Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,15

far away, arm in arm with a big man. A big man with a shaved head. They were just heading through the doorway of the female public toilet. I tried to run, but someone was holding the handle of my backpack.

“He’s here!” I cried. “Let go of me!”

But they yanked me down onto the ground.

“I got her,” the homeless man with the plaited beard said.

I didn’t have time for this. I’d seen Regan, seen him with his next victim.

I rolled, tried to kick out from underneath him, but someone else had my legs.

I looked up through the forest of legs around me and saw the young man in the food truck trying to see what was happening over heads of the crowd. I did the only thing I could think of—I screamed as pathetically as I could.

“Help! Help! He’s got me! Please!”

The young man burst out of the side of the truck, trying to shove his way toward me. The distraction was enough. I freed my hand from where it had been trapped under me, took the gun from my pocket, and fired it into the air above my head.

I was free, instantly, the crowd falling away in terror. I got up and bolted for the other side of the park, my phone still in one hand, my gun in the other. The door to the toilets seemed miles away, over pathways, behind bushes.

I ran for my life. For her life. The phone clattered from my fingers as I lifted the gun with both hands and skidded to a halt through the doorway.

“Police!” I roared. “Hands up!”

Chapter 21

THE DOOR TO the cubicle was open. His jeans were pooled around his boots, his white arse clenching as the tremors pulsed through him. The girl leaned out from her position in front of his crotch, shock in her eyes, standing and putting her hands up with a wail.

It was not him. Just some tradesman getting a blow job on his way home from work. He turned and I cringed. He, too, put his hands in the air.

“I’m sorry!” he gasped. “I’m sorry! Don’t shoot!”

The gunshot had brought more people into the park. In the distance I could see the homeless men pointing in my direction. Another siren. I grabbed my phone from the ground and took off at a sprint across the road toward the hospital. I’d lose them in the underground car park, come up on the other side of the building, disappear into the winding streets and alleyways around Surry Hills. As I ran, I remembered the phone. The line was still open. I put the phone to my ear and listened, my face burning with embarrassment.

“Harry?” Regan was saying. “Are you there?”

“You’ve fucked with me for the last time,” I promised him. Even to me, my voice sounded weak. Rattled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist. I have considered following you around, watching you from afar, reporting your whereabouts back to you. It wouldn’t be hard. You’re not exactly the world’s hardest person to track.”

“Bullshit,” I sneered.

“How do you think I got your number?” he asked. “I followed you to that back-alley shithole in Kings Cross where you got the burner phone.”

I swallowed. “Did you hurt those people?” I thought of the family sitting around the boxes, watching their laptop screen. The toddler.

“I don’t have to hurt people all the time to get what I want,” he said.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. “What the fuck is all this? Why Sam? I need to understand.”

“You’ll understand one step at a time,” he said. “I’m not going to follow you. You’re going to follow me. And I think that, as you do, you’ll learn to understand both me and yourself. Things are about to get very personal, Harry.”

“I don’t want to play stupid games. Just come at me,” I snarled. “I’m ready. If you have any guts at all, you slimy little coward, you’ll tell me where you are and we’ll have at it.”

“I’ll tell you exactly where I am,” he said. “When the time is right.”

Chapter 22

WHITT WALKED QUICKLY toward the front steps of the station, his coat pulled tightly around him, partly to ward off the cold, partly as a shield against curious eyes. He knew that if he looked as terrible as he felt, there would be rumors. His past relationship with the drink was public knowledge across the police department. Everything was. He’d slipped off the wagon the night before.

Not so much slipped as