The 13-Minute Murder

by James Patterson

  She looked back, worried. But not about herself. She’d only caught his side of the conversation. She looked concerned because she was worried about him.

  She cared about him, and he hadn’t thought of her for a second. Of course they knew she was with him. They’d known everything else so far.

  He’d screwed up. He’d been stupid.

  And now Susan was in danger—even more danger than he was—because of him.

  Beck dropped the phone. It was useless now.

  He got out of the car, feeling dizzy. He heard Susan get out of the other side. She said his name. “Randall?”

  But it seemed to be coming from very far away. He was having trouble breathing. His pulse hammered behind his ears.

  He hit the ground hard as his legs went weak.

  And all he could think was that he’d put a target on Susan’s head. It was all his fault.

  Chapter 19

  Susan dragged him to his feet. He managed to walk almost a block toward her car before he nearly fell again. Fortunately, there was a bus shelter nearby. Susan set him on the bench.

  Beck breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He taught his patients relaxation techniques for moments like this.

  Funny how useless they seemed to him now.

  But after a moment, his pulse returned to normal. The world stopped spinning. He’d screwed up. That was done. The question now was how to fix it.

  “Susan,” he said, opening his eyes. “You have to get away from me. Find a place to hide. I will deal with this on my own. But you have to go. Now.”

  She stared at him for a moment. Then swore, quietly, under her breath. Then she asked, “Are you completely out of your mind?”

  “It’s not safe to be around me—”

  “Shut up,” she said, her voice like a door being slammed. “Do you really expect me to run away just because you tell me to? You think I didn’t know this was dangerous? I am trying to keep you alive. I will not let you run off and commit suicide now.”

  “I am dying anyway—”

  “So you’re just going to give up? Really? You? You never give up. Never. Remember? Not on your patients. Not when you think you’re right. So don’t ask me to do it, either.”

  Beck shrugged. He was too tired to argue with her. And it didn’t help that she was right. “Fine,” he said. “What do you suggest?”

  “I know you’re frightened. But I really believe our best chance is to go to the police. Whoever is behind this, they cannot control everything. That’s the problem with conspiracy theories. No one has that much power. There are still people we can trust. They cannot possibly control all the cops—”

  The sound of sirens and screeching tires drowned out whatever Susan was going to say next.

  They both looked up the street and saw several squad cars barreling around the corner, lights flashing, zeroing in on the bus shelter.

  Beck watched, helplessly. He should have known. The woman kept him on the phone to trace his location. It was so obvious.

  Now the police were headed right for them.

  Chapter 20

  The Metro PD’s squad cars raced toward them on the street. Beck hunched back inside the bus shelter, as if that would protect them.

  Then the cars skidded to a halt a block away.

  They surrounded the assassin’s car.

  Where Beck had dropped the phone.

  The cops were out of their cars, guns up, almost before their tires had stopped spinning. One officer grabbed his mike from the dashboard and began shouting into it.

  “You! In the car! Come out with your hands up! Now!”

  Beck realized they couldn’t see inside the car. The windows were tinted, and the glare from the sun made it impossible.

  “I said, come out now or we—”

  Whatever the officer said was lost in a sudden hail of gunfire.

  Someone decided not to wait for the order to fire, and the rear windshield exploded. The other cops, afraid that someone inside the car was shooting at them, unloaded their weapons as well. The entire street echoed with staccato pops and cracks as the bullets slammed into the car. The windows disintegrated first. The door panels deformed and crumpled as they were hit by ammo from both the pistols and shotguns of the police.

  It seemed to take forever before the shooting stopped, as the officer in charge bellowed, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” over and over through his car’s PA system.

  A moment later, the car sat in the street like a wounded, dying animal. It had been torn apart by the shots.

  It was clear that if anyone had been inside the vehicle, they would have been dead many times over.

  A police officer carefully moved toward the shot-up car. He swung the passenger door open. Then he looked at the other cops. He shook his head.

  The officer in charge dropped his mike and yelled at the other cops. “All right! Who shot first? I want to know! Who shot first?!”

  No one spoke up.

  Beck and Susan sat in the bus shelter, hardly breathing. No one had seen them. No one had even glanced in their direction.

  The police were arguing among themselves now. Beck, carefully and quietly, stood up, and Susan followed.

  They walked away.

  The entire time, Beck felt an itching between his shoulder blades, just waiting for someone to shout for him to stop.

  Or a bullet.

  But they made it around the corner to Susan’s car and got inside without getting caught or shot.

  Beck collapsed into the passenger seat and sighed deeply.

  Susan did the same. “They knew where we were,” she said numbly. “It’s like they were tracking down terrorists or something.”

  “For all we know, that’s what they were told,” Beck said.

  “I take back anything I told you about being paranoid.”

  Beck chuckled a little at that. Then he sat straight up as he remembered.

  “The laptop!” he said.

  Susan put a hand on his arm. She opened her bag. The laptop was inside.

  Beck sighed again, in relief. She’d remembered it. Thank God.

  “I can’t believe I forgot it.”

  “You’ve got a few other things on your mind,” Susan said.

  “Including a tumor,” he muttered. He took the laptop from her bag and opened it. Maybe there were some answers in here. If he could only get to them.

  There was the log-in screen. Beck thought hard. What would Kevin Scott use as a password? What mattered to him?

  He’d barely met the man. But he was an Army Ranger. He valued duty. Loyalty. Honor.

  Beck entered the Latin motto of the Rangers: Sua Sponte, which meant “Of Their Own Accord.” It symbolized the Rangers’ willingness to volunteer for the toughest missions.

  And it didn’t work. The screen blurred and shook, and then reset itself.

  TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING.

  “Still looking for clues?” Susan asked.

  “I’m out of ideas.”

  The screen saver kicked in again. Kevin Scott’s photos began to roll across the laptop once more.

  Beck was only halfway paying attention. Then he saw something that made him stare.

  He looked at the picture on the screen. It showed Kevin Scott with a bunch of other men and women, all in business attire, in front of a big corporate logo. Beck remembered that from the case history. Scott had been working as a contractor with a private security firm, like a lot of ex–Special Forces who’d come back home. The pay was decent, and it was usually nothing more strenuous than looking after a CEO or billionaire with delusions of importance.

  The case history didn’t include the name of his employer. It wasn’t relevant to Scott’s problems.

  Except that it was.

  Beck looked at the logo on the screen. It was a sword hanging over a stylized graphic of the globe. And across the globe was the name of the company:

  THE DAMOCLES GROUP

  “Randall?” Susan said. “Randall, are you
all right?”

  Beck didn’t seem to hear her. He looked at the picture and the logo.

  Then he nodded, making a decision.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “We should go to the police.”

  Not for the first time that day, Susan looked at him like he was insane.

  Chapter 21

  Sergeant Todd Graham of the Metro PD wasn’t expecting to see his psychiatrist show up at his home. That much was obvious from the look on his face when he opened the door.

  But Graham didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Beck and Susan and hustled them inside. “Get in here, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “before someone sees you.”

  It confirmed Beck’s intuition about Graham: he was a good cop, and he could be trusted.

  It also confirmed something else: Beck was a wanted man.

  But Graham was still willing to help him.

  Graham slammed the door behind them, then turned and faced Beck and Susan. “What are you doing here? Do you have any idea the shitstorm you could bring down on my head?”

  Beck decided to be honest. “No,” he said. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”

  For a moment, Graham looked like he was going to hit Beck. Then he shook it off. “You really don’t know?”

  “All I know is that people are out to kill me. And I need help. That’s why I came to you.”

  Graham scowled and crossed his arms. He turned away from Beck, clearly thinking. He knew what his duty was, but he was obviously conflicted.

  Susan chose that moment to speak up.

  “I’m Susan,” she said. “We haven’t met.”

  It was just the right oasis of normalcy in the desert of insanity all around them. Graham was forced to turn to her and acknowledge her. It took some of the anger out of him.

  “Yeah. I know. You’re on the warrant, too.”

  “What warrant?” Beck asked.

  “The arrest warrant. The one issued by the Secret Service.” Graham smiled, as if he were joking, but there was no real humor in it.

  “Congratulations, Dr. Beck. Apparently you’re plotting to kill the president of the United States.”

  Chapter 22

  “That’s crazy,” Susan said. Shock was etched on her face.

  “I know,” Graham replied. “You think I’d even be talking to you if I believed it?” He looked back at Beck. “You’re crazy, but you’re not that crazy. Nobody who’d work that hard with me would do something like that. I know.”

  Beck stayed quiet. For the first time, he was beginning to figure out what was going on. Things were starting to come together. He just had to think.

  “What are they saying?” Susan asked.

  “I don’t have a lot of detail, but there’s an APB out for you both. The Service says you’ve been implicated in a homegrown terrorist plot to kill President Martin. You’re the highest priority in the Washington, DC, area. They thought they had you in a car an hour ago, but that turned out to be a false alarm. They’re keeping it quiet for now, but if they don’t find you soon, they’re going to go public. You’ll be the most wanted people in America.”

  “That’s insane,” Susan said. “We’ve done nothing wrong. People have tried to kill us, and we have no idea why. And now you tell us we’re supposed to be assassins? It’s unbelievable!”

  But Beck shook his head. “No,” he said. “It makes sense.”

  That stopped both Susan and Graham in their tracks. “You’re going to have to explain that,” Graham finally said, his voice very serious.

  “Sorry,” Beck said, dragging himself back from his thoughts. He could see it very clearly, like a chain, one link after another. But he needed some confirmation. “I mean, I think I have an idea of what’s going on. Can we please sit down and I’ll explain?”

  Graham made a face, but he led them further inside his house to a breakfast nook that he’d also set up as a workspace. Beck took Scott’s laptop from Susan’s bag and opened it, showing the display to Graham.

  The screen saver kicked on again. “Look,” Beck said.

  Graham watched the pictures of Kevin Scott scroll past. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s the man who was killed in front of my office today.”

  Graham grunted. “Yeah. I heard something about that. That’s supposed to be what tipped the feds off to you.”

  You ever done anything really bad, Dr. Beck? Kevin Scott had asked him.

  “No,” Beck said. “He was killed by the people working with him. They were afraid he’d had a change of heart, or a guilty conscience. They murdered him. But they were too late to stop him from talking to me, and they wanted to know what he’d said. So they arrested me.”

  “Who? Who are you talking about?” Graham demanded.

  The group photo came up on the screen saver again. Kevin Scott with his coworkers.

  “Them,” Beck said. “That was all he said to me. He said the word, ‘Damocles.’ I didn’t know what it meant. But now I do. He was naming his killers.”

  “Damocles?” Graham said. “Dr. Beck, do you know who you’re dealing with here?”

  “I do,” Susan said. “They’re a security company.”

  Graham snorted. “The guy who installs your burglar alarm is a security company. This isn’t some rent-a-cop operation. Damocles is one of the biggest private military contractors in the world. They do billions of dollars’ worth of business with the government. They’re basically a small army.”

  Susan reached over to Graham’s computer and typed the name “Damocles” into a search engine. A list of articles popped up.

  “And they’re in trouble,” she said. “I was listening to this on NPR just the other day. The Senate is investigating them for cost overruns, corruption, and even torture and murder. They’ve got a lot of friends in high places, but they’ve been getting hammered in the hearings. Do you really not know this, Randall?”

  “If these are the people after you, then you picked a hell of a fight here, Dr. Beck,” Graham said.

  Beck looked at some of the headlines. Susan was right: he hadn’t been paying attention to any of this.

  “I’ve had other things on my mind,” he said. But he wasn’t completely oblivious.

  There it was. There was the connection he was looking for.

  He pointed at one of the articles on the screen.

  The headline read:

  SENATOR ELIZABETH PIERCE DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM DAMOCLES

  “That’s who’s leading the hearings,” he said.

  Senator Elizabeth Pierce. Ranking member of the Senate Committee on Intelligence. And currently, the leading challenger in the upcoming election against the president of the United States.

  Twelve hours.

  The woman’s voice on the phone. She’d told Beck to be quiet for twelve hours.

  What’s happening in twelve hours?

  Then Beck remembered. At Georgetown tonight. He wasn’t as out-of-touch as Susan thought.

  “The presidential debate,” he said.

  “What?” Graham asked.

  “The presidential debate. That’s why she told me to stay out of the way for twelve hours. Senator Pierce is debating the president tonight. She’s beating Martin in the primaries. And if she wins, Damocles could lose billions of dollars when they lose their military contracts.”

  It all made sense to Beck now.

  “There’s an assassination plot,” Beck said. “But it’s against her. Damocles is going to kill Senator Pierce.”

  Chapter 23

  “You’d better be damn sure about this, Dr. Beck,” Graham said for what seemed like the tenth time. Beck had lost count.

  They were in Graham’s unmarked sedan, driving through the thick downtown traffic, heading toward Senator Pierce’s campaign headquarters.

  Beck had explained it to Graham and Susan several times. Susan believed it made sense. Graham took more time to convince.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Graham asked Beck. “You’
re accusing President Sharon Martin of plotting to kill her opponent in the primary elections. Because there is no way that the Secret Service cooperates with Damocles without her knowing about it.”

  “I don’t know,” Beck admitted. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know where the president fits in. All I know is that these people are killers, and we have to stop them.”

  Beck knew this was probably an abuse of the doctor–patient relationship. Graham never would have bought this story if it was coming from some perp he’d arrested on the street. But Graham decided to put aside his skepticism and believe in Beck mainly because Beck had believed in him. Beck had refused to give up on him when he was at his lowest point. And that got Beck a lot of credit with the cop.

  So Graham made a few calls to some friends on the force, who’d given him the names of some people he could trust inside the Secret Service. Good people, he promised Beck.

  Beck was nervous about that, but Susan had taken him aside and whispered to him, “He trusted you. It’s time for you to trust him.”

  So Beck did.

  After an excruciating hour of waiting and muttered conversations on the phone, Graham had put on a suit jacket and tie and put his Glock 19 into his shoulder holster.

  They were going straight to Senator Pierce. With any luck, they would get to her in time.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Beck asked.

  Graham, next to him in the driver’s seat, honked his horn impatiently and squawked his siren at a driver who was too slow to move at a green light. “I’m sure,” he said. “Even if the Service is corrupt, the men and women next to the senator—the ones on her personal detail—they will not be in on this. You have to agree to take a bullet for the people you protect. You don’t betray that on a whim. Trust me. I know some of these guys. They become like family. There’s a real loyalty there.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Susan said from the backseat. She was looking at the laptop again, staring hard at the log-in screen, as if she could see inside the machine’s circuits to unlock the password.