James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

‘Pattern’s definitely different,’ an analyst volunteered. ‘Abduction at a bar . Male taken.’

‘How can we be so sure of that at this point?’ Burns spoke up from the front of the room. ‘What is the pattern here?’ he asked.

Burns’s question was met with silence. Like most chief executives he had no idea of his own power. He turned and looked around at the group. His eyes finally settled on mine. ‘Alex? What is the pattern?’ he asked. ‘You have any ideas?’

The other agents were watching me. ‘Are we certain it was two males at the club?’ I asked. ‘That’s the first question I have.’

Burns nodded in agreement. ‘No, we are not sure, are we? One of them had on a sailor’s cap. Could have been the woman from King of Prussia. Do you agree with the opinion voiced about the disconnection between this abduction and the others? Has the pattern been broken?’

I considered the question, trying to get in touch with my gut reaction to what I’d heard so far.

‘No,’ I finally said. ‘There doesn’t even have to be a behavioral pattern. Not if the abduction team is working for money. I’m inclined to think they probably are. I don’t see these as crimes of passion. But what bothers me are the mistakes. Why are they making mistakes? That’s the key to everything.’

Lizzie Connelly had no sense of time anymore, except that it seemed to be moving very slowly, and that she was pretty sure she was going to die soon. She would never see Gwynne, Brigid, Merry or Brendan again and that made her incredibly sad. She was definitely going to die .

After she was locked away in the small closet-room, she’d spent no time feeling sorry for herself, or worse, feeling panic, letting it rule her for whatever time she had left. Certain things were obvious to her, but the most important was the reality that this horrible monster wasn’t going to let her go. Ever. So she had spent countless hours plotting her escape. But, realistically, she knew that it wasn’t likely to happen. She was bound with leather straps, and though she’d tried every possible maneuver, every twist and turn, she’d never be able to break loose. Even if she did, by some miracle, she could never overpower him. He was probably the strongest man she’d ever seen, twice as powerful as Brendan, who had played football in college.

So what could she do? Maybe try something during a bathroom or food break – but he was so attentive and careful. At the very least, Lizzie Connelly wanted to die with dignity. Would the monster let her? Or would he want her to suffer? She thought about her past history quite a lot, and took comfort in it. Her growing-up years in Potomac, Maryland, spending nearly every spare hour at a nearby stable. College at Vassar in New York. Then the Washington Post . Her marriage to Brendan, the good times, and the bad. The kids. All leading up to that fateful morning at Phipps Plaza. What a cruel joke life had played on her.

During her last few hours locked up in the dark, she’d been trying to remember how she had gotten through other terrifying experiences. She thought that she knew: with faith; with humor; and with a clear understanding that knowledge was power. Now, Lizzie tried to remember specific examples… anything that might help.

When she had been eight years old she’d needed surgery to correct a straying eye. Her parents were always ‘too busy’ so her grandparents had taken her to the hospital. As she watched them leave, tears had streamed from her eyes. When a nurse came in and saw the tears, Lizzie pretended that she’d bumped her head. And somehow she got past the lonely, terrifying incident. Lizzie survived .

Then when she was thirteen there was another terrifying incident. She was returning from a weekend with a friend’s family in Virginia, and had fallen asleep in the car. When she woke up she was groggy and confused and completely covered with blood. She remembered staring out into the gloomy darkness and slowly beginning to understand. There’d been an automobile accident while she was asleep. A man from another car involved in the accident lay in the street. He wasn’t moving – but Lizzie believed she heard him tell her ‘ not to be afraid ’. He said that she could stay on earth, or leave. It was her decision – no one else’s. She had chosen to live.

‘It’s my choice,’ Lizzie whispered in the blackness of the closet. ‘It’s my choice to live or die, not his. Not the Wolf’s. Not anybody else’s.

‘I choose to live.’

The next morning, just about everybody attached to the White Girl task force had been assembled in the main conference hall at Quantico. We hadn’t been told much yet, just that there was breaking news, which was good; there had already been too much bureaucracy and wheel-spinning for me.

Senior Agent Ned Mahoney from HRT arrived when the room was already filled. He walked to the front, turned and faced us. His intense, gray-blue eyes went from row to row, and he seemed more pumped up than usual.

‘I have an announcement. Good news for a change,’ Mahoney said. ‘There’s been a significant break. Word just came down from Washington.’ Mahoney paused, then he continued. ‘Since this past Friday, agents from our office in Newark have been monitoring a suspect named Rafe Farley. The suspect is a repeat sex offender. He did four years in Rahway Prison for breaking into a woman’s apartment, beating and raping her. At the time, Farley claimed that the victim was a girlfriend from where he worked. What alerted us to Farley is that he went into an Internet chat room and had a lot to say about Mrs Audrey Meek. Too much. He knew details about Mrs Meek, including facts about her family in the Princeton area, her house there, even the physical layout inside.

‘The suspect also knew precisely how and when Mrs Meek was abducted at the King of Prussia Mall. He knew that her car was used, what kind of car it was, and that the children were left behind.

‘In a subsequent visit to the chat room, Farley provided specific details that even we don’t have. He claimed that she was knocked out with a specific drug and then taken to a wooded area in New Jersey. He left it vague as to whether Audrey Meek is alive or dead.

‘Unfortunately, the suspect hasn’t gone to visit Mrs Meek during the period we’ve been watching him. It’s been nearly two days. We believe it’s possible he may have spotted the surveillance. It is our decision, and the Director concurs, that we take Farley down.

‘HRT is already on the scene in North Vineland, New Jersey, assisting the local field office and the police. We’re going in this morning, probably within the hour. Score one for the good guys,’ said Mahoney. ‘Congratulations to everyone involved at this end.’

I sat at my seat and applauded with the others, but I had a funny feeling too. I hadn’t been involved, or even known about Farley or the surveillance on him. I was out of the loop, and I hadn’t felt like this for over a dozen years, not since I started with the police department in D.C.

A phrase from the briefing kept playing in my head: the Director concurs … I wondered how long Director Burns had known about the suspect in Jersey, and why he decided not to tell me. I tried not to be disappointed, or paranoid, but still… I wasn’t feeling good as the meeting broke up to huzzahs from the group of agents.

The trouble was, something felt wrong to me and I had no idea what it was. I just didn’t like something about this bust.

I was filing out of the room with the others when Mahoney came ambling up to me. ‘The Director asked that you go to New Jersey,’ he said, then grinned. ‘Come with me to the helipad. I want you there too,’ he added. ‘If we don’t break Farley down immediately, I don’t think we’ll get Mrs Meek back alive.’