Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,21
enters the town house.
Charlie hits a button on his dashboard. The back door to the customized van slides open, and the hydraulic ramp unfolds and drops down to the pavement.
Charlie removes the earbuds but keeps his cell phone in his hand. He grabs the bag of toiletries off the floor and navigates the wheelchair down the ramp. He could use the remote but chooses to manually move the wheelchair instead. He rolls up a driveway two doors down from Bookman and moves along the sidewalk until he reaches the back of Emmy’s Jeep.
He looks at his cell phone as if it were ringing, then raises it to his ear as if he were answering, making sure the bag of toiletries falls from his lap onto the pavement in the process. Oops.
He pretends to speak for a moment while looking with distress at the spilled contents of his bag. He puts the phone in his lap and reaches down for the bottle of shampoo on the sidewalk. He pretends that he can’t quite reach it. He cups his right hand under the fender of Emmy’s Jeep to pull himself forward.
And to plant the GPS device.
He completes the charade for anyone who might be watching, picking up the toiletries and then continuing to wheel himself down the sidewalk. He will do a lap around the block and return to his van and drive away.
He doesn’t have any idea how long it will be before Emmy returns home. She may stay with Bookman, her fiancé, for a few hours or the evening or even the weekend. But eventually, she will return home.
Sooner or later, Charlie will know where Emmy lives.
21
BOOKS OPENS the door for me wearing a button-down shirt pulled loose from his jeans and loafers with no socks. His hair is still wet from a shower, and I catch the scent of soap and musky aftershave.
My heart does gymnastics as he pulls me close and presses his lips against mine with urgency. I feel everything else drift away; serial killers and murdered cops and domestic terrorists and leaks of confidential information recede into fog as we make out like teenagers in the foyer of his town house. Everything safer and happier and…better. Just better.
We get only as far as his living room, pawing at each other, unbuttoning clothes and yanking off shirts, panting like animals, before he lays me down gently on the carpet. His muscular arms tremble as he hovers over me, his face inches from mine, then enters me with a sharp moan.
Hello, Friday night.
We almost never see each other during the week. Books, trying to keep his struggling bookstore afloat, has trimmed down staff to the point that he is the only full-time employee, handling the counter and the inventory and the accounting and the marketing, working sixteen-hour days. And I’m my usual obsessive, workaholic self.
He grits his teeth and arches his back and, with one final thrust, lets out a violent grunt, looking down at me with that intense, pained expression, wet hair falling into his face. Then he releases a breath, his expression easing.
“Wow,” he says after a few seconds. “I’ve missed the hell out of you.”
My breathing evens out as he lowers himself onto me. I touch his smooth cheek. His smell and his warmth are all I need right now, all I want. I close my eyes and pretend it’s going to stay like this.
I pretend that I really am good for him, that we really will get married.
He starts to pull away but I hold him tight. “Just…stay here a minute,” I say, opening my eyes.
He smiles that gentle Books smile, kisses me softly.
“I love you, Agent Bookman,” I whisper. “You know that, right?”
If he is surprised at the question, he doesn’t show it. “You’re not just using me for my body?” He slides off of me and props himself up on his elbow. “You okay?” he asks.
“I am now,” I say. “I am here.”
“You can always be here,” he says. I can’t see my own expression, of course, but I can see his as he reads mine. It’s like the needle screeching off the turntable, and the passion and intimacy disappear as we return to our regularly scheduled program, My Fiancée Is a Freak, starring Harrison Bookman as a handsome, brilliant, well-adjusted man drawn to a neurotic woman. “What, I’m not supposed to say that? You can be here. I want you here. I want us to live together.”