Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,14

note that we were in the same Risk Category?”

I looked at the papers in my hands. Regan’s RC across his time in foster care had come down to 5 out of a possible 5. The assessment indicated how volatile he was—how much of a threat he was to other children, how many infractions he had in group homes, how many homes had outright rejected him as too difficult to deal with after only a short period. My score had been the same.

“There’s a big difference between what you did in foster care and what I did, Regan,” I said.

“Is there?” I heard him shift. “You’ve got a total of twelve assault reports. Fourteen failed short-term placements. Says here you stabbed one of your foster fathers in the leg with a corkscrew.”

“Does it mention he was climbing into my bed at the time?” I snapped.

“You were defending yourself.” Regan’s sarcasm was gentle. “All those times.”

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to let him feel like he knew me, even though he was right. Most of the time when I’d been violent as a kid, I’d been defending myself against predatory men or boys, or girls my age who wanted to steal my stuff or recruit me into a gang of bullies. But yes, some of the time I’d just plain had enough. I’d been angry. I’d picked on other kids. Caused trouble to get attention.

I’d been a bad kid. But didn’t I deserve to be?

“What happened to your parents?” I shoved the papers into my backpack. “Your file was sealed when you were seven years old by a court order. They must have done something really bad to you. Is that why you go after girls? You got mummy issues?” I made a sooky baby voice as I stood and paced before the wall. “Did Mummy spank her Reegsie-Weegsie too hard and give him a big nasty boo-boo?”

He laughed. “I like it when you do that voice. Do it again.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I like the way your mouth pouts,” he continued. “You’ve got good lips, Harry.”

I stopped in my tracks. The prostitutes were looking over their shoulders at me, their cigarettes leaking smoke.

“Are you watching me?” I asked.

He didn’t say a word.

Chapter 20

I WENT TO my bag, drew out my gun, and stuffed it into the pocket of my hoodie. But I was sloppy, too busy scanning the street for a tall man with a shaved head and a phone to his ear. One of the girls saw my gun and stepped out of the circle.

“Aww, shit!” She pointed at me. “We got a narco over here!”

She thought I was one of the undercover cops who regularly patrolled Kings Cross in hoodies and jeans, doing hand-to-hand buys and busting dealers, or simply hanging around, listening, trying to keep a finger on the pulse. The girls were all looking at me now.

“Hey, bitch!” one of them shouted. “We know you’re five-o!”

“Fuck the po-lice!”

Regan said something in my ear. I couldn’t hear it over the group of girls all now pointing, shouting, throwing threats. A fire-engine siren started up at the nearby station.

“Get out of here, bitch.” One girl shoved my shoulder. “Go back to the fucking pigpen, narco piece of shit.”

“Hey!” I returned the shove, squeezing the phone to my ear. “Back the fuck up.”

She pushed me again, encouraged by her friends, who now surrounded me. But they weren’t important. Regan was here. These people were in danger. A phone rang nearby. I thought I heard it on the other end of the call. Had I heard the siren through the phone, too? Was he that close?

“Where are you?” I said into the phone. “Come on. Come out, you bastard.”

“Look at them,” Regan said. “These are the people you spend your life protecting.”

A hand on my shoulder. I whirled around. The girl who’d noticed the gun, a round, pasty creature squeezed into a short skirt, knocked the phone from my hand and came at me again, her chest against mine.

“I said get moving, bitch!”

I bent and picked up the phone, used the distance between the ground and her face to build momentum in the swing. I punched her hard in the jaw, heard crunching teeth. She staggered backward, head wobbling. They all backed up.

“Anyone else?” I asked, setting my feet. “Anyone else wanna go?”

No one did. I swung my bag onto my back, was about to run when I spotted one of the girls from the circle. She was across the park, impossibly