Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear Read Online Free

of the last of the laths just as he plunged over the side. He held ontight and found himself swinging from it in a great arc, back and forth, like a kid on a jungle gym. At the inner end of one swing he let go, dropping onto the next balcony down.
    Glancing between the laths at his feet, he saw Sheba two flights below him, a shoe in one hand, descending as quickly as she could manage. Glancing up, he saw the men on the roof looking back down and then the barrels of their guns as they extended them toward him.
    Three triggers were pulled simultaneously, and three bullets went spanging off various bits of metal between them and him.
    Gabriel got his legs under him and, staying low, hurried down the metal steps. From overhead he heard the sound of first one, then another, of the men landing on the fire escape. The third attempted it but missed. A moment later he fell past Gabriel, arms windmilling desperately; their eyes locked for an instant and then he was gone. The sound when he hit the ground was wet and terrible.
    Gabriel chanced another look down and was briefly concerned when he didn’t see Sheba below him. Then he realized it was because she’d already reached the bottom. He caught sight of her running along the sidewalk toward Park Avenue, both shoes in her hands now, bare feet pounding against the pavement.
    Another bullet flew past him, this one within inches of his face. He saw Sheba stop and look back. “Go!” he shouted. “Don’t wait for me. Just go!”
    She turned again—and ran head-on into the arms of a man who’d stepped around the corner into her path.
    He was at least a foot taller than her and quite a bit heavier; despite the warm weather he wore a heavy overcoat and black leather gloves. And when she tried to back away, he wrapped his long arms around her and lifted her entirely off her feet.
    The shoes fell from her hands.
    Gabriel hurried to get to the bottom of the fire escape, but by the time he made it, leaping over the side of the lowest balcony and landing in a crouch, Sheba had already been bundled, screaming, into a black car that peeled away from the curb in a cloud of exhaust.
    He ran after the car, chasing it out into the street as more gunshots exploded behind him. The car swung around the corner onto Park, where for once—this being a weekend morning in New York City in the middle of August—traffic was practically nonexistent. There’d be no catching it on foot. Gabriel looked back the other way, saw a yellow cab speeding downtown, and stepped into its path. The car screeched to a stop just inches from his legs.
    The cabbie, a turbaned and bearded Sikh, stuck his head out the driver-side window and shouted, “You wish to be killed? Is this what you desire?”
    Gabriel threw open the door to the backseat, piled inside. “You see that car,” he said to the driver in Punjabi, “the black one, there? Follow it. Don’t let it out of your sight. A woman’s life depends on it.”
    Through the rear window, Gabriel saw the men from the roof round the corner. One of them kicked Sheba’s shoes into the gutter as he ran. The other raised his gun.
    “Now!” Gabriel said, ducking.
    The cabbie glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see the rear windshield of his car shatter. He put the gas pedal to the floor and, swerving around a double-parked delivery van, roared off.

Chapter 4
    They made it three blocks before a sedan pulled in behind them, a silver Audi with smoked-glass windows and a dent the size of a melon in the hood. The four silver circles across the car’s grill made Gabriel think of the ring in the nose of a bull, particularly when the driver revved the engine angrily and the car surged forward. The Audi came within a few feet of the cab’s rear bumper before the taxi driver—Rajiv Narindra, according to the ID displayed on the back of his seat—swerved again, nearly sideswiping a street-corner hotdog cart in his haste to change lanes.
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