James Patterson: Now You See Her

The warden let out a breath. “That’s it,” he said.

Charlie sat heavily in one of the folding chairs. His head dropped down between his knees.

“Just tell me how Justin’s OK again,” he said, looking up at the warden.

“The doctor on call says his pulse is fine. He just needs to sleep it off. They’re bringing him to the infirmary.”

Charlie let out a breath, then sat up, wiping at the tears in his eyes. I came over and hugged him.

“Then we did it?” he whispered as if he could hardly believe it. “We actually did it?”

After a minute, we joined Fabiana and Justin’s mother in a standing embrace as the reporters spoke excitedly into their cell phones.

“See, I knew you would help Justin, Miss Bloom,” Mrs. Harris said to me as she kissed my hand, then my cheek. “I never doubted it for a second.”

“Me, too, Miss Bloom,” Charlie said winking from over her shoulder. “I knew you could pull it off.”

A VIOLET-TINGED SHADOW rose up the cabin wall of the small American Eagle jet like a tide as we made the final descent for Key West the next afternoon. Beside me, Charlie started to snore as the landing gear hummed down beneath our feet.

Now that Justin had been given a stay, I wanted nothing more than to be landing in New York. But after we visited a groggy Justin in the infirmary that morning, Charlie had called his law school buddy FBI Special Agent Robert Holden and told him about Peter.

Holden was already waiting for me at Charlie’s house to formally interview me and open Peter’s case. Getting back to my life, unfortunately, would have to wait.

I unburdened my troubled soul in Charlie’s office for a second time.

Agent Holden, a tall, black, former college basketball player, sat across from me taking extensive notes on a yellow legal tablet as I told him about Peter’s first wife, Elena’s shooting, my faked death.

When I was done, Holden looked at me, poker-faced, expressionless. Whether he thought I was crazy or heroic or a liar, there was no way to tell. He capped his red Mont Blanc pen and tucked it into the inside pocket of his charcoal suit coat.

“Would you be willing to repeat what you just told me in open court?”

I thought about that. What would happen when my bizarre story of faking my death and changing my identity came out? It would probably mean my job, some of my friends. I decided that losing it all was worth getting my life back, becoming whole again.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “So what do you think? Is there a case against Peter after all these years?”

“We’ll have to see,” Holden said. “There’s no statute of limitations for murder. The most interesting angle from where I’m sitting is Peter’s corruption as the chief of police. We can start by going after him for Hobbs Act public official violations and see where that leads us. I’m definitely satisfied enough to open an investigation on him forthwith. Because of the threat to you, after I leave here, I’m going to recommend to my boss that he send a team down and that we place Fournier under immediate surveillance. When will you be heading back to New York?”

“Tomorrow,” Charlie said, coming into the office, clinking a couple of Coronas together. “We still have some serious celebrating to do.”

“Well, take it easy and keep an eye on her until she gets on that plane, Charlie,” Holden said. “I’ll keep you guys updated.”

As the FBI agent stood, I wondered yet again if I should bring up that one pesky little detail concerning Ramón Peña. Try to get ahead of it before it undoubtedly came out.

Yet I kept my mouth shut as Holden went out the front door.

“To you,” Charlie said, handing me a beer. “I’m proud of you. You’ve been holding that in for seventeen years. That took guts.”

Guts, lack of scruples. Whatev, as Emma liked to say.

I threw the lime wedge garnish into the office wastepaper basket and took a long hit off the beer. It was crisp, delicious, as cold as an ice cream headache, and after another hit it was empty.

“My plane leaves in twelve hours,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “We don’t have time to fruit the beer, Baylor.”

IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK when we arrived in Mallory Square for the sunset celebration. The kooky Key West sunset party hadn’t changed a bit. It was the same uplifting reggae music I remembered, the same happy dancing fools splashing beer all over themselves and one another, the same seductive champagne-colored light.

The original plan had been just to chill back at Charlie’s house, but about an hour before, Agent Holden had called. He’d said that they’d put Peter under surveillance and that they had tailed him up to a boat show in Key Largo, where he’d checked into a hotel with his wife and two kids. Which meant that Key West was ours at least for the night.

Charlie held my hand as he guided me through the street performers and sunburned drunken tourists. He said he had a surprise lined up. I let him walk me out of the square and down a few narrow blocks. We finally arrived at the water at Schooner’s Pier, a restaurant and private marina.

I closed my eyes and sighed as a sea breeze lifted my hair.

I actually deserved to celebrate a little. I had helped get Justin a stay of execution. I’d even made some progress in cleaning up my own life in the past week. There was still the ghost of spring break past haunting me, but what were you going to do? Despite the still unresolved issue that was my life, I officially decided to give my guilt a well-deserved night off.

“Is this where it happens? Your big surprise?” I said to Charlie.

“You’ll see,” Charlie said, taking my hand again.

Instead of taking me into the restaurant as I expected, Charlie walked me down the wooden dock. We stopped in front of a massive two-decked luxury motor yacht.

“After you,” he said with a courtly wave toward its boarding ramp.

“What… what are we doing?” I said, gaping at the white Ferrari-sleek lines of the majestic ship. The black-tinted windows on the captain’s bridge made it look like it was wearing shades.

“It belongs to a client of mine, Bill Spence. He owes me a favor,” Charlie said as he tugged me up the ramp. “He runs an upscale sunset dinner cruise. Even at a hundred and eighty a pop, it’s usually pretty crowded, but I got us the whole shebang. She’s all ours. At least for the next three hours.”

“What?” I said, ecstatic.

“Wait here,” Charlie called as he stepped through a doorway off the first deck.

He came back two minutes later, smiling, as he grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. We passed a Jacuzzi and a tiki bar before arriving at the railing of the bow, where an intimate table for two sat waiting.

Charlie handed me a champagne flute and pulled a bottle out of a silver ice bucket.

“Our host is putting the finishing touches on our dinner,” he told me as he filled my glass with bubbly. “He said to enjoy a toast as he takes us out. The first course is coming up.”

“First course?” I said in surprise.

“Now, now. Enough chitchat. This is a surprise,” Charlie said, winking.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the Mallory Square crowd roared at us like we were celebrities, as the luxury yacht swooshed us past them toward the setting sun.

The captain let off the ship’s air horn. When we turned, we could just make out his large silhouette waving to us from behind the bridge’s tinted glass windshield. Charlie hugged me as we waved back with raised champagne flutes.