Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,73

he grumbled.

“Good choice.” I patted him on the shoulder and walked off into the dark.

When I was a good distance away, the rifle and key left for the young man I’d subdued on the ridgeline as promised, I hooked his radio onto the waist of my jeans and fed the earpiece into my ear. As I made my way through the dark, moving quickly down the slope toward the bottom of the valley, the speaker in my ear burst into life.

“Command to ground units, unit one has been compromised.”

There was silence, and then a flurry of male voices.

“Command, can we have more information?”

“Command, this is unit five. Is there a casualty report?”

I heard fear in the voices ringing over the radio. I didn’t know if that fear was directed at me or Regan. No one had asked who had taken out the scout. For the first time, I felt a chill rush through me at the thought that the men out there in the dark might be afraid of me, might be assuming that I had hurt or killed one of their number. I knew I had a violent reputation among my colleagues, but just how dangerous did these men think I was? If they found me, what degree of force had they been authorized to use? Would they kill me to take me down?

I stopped and pushed the button on the radio.

“Come in, tactical units,” I said. “This is Harry Blue speaking.”

Chapter 91

THE RADIO WAS silent for a good twenty seconds. I guessed suddenly hearing the voice of one of their quarry might have stunned them into speechlessness. When no one spoke, I clicked my radio open, hardly knowing myself what I wanted to say. The bush around me was unnaturally silent and still.

“I just took down one of your men,” I said. “I didn’t hurt him. I’m not here to hurt any of you.”

No answer. I crept slowly farther down the slope toward the clearing where the house was situated.

“I came here to stop Regan Banks,” I said. “Regan is a merciless killer. I’ve seen his handiwork. I’ve seen it, because it was meant for me. This is my fault. If anyone’s at risk trying to stop this man, it should be me. If he has as much trouble taking one of you down as I just did, you’re all in real danger right now.”

There was a small crackle on the radio, two of the men out there speaking to each other.

“Unit seven, are you hearing this?”

“Yeah, two.”

The men’s voices were shocked, high with tension. Still, no one answered me directly. I clicked the mic again.

“I’m asking you not to consider me a target,” I said. “And I’m asking you to leave now, while you still can.”

The radio cracked to life again. A voice heavy with anger, clipped with the certainty of someone in command.

“All tactical units, this is Command. Switch radio frequencies, and disregard rogue transmissions,” the voice said.

My radio fell silent. I tore it from my ears and dropped it in the dirt. I’d never find the secondary tactical frequency, even if I scanned the airwaves all night. All I could hope was that the men had heard my plea, and that they would at least pair up so that if Regan came, he would have two men in each position to contend with.

I also hoped that if I ran into any of them, they’d remember what I’d said and not shoot me.

Chapter 92

POPS COULD HEAR the voices but had lost all sense of where they were coming from. It seemed to him that Harry was in the mobile-command center with them, but through the hazy red light he couldn’t see her. Woods had instructed two of his officers to escort Pops to the farthest end of the truck, where they sat him on a fold-up chair and cuffed his wrists behind his back. The pain across his chest, the one he had been experiencing for days, was not receding the way it usually did. If anything, it was becoming more specific, a sensation like a belt tightening endlessly around his chest, pulling inward at his sides. It felt to Pops as though his rib cage wanted to collapse in on itself.

Pops could just make out the broad figure of Woods at the other end of the truck, Nigel Spader standing restlessly beside him, watching the screens on the desk.

“He’s not coming,” Woods grunted. “The bastard’s not coming tonight.”

Nigel didn’t answer.

“Any minute now, we’re going to