Unlucky 13 - James Patterson Page 0,7

distract us, impress her lover, and set him free.

Her plan had backfired.

She, too, should be languishing on death row, but she had escaped from a hospital bed and hadn’t been heard of again—until now.

I looked over at Conklin, who was staring at the image of Morales. I knew that he was still ashamed that this criminal nut job had conned him. Actually, she’d conned both of us.

I flashed on Morales’s three months in our house, a proficient and slippery killer convincingly disguised as our cheerful back-office summer temp. No one was safe while Morales was free.

“So is she in custody?” Conklin asked Brady.

“Afraid not. This was a random video from a security cam across the street from the post office in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. That’s about a half hour from Cleveland. Someone who had been in the post office recognized Morales from the wanted poster, and after a few days, this video ended up at the FBI.

“She could be anywhere by now,” Brady said. “So keep your eyes open. And have fun tonight, Boxer. Take good care of my baby.”

CHAPTER 7

CLAIRE HAD PUT Yuki’s all-girl engagement party together in a flash. Instead of going to Susie’s Café, our customary watering hole, we met at Rickhouse, a restaurant bar in the financial district known for its sophisticated cocktails and its cozy brick and bourbon-barrel-stave decor.

I was late, but with a little help from the maître d, I found Claire, Yuki, and Cindy in the mezzanine level overlooking the bar below.

Yuki was radiant in office wear: vintage I. Magnin, 1960s black silk chiffon with rhinestones, and she was wearing her open-toed silver pumps that she never gets to wear.

She also had her mom’s diamond ring, a four-carat solitaire the size of a cocktail onion, on the ring finger of her left hand. That thing almost lit up our little table in the dark.

Claire stood to let me slide in next to Yuki, saying, “We’re drinking something called ‘Corpse Reviver Number Five.’ Should be our signature Club cocktail.”

“What’s in that potion, if I may ask?”

Cindy said, “It’s the reverse of embalming fluid,” and lifted her glass to show me her sunny-looking drink. Like me, Cindy is blond, but unlike me, she’s got corkscrew curls and adorable, slightly overlapping front teeth, and she’s a graceful size six.

“The key ingredient is tequila,” she said. “We’ve got Yuki on pass-out alert. Brady’s going to pick her up when we call.”

Yuki grinned and said, “Thanks for having faith in me.”

We said, “You’re welcome,” in unison. It was no secret that Yuki was an easy drunk with a weakness for margaritas, and this Corpse Reviver was close enough to her favorite drink.

I ordered what they were having, and when my drink arrived, we toasted the bride-to-be in turn. We’d given her a lot of crap over the years for her go-nowhere relationships. One of her former frogs had actually set out to kill her.

“To Yuki, with thanks for putting an end to the frog parade.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she said.

“To you and Brady,” said Cindy. “Perfect together.”

“I’ll drink to that, too,” said Yuki, already slurring softly. She guzzled her drink down to the bottom of the glass.

Claire said, “Darlin’, here’s to the best sex, best friends, and best times, for the whole of your lives.”

“Hear, hear,” I said.

We clinked glasses of lemony-pineapple-y tequila, and Yuki put down her empty glass and dipped her head. I saw a couple of tears gathering in her eyelashes. I put an arm around her shoulder.

“Hey. Don’t cry. What’s wrong, for Pete’s sake?”

“Happy tears,” she said. “How much I love the three of you. And I miss my daffy mom.”

“She would’ve loved this,” Claire said. “You getting married to that big, brave, blondy-haired man.”

Yuki smiled. She cocked her head and in her mother’s voice she said, “‘Yuki-eh, be good wife. Cook what he likes. Say yes alla time. Keep yourself up.’”

We all laughed. And then asked Yuki a hundred questions, which she answered in full—about the wedding plans and the honeymoon, and she told us that she and Brady were going to live in her apartment, which had been her mother’s, once they came home from their cruise.

Claire grabbed the check and Cindy leaned toward me and said, “I may be too sloshed to drive.”

“Then I’m your designated driver,” I told her.

Once Cindy was strapped into my passenger seat, I buzzed down the windows and fired up my trustworthy Explorer. As I drove, I told her about the belly bombs—off the record. And