James Patterson - Swimsuit

I felt a chill shoot from the back of my neck all the way down my spine. A death threat with a smile. The guy had just threatened to kill Amanda and made it sound like an invitation to have lunch.

“Wait a minute,” I said. I put the pictures down, shoved my hands out, as if pushing Henri and his gun and his damned life story far, far away. “I'm wrong for this. You need a biographer, someone who's done this kind of book before and would see it as a dream job.”

“Ben. It is a dream job, and you're my writer. So turn me down if you want, but I'll have to exercise the termination clause for my own protection. See what I mean?

“Or, you could look at the upside,” Henri said, affable now, selling me on the silver lining while pointing a 9-millimeter at my chest.

“We're going to be partners. This book is going to be big. What did you say a little while ago about blockbusters? Yeah, well that's what we're looking at with my story.”

“Even if I wanted to, I can't. Look, Henri, I'm just a writer. I don't have the power you think. Shit, man, you have no idea what you're asking.”

Henri smiled as he said, “I brought you something you can use as a sales tool. About ninety seconds of inspiration.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gizmo hanging from a cord around his neck. It was a flash drive, a small media card used to save and transfer data.

“If a picture's worth a thousand words, I'm guessing this is worth, I don't know, eighty thousand words and several million dollars. Think about it, Ben. You could become rich and famous? or? you could die. I like clear choices, don't you?”

Henri slapped his knees, stood, asked me to walk him to the door and then to put my face against the wall.

I did it – and when I woke up sometime later, I was lying on the cold cement floor. I had a painful lump at the back of my head and a blinding headache.

Son of a bitch pistol-whipped me before he took off.

I pulled myself to my feet, bumped against walls all the way to the bedroom, yanked open the drawer to my night-stand. My heart was clanging in my chest like a fire alarm until my fingers curled around the butt of my gun. I stuck the Beretta into my waistband and went for the phone.

Mandy answered on the third ring.

“Don't open your door for anyone,” I said, still panting, perspiring heavily. Had this really happened? Had Henri just threatened to kill me and Mandy if I didn't write his book?

“Ben?”

“Don't answer the door for a neighbor or a Girl Scout or the cable guy, or anyone, okay, Mandy? Don't open it for the police.”

“Ben, you're scaring me to death! Seriously, honey. What's going on?”

“I'll tell you when I see you. I'm leaving now.”

I staggered back to the living room, pocketed the items Henri had left behind, and headed out the door, still seeing Henri's face and hearing his threat.

That's just a way of? getting Amanda killed? I'll have to exercise the termination clause? Understand?

I think I did.

Traction Avenue was dark now, but alive with honking horns, tourists buying goods from racks, gathering around a one-man band on the sidewalk.

I got into my ancient Beemer, headed for the 10 Freeway, worried about Amanda as I drove. Where was Henri now?

Henri was good-looking enough to pass as a solid citizen, his features bland enough to take on any kind of disguise. I imagined him as Charlie Rollins, saw a camera in his hand, taking pictures of me and Amanda.

His camera could just as easily have been a gun.

I thought about the people who'd been murdered in Hawaii. Kim, Rosa, Julia, my friends Levon and Barbara, all tortured and so skillfully dispatched. Not a fingerprint or a trace had been left behind for the cops.

This wasn't the work of a beginner.

How many other people had Henri killed?

The freeway tailed off onto 4th and Main. I turned onto Pico, passed the diners and car repair shops, the two-level crappy apartments, the big clown on Main and Rose – and I was in a different world, Venice Beach, both a playground for the young and carefree and a refuge for the homeless.

It took me another few minutes to circle around Speedway until I found a spot a block from Amanda's place, a former one-family home now split into three apartments.

I walked up the street listening for the approach of a car or the sound of Italian loafers slapping the pavement.

Maybe Henri was watching me now, disguised as a vagrant, or maybe he was that bearded guy parking his car. I walked past Amanda's house, looked up to the third floor, saw the light on in her kitchen.

I walked another block before doubling back. I rang the doorbell, muttered, “Please, Mandy, please,” until I heard her voice behind the door.

“What's the password?”

“ 'Cheese sandwich.' Let me in.”

Amanda opened the door, and I grabbed her, kicked the door closed behind me, and held her tight.

“What is it, Ben? What happened? Please tell me what's going on.”

She freed herself from my arms, grabbed my shoulders, and inventoried my face.

“Your collar is bloody. You're bleeding. Ben, were you mugged?”

I threw the bolts on Amanda's front door, put my hand at her back, and walked her to the small living room. I sat her down in the easy chair, took the rocker a few feet away.

“Start talking, okay?”

I didn't know how to soften it, so I just told it plain and simple. “A guy came to my door with a gun. Said he's a contract killer.”

“What?”

“He led me to believe that he killed all those people in Hawaii. Remember when I asked you to help me find Charlie Rollins from Talk Weekly magazine?”

“The Charlie Rollins who was the last one to see Julia Winkler? That's who came to see you?”

I told Amanda about Henri's other names and disguises, how I had met him not only as Rollins, but that he'd also masqueraded as the McDanielses' driver, calling himself Marco Benevenuto.

I told her that he'd been sitting on my couch and pointing a gun, telling me that he was a professional assassin for hire and had killed many, many times.

“He wants me to write his autobiography. Wants Raven-Wofford to publish it.”

“This is unbelievable,” Amanda said.

“I know.”

“No, I mean, it's really unbelievable. Who would confess to murders like that? You've got to call the police, Ben,” she said. “You know that, don't you?”

“He warned me not to.”

I handed Mandy the packet of pictures and watched the disbelief on her face change to shock and then anger.

“Okay, the bastard has a zoom lens,” she said, her mouth clamped into a straight line. “He took some pictures. Proves nothing.”

I took the flash drive out of my pocket, dangled it by the cord. “He gave me this. Said it's a sales tool and that it will inspire me.”

Amanda left the living room, then came back with her laptop under her arm and holding two glasses and a bottle of Pinot. She booted up while I poured, and when her laptop was humming, I inserted Henri's flash drive into the port.

A video started to roll.

For the next minute and a half, Amanda and I were in the grip of the most horrific and obscene images either of us had ever seen. Amanda clutched my arm so hard that she left bruises, and when it was finally over she threw herself back into the chair, tears flowing, sobbing.

“Oh, my God, Amanda, what an ass I am. I'm so sorry. I should have looked at it first.”

“You couldn't have known. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.”