Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,54

me. I sprawled on the soil, then rose and staggered away from the trail and into the trees.

I’d been shot before, so I recognized the sensation. A biting, burning pain in my calf, creeping up to fever pitch, making the whole limb shake as I powered along. I told myself I wasn’t going to stop, though every ounce of my body begged me to.

The forest floor fell away suddenly, a steep embankment. I rolled and slid, pushing myself off a thick tree trunk, using the momentum to keep my pace toward the river.

Chapter 67

WHITT COULD BARELY comprehend what he had seen. He walked stiff-legged down onto the track where Vada was standing. She was panting with adrenaline, trying to unjam the pistol’s slide and eject the round stuck in the chamber. When Whitt’s foot snapped a twig lying across the road, Vada turned on him, her eyes wild.

“You shot her,” Whitt breathed, hardly believing the words as they came out of his mouth. “You shot Harry.”

“She pulled a gun on me,” Vada said, handing the weapon to Whitt. Whitt unjammed the pistol as though in a dream, picking the round up from the mud with shaking fingers. Vada held her hand out for the weapon, but Whitt found that his own hands were clamped on the gun so tightly, he didn’t seem to be able to give it back. His mind was screaming for him not to hand it over.

Again and again, he saw Vada’s arm rise as she pointed the gun at the shadowy figure of Harry.

Harry’s back had been turned.

Hadn’t it?

“Harry’s now a dangerous fugitive,” Vada said. “She pointed a gun at an officer. You saw it. You saw her try to fire on me, didn’t you?”

Whitt stood trembling, looking at Vada’s open palm.

“Whitt,” Vada said, “give me the gun.”

He didn’t resist as she pried the weapon from him. She tucked it into her holster, her eyes imploring him. When her hands came to his shoulders, he almost sank into her arms.

“I need you to back me, Whitt,” she said. “The way I’ve been backing you. Remember those officers on the bridge? No one needs to know about this.”

“She was turned away.”

“You’re buzzed out of your mind. You don’t know what you saw. Harry’s your friend. She made a mistake. We’ll find her before she hurts herself or anyone else.”

He said nothing. She gave his hand a squeeze, then went ahead up the narrow animal trail toward the crime scene. While her back was turned, Whitt considered his plan.

Chapter 68

THE OLD ADAGE was that crime didn’t pay. Pops thought that even though that probably wasn’t true, there was something to be said for maintaining the illusion. He parked the patrol car a block down from Judge Boscke’s enormous house in Kirribilli, thinking that while he was saving the judge the embarrassment of being seen to be hosting a police officer in the early evening, he was probably loading that same embarrassment on some politician or actress or another. As he switched off the ignition, a reminder pinged on his phone. Pops opened his internet app and found the live feed of the press conference without trouble. A dark-haired woman was on the screen, reading from a piece of paper at a lectern. Cameras flashed in front of her. The paper in her hand was shaking, as was her voice.

“My name is Annie Parish. Doctor Samantha Parish was my sister,” the woman said. “She was a warm, clever, funny person. She was a gifted medical professional, and a good mother to my beautiful niece Isobel, who was also taken. I’ve lost two members of my family to Regan Banks.”

Pops turned the sound up on his phone, glancing outside the car.

“It is my understanding,” the woman continued, wiping at a tear with a trembling hand, “that there is a police officer, Detective Harriet Blue, who is missing out there somewhere. A reward is being offered for information on her whereabouts. I would like to speak directly to Harriet Blue, if she is listening.”

Pops winced, realizing he had chewed his thumbnail down to the tender flesh beneath. The woman on the screen looked at the cameras, letting the hand that held her written speech settle on the lectern’s surface.

“Detective Blue,” Ms. Parish said, “I encourage you to find that son of a bitch Regan Banks, and kill him.”

Pops’s mouth fell open, as did those of the men and women at the edges of the screen, standing behind Ms. Parish. Someone strode