The Double Eagle Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembered. The knock on the back of the head, the sudden flash of pain. Then nothing.
    Blinking through the smoke, his head throbbing and awkwardly slumped forward onto his chest, his streaming eyes could just make out a steering wheel, a window, a red tube jutting into the car. The truth slowly dawned on him and his eyes opened wide with fear. Not like this, surely not like this. This wasn’t how it was meant to end.
     
    He realized then that he was coughing, struggling to catch his breath, gasping for air as the blood raced around his head, the dull pumping of his heart echoing in his ears, the tie and collar of his uniform tight around his neck. He felt sick and random thoughts began to tumble through his head as he strained to remain conscious, fireworks of memory that exploded brightly and then immediately dimmed only for another to go off.

    His Auntie May, drunk at Thanksgiving when he was eight. Kissing Betty Blake at the prom. Falling off his bike at college and cutting his chin open. His retirement party when police captain O’Reilly had clapped him on the back and whispered that if he ever wanted his old job back, then it was his. The time he’d picked the phone up to do just that, but then slapped it back down in the certain knowledge that Debbie would say no. Debbie and the kids waving to him from the porch, smiling and happy and oblivious.
     
    Debbie. At the thought of her he had started to cry, tried to wrap his guilt in grief, but found that the tears wouldn’t come now, that his arid body had begun to ignore him and his throat merely constricted further with the effort.

    Sweet Lord Jesus, he prayed through the drumming in his head, let me live long enough to tell Debbie what really happened, why I really did this, why they killed me.
     
    Even though he couldn’t feel his legs, somehow he managed to summon the strength to beat his hand weakly against the glass, scrabble at the door handle. The handle moved, but the door wouldn’t open. The seat belt was hugging him, pressing into his stomach, crushing his chest, stopping him from breathing.

    He tried to scream, but his red lips barely parted. And then, despite everything, despite the heat and the smoke and the fear, he smiled at the beautiful simplicity of it all. Gently, the sound of the engine lulled him back to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
    FBI LABORATORY, FBI ACADEMY, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
18 July—11:10 P.M.

    “Y ou still here?”
    Dr. Sarah Lucas paused in the doorway to the laboratory as she pulled her jacket on, lifting her blond hair out from under the collar. The room was dark apart from the pool of light around the computer at the far end, the outline of the person hunched in front of it silhouetted against the flickering screen.

    “Yeah,” the outline grunted back. “I promised some cop in New York I’d run something through the system before I left tonight. Kinda wishing I hadn’t.”

    Sarah smiled. David Mahoney was a rookie fresh out of Quantico, full of zesty enthusiasm and uncomplicated ambition. He still had a lot to learn; knowing when to say no was right up there. But that would come with time and experience. Then again, she mused, it was past eleven and she was still there. Maybe some people just never learned to say no. She put her briefcase down and stepped into the room.

    “What have you got?”

    Mahoney was tapping furiously into the keyboard, his stubby fingers complementing his round, fleshy face, greasy brown hair parted on the left-hand side and scooped behind his ears. He barely looked up when she peered over his shoulder, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses on her face.

    “Get this. Some guy rappelled down to the seventeenth floor of a Park Avenue apartment block, stole a nine-million-dollar Easter egg and then vanished. NYPD forensics found an eyelash on the floor next to the safe. They figure it’s probably unrelated but wanted us to run it through just in case something showed up. It’ll only be another few