Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,64
spent her life lying, manipulating, searching for that dark partner in crime she’d found in Regan Banks.
She was going down with him.
Chapter 80
AS I HEADED TOWARD the highway, my phone buzzed.
“Well, well, well,” I said before Regan could speak. “Someone’s got a girlfriend. Turns out she’s a chronic fuck-up as well. Couldn’t pour water out of a boot, that one. Your squeeze had me at ten paces and she couldn’t hit me, and now she’s let Edward Whittacker slip away.”
Regan was quiet for a moment.
“She had you at ten paces?” he repeated.
“Oh, she didn’t tell you she fired at me?” I laughed. “Now, that’s funny. I think your little love pet might be aware that you only have eyes for me.” The words had spilled out, but they trailed to a halt as I burned with a sudden pang of regret. I didn’t know how complicit Vada was in Regan’s plans. She might have been his victim, too, and even though she had tried to kill my friend, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be responsible for signing her death warrant with Regan just yet. I decided to lie. “You should give her a break. I fired first. She was only defending herself.”
“Harry,” Regan said, “we can talk about Vada later. We can talk about all of it. I really wanted to do more, you know. I think that taking away that layer, helping you to realize that your strange, small circle of friends doesn’t really mean anything, might have been really powerful for you.”
“You’ve only taught me how important my friends are to me,” I said. “Your plan is failing.”
“We’ll see. For now, I’ve run out of time to carry on. We have to meet.”
“Why now?” I asked.
He seemed surprised. “You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“This is about me and you, Harry. About my gift to you. You don’t get it?”
“The day you start making sense is going to be the greatest day of my fucking life,” I said.
“You’ll see, in time. I have faith. I’m going to give you an address.”
Those ominous words I had heard before, words that made my skin crawl.
“I think we’re going to have company,” he continued. “But you’ll work out how we’re going to be alone. You’ll understand when you see the lighthouse.”
Chapter 81
TOX SAT ON the end of the motel bed where Whitt slept, looking at his cigarette between drags, admiring the glow of the embers in the dim light. There had been no smoking in the hospital. None of life’s necessities, really. For the first few days after waking from his coma, Tox had not smoked, drunk, or felt the press of a woman’s naked body against his. And that was a very unusual thing. He’d lain silently like a pathetic, wounded animal, watching the pretty nurses coming in and out, giving him drugs, adjusting his sheets and pillows, starved of all joy. Then he’d heard a couple of those nurses walking by his room giggling about “Mr. Handsome in number twelve.” With effort, Tox had shuffled down on the mattress, leaned forward, and grabbed his chart from where it hung near his feet. The top of the page read “Barnes, Tate John. Room 12.”
Mr. Handsome? Huh.
A few careful looks, some of his rusty but serviceable romantic charm, and he’d managed to get a couple of Jim Beam minis stuffed under his pillow one day. Then, about a week later, one of the young ladies had tucked herself under his arm and helped him hobble to the fire escape, stood watching him with a nervous smile as he sucked down three cigarettes in a row. Tox thought he’d pushed his luck just about as far as it would go when, one night, a darkened shape had come creeping in and flipped the lock on the door after closing it behind her. They’d both laughed as she slid back his sheet, pushing his hospital gown up his hairy legs.
No, hospital hadn’t been so bad. But that didn’t mean that Tox was going to leave the score between him and Regan unsettled. He’d been selfish to try to take Regan down himself, keep the girl-killer for his own plaything when really it was Harry who deserved that prize. Tox had learned of Sam Blue’s killing while in the hospital bed. He’d tried to leave then but only made it as far as the foyer before hospital security dragged him back to his room.
Tox would help Harry kill the beast. That would make things just about