Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,23

my name, and his excited tone, more people looked up. I shielded my eyes, gritted my teeth, and snarled at the guy.

“No, I’m not. I just look like her. Now, fuck off.”

“Is everything okay?” A man in a business suit standing by the doors turned toward us. “Is he bothering you?”

“Yes, he is.” I tried to push toward the doors to the next carriage. The train lurched, and I grabbed an overhanging handle.

“She’s Harriet Blue,” Red Cap said. “The one they’re looking for. The police.”

A woman nearby slipped her phone out of her pocket. She watched me, looking guilty, as she dialed what was obviously emergency services. I went for the doors again, grabbing the handle and wrenching them open. The gangway between the two carriages was unsteady, the train thumping on the tracks. I shoved my way into the next carriage, but the two men were right behind me now.

The businessman grabbed my arm. “I think you really ought to come with me.”

“Hey, I saw her first,” Red Cap snapped. “You just want that reward.”

“Someone get a guard!”

I shrugged my arm out of the man’s grip and pushed him in the chest. He grabbed again, but the guy in the cap was with me now, a sudden ally, shoving him against the doors. Red Cap went for the strap of my backpack and I grabbed his fingers, wrenching them backward, causing him to drop to his knees. I put a boot into his side and hurled him to the ground. The train was slowing, rocking on the tracks. People were getting up from their seats, alarmed by the scuffle.

“Someone call the police!” the businessman yelled down the length of the carriage.

I turned and ran down the aisle, leaving the men to fight it out. “Hey, stop her!”

I burst through the doors to the next carriage and looked out the side doors, watching the rocks and gravel between the tracks rushing past me through the glass. I couldn’t wait for the train to slow much more. Through the murky windows to the carriage I had come from, I could see a small crowd gathering in the aisle, pointing, passing on the story to one another. A couple more people grabbed their phones. In minutes, the police would be waiting for me at the next station.

I hit the emergency exit button and pried the automatic doors apart. The jump seemed higher, somehow, now that the doors were open.

I had no choice. I closed my eyes and jumped.

Chapter 31

WHITT TOOK THE on-ramp to the highway at breakneck speed, causing Vada to grab onto the handle above her window.

“Edward, you’re driving like a crazy person. Can you slow down? I know Nowra is a long way off, but I want to get there in one piece.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m just anxious to get to the crime scene. You know.” He pushed his hair back and tried to ease off the accelerator.

Not even twenty-four hours, he told himself. The previous evening at 5:30 p.m., he’d relapsed, broken his promise to himself that he would not succumb to drugs or alcohol again. Now he’d stumbled once more, talking himself into taking a couple of Dexedrine to wipe out the hangover and get him moving. The great weight that Deputy Commissioner Woods’s words had dumped on him had made it difficult to breathe. But as he’d cracked open the plastic baggie of pills he’d stolen from the evidence room, he’d felt the weight lifting. He deserved this, needed to take care of himself, needed to be kinder to himself. How else was he supposed to keep going? Regan was escalating—so Whitt needed to escalate, too, if only for one day.

By 5:30 p.m., he promised himself, he’d be sober again—mentally strong, emotionally impenetrable, ready to continue the hunt. The Dexedrine pills would have worn off. He would be clean. Everybody gets a day off once in a while, right? he thought. As long as Vada didn’t notice he was high, he would be fine.

“Edward, slow down!”

“Sorry.”

“What did the report say, exactly?” Vada gripped her seat belt. She’d had to take a phone call when Whitt was called up to the emergency briefing in the command center.

“It just said a woman’s body was found in a house,” Whitt said. “A big man, broad shoulders, white, late thirties, not a regular from the neighborhood was spotted leaving the scene in her car late morning. We haven’t found the car yet, but we’ve got an alert out on it. They’re erecting