James Patterson: Now You See Her

I WAS STARING at the keys, now miraculously back in my palm, when Peter’s police radio let out a long beep. A voice on the radio began chattering something I couldn’t decipher. Peter cocked his head, listening intently.

“What is it?” I said.

“Wait, wait,” he said, leaning back into the car, listening.

“Unbelievable,” he said when the radio voice stopped. He shook his head as he turned, his face crestfallen.

“What?” I said.

“Your boyfriend’s Camaro just came up over the radio as stolen. He told dispatch that not only did you take his car without permission, but that you’re drunk. First thing the DTs will do when they pull up is ask for all the overnight calls that came in. Next, they’ll want to see your boyfriend’s car, which for sure has blood on it. Which leaves no way out of this after all. I can’t believe this. I actually can’t let you go. I have to call this in now.”

Alex had called his car in as stolen? After what he did to me with Maureen, he actually called the cops on me? I felt incredibly weak suddenly. I felt like lying down on the asphalt next to the cop car and closing my eyes. Instead I just started to cry.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Peter said, putting his hand on my shoulder. He stared at me, his blue eyes as big as saucers. “Please don’t cry. I think we can fix this. I have an idea,” he said.

Peter made a dismal face as he slowly glanced over his shoulder at the fallen man, then back at me.

“We could get rid of Ramón’s body,” he said.

“WHAT?” I said, wincing.

“I live a few blocks from here. I have a boat at my house,” Peter said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

My leg started hopping again like a Mexican jumping bean.

“But that’s nuts,” I said. “You know that, right? How nuts that is?”

Peter nodded with an almost comic enthusiasm. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” he said.

“But I mean…,” I said, hesitating.

“Look, Jeanine. It’s our only option. I’ll put him in the Camaro’s trunk. You follow me in the Camaro back to my house. I’ll take it from there. I’m working the graveyard shift. No one will even know I’m gone.”

“This is crazy,” I said, looking around.

“We’re out of time,” Peter said. “If a car comes by, I won’t have a choice. I’m trying to do you a favor, but if you’re not up to it, I completely understand. I’m not real jazzed about the possibility of going to jail myself. It’s entirely up to you.”

I stood there looking at him as he checked his watch. He blinked as he stared back, waiting calmly for my answer. Even with his big hands resting on his bulky gear-laden hips, he suddenly seemed friendly, a nice teddy bear of a guy, a drinking buddy, a big brother sticking his neck out for me, trying to do me a solid.

Had my father ever done something like this for someone? I wondered. Maybe he had, I thought.

I closed my eyes. There it was before me. The rest of my life. Jail or freedom. Right or wrong.

I thought about looking over again at the man I’d struck, but in the end I decided not to.

I opened my eyes.

In the silence, Peter clicked the cuffs together. Like the final tick of a scale coming to rest. Like the click of the bathroom door with Alex and Maureen behind it, I thought.

Then finally, I nodded.

“OK, then. Hurry up now,” Peter said. “Back up the car, pop the trunk, and follow me.”

IT MUST HAVE BEEN around noon when I woke up, but I didn’t open my eyes right away.

As I pretty much always did over the last two years, I lay still, my breath held and eyelids sealed, momentarily unsure and afraid of where I might find myself.

Then I opened my eyes and let out a sigh of relief.

Because I was OK.

I was still free.

I wasn’t in a prison cell.

Not even close.

Yawning, stretching, blinking in the bright, hazy morning light, I sat up in bed, slowly taking in the white-on-white bedroom. From left to right, I scanned the driftwood sculpture on the side table, the seashell shadow box, the book-filled beadboard bookcases.

And, as usual, my waking inventory ended at my left hand. Or more precisely, at the diamond engagement ring and wedding band that had somehow become attached to my ring finger.

Standing, I stopped and shook my startled head at the mirror above the bedside table. From all my sea kayaking and windsurfing over the past two years, my light skin had turned a deep shade of brown. My brown hair, on the other hand, had become lighter, now striped with blond streaks.

I’d somehow become a version of myself I’d never even considered. Jeanine, surfer chick. Malibu Jeanine.

Failing to wrap my head around that one, I crossed the room and opened the vertical blinds on the sliders. I squinted as I took in the lazily leaning king palms, the expanse of Crayola teal water, the forest of boat masts.

My backyard, replete with two white seaward-facing chaise longues, could have been the set of a Corona commercial. I smiled at the muscular arm resting on the edge of the right chair.

Since we were out of Corona, I had to settle for putting an ice-cold bottle of Red Stripe into the big hand as I stepped up.

Two years of healing. Two years of love. No one was luckier than I.

“How’s the fishing there, Mr. Fournier?” I said.

“Slow, Mrs. Fournier,” Peter said, grinning at me impishly behind his Wayfarers.

YEP. YOU GUESSED IT. Peter and I had gotten married.

Or maybe you didn’t. I don’t blame you. I sure as hell hadn’t seen it coming.

I came down for spring break, and I never went home.

“Fish don’t seem to be biting today,” Peter said, putting the beer bottle down next to his sea rod and grabbing my ankle. “But hey, wait. I think I got something.”

For a scary second, I worried that I’d fall onto our concrete seawall or off it. But then I was on my back, across Peter’s lap, screeching ecstatically as he mercilessly tickled my armpits. Over the last two years in Key West, I was basically majoring in ecstatic screeching.

“You honestly think I’d let you fall in?” Peter whispered as he caught my earlobe in his teeth. “After all we’ve been through? It took me my whole life to catch a real-life mermaid. I’d never throw you back. No way.”

“In that case,” I said, sighing, as I lay back in the neighboring chaise. I smiled up at the merciless blue tropical Floridian sky. “I’ll just have to put up with you mortals for one more day.”

What hadn’t we been through? I thought as I closed my eyes, remembering the night of the accident.

It seemed like a million years ago.

After we had pulled into Peter’s carport, he brought me inside and sat me down on his living room couch and told me to sit tight. About ten minutes later, I heard his boat start up. I fell asleep waiting for him to return and woke to the sun coming up and Peter, back from his night shift, in the kitchen making us breakfast.

He’d taken care of everything, including delivering the Camaro back to Alex and persuading him to drop the car theft charge. It was as if the night before had never happened at all.

When I went back to the hotel that afternoon, the only thing waiting in the lobby were my bags. My friends were gone. Not just Alex and Maureen, but Mike and even Cathy had left. They hadn’t left a message.

I remembered singing “Could You Be Loved?” with them. The answer in my case was apparently a big fat no. Life wasn’t an episode of Friends, it seemed. Not one of them had “been there” for me, that was for sure. Not one of them had given a shit whether I lived or died.