Chase by James Patterson Chapters 30-32 and Epilogue — Members Only Access

I smiled. It was Rosalind. “What the—?” Haber said. “Listen up. My grandpa’s got your friend’s gun, and he’s got a bead on your head, mister. Now drop your gun or he’ll blast your head off.”

The sound of the silenced bullet that hit Haber’s head as he swung up with his rifle for the tree line beyond the range was insignificant, but what it did to his head was very significant.

Half headless, he toppled over backward as if it were a trust team-building exercise. Not surprisingly, no one caught him. “Now my grandpa’s got the bead on you other guys,” the girl’s voice

said over the radio. “Drop your guns if you don’t want to get shot, too.” They dropped their guns. I stood and picked one up. “Mr. Walke, I thought I told you to leave,” I said into Haber’s

radio, as I saw the good old man emerge from the trees with his granddaughter and dog. “Yeah, well, I don’t hear so well sometimes,” he radioed back. EPILOGUE IT WAS ABOUT two hours later

when I drove my rental Chrysler 200 back down the mountain, around the line of the Pennsylvania State Trooper cars. Joe Walke sat beside me, and Rosalind and Roxie slept in the back. “I owe

you my life, both of you,” I said to Mr. Walke, as we pulled up in front of a crumbling old Victorian in Marble Spring, a block behind the church. “You’re good people, Mike. You would have

done no different for us, were we in trouble. Good people are the same everywhere. They help each other.” “They tuned you up pretty good, and you lost your truck and the ATVs. I feel

terrible.” “Ah, the vehicles are insured, and a crack or two to this old noggin ain’t nothing at all. I actually feel sorry for those stupid young men.” “Sorry for them?” “Look what we as a

nation asked them to do. Go off to war, ride on helicopters, and kill people in some far-off hellhole. Then they come back, and we ignore them. Too busy playing with our phones. We couldn’t

care less. “Any wonder these kids would want to line their own pockets? Hell, everybody else seems to be doing the same thing these days.” “Not everybody,” I said, and shook his hand. “So

long, Mike,” Mr. Walke said with a wink. He lifted his sleeping granddaughter out of the backseat. “You find yourself around these parts again, look me up. We’ll go down to the veterans’

hall for a jar or two.” “Will do,” I said, smiling. He’d just closed the rear door of the car when my phone, sitting there in the drink holder, started to ring. I’d glanced at it coming into

town and had seen the screen filled with messages. “Hello. Mike here,” I said. “Sweet mother of hope, you’re alive,” Mary Catherine said. “Well, thanks for calling, Mike. We haven’t been

worried sick about you or anything. What happened, the case went late? You decided to stay over in DC? That Parker woman wasn’t around, was she? You better hope not.” “I stayed over in

Pennsylvania, actually,” I said. “Pennsylvania?” “Well, it’s sort of a long story,” I said, glancing back up at the misty hills above the town as I followed the state road toward home. —THE

END—