1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,87

a whole new way. Most of all, I just kept thinking, What next?

Because I was all out of predictions.

CHAPTER 94

THE CRAZINESS AROUND the case went on for nearly a week. The press coverage was absurd, and I had to lie low for a while.

But finally, I got to have a nice dinner, one-on-one, with my bestie, A.A.

And by dinner, I mean I brought a loaded pizza and a bottle of Jameson to our old apartment. That’s where life could start to feel something like normal again.

I’m not naive enough to say that everything I’d been through meant never sweating the small stuff again. But I wasn’t going to waste any more opportunities, if I could help it.

So once A.A. and I got through all the brouhaha about this case, I brought the subject around to her.

And me.

And us.

“Listen,” I said. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. I should probably ask you about it first, but … I don’t know. I guess this whole experience has left me in a ‘Just go for it’ kind of mood.”

“Excuse me?” she said. “Since when have you not been that way?”

“Good point,” I said.

So I leaned in, put a hand on her cheek, and kissed her. I did it lightly and slowly. Then I lingered. And she let me. The whole thing sent a swimming feeling through my body before I leaned back again.

“O … kaaay,” she said. “Was that for real? Or are you just—”

“It was for real,” I told her. “And maybe a little late in coming.”

There were a million other things in my head, but nothing that actually needed saying.

A.A. took a swig of Jameson from the bottle. “I didn’t even know you were bi,” she said. “I mean … are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not really down with the label, if that’s what you’re asking. But does it matter?”

“God, Piglet, I’m not sure what to say,” she told me. “Believe me, if I was going to go for a girl, you’d be at the top of the list. Actually, scratch that. You’d be the list.”

Her smile was warm, like the whiskey glow I could feel in my chest. This wasn’t a rejection. It was just loving honesty, the kind you’re lucky to get once or twice in a lifetime.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” she said. “I just don’t think I’m interested. But if you tell me we can’t be friends now, I’m totally going to hunt you down, take you captive, and tie you up in the woods.”

“Very funny,” I said.

“Too soon?”

I shook my head. “For anyone else, maybe. Not you.”

“Friends, then?” she asked, putting her hand on top of mine.

“Sisters,” I said. “For life.”

CHAPTER 95

AT MY FAMILY’S insistence, Keats came to the house in Belmont for dinner that Saturday night. It didn’t stand for as much as I think they all wanted it to.

“Come outside for a second,” he said when I answered the door. I followed him down to the curb, where he was parked. He popped the hatch on his car.

In the back was a brand-new, twenty-seven-inch Giant Talon. It was exactly like my old bike, but newer, better—and double suspension. Those puppies aren’t cheap.

“I figured you deserved it,” he said.

“But you didn’t have to buy it,” I said.

“It’s from all of us at the office,” he told me.

“Oh.”

I was a tiny bit disappointed, in a way that I wasn’t going to admit to myself, much less to Billy.

“Well, I’m overwhelmed,” I said. “Thank you. Really. In fact, maybe I’ll skip dinner and go out for a ride right now.”

“And leave me alone with your family?” he said. “Move. Inside, Hoot. That’s an order.”

Dinner was actually a lot of fun. I liked watching Billy squirm under the Hoot microscope.

“Are you the one Angela dropped out of college for?” Sylvie asked.

“She didn’t drop out,” Hannah said. “She was kicked out.”

“Drop-kicked, maybe?” Billy tried, which scored a couple of huge grins at the table.

Not from Mom, though. She still had no sense of humor about my MIT debacle. If she had her choice, I’d be out of the FBI and back at school.

But lucky for me, that wasn’t up to her.

“Angela’s going to make an excellent trainee at Quantico,” Billy said. “We’ll miss her at the office while she’s gone, but then it’ll be great to have her back.”

“Angela 2.0,” Hannah said. “Superagent extraordinaire.”

“Next subject?” I said. It was crossing into embarrassing territory now.

“So, Agent Keats,” Mom started in as