Private Screening by Richard North Patterson EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Richard North Patterson
- Language: English
- Genre: Political Thrillers & Suspense
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE KIDNAPPING
April 7
FROM a distance, the players could have been anyone; two figures flailing
soundlessly at an invisible ball.
The court was a green rectangle in a crevice of the Napa Valley. For half a
mile the terrain swept downhill toward them. A sequence of gullies and rises
covered with low green brush, it resembled a sea of heather which swelled to
pine-covered ridges miles beyond the court. At odd intervals, oaks cast lateafternoon shadows from the west.
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Between them, two men with
semiautomatic weapons crept toward the tiny figures in white.
They loped, bent to the brush for cover, traversing the gullies and rises in a
deadly zigzag forward. As minutes passed, the eye would lose them, find
them, lose them again: with each rise they reappeared, but smaller, closer to
the court. The only constant was the players, heedless as children.
The men disappeared in a wrinkle thirty feet from courtside. There was a
last few seconds’ peace. Charging to the net, one player raised his arms in a
comic gesture of victory.
The two gunmen burst onto the court.
The players stopped; their masked invaders faced them, a pantomime of
indecision.
Suddenly a white van appeared at courtside. Hooded and armed, its driver
moved toward the four waiting figures. Without hurry, the new protagonist
raised his curiously-shaped weapon, and then announced to those who
watched him, “I am Phoenix.…”
Tony Lord turned up his television, uncertain of what he was seeing.
Deep yet slurred, the taped voice was like a record played too slowly. “For
the next eight days, through Satellite News International, you will participate
in all I do.…”
The picture changed abruptly.
In close-up, Lord recognized the two players as Colby and Alexis Parnell.
He stared at them in disbelief. Instinctively, Parnell moved to shelter his
wife from the camera; the gesture was touching and pathetic, a moment from
a Chaplin film.
The new angle was that of Phoenix.
“Three days ago, I captured Stacy Tarrant’s personal manager, John
Damone. Tonight, as you can see, I’ve taken Alexis Parnell. Tomorrow, I will
broadcast my first demand to Stacy Tarrant and Colby Parnell by satellite, for
them to answer as you watch on Satellite News International.…”
The two armed men moved toward Alexis. Turning to the camera, Parnell
mouthed across the tennis net, “Take me.”
“On television, you will see whether this wealthy newspaper magnate and
famous rock star care for the people closest to them as much as for their
privilege. And then you will join me as their jurors.…”
Lips closing, Parnell watched one gunman bind Alexis’s hands as the other
held his weapon to her temple. She looked stunned yet perfect, a well-coiffed
mannequin; Lord could feel her shock.
“My intentions are unprecedented: a trial for social justice viewed by
millions, with Colby Parnell and Stacy Tarrant as defendants, and the lives of
those they love at stake.
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