Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,68

got out. He walked to the back, popped the boot. Whitt marveled at the array of weaponry that was lit by the flickering red interior bulb. A pile of guns, haphazardly dumped in the trunk, barrels and stocks poking at odd angles, shoulder straps tangled across magazines. Tox took a hunting blade the size of his forearm from the edge of the pile and attached it to his belt. He handed Whitt a similar knife and then put a foot on the bumper, extracted a sawed-off shotgun from the collection, and started fitting it with shells.

“Is this overkill?” Whitt asked, picking up a huge magnum revolver from the pile of guns heaped on the carpet before him.

“The Kalashnikov would probably be overkill,” Tox said. Whitt hadn’t even noticed the huge semiautomatic rifle lying at the bottom of the pile until he spotted its camouflaged stock. Tox took the revolver from Whitt’s hand and tossed it back into the pile, handing him a Glock instead. “Take this. You don’t want to be fumbling around in the dark with a cylinder.”

They shut the trunk, and Tox snapped the shotgun closed. Without so much as a glance at each other, the two men turned and started walking back toward the detour on the highway. They came within a hundred meters of the men pretending to be road workers, then turned and walked into the darkened bush.

“Try not to shoot me,” Tox warned his partner. “I’ve had enough of hospitals for one year.”

Chapter 85

THE HELICOPTER WARNED ME.

I spotted the chopper tracking along the mountain range in the distance, a tiny moving star among a thousand others, drifting slowly east toward the coast. The chopper might have represented anything—the coast guard surveying the beaches for signs of trouble, a pair of pilots taking a night ride, a traffic crew scanning the general area for their evening report. But as I walked toward Bellbird Valley, having hidden my stolen car in the bush off the side of the highway, I saw the chopper stop and track back the way it had come. It was a police chopper, holding off until it was called. I stood on the side of the road and watched it pass between the tops of two trees.

They were waiting.

I pressed my palm against my forehead and groaned.

Pops. He must have been right, that Regan had decided to take me to the place where whatever had happened to him as a kid had occurred. This is about me, Regan had said. He wanted me to know what had happened to him.

My body heavy with fatigue and disappointment, I paused and tried to decide what I would do. With the state’s best specialist officers lying in wait for Regan, there was no way he would come tonight. No way I would be able to take him down on my own, even if he did. I sank onto the ground at the roadside and tried to draw some remaining strength from deep inside my body.

We were nowhere near a lighthouse. A quick scan of Bellbird Valley on the car’s GPS had told me I was miles from the sea.

I thought about walking into the forest, making myself known, letting the team pounce on me and drag me into custody. I needed medical attention, and fast. I hadn’t felt any sensation in the toes of my wounded leg for an hour. I was dehydrated, exhausted, and covered in the various cuts and scrapes that come with living rough. I was hungry, dangerously on edge. Here was the perfect opportunity for me to surrender before I crossed the line I’d been steadily approaching over the past weeks, the one that would change my life.

But I didn’t.

Regan had said he thought we might have “company” in the valley. He was right. But I knew there was a chance this was the night he had chosen for me, and that he wouldn’t spot the trap waiting for him. That he would come, and they would pounce, and someone I cared for, maybe Whitt, maybe Pops, might be hurt. And I also knew there was a chance I could get to him before my colleagues put cuffs on the monster in their midst and wrapped him safely in the protective arms of the justice system. I had come too far to give up all hope now.

I kept walking, using the land beneath me as a guide. I knew I was adjacent to a narrow, deep valley. I turned off the