Read Online Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James - Free Book Online Page B

Screams, sirens, cries, the overhead chop of helicopter blades. Police and fire officers were running towards the buildings. A fire truck bearing the words ‘Ladder 12’ pulled up in front of him, blocking his view. He moved around the far side of it as helmeted firemen poured out and broke into a run.
    There was another thud. Ronnie saw a plump man in a suit land on his back and explode.
    He threw up again, swaying giddily, then dropped to one knee, covering his face with his hands, and stayed there for some moments, shaking. He closed his eyes, as if somehow that would make everything go away. Then he turned in a sudden panic that someone had taken his bag and his briefcase. But they were there, right behind him. His smart fake Louis Vuitton briefcase. Not that anyone was going to care at this moment who the hell had made it. Or whether it was fake or real.
    After some minutes, Ronnie pulled himself together and stood up. He spat several times, trying to get the taste of vomit out of his mouth. Then a flash of anger turned in seconds to a burning rage inside him.  Why today? Why not some other fucking day? Why did this have to happen today?
    He saw a stream of people, some of them covered in white dust, some bleeding, walking slowly, as if in a trance, out of the entrance of the North Tower. Then he heard the distant  honk-honk-honk  of another fire engine. Then another. And another. Someone in front of him was holding a video camera.
    News, he thought.  Television. Stupid bloody Lorraine would be panicking if she saw this. She panicked over everything. If there was a pile-up on a motorway she would instantly call to make sure he was all right, even when she must have known, if she’d only thought about it, that he couldn’t have been within a hundred miles of it.
    He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled her number. There was a sharp beep, then the message on the display:
    Network busy.
    He tried again, twice more, then put the phone back in his pocket.
    He would come to realize just a little while later, when he reflected on it, how lucky he was that his call did not get through.
    16
    OCTOBER 2007
    You are meant to be bloody luminous!  In the pitch, bitumen-black darkness, Abby brought her watch right up to her face, until she felt the cold steel and glass against her nose, and still she could not see a damned thing.
    I paid money for a luminous watch, damn you!
    Curled up on the hard floor, she had a feeling she might have slept, but she had no idea for how long. Was it day or night?
    Her muscles felt as if they had seized and her arm was dead. She swung it through the air, trying to shake circulation back into it. It was like a lead weight. She crawled a couple of feet and swung it again, then winced in pain as it struck the side of the lift with a dull  boom.
    ‘Hello!’ she croaked.
    She banged again, then again and again.
    Felt the lift swaying at her exertion.
    Banged again. Again. Again.
    Felt the urge to pee once more. One boot was already full. The reek of stale urine was growing stronger. Her mouth was parched. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, brought the watch up close until she could feel the coldness on her nose. But still she couldn’t see it.
    Squirming in sudden panic, she wondered if she could have gone blind.
    What the hell time was it? When she had last looked, before the lights went out, it had been 3.08 a.m. Some time after then she had peed into her boot. Or at least as best she could in the darkness.
    She had felt better then and had been able to think clearly. Now the need to pee was muzzing her thoughts again. She tried to push the desire from her mind. Some years ago she had watched a documentary on television about people who had survived disasters. A young woman her own age had been one of the few survivors from an aircraft that had crash-landed and caught fire. The woman reckoned she had lived because she kept calm when everyone else was panicking, had