James Patterson - Swimsuit

“What's that sound? A cell phone?” Levon asked. “In the trunk with us?”

Barb saw the glowing faceplate of a phone by her feet. “We're getting out of here, honey. Hogan made a big mistake.”

She struggled to position her hands as the first ring became the second, thumbing the buttons blindly behind her back, hitting the Send key, turning on the phone.

Levon yelled, “Hello! Hello! Who's there?”

“Mr. McDaniels, it's me. Marco. From the Wailea Princess.”

“Marco! Thank God. You've got to find us. We've been kidnapped.”

“I'm sorry. I know you're uncomfortable back there. I'll explain everything momentarily.”

The phone went dead.

The car slowed to a stop.

Henri felt blood charging through his veins. He was tense in the best possible way, adrenalized, mentally rehearsed, ready for the next scene to play itself out.

He checked the area again, glancing up to the road, then taking in the 180 degrees of shoreline. Satisfied that the area was deserted, he hauled his duffel bag out of the backseat, tossed it under a tangle of brush before returning to the car.

Walking around the all-wheel-drive sedan, he stooped beside each tire, reducing the air pressure from eighty to twenty pounds, slapping the trunk when he passed it, then opening the front door on the passenger side. He reached into the glove box, tossed the rental agreement to the floor, and removed his ten-inch buck knife. It felt like it was part of his hand.

He grabbed the keys and opened the trunk. Pale moonlight shone on Barbara and Levon. Henri, as Andrew, said, “Is everyone all right back here in coach?”

Barbara launched a full-throated, wordless scream until Henri leaned in and held the knife up to her throat. “Barb, Barb. Stop yelling. No one can hear you but me and Levon, so call off the histrionics, okay? I don't like it.”

Barb's scream became a wheeze and a cry.

“What the hell are you doing, Hogan?” Levon demanded, wrenching his body so he could see his captor's face. “I'm a reasonable man. Explain yourself.”

Henri put two fingers under his nose to resemble a mustache. He lowered his voice and thickened it, said, “Sure, I will, Mr. McDaniels. You're my number one priority.”

“My dear Christ. You're Marco? You're him! I don't believe it. How could you scare us like this? What do you want?”

“I want you to behave, Levon. You, too, Barb. Act up, and I'll have to take strong measures. Be good and I'll move you up to first class. Deal?”

Henri sawed through the nylon ropes around Barbara's legs and helped her out of the car and into the backseat. Then he went back for Levon, cutting the restraints, walking the man to the back of the car, strapping them both in with the seat belts.

Then Henri got into the driver's seat. He locked the doors, turned on the dome light, reached up to the camera behind the rearview mirror, and switched it on.

“If you like, you can call me Henri,” he said to the McDanielses, who were staring at him with unblinking eyes. He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulled out a dainty, bracelet-style wristwatch, and held it up in front of them.

“See? As I promised. Kim's watch. The Rolex. Recognize it?”

He stuffed it into Levon's jacket pocket.

“Now,” Henri said, “I'd like to tell you what's going on and why I have to kill you. Unless you have questions so far.”

When I woke up that morning and snapped on the local news, Julia Winkler was all over it. There, filling the TV screen, was her achingly beautiful face and a headline in bold italics running under her picture: Supermodel Found Murdered.

How could Julia Winkler be dead?

I bolted upright in bed, goosed up the sound, stared at the next shot, this one of Kim and Julia posing together for the Sporting Life photo-story, their lovely faces pressed together, laughing, both absolutely radiant with life.

The TV anchors were going back over the breaking news “for those who've just tuned in.”

I stared at the tube, gathering in the stunning details: Julia Winkler's body had been found in a room at the Island Breezes Hotel, a five-star resort on Lanai. A housekeeper had run through the hotel shouting that a woman had been strangled, that there were bruises around her neck, blood all over the linens.

Next up, a waitress was interviewed. Emma Laurent. She'd waited on tables in the Club Room last night and recognized Julia Winkler. She'd been having dinner with a good-looking man in his thirties, Laurent said. He was white, brown-haired with a good build. “He definitely works out.”

Winkler's date signed the check with a room number, 412, registered to Charles Rollins. Rollins left a good tip, and Julia had given the waitress her autograph. Personalized it. To Emma from Julia. Emma held up the signed napkin for the camera.

I got a POG out of the fridge, guzzled it, watched the camera cut now to live shots outside the Island Breezes Hotel. Cruisers were everywhere, the loud garble of police radios squawked in the background. The camera held on a reporter with the local NBC affiliate.

The reporter, Kevin de Martine, was well respected, had been embedded with a military unit in Iraq in '04. He was now standing with his back to a sawhorse barrier, rain falling softly on his bearded face, palm fronds waving dramatically behind him.

De Martine said, “This is what we know. Nineteen-year-old supermodel Julia Winkler, former roommate of the still-missing top model Kimberly McDaniels, was found dead this morning in a room registered to a Charles Rollins of Loxahatchee, Florida.”

De Martine went on to say that Charles Rollins was not in his room, that he was sought for questioning, that any information about Rollins should be phoned in to the number at the bottom of the screen.

I tried to absorb this horrendous story. Julia Winkler was dead. There was a suspect – but he was missing. Or how the police like to describe it – he was in the wind.

The phone rang next to my ear, jarring the hell out of me. I grabbed the receiver. “Levon?”

“It's Dan Aronstein. Your paycheck. Hawkins, are you on this Winkler story?”

“Yep. I'm on the case, chief. If you hang up and let me work, okay?”

I glanced back at the TV. The local anchors, Tracy Baker and Candy Ko'alani, were on screen, and a new face had been patched in from Washington. Baker asked the former FBI profiler John Manzi, “Could the killings of Rosa Castro and Julia Winkler be connected? Is this the work of a serial killer?”

Those two potent and terrifying words. “Serial killer.” Kim's story was now going global. The whole wide world was going to be focused on Hawaii and the mystery of two beautiful girls' deaths.

Former agent Manzi tugged at his earlobe, said serial killers generally had a signature, a preferred method for killing.

“Rosa Castro was strangled, but with ropes,” he said. “Her actual manner of death was drowning. Without speaking to the medical examiner, I can only go by the witness reports that Julia Winkler was manually strangled. That is, she was killed by someone choking her with his hands.

“It's too soon to say if these killings were done by the same person,” Manzi continued, “but what I can say about manual strangulation is that it's personal. The killer gets more of a thrill because unlike a shooting, it takes a long time for the victim to die.”

Kim. Rosa. Julia. Was this coincidence or a wildfire? I wanted desperately to talk to Levon and Barbara, to get to them before they saw Julia's story on the news, prepare them somehow – but I didn't know where they were.