Watchlist by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page A

the collar of the blue-uniformed shirt over his bulletproof vest. A red stream flowed from George’s neck. His eyes stared at the ceiling
    Connolly lunged toward the fallen trooper, but Kohrman jerked her handcuffed left arm and she tipped back toward him.
    “I wanted to make it big!” screamed Kohrman. “All right? I admit it! Just don’t shoot—”
    “Shut up!” Connolly shouted as she broke his nose with the butt of her pistol.
    Kohrman crumpled, dead weight she dragged to Trooper George bleeding on the floor. Dropped her gun, pressed her free right hand over the gushing hole in the trooper’s neck.
    “You’re going to make it!” she screamed at the fallen officer.
    But she knew that was a lie.
     
    Can’t hear!
    Middleton saw the second uniformed man who’d tried to shoot him crash to the floor. Middleton whirled his deaf attention to the nearby fake cop, who scrambled to his feet on the floor’s glittering debris and fled through an emergency exit door.
    Get him before he gets me! Or my daughter!
    Battling in a world of silence, Middleton saw men and women dive for cover behind waiting room chairs. He saw their muted screaming faces.
    First-class husband slumped in a black plastic chair, his face contorted like a laughing clown, staring at the tiled floor where his buxom wife lay gasping for air.
    Middleton’s eyes followed the husband’s focus.
    Saw flecks of gold paint on the tiles.
    Saw broken shards of red and green and white stones.
    Saw glittering glass ground to dust.
    Saw a fallen cell phone spinning to a stop amid the rainbow rubble.
    Middleton scooped up the cell phone as he burst to the emergency exit, broke out to the night from a facility designed by Homeland Security to prevent people from storming into it and its planes, not to keep people from running away.
    Swallowed by cool air, Middleton stood at the top of metal stairs leading to the vast fields of runways where jets taxied, landed, took off—all in terrible silence.
    A baggage caravan rolled silently across the dark tarmac. No sign of the fake cop. Middleton suddenly realized he stood spotlighted by the door’s white light—a perfect target.
    He ran down the stairs. Ran toward the glowing swoop of the main terminal.
    A jumbo jet dropped out of the sky, skimmed over his head as he staggered across a runway. He ran under a second airliner as it climbed into the night. The pressure changing wakes of those jet engines popped his gunshot-deafened ears.
    Suddenly, blessedly, he heard jet engines roar.
    Get to Scotland, he thought. Got to get to Scotland.
    The strap of his briefcase boa-constrictored his chest as he gasped for oxygen. Sweat stuck his shirt to his skin. His leg muscles burned and felt as if someone smashed a baseball bat into his right kneecap.
    He knew better than to try for his car. They—whoever they were—might be waiting for him in the parking garage.
    Pistol shoved in the back waistband of his pants, Middleton loped to the front of the main terminal. No one paid much attention—people run through airports all the time. A long line of people stood waiting their turn for a taxi.
    To his left, he saw a young couple exiting a Town Car. He burst between them, leapt into the back seat before the driver could protest.
    “Go!”
    The man behind the wheel stared into the rearview mirror.
    “Two-fifty,” Middleton said, digging into his pocket for U.S. currency.
    He sank into the backseat cushion of the taxi as it shot away from the terminal. “Capitol Hill.”
    The driver let him out in front of the Supreme Court that glowed like a gray-stone temple across from Congress’ white-castle Capitol. Middleton walked through a park and saw no one but the nocturnal outline of a patrolling Capitol Hill policeman and his leashed German shepherd.
    Scotland was a hotel built back when visiting Washington wasn’t a big business. Middleton passed through the hotel’s glass doors, walked straight to the registration desk.
    “No