NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,21

have any more questions, Detective Jordan, Detective MacDonald, you can call my attorney. Adriana will give you the number.”

The protocol at NYPD Red is that rich-and-famous assholes get treated differently from regular assholes. Essentially that meant the interview was over before it started.

“Just one quick question,” Kylie said. “Have you ever seen this man?” She held up her phone with the picture that Venetia Jones had taken of Dodd on the screen.

“Never,” Gibbs said. “Is he the one who kidnapped her? You can tell him for me that I’m not going to pay him a nickel.”

“Did he contact you?” I asked.

“This guy? No! How would he even get my number? My son, Jamie, called me. He wants me to help him buy back the slut I told him not to get involved with in the first place. Not happening.”

She turned and started to walk away.

“Mrs. Gibbs,” Kylie called after her.

Gibbs stopped, turned back, and walked toward us. Slowly. A white tigress, her body elegant, her eyes filled with hatred. “I didn’t take her,” she said. “I didn’t pay anyone to take her. I don’t know the man who took her, and I have no idea where she is. The only thing I do know is that I hope to God she never comes back. Goodbye.”

She turned and walked away again. This time we didn’t try to stop her.

CHAPTER 17

WELCOME TO YOUR home away from home,” Dodd said as he opened the bedroom door. “It’s small, but it’s cozy.”

He actually smiled. It was pathetic how proud he was.

It was the ugliest room Erin had ever seen. Every inch of the walls and the ceiling were covered with grayish-brown panels. Soundproofing.

The bed was small with no headboard or footboard, but there were clean sheets and, hopefully, no bedbugs. There was no other furniture—just some boxes filled with clothes.

“I can’t afford Saks Fifth Avenue,” he said, “but I hope you like what I picked out for you.”

She hated it. All of it. No-name jeans, vomit-green shorts, underwear that came in packs of three, a bunch of hideous T-shirts, two sweat suits, and a pair of sneakers that were one size too big.

“Bathroom’s over here,” he said.

There was no door. Just a sink, a shower, a toilet, and a shopping bag from the Dollar Store filled with shampoo, toothpaste, tampons, and other cheap crap. The lighting was so harsh that she looked like a corpse in the mirror.

“This is where you live,” Dodd said. “If I’m in the house, you can sit in the living room or the kitchen with me, but when I’m out, you’re in here, and you’ve got a full-time babysitter. I call her Octomom.”

He looked up, and Erin followed his gaze to the dome camera on the ceiling.

“That one is obvious,” he said. “The others are not. She’s got eight pairs of eyes throughout the house, and she broadcasts everything she sees to my phone or my iPad, so don’t think about doing anything stupid. Okay?”

“I won’t,” she said.

That was the first thing Ari had taught her: Be compliant.

Erin was twenty-two years old when People magazine put her on the cover and proclaimed her the most desirable woman in the world. A week later, two men grabbed her in the parking lot of a shopping mall in LA and tried to drag her into their van.

They would have succeeded, too, if not for an off-duty cop, a woman who heard Erin’s screams and was able to stop the abduction before it happened.

The next day her father hired a bodyguard. Erin had had security people for years, but most of them had been glorified bouncers, musclemen who could wipe the floor with anyone who harassed her, but this one was different. Ari Loeb was a multilingual, combat-trained commando who had served in the Mista’arvim, the elite counterterrorism unit of the Israel Defense Forces.

Early on, Ari had warned her that she was a prime target for another would-be kidnapper.

“I’m not worried,” she said. “You’ll stop them.”

“Yes, but I can’t stop a bullet. Let me teach you what to do and what not to do if you’re ever held hostage and I’m not there. How do you feel about going back to the mall where they tried to grab you?”

“Fine, if I’m with you.”

As soon as they got in the car Erin started asking questions. “Did you ever kill anyone?”

“No talking,” he said.

She sulked. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive. What am I supposed to do?”

“Pay attention.”

“To what?” she said.

“Everything.”

He didn’t take her to the