a bullet in the center of his chest. If I didn’t-if I didn’t kill him now-there was no question he’d kill me. I was no match for him, and we both knew it.
It was the middle of the night, and we were the only ones on the twentieth floor, probably in the entire building. Outside my office the maze of cubicles was dark. All those people who worked with me and for me, I’d probably never see again.
My hand was trembling, but I squeezed the trigger.
Just a few days ago, if you looked at me you’d see a successful corporate executive. A guy with a high-powered job married to a beautiful woman. A man for whom everything seemed to be going perfectly.
My idea of danger had been going to bed without brushing my teeth.
Now I didn’t think I was going to live to see the morning.
So where did I go wrong? How far back did it go? First grade, when I hit that kid Sean Herlihy with a snowball? Fourth grade, when I was picked third to last for the kickball team?
No, I can tell you exactly when it began.
It was ten months ago.
PART ONE
1
Okay, so I’m an idiot.
The Acura went into a ditch because I was trying to do too many things at once. Radiohead’s “The Bends” was playing, loud, while I was driving home, too fast, since I was late as usual. Left hand on the wheel, while with my right hand I was thumbing my BlackBerry for e-mails, hoping I’d finally nailed a deal with a huge new customer. Most of the e-mails were blowback from the departure of our divisional vice president, Crawford, who’d just jumped ship to Sony. Then my cell phone rang. I dropped the BlackBerry on the car seat and grabbed the cell.
I knew from the ring that it was my wife, Kate, so I didn’t bother to turn down the music-I figured she was just calling to find out when I’d be home from work so she could get dinner ready. She’d been on a tofu kick the last few months-tofu and brown rice and kale, stuff like that. It had to be really good for you, since it tasted so bad. But I’d never tell her so.
That wasn’t why she was calling, though. I could tell right away from Kate’s voice that she’d been crying, and even before she said anything I knew why.
“DiMarco called,” she said. DiMarco was our doctor at Boston IVF who’d been trying to get Kate pregnant for the last two years or so. I didn’t have high hopes, plus I didn’t personally know anyone who’d ever made a baby in a test tube, so I was dubious about the whole process. I figured high tech should be for flat-screen plasma monitors, not making babies. Even so, it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
But the worst thing was what it would do to Kate. She was crazy enough these days from the hormone injections. This would send her over the edge.
