Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,20

the investigation. You’re Harry’s former partner. From Perth, was it? Yes, I had a brief look at some of your past cases.”

Whitt felt sweat breaking out at his temples. People were staring.

“The men who killed that little girl,” Woods said. “The ones whose release from prison you practically handed to them on a platter. Have they killed again since they’ve been free?”

Whitt couldn’t answer. He felt suddenly, unbearably sick.

“I don’t suppose anyone knows,” Woods said. “A kid goes missing. They never find her. Could have been your guys. No one’s watching them anymore. You made sure of that.”

Whitt walked toward the men’s room. He barely made it through the door before the sickness came.

Chapter 27

LOOK AT THEM. These are the people you spend your life protecting.

I looked, keeping my head low, pretending to browse through a magazine in a convenience store while I filled my hoodie pockets with snacks for the road. Something told me I was going to be on the move soon. Regan was going to kill again. He was going to make things “personal.” There weren’t many people who meant anything to me anymore, not now that Sam was dead. I’d felt better after warning Whitt. But I needed to think laterally. Be smart. He might murder someone I cared about, or he might murder someone in front of me. Make the experience “personal” that way. Any of the people around me could be a target. Even the strangers. He’d said he wouldn’t follow me, but Regan was a liar, a manipulator.

The shopkeeper was oblivious to my stealing. He stood with a hand on the glass countertop, chatting to a young mother who was buying lottery tickets.

Mention of my name on the television in the corner of the store distracted me. The people at the counter had turned to watch. I pulled my cap lower as a picture of me flashed on the screen beside a video of my chief, Pops, reading from a piece of paper. He looked old, tired. A man I recognized as Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Woods stood at the corner of the screen, looking bored. Was he on the case now? I knew little about Woods other than that he was powerful, a hard-arse who had influence and knew how to use it.

“She is an official missing person,” Pops said. “We want to stress that the reward for her whereabouts does not imply any wrongdoing on Detective Blue’s part. The reward is being offered by an individual, not the New South Wales Police.”

One hundred thousand dollars for Harriet Blue’s location, the banner read.

“Oh, no.” I covered my eyes. I knew instantly that he had done this himself. Pops didn’t care about money. He wanted me home. I was his pet project. His lost cause. He would never stop believing in me. He would not let me ruin my career, my life, by taking revenge on Regan.

“This’ll flush her out,” the shopkeeper commented as I shoved the magazine back onto the rack. “A hundred grand? Shit, everyone in the city will be lookin’ for that woman.”

Great, I thought. Just what I need.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unidentified number. Regan. It was a single word.

Nowra.

A suburb two hours’ drive south of Sydney. What? Why was Regan so far away? I held the phone and tried to breathe. Who did I know in Nowra? How would I even get there?

I walked out of the convenience store and turned right, almost ran to the entrance of the train station I knew was on the corner. Stealing a car now in the broad light of day would be too risky. I snuck through the wheelchair-access ticket gate and headed down the stairs.

Chapter 28

DEPUTY COMMISSIONER WOODS didn’t look up at the sound of a rapping on the door to his office. He’d spent a half an hour adjusting the space to suit his needs, removing Chief Morris’s many distractions—the framed photographs on his desk, a misshapen clay mug a child had obviously made him, framed awards on the walls. Woods hadn’t needed to take Morris’s office as a command space—there were plenty of other offices in the building that would have suited his needs—but sometimes it was necessary to send a message to the gawkers outside the glass doors. Big Joe Woods was here, and he was cleaning house. Already a detective had stood up to him in front of the task force. He’d nail Whittacker in time, as publicly and ceremoniously as he had dumped