Free Worst Case by James Patterson

you’d only tell us.”
    Then he said the words I was dreading.
    “If that’s the case, then listen closely,” he said. “I want you to come and get it. I want you to come and get little Chels and bring her back to Mumsy. You know the drill. Get in a car. Ten minutes. You can bring your pretty little FBI friend, too, if you like.”

Chapter 26
    THE CIRCLE LINE tour boat was coming through the Amtrak swing bridge down on the Harlem River as we raced across the Henry Hudson Bridge.
    And if you look up, ladies and gents, I thought, emergency lights blazing through the lower level’s E-Z Pass lane, you’ll see an authentic, stressed-out New York City cop about to break the sound barrier .
    I clicked the siren to full auto as we blasted through the Manhattan-side tolls at a stomach-churning seventy.
    We’d just been told Chelsea was in Harlem. I couldn’t lose another kid. If there was any possible way to get to her before it was too late, I was going to do it.
    “Where are you now?” the kidnapper said into the ear of my hands-free headset. Again, he’d insisted on guiding me street by street. My own personal insane OnStar operator.
    “On the Manhattan side of the Henry Hudson Bridge,” I said.
    “Did you know that it was built by Robert Moses back in the thirties using New Deal labor?” he said. “In twenty years, Moses managed to build most of New York City’s major bridges, parkways, and public beaches. The Twin Towers were knocked down almost ten years ago, and it’s still just a pit. Our civilization is winding down, Mike. It’s obvious. So’s our planet. Take a fork out of the drawer and turn off the oven timer. This place is done.”
    “Hello? Hello? I think the signal’s breaking up,” I said as I whipped off the headset to clear the sweat and bull crap out of my ears. Beside me, Emily was working two radios and her cell phone as we gunned it south. I cupped my cell’s microphone.
    “How are we looking?” I whispered.
    Besides Aviation and the Emergency Service Unit backing us up, the phone company was on board now, actively working on a trace.
    “Verizon’s still trying to triangulate,” Emily said. “Nothing so far.”
    As I drove, I racked my brain to come up with a way to try to throw the kidnapper off balance, turn the tables on him. He was in charge, and what was worse from the smug tone of his voice, it sounded like he knew it.
    “Are you there?” he was saying angrily when I patched back in.
    “Hello? Hello?” I said. “The signal seems to be back now.”
    “The signal, huh? I believe you, Mike. Almost. Now take the George Washington Bridge exit.”
    Shit, I thought. That exit was already blowing past on my left. I spun the wheel, mercilessly mowing down a family of construction traffic cones on the exit’s shoulder. We missed a head-on with a construction light cart by a few millimeters as I just made it back into the lane.
    “Can you hear me now?” the kidnapper said. “Head over to Broadway, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Chapter 27
    I FOLLOWED THE kidnapper’s instructions through Washington Heights and on deeper into Harlem. As we turned off Broadway at St. Nicholas Avenue, we passed a series of enormous housing projects that were as stark and depressing as warehouses in an industrial plant.
    Bulletproof windows began to appear on the corner delis and Chinese takeouts. It looked a lot like the section of the Bronx where we’d found Jacob Dunning.
    I was on another magical misery tour of the inner city, complete with constant narration.
    “Take a good look around, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Remember the War on Poverty? Poverty won. African Americans and Latino immigrants were lured into the cities because of jobs, and then the jobs moved away with all the white people. The racial and economic inequality that still exists in this country makes me physically sick sometimes.
    “It’s not just here, either. Look at places like Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.