Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online Page A

hand, and she wondered how anyone had the strength to lift it, aim, and fire. She used both hands, and adopted a shooter’s stance as she had seen in television melodramas. Using two hands helped, but it was still difficult. A guy’s gun, she thought. Teddy would always want a real guy’s gun. Not some flimsy little girly shooter.
    This thought made her smile.
    She looked down at the words on the letter.
    “ You have been selected to die .”
    Sarah put the gun down on top of the typed page
    That might be true, she silently told whoever it was that was out there planning to kill her, but I’m more than half-dead already, and this is one Little Red Riding Hood that isn’t going down without a fight. So come on.
    Give it your best shot, and let’s see what happens.
    Sarah was astonished at her response. It was the exact opposite of what she’d expected herself to think. Logic suggested that because she wanted to die, she should do nothing and just open her door to the Big Bad Wolf and let him kill her and put her out of her misery.
    But instead, she spun the cylinder of the gun, which made a clicking sound before coming to a halt. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got. I may be alone, but I’m not, really. She had absolutely no desire to call her aging parents, who lived in the eastern portion of the state, or any of the people she once thought of as friends but whom she now ignored. She did not want to call the police or an attorney or a neighbor or anyone else. Whoever it was that had selected her, well, she was going to face him all by herself. This just might be crazy, she told herself, but it’s my choice. Whatever happens, it’s okay with me.
    And oddly, she felt a sense of warmth, because for a fleeting instant, she thought her dead husband and her dead daughter just might possibly be proud of her.
    36
    RED 1–2–3

    * * *
Jordan seemed frozen on her bed, hunched into a fetal position. She wondered whether she should ever move again. Then, as seconds blended into minutes, and she heard some of the other girls in the dormitory returning—voices raised, doors slamming, a sudden burst of laughter, and a fake wail mocking whatever phony trouble someone had—Jordan began to stir. After a few more moments, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor. Then she picked up the letter and reread it.
    For an instant, she wanted to laugh.
    You think you’re the only Big Bad Wolf in my life?
    It was almost like get in line . Everyone else—from her estranged and constantly arguing parents, to the faculty at her school, to her ex-friends who’d abandoned her—was in the process of killing her off. Now, added to that was some anonymous joker.
    She suddenly felt rebellious, confrontational. She still figured that whoever wrote the letter was just taunting her. Prep school students could be incredibly inventive and incredibly cruel. Someone wanted her to react in some manner that would amuse him. Or her. She reminded herself to not rule out girls just because the letter writer promised violence. Some of her female classmates were capable of administering astonishing physical beatings.
    Screw you, she thought. Whoever you are.
    Jordan picked up the letter and began to go over it carefully, the way she once would do when she was absorbing a detailed question on a difficult test.
    The words on the page seemed to leap at her. The letter didn’t seem juvenile. It had a more sophisticated tone than that of her classmates. But Jordan knew she needed to be careful before she reached any conclusion.
    Just because it didn’t read like it came from another teenager didn’t mean that one hadn’t written it. Like Jordan, many of her classmates had actually absorbed the language lessons taught by Hemingway and Faulkner, Proust and Tolstoy. Some were capable of very sophisticated prose.
    37
    JOHN KATZENBACH
    She stepped across the room to her small work space. Desk. Laptop. A jar of pens and pencils and a stack of unused notebooks. In