Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,8

single standard glass of red wine at 5:30 p.m. Not a drop more. Sometimes, on his worst days, he had a Scotch. Just one.

He’d have that drink with his new partner and explain it all to her then.

“Let’s go,” he said, the dread almost choking off his words.

Chapter 12

I SAT AT the back of the bar in a shadowy corner, my eyes on my glass, listening to the talk of the men at the counter. The tumbling and crashing sounds of the poker machines. The cars rushing by in the wet street.

In the time I’d been on the run, I’d learned plenty of things, but the most important had been how essential the sense of hearing is to a fugitive. I kept my ears pricked for mentions of my name at all times. For sirens, or the unmistakable stern, direct talk of cops. I made eye contact with no one. I’d kept my head so low in my first week in hiding, my neck had been stiff and sore at the end of each day.

On the television screens above the bar, a cricket game, a cooking show, and the national evening news. I listened as the bartender howled above the general din of conversation from the men crowded at the tables nearest the bar.

“Shut up, you guys! I wanna hear this!”

The men’s volume lowered. The sound of the news program rose. I turned my drink on the tabletop before me, watching the ice melt.

“…shocking scenes. Police are saying they have no reason to believe the shooting at Sydney Police Center in Surry Hills is linked to the ongoing search for Regan Banks…”

I dropped my head, realizing I’d almost risen out of my seat, eyes glued to the screen, my cover forgotten. My thoughts were racing. A shooting at the police command center. Did they mean inside the building? How was that possible?

I realized with sudden, shocking clarity how many people I cared about had probably been in the building that day. Pops. Whitt. I thought briefly about Nigel Spader. He was a jerk, a jerk who had been partly responsible for my brother’s incarceration. But I didn’t want him dead. There were others—old partners, people I knew from the academy. Who was dead? Who’d done the shooting?

“…in total lockdown, as you can see. The names of the two officers who were killed have not been released, but sources are saying a shootout inside the station records room resulted in…”

The records room. I chanced another look at the screens from under the ball cap pulled low on my brow. The reporter was standing outside a barricaded command center, his face demonstrating his shock at the story he was reporting. Rage flickered in me. Regan Banks. Why had the reporter mentioned Regan Banks at all? Of course, the country was in terror at the idea that Regan was running around, ready to kill again. They were horrified at the police’s apparent inability to capture him. But a shooting at the station—nothing about that brought Regan Banks and his crimes to mind. Banks was a rapist. A strangler. A stabber. A torturer of women. He was not someone who entered buildings crowded with cops and shot people.

But there was one possibility: the reporter had mentioned Regan Banks because someone had mentioned it to him. A press release from police headquarters might have specifically said the shooting was not linked to Regan Banks.

Which meant, of course, that it was.

Regan. Why would he break into the records department? Was it to kill the people working there? The records room was a dumping ground for the department’s bad kids. I’d worked there plenty of times myself. The room was a weak access point for the building, now that I thought about it. If Regan just wanted to kill a cop, any cop, the records staff were sitting ducks.

Or had the records room itself been the target, and the staff there collateral? But what in the records room could Regan possibly—

I knew, even before I’d completed the thought.

I drained my drink and rose from my seat.

Two could play at that game.

Chapter 13

BEING ON THE lam is harder than you think. It takes a lot of setup. I’d been given the news of my brother’s death only minutes after landing at Sydney Airport, coming home from my last case. From there I’d walked out, got a cab to my apartment, which was a crime scene, taped and locked up after Tox’s showdown with Regan. I’d taken no time