Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,41

off his shoes, turning off the lights, plugging his phone into the charger.

As he struggled to wake, Whitt seemed to recall Vada doing some other things, too. Things he couldn’t understand. He’d thought she was setting an alarm on his phone, but she seemed to handle the phone for a long time, swiping and selecting things. Had he heard the sound of her unzipping his bag? His belongings shifting about? Whitt was sure there was an explanation for these things. She’d cared for him like a girlfriend, a wife. When he opened his eyes, she was there at the bedside, a chilled bottle of water on the nightstand, which she took and placed in his hand.

“Oh, Jesus.” Whitt put a hand to his head, followed the line of searing pain from his forehead to the back of his skull. “Jesus.”

“You can’t pray your way out of this hangover,” Vada said. “Drink the water.”

He sipped, felt his stomach lurch. He wondered if he could make it into the bathroom before he was sick. That would be his rock bottom, surely, throwing up on the carpet of a motel room in front of his new partner.

Vada was freshly dressed, her red hair pulled taut into a high, neat bun.

Her eyes were sympathetic under her bangs, an understanding smile playing on her lips.

“I have a problem,” Whitt said. He struggled to find the words that had been so available to him last time he said them, sitting in a gathering in a dusty Scouts hall, part of a circle of seated men. He tried to drink the water again and failed. “I’m an addict. I was recovering, but I…I lost control. I let Regan go, and it’s because of me that…that…”

Whitt squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t going to cry in front of this woman. That would be a level even deeper than throwing up in front of her. Punching a cop in front of her. Passing out drunk in front of her. Whitt wondered how deep the layers went, when he would bottom out. He needed to pull out of the case before he went much lower.

“I knew there was something wrong before we left Sydney,” Vada said. “It’s not as obvious as you think. You hold yourself well.”

Whitt burned with shame, his face in his hands.

“I smoothed over the fight on the bridge,” Vada said. “Those Boyraville cops don’t want us to support the young driver’s claim that he was assaulted. That’s if he makes a claim at all. When I put you in the car, I went back and it seemed like the boy just got caught up in a love triangle he never knew he was a part of.”

Whitt nodded, trying to breathe through the sickness.

“What are you on?” she asked.

“Dexedrine,” he admitted.

“Wow.”

“What?”

“They use Dexedrine to treat patients with narcolepsy,” she said. “Too much of it and you’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

“That wasn’t my main concern at the time,” Whitt said. “I just needed to bounce back. I needed something to keep me going.”

Whitt reached reflexively for his heart. His chest felt tight, but that might have been from sleeping on his front, something he never did. “I’ll bin the rest of them.”

“Don’t,” Vada said. He frowned at her. “You shouldn’t go off them too quickly, not if you’ve been popping them like candies. Give them to me, and I’ll dole them out to you.”

“It’s okay. They can give me something to come down on in rehab.”

“You can’t go to rehab,” Vada said. She seemed about to say more, but her words failed. She sat on the bed beside him, slid the tie out of her hair and ran a hand through it, sighing as she shook out the burnt-orange curls.

“You can’t go. I want you here,” she said.

Whitt was surprised by one of her hands in his, the other on his chest. How had he missed this? All the time he had been focusing too hard on trying to stay even, trying to get through the minutes and hours on the chase for Regan, he’d never noticed her watching him, wanting him. He couldn’t remember even a hint of it, a smile held too long or a conversation wandering into intimate territory. But then, she was moving toward him now, and the sudden awakening of a furious hunger in him made it hard to breathe. Vada was in his arms, and her lips were against his, and he was pulling her