Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,86

I ran after Regan.

Chapter 110

I CAME TO the clearing suddenly, a small patch of treeless sandstone reaching out over a shallow valley. Regan had stopped just short of the cliff edge, taking a moment to glance over its rim before he noticed me standing there. His lower half was soaked in blood from the bullet in his guts, and yet he carried on, a machine built for violence.

He didn’t wait. Regan strode to the edge of the forest and grabbed my throat, slamming me into the rocks in one swift motion. My brain was still tangled up in the idea of finding him and was unprepared for what I would do now that I had.

I reached up and punched him hard in the head, twice, three times, but his strength was inhuman. A frantic thought pushed through the madness, that perhaps our fight in the barn had just been play. He was serious now. I had turned away from him. I had betrayed him. I had failed to be that perfect other he’d been searching for, to surrender to the lessons he’d been trying to teach me. He had been lonely, just as Tox said. And now he was enraged.

Regan straddled me, pinning my legs with his, and wrapped both hands around my throat.

I scratched and clawed at his hands, grabbed at his ears and face. The cartilage in my throat was creaking and crunching, and my eyes flooding with tears. I was only seconds without air, too early for hallucinations. But I was sure that what I was seeing was not real when Edward Whittacker’s face appeared behind Regan’s shoulder.

The knife in Whitt’s fist came down hard, the blade sinking into Regan’s shoulder. Whitt tried to yank the blade back, but it snapped at the hilt.

Regan rolled, staggered to his feet, holding the wound.

Whitt and I moved together, a silent agreement made. We ran at the big man at the cliff edge.

Our hands met at the center of his chest, a hard shove, both our bodies almost rocketing over the cliff with him.

Regan fell into the darkness.

Chapter 111

WHITT AND I collapsed at the edge of the cliff, still struggling for breath. He held my arm as though to stop me from falling as we peered into the blackness below. The drop was long, at least a hundred feet. I could see a pale, twisted shape below on the rocks but couldn’t tell if it was Regan or the fallen trunk of a young ghost gum. I slid back from the edge and knelt, and Whitt folded his arms around me.

I was taken back to the moment, seemingly years ago but really only weeks earlier, when this man had held me in the airport after telling me my brother had been killed. As I clung to Whitt, my fingers gripping at his sweat-damp shirt, I remembered thinking that my brother’s death had been the loss of all that I had in the world. I’d been wrong. I squeezed Whitt and he squeezed me back, a strangled laugh coming from his chest.

“What are you doing here?” I said, catching his laughter. “What are you doing here?”

“All my friends were in the same place.” He shrugged. “I thought I’d join the party.”

We walked back through the darkened forest, Whitt’s arm around my shoulder. He reeked of Scotch. Whitt had been driven back to his addiction. I realized, as we moved through the forest, just how much of the man I had known was gone. He pulled me close, surprised perhaps by how long I’d let him touch me. The few attempts he’d ever made at hugging me were always a risk. Maybe I was changing, now that I’d discovered that the real me Regan had spent so long unraveling wasn’t empty, or completely bad.

We reached the place where I was sure Tox had been hit and knocked out, but there was no sign of him. I stopped and pulled away from Whitt, scanning the dark for any sign of the man.

I thought I saw him coming out from behind a tree, but as the forest exploded with light, I knew I was wrong.

Chapter 112

THERE WERE TEN of them. Fifteen, maybe. The bush around me was suddenly alive with people, too many to count behind the torchlight, the screaming voices. I heard the ominous sound of a dozen rifles engaging. I threw my hands up, my shout of terror inaudible among the voices all around me.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!”

They had authority to fire,