Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,62

the shoulders slightly slanted and the head lowered, two black eyes visible through slivers of icy blond hair. A ghoul or ghost, a twisted, hellish skull mask, the cheeks hollow and the eyes sunken. As he walked, unsteady, into the moonlight, Whitt recognized the ominous line of a battered leather jacket, one dirty steel-capped boot swinging, landing, with the deadly confidence of an executioner.

Tox extended the gun in both hands as he came toward Whitt. He motioned as he passed, palm out, telling Whitt silently to stay where he was.

Then Tox disappeared.

Like a specter, his movements were smooth and soundless, leaving enormous prints behind in the mud. Whitt wasn’t sure what was real now and what was a dream, brought on either by the drugs, the booze, or the threat of his own death.

He waited in the dark, standing alone, until Tox returned, the gun hanging by his side.

“She got away,” Tox growled. “Worst shooting of my life. I should have thrown the fucking gun at her.”

Chapter 78

WHITT WRAPPED HIS arms around the other man.

“Get off.” Tox shoved Whitt away. “We’ve got to get out of here before she doubles back on us.” As he pushed his friend, Tox almost toppled Whitt over. He grabbed a handful of Whitt’s sweat-damp shirt and pulled him steady.

“What’s wrong with you?” Tox’s face was narrower than Whitt remembered, darkened by a thick brown beard. When he frowned, his features pointed, dangerously sharp. “Are you…are you drunk?”

“Yes,” Whitt admitted. “And high.”

Tox considered the man before him. Then he slapped him hard across the side of the head.

“Oh, fuck!” Whitt gripped his face. “What was that for?”

“For being drunk and high in the middle of a fucking police investigation—what do you think?” Tox shook his head, disgusted. He grabbed Whitt by the shoulder and shoved him toward the edge of the forest. “Jesus Christ, people are gunfighting around you and you’re sippin’ margaritas.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Whitt stumbled forward as Tox kept shoving him.

“I got sick of being babysat in a hospital bed like a drooling invalid,” Tox said. “I’d have come earlier, but Chief Morris put some goon-for-hire friend of his on my room who wouldn’t let me leave. I had to take him out with a fold-up chair to the back of the head. It’ll probably strain the relationship.” He considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Meh.”

As the route through the forest widened, they walked side by side.

“How did you find me?”

“Didn’t take a genius,” Tox said. “I saw the news reports about Bombala and followed all the blue and red lights. I was walking right toward you down the road outside the crime scene when I saw some chick come up and stick a gun in your guts.”

“I didn’t see you,” Whitt said.

“You were distracted,” Tox reasoned.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Whitt drew a ragged breath. “I’m so—”

“Hug me again and I’ll pull your spleen out.”

Whitt nodded. He observed that Tox wasn’t walking right. The ghoulish appearance he’d had as he emerged from the dark was the result of weight and color lost during his coma. He had the strained look of a man who should rightfully have been dead but hadn’t quite returned to the land of the living yet, either. He walked slightly twisted, a hand braced against his stomach where five weeks earlier he’d been stabbed with a ten-inch kitchen knife.

“Should you be out of bed?” Whitt asked. “You don’t look right.”

“Heh! This from the fucking booze hound with pupils like dinner plates,” Tox said. As they emerged onto the moonlit road, he pointed. A dented black vintage Monaro was parked at an odd angle against a fence. “Get in the car. Then you can tell me all about the crazy bitch who nearly just blew your brains out.”

Chapter 79

THE SUNLIGHT CAME and went. In the bare, windswept farmhouse where I spent the night and most of the day sleeping, I saw no sign of it. Curled in a corner on the floor, blocked from the view of the open doorway by a table I had turned on its side, I lay and dreamed of Regan’s victims, my brother in his jail cell, and for some worrying reason, Pops in the back of an ambulance. Memories, visions, premonitions, I didn’t know. My leg was throbbing again. I unrolled the blood-soaked bandage, cleaned the wound with alcohol wipes from the small first-aid kit, and rewrapped it.

As I emerged into the thick twilight and looked across the