Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

‘Oh shit!’

‘Turn around and put your hands on the well. Reach for the gun and I’ll slug you.’

‘Oh fuck.’ Her voice was tinged with the same shame I’d heard from the young officer I’d put down in the other valley. ‘I can’t believe this.’

She acquiesced with my commands reluctantly, slumping forward with her hands on the well. I took the cuffs off her belt and tucked my pistol into the back of my jeans.

‘Don’t feel too bad –’ I began. But before I could continue she’d twisted back around, and I could feel the press of a sharp point in the soft flesh of my throat.

‘Oh.’ Vada smiled in the dark. ‘I don’t feel bad at all.’

Chapter

97

BREATHE , I TOLD myself. Just keep breathing. Don’t panic. This isn’t over yet .

The mental pep talk didn’t work. I was so surprised by Vada’s presence, so shocked at my sudden loss of the upper hand, that I stumbled, my weak leg giving out, almost pitching me forward into the well. She had both my guns and my knife before I could even comprehend how she had taken them. I dropped the cuffs, and they were lost in the shadows, too risky for Vada to crouch down and try to find. She shoved me down onto the sandstone, ratcheting my hand behind my back.

So stupid. So thoughtless. I’d been so caught up in my realisation about Regan’s plan that I’d completely forgotten his partner.

This is about me. But it is also about you .

It was also about Vada. At least for now.

The knife that she put on the stones beside my face was bloodied. This woman had already killed tonight, and she was handling me so roughly that her fingernails dug into my wrists as she bound my hands with cable ties. She yanked me upwards. Unnecessary force. This was personal for her. I could feel the hate coming off her in toxic waves.

I let her shove me into a walk through the grass towards the edge of the forest. My leg hurt, but now I limped badly, wanting her to believe I was less mobile than I really was. Make your opponent think you’re weak. Make them under-estimate you until you can form a plan. I feigned a stumble over some rocks and her fingers bit harder into my arm.

‘None of your bullshit, Harry,’ she snapped. ‘Try anything funny and I’ll put another bullet in you.’

I walked, one of her hands clasping my wrists, the other pressing the knife into my shoulderblade. My brain was in full panic mode, frazzled and frantic. I saw flashes of Pops. Not surprising that the old man would come to me now, the closest thing to a parent I’d ever had. The sensation of his breath on my face as we danced around the boxing ring together, his padded hands taking furious punches until I was shivering and sick with exhaustion.

‘ Come on, Blue. You’re stronger than this! ’ he’d growl.

He was right. I was stronger than this.

Wherever she had got the tactical uniform from, she had not taken the officer’s utility belt, probably thinking it would weigh her down. She’d bound my hands with cable ties from the breast pocket of the bulletproof vest. Cable ties I could work with. All was not lost, but I would have to think and act carefully.

I couldn’t fight right now. But I could talk. Reason was my only available weapon.

‘So you’re Vada,’ I said. ‘Regan’s next victim.’

She gave a baffled, tense laugh.

‘What? You don’t think he’s going to kill you once you’ve fulfilled your purpose?’ I asked.

‘Just walk,’ she ordered.

‘I’m walking. I’m having a great time. What a beautiful night. Better enjoy this little stroll we’re taking through the moonlight, because you’re about to die, bitch,’ I said.

‘You think so, huh?’ She dug her nails into my wrist.

‘I know so,’ I said. ‘This whole mission is about me, not you. If you take me to Regan, he’ll have no further use for you. You think he’ll do it quick, like that little girl and her mother, the doctor? Or will he do it slow like that helpless old couple? Which one means he loves you more, in your fucked-up brain?’

She shoved me forward into the edge of the woods. As my eyes adjusted to the new darkness beyond the reach of the moon, I picked out the shape of a barn. There was a dim light inside the structure.

‘You killed two cops for him,’ I said. ‘I assume there were more tonight. That’s where you got the uniform. You took out one of the tactical –’

‘Shut up, Harriet.’

‘He must have encouraged you to kill,’ I said. ‘He probably prepared you for it mentally when you were forming your plan together. I bet he told you it would make you feel powerful. You’ve probably never felt powerful in your life. You’ve spent your whole life following men around, men who wanted to care for you. But Regan treated you like an equal.’

‘Don’t try to psychoanalyse me, Harry,’ Vada snapped. ‘You don’t have the training for it.’

‘I might not have your training, Vada, but I have something you don’t.’

‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’

‘Foresight.’

‘Please,’ she sighed. ‘Spare me.’

My stomach plunged as she pushed me forward. I dug my heels in and turned, wanting to look her in the face.

‘You can stop this now,’ I said. ‘Or we can go in there, and I can watch him kill you.’

‘You really do think this is all about you, don’t you, Harry?’ Her knife was pointed at my sternum, only an inch from the surface of my jacket. ‘I’m surprised someone like you, who’s started your life over so many times, can’t see what this is. You spent your whole childhood going from house to house, family to family, dozens and dozens of fresh starts.’

‘Don’t pretend you know me,’ I said.

‘I don’t know you. But I know Regan. He wants to start over,’ Vada said. ‘And he’s worthy of that. He’s a great man. He has incredible potential. But before he can start again, he has to be finished with his old life.’

She tapped the knife against my chest.

‘He has to be finished with you .’

Chapter

98

HE WAS THERE in the barn, perched on the edge of a stack of dusty pallets, a gun resting on his thigh.

Vada pushed me into the room, where the air was thick with the smell of mould and decay, and the unmistakable reek of rodents. The barn was divided into two sections: a wide space with a fold-out table, and a section for horses. Two of the walls dividing the stables were collapsed in and splintered. On the walls around me, I could see the outlines of tools that had once hung on angled nails. Wind whistled through the corrugated iron roof, gently swaying a single dim bulb that must have been powered by the generator I could hear humming somewhere.

Vada led me to a thick beam supporting the heavy trusses above us and cut the cable tie from my wrists, yanking me into position with my arms behind me around the beam. She slipped another tie around my wrists.

I watched Regan as Vada secured me. He was leaner than I had anticipated, his body probably worn from the chase and his injury in the Georges River. His hair was longer. Even with a face that had been windswept and hardened, his eyes were a little too big, too blank, like those of a man reminiscing and not really focusing. I thought of those cold eyes gazing over Eloise Jansen as he worked on her, or staring down the hallway at little Isobel Parish as she ran desperately from him.

Regan didn’t look at Vada as she stepped away from me. Those dead eyes were only for me.

‘Did she give you any trouble?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Vada said. ‘She was fine.’

‘He was talking to me, you idiot,’ I snapped at Vada. Anything I could do to undermine her confidence in him. To try to warn her about what was coming. I turned back to Regan. ‘No, she was fine. Now let her go. Let her turn herself in. She might be able to convince a prosecutor that you brainwashed her, threatened her, maybe. Stockholm syndrome. I’m sure you could come up with something, Vada. You’re a shrink. You could get parole in fifty years if you play your cards right.’