Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,11

to find you, and I’m going to end you. I’m gonna put you in the ground. And I’m gonna come back to visit you every year on the anniversary just so I can tell your rotting, worm-riddled corpse to go fuck itself.”

I glanced toward the doorway, hearing my own voice rising and being unable to stop it. I’d bitten the inside of my cheek in my fury. The hatred was intoxicating.

He was laughing softly. I felt something wild inside me throwing itself about inside its cage, yanking painfully hard on its chains.

“I believe you, Harry,” Regan said. “There’s not an instance here in your personnel file that makes me believe you’re not a woman of your word.”

My file. I’d been right. He’d killed two cops to get what he could on me. I ground my teeth, selected his record on the screen, and hit print.

“I see you’ve been questioned multiple times about revenge attacks on the men you’ve dealt with on the job,” he said. I heard papers being shuffled. “You were questioned after a luxury Mercedes belonging to a man who was accused of molesting his teenage daughter was set on fire.”

I remembered the case. The daughter had been too scared to testify. I recalled the warmth of the flames as I stood in the dark across the street. The man was trying to put out the fire with a blanket as his neighbors slowly emerged from their houses.

“Here’s another one,” he said. He was having fun with this now. “A couple of teenage boys accused of raping a girl at a high-school party. You did your best, but there was not enough evidence to convict. Three weeks after the charges were dropped, the two were found naked, bound to a tree on the school grounds. Neither would identify their attacker.”

I gathered up the wad of paper on Regan and shoved it into my backpack. The phone was sweaty against my ear. I turned back into the hall and saw through the glass doors that the FACS woman was nearly finished securing the new tire on her car.

“Seems to me,” Regan said, “you like your scores settled. You like vengeance. You see yourself as a powerful being, sometimes the only person powerful enough to bring down justice.”

“Oh, please.” I went to the glass door. “Give me a fucking break. Don’t do this. Don’t try to relate to me, Banks. I’m not going to be the one to finally understand you. We’re not going to cry on each other’s shoulders about our sucky lives and how we’re justified in being violent because the world owes us something. You want to hold up a mirror to someone? Do it to yourself. If you have any sense at all, you’re not going to like what you see.” I grabbed the doorhandle. “You’re a monster,” I told him. “I am nothing like you.”

I could almost see his smile, heard it lingering in his warm voice.

“You sure?” he asked.

I hung up, jabbing the phone screen too hard in my fury.

I jogged on my toes out into the car park, making a wide circle so that I didn’t alert Maria to my presence. I snuck to the car, chucked her keys back into her bag, then took off into the night.

The night air was unseasonably cold. However, a part of me wondered whether the trembling in my bones was not from the cold but from Regan’s final question. You sure?

The realization hit me, crushing, becoming heavier and heavier with every step.

I wasn’t sure at all.

Chapter 17

WHITT KNEW HE was in dangerous territory, wandering along the line he’d drawn in the sand, from the moment he sat down at the bar beside her. The whole situation was seductive. In the corner, an old-style jukebox was playing Miles Davis, just the kind of soft, rolling jazz that usually loosened Whitt right up. The lights were low, and the place was almost exclusively theirs. Burgundy leather armrests on the bar top, Vada’s deep-red hair glossy, shimmering. She smelled good. Expensive perfume. They ordered a couple of wines, and Whitt was drawn out of his fantasies when the bartender drained the end of a bottle into his glass. Whitt didn’t say anything, but even from where he sat, he could see the sediment at the bottom of his glass. Disappointing.

“How are you coping?” Vada said without warning, fixing her eyes upon him. “You want to talk about it?”

“Uh. I’m not sure.” Whitt was startled as he realized that his