I, Alex Cross

to take full responsibility. He’d already picked up the package. Scared him, but he’d done just fine.
    No one ever said so, but once you started making deliveries like this, it meant you had something on the family, and they had something on you. In other words, there was a relationship. After tonight, there’d be no more running numbers for Johnny, no more scrapping for crumbs in southside neighborhoods. It was like the bumper sticker that said,
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
    So naturally, he was pumped — and just a little bit nervous.
    His uncle Eddie’s warning kept playing like a tape in his mind.
Don’t blow this opportunity, Twitchy,
Eddie had said.
I’m way out on a limb here for you.
Like he was doing him some kind of big favor with this job, which Johnny supposed maybe he was, but still. His own uncle didn’t have to rub his face in it, did he?
    He reached over and turned up the radio. Even the country music they played down here was better than listening to Eddie’s nagging in his head all night long. Turned out, it was an old Charlie Daniels Band tune, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia.". He even knew some of the words. But the familiar lyrics couldn’t keep Eddie’s voice out of Johnny’s head.
    Don’t blow this opportunity, Twitchy.
    I’m way out on a limb for you.
    Oh, fuck!
    Blue flashers danced off his rearview mirror — coming out of nowhere. Two, three seconds ago, he could have sworn he had I-95 all to himself.
    Apparently not.
    Johnny felt the corner of his right eye start to twitch.
    He goosed the gas; maybe he could make a run for it. Then he remembered the piece-of-shit Dodge he was driving, lifted out of a Motel 6 parking lot back in Essington.
Goddamnit! Should have gone to the Marriott. Got a Jap car.
    Still, it was possible the stolen Dodge hadn’t been flagged yet. Whoever owned it was probably sleeping back at that motel. With any luck, Johnny could just eat the ticket and no one would ever have to know.
    But that was the kind of luck other people had, not him.
    It took the cops forever and a day to get out of their cruiser, which was a bad sign — the worst. They were checking the make and the plates. By the time they came up on either side of the Dodge, Johnny’s eyes were going like a couple of Mexican jumping beans.
    He tried to be cool. "Evening, officers. What seems to be —"
    The one on his side, a tall dude with a redneck accent, opened the driver’s door. "Just keep your mouth shut tight. Step out of the vehicle."
    "It didn’t take them any time at all to find the package.
    After they checked the front and back seats, they popped the trunk, pulled the spare-tire cover, and that was that.
    "Holy mother of God!" One of the troopers shone his light down on it. The other one gagged at the sight.
"What the hell did you do?"
    Johnny didn’t stick around to answer the question. He was already running for his life.

Three

    NOBODY HAD EVER been any deader, or dumber, than he was right now. Johnny Tucci knew that, even as he broke across the tree line and started slip-sliding down a ravine at the side of the highway.
    He could hide from these cops, maybe, but not from the Family. Not in jail, not anywhere. It was a fact of life. You didn’t lose a "package" like this without becoming one yourself.
    Voices came from up the slope, and then dancing flashlight beams. Johnny dropped down low and threw himself under a clump of bushes. He was trembling all over, his heart was going so fast it hurt, and his lungs were heaving from too many cigarettes. It was almost impossible to keep still and keep quiet.
    Oh shit, I am so dead. I am so, so dead.
    "You see anything? See that little bastard? That freak?"
    "Nothing yet. We’ll get him. He’s down here somewhere. Can’t be far."
    "The troopers fanned out on either side of him, working their way down. Very deliberate and efficient.
    Even as he caught his breath now, the trembling only got worse, and not just because of the cops. It was because he’d started to figure out what he had to do next. Strictly speaking, there were only two real options. One involved the .38 he had holstered to his ankle. The other, the package — and who owned it. It was only a question of which way he wanted to die.
    And in that cold moonlight, it didn’t really seem like much of a question at all.
    Moving as slowly as he could, he reached down and pulled the .38. With a badly shaking hand, he fitted the barrel in his mouth.