Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

Jamie had probably figured we’d drive him back to his apartment or maybe take him into the Nineteenth Precinct to interview him. But this strange place threw him into a tailspin—which was exactly why we’d picked it.

He panicked. “Where are we? What the hell is going on?”

Kylie and I both turned around in our seats, and for the first time since we picked him up, I broke the silence.

“That’s precisely what I was going to ask, Jamie. What the hell is going on?”

“Harris Brockway called me. I went to talk to him. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Everything is wrong with that,” Kylie said. “What is Harris Brockway going to do if it turns out you’re next on the kidnapper’s list?”

He gawked at us. “I don’t understand.”

“You told the kidnapper that you couldn’t afford to pay the ransom and that your mother wasn’t responding to your calls to save Erin and the baby. By now he could be thinking, I kidnapped the wrong person. Veronica hates the daughter-in-law. Maybe I’ll do better if I grab the son .”

“That’s insane.”

“Everything that has gone down in the past forty-eight hours has been insane,” Kylie said. “Have you counted the number of cops who are watching you? Do you think they’re all there to monitor your phone calls? You’re a target, and our job is to protect you.”

“I didn’t ask for protection.”

“Jamie, this is New York City,” I said. “If there’s a bomb scare at the bus terminal, we don’t wait for a phone call from Penn Station or LaGuardia to ramp up security. From the minute Erin Easton was abducted, everyone connected to her was in danger, and you are at the top of that list. Now, what did Brockway want?”

“Nothing.”

“He didn’t call you from a burner phone to talk about nothing.”

“He wants me to go on TV.”

“To what end?”

“I don’t know. He’s a network guy. I guess he figures people will watch.”

“And how will that help Erin?” I said. “In fact, you might say something that pisses the kidnapper off. Don’t you think it might backfire?”

“I don’t know what to think. Am I under arrest?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then we’re done here. Open the door.”

“We’ll drive you home,” Kylie said.

“No! Just let me out.”

I got out of the car and opened the rear door.

“Stop fucking protecting me,” he said, getting out. “Nobody’s going to kidnap me. And if they do, at least I’ll get to be with Erin.”

Without looking back, he crossed the parking lot and, shoulders slumped, trudged west along the transverse.

He looked like a beaten man—his world turned upside down, his mother abandoning him, the network sharks exploiting him.

Kylie and I were still in his corner. He just didn’t know it.

CHAPTER 42

TWO HOURS LATER, after a hot shower and a mani-pedi, Kylie put on a pair of cropped white jeans, a navy off-the-shoulder top, and her favorite Tory Burch wedges. From the back seat of her Uber, she took out her cell phone and flipped the camera into selfie mode. She wasn’t taking a picture—she just wanted one last look at herself before she got to the restaurant.

Kylie tried to think of the last time she’d gone on a blind date.

College. God, I am so out of practice .

She reminded herself of why she was doing this. For one thing, she was doing her friend Cheryl a favor. Plus Zach, of all people, thought it was a good idea. And hell, it was a free dinner.

The Uber pulled up to the restaurant, and she got out. She recognized the tall red-haired man standing at the front desk from her Google image search, only he’d traded his chef ’s whites for a blazer, a tattersall shirt, and a tie.

She smiled. “Kylie MacDonald.”

He returned the smile and extended a hand. “Shane Talbot. Your table is ready.”

He escorted her to a booth in the rear. “What kind of wine would you like?” he asked as they sat down.

“Surprise me,” she said.

He held up three fingers. A waiter appeared with a platter of appetizers while another set a loaf of warm fresh-baked bread and a small stone crock of butter on the table. A minute later the sommelier arrived with a chilled bottle of rosé.

The wine was poured, and Shane raised his glass. “To my meddling mother and my complicit cousin, who came up with this brilliant idea.”

Kylie touched her glass to his and sipped the wine. “Oh my God. This is … I’m not good at wine words. How about darn tasty ?”

He laughed. “The guy who sold it to me said it has a crisp palate of strawberry and crunchy apple gorgeously rounded out by light toasty undertones. But I like your description better. It kind of captures our philosophy of locally sourced fresh food, a range of fine but affordable wines, and minimal pretensions.”

“ Minimal pretensions?”

“Yes. That means I will now attempt to give you the grand tour of the seven different appetizers on this platter without once saying, ‘La-di-da.’ ”

His descriptions were funny, and the food was every bit as good as Cheryl and Zach had promised it would be.

“This is about the point where I would normally say, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ ” Shane said as they dug into the appetizers. “But Dr. Cheryl gave me a complete dossier on you, so I already know the answers to most of the traditional first-date questions—where you’re from, where you went to school, what you do for a living. So how about you tell me something Cheryl might have left out?”

“Let’s see,” Kylie said. “Did she tell you my favorite action movie?”

“No.”

“How about my favorite Christmas movie?”

“No.”

“They’re the same movie,” Kylie said.

“Really? Which one is it?”

“Back off, pal,” Kylie said. “That’s a second-date question.”

Shane laughed. “Okay, what did Cheryl tell you about me?”

“She gave me a list of culinary schools you went to, all of which I’d heard of, and she told me you were an apprentice to some famous chef in Switzerland, and I was duly impressed even though I’d never heard of the guy.”

“That’s terrible profiling,” he said. “It makes me sound like I’ve spent my entire life in the kitchen.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Heck no. When I was twenty-three I didn’t see the inside of a kitchen for eight solid months,” Shane said.

“Sounds like jail time.”

“You think like a cop. No, I hiked the Appalachian Trail—all two thousand one hundred and ninety miles of it—with my friend Pat.”

“Pat-rick? Or Pat-ricia?”

“Back off, pal,” he said. “That’s definitely a second-date question.”

Three courses followed the appetizers, each paired with a different wine, and by the time they were finished, Kylie had decided that Shane Talbot was too much fun and too damn sexy to be one-and-done.

The restaurant was bustling, but he never once turned to look at the crowd. She’d been married to Spence for eleven years, and she couldn’t remember a single dinner when he’d spent an entire evening completely focused on her.

“I hope you saved room for dessert,” Shane said.

“Dessert, singular? I got through seven appetizers because I was starved, but I couldn’t possibly handle a heaping platter of multiple desserts.”

“Just one, I promise.” He twirled his fingers in the air, and a waiter arrived with two bowls and set one in front of each of them.

Kylie looked at it, leaned down and inhaled the sweet aroma, then finally picked up a spoon and tasted it.

“Butterscotch budino with salted caramel sauce,” she said. “You’re not going to believe this, but this is hands-down my favorite dessert.”