Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,85
be a bigger, more offensive problem. There was a lot of bad in me, and stripping away any goodness I’d managed to cover it up with had been easy. I was like Regan in so many terrifying ways.
Inside me, there wasn’t a great ball of warm, glowing, righteous goodness.
But there was a tiny spark. And there was a tiny spark in the man on the ground before me. As vile and merciless and depraved as he was, he was human. He felt loneliness. He wanted to find comfort with someone as unredeemable, as profoundly worthless, as he saw himself. He’d tried to show me that we were as bad as each other, deep down inside, and I’d come here to find out if that was true.
It was not.
Chapter 108
I DROPPED MY AIM.
Blood was seeping from between Regan’s fingers. He steadied himself against the ground with one hand, his expression unreadable. It would have been too easy to take his life then. I was exhausted. My resolve was gone. All I wanted was for Regan to be gone from my life, taking all the pain he had brought with him.
But it wasn’t going to happen like this.
“I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t kill a wounded, unarmed man on his knees in a fucking barn.”
“I can,” Tox suggested, taking the gun from me.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “Help me tie hi—”
A crash split the air, so sudden and loud it made all three of us jump. Vada’s head was turned toward me, the bullet hole in her cheek running blood over the side of her face, a grotesque half-mask of red. Her hand was still on the leg of the foldout table that she had yanked backward, causing the table to fold in on itself and crash to the floor.
As we watched, Vada’s unfocused eyes fell closed.
In her last act, she had caused a desperate distraction. The shock of the noise was enough to draw my and Tox’s attention away from Regan for just a second.
That was all the time he needed to escape.
Chapter 109
A FIERCE WIND had risen outside the barn, whipping the long grass, dragging smeary clouds across the moon. At first, I saw no sign of him, my night vision ruined by the light inside the barn. But then I caught a flicker of movement through the forest. I had to take a chance.
Tox ran beside me, grabbed my wrist, and pulled as he noticed Regan turn in the darkness ahead. I was worried that with my wounded leg, my friend would get ahead of me, that I’d be leaving Tox to capture Regan by himself.
But Tox wasn’t running on full strength, either. Now and then a hand braced against his abdomen, his breath coming too hard as he sprinted through the bush.
A desperate thought pulsed with the rhythm of my feet on the forest floor.
You let him go. Now he’ll kill again. You’ll never exonerate Sam. Regan will continue his sick game until he wins.
Tox stumbled on a tree branch and gave a growl of pain.
“Are you okay?” I yelled against the wind. He didn’t answer. I stopped with him in the blackness, both of us panting heavily. We held each other. Not a hug, but the fierce grip of two allies glad to be within arm’s reach of each other.
“We can’t lose him,” Tox said, his eyes searching the forest around us. Suddenly there was a gust of wind, carrying the thump of a chopper. I could feel its beat in my chest. A white light swept the forest, looking for Regan, for us. In its wake, I spotted a figure moving through the trees.
“There!” I dragged Tox along, then let go of him and sprinted up the incline. Tox overtook me. Regan appeared from behind a tree and smashed a branch into Tox’s face.
Tox went down hard, Regan sprinting away from him. The chopper light darted again through the forest, and I caught a flash of my partner’s face. He was out cold. As the light disappeared, I fumbled on the ground around him, looking for the gun he had dropped, feeling only rocks and branches, his warm jacket and hard chest.
I was unarmed. It was dark, I was on my own now, and the tactical team would be heading toward me, most likely with orders to shoot me on sight. The smartest thing to do would be to wait with my injured friend and surrender when the police eventually found us.
Instead,