Джеймс Паттерсон: The Summer House

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2020 by James Patterson

Cover design by Anthony Morais

Cover art by Sandra Cunningham/Trevillion Images

Author photograph by David Burnett

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ISBN 978-0-316-53956-2

E3-20200413-DA-NF-ORI

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Authors’ Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65: Afghanistan

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68: Afghanistan

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71: Afghanistan

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81: Afghanistan

Chapter 82: Afghanistan

Chapter 83: Afghanistan

Chapter 84: Afghanistan

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88: Afghanistan

Chapter 89

Chapter 90: Afghanistan

Chapter 91

Chapter 92: Afghanistan

Chapter 93

Chapter 94: Afghanistan

Chapter 95

Chapter 96: Afghanistan

Chapter 97

Chapter 98: Afghanistan

Chapter 99

Chapter 100: Afghanistan

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103: Afghanistan

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Acknowledgments

Discover More

About the Authors

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This is for my family.

—B.D.

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Authors’ Note

There is no Fourth Battalion in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, and Sullivan County and its residents and towns are also fictional.

Chapter 1

INSIDE THIS DUMP of a home in rural Sullivan, Georgia, Lillian Zachary’s rescue mission to save her younger sister and niece isn’t going well. Only because of her parents’ pleadings did she make the three-hour drive this warm evening from the safety of her Atlanta condo to liberate Gina and her daughter, Polly, from this place.

She nervously eyes the guns that are on open display, their promise of violence making her uneasy. A pump-action shotgun is leaning near the sole door leading outside, a hunting rifle is up against the wall on the other side of the old home, and two black semiautomatic pistols are on the cluttered kitchen counter, next to three sets of scales and plastic bags full of marijuana. Antique oak cabinets and porcelain-lined sinks and metal faucets are on the opposite side of the room.

Lillian is in a part of the home laughingly called a “living room,” and there’s nothing in here worth living for, save her sister and her sister’s two-year-old girl. The place is foul, with empty beer cans, two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, crumpled-up McDonald’s bags, and crushed pizza cartons strewn across a wooden floor worn and gouged from a century of wear.

Built in the small plantation-plain style and named The Summer House, the place was once the getaway destination of a rich Savannah family fleeing city smells and sounds generations before the invention of air-conditioning. Now, decades later, the rich family has fallen on hard times, and their grandly named Summer House is a decaying rental property fit only for this group of lowlifes.

Lillian wonders if the ghosts of the old Savannah family are horrified to see how decayed and worn their perfect summer escape home has become.

Lillian is perched on the armrest of a black vinyl couch kept together with scrap lumber and duct tape, and Gina is sitting next to her, shaking a footless rag doll in front of little Polly, who’s on the carpeted floor before her mother, giggling.

Lillian says, “Gina, c’mon, can we get going?”

Her sister shakes her head. “No, not yet,” she says. “Polly’s laughing. I love it when Polly laughs. Don’t you?”

Lillian isn’t married, doesn’t seem to have that maternal urge to bear children, but something about the bright-blue eyes and innocent face of the chubby little girl in a pink corduroy jumper stirs her. Her little niece, trapped here with her single mom, in a crappy house in a crappy part of the state.

At the other end of the room is another couch in front of a large-screen television—no doubt stolen, she thinks—and three other people who live here are playing some stupid shoot-’em-up fantasy video game where fire-breathing dragons and knights do battle armed with machine guns. She’s already forgotten the names of the two lanky, long-haired boys and their woman friend. Shirley? Or Sally. Whatever. And Randy. Yeah. That’s one of the losers’ names.

The two guys gave her serious eye when earlier she knocked on the door, and she feels vulnerable and out of place with them and their guns. Even though they seem to be having fun on their couch, there’s a simmering tension between them that’s growing along with the insults they’ve been tossing at each other.

“Missed it, you fag!” Randy yells.

“Bite me!” the other young man shouts back.

Upstairs in the old home is the other occupant, Gina’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Stuart, who’s lying in bed, not feeling well, bitching and moaning like the community college dropout and drug dealer he is.

Plus the father of little and innocent Polly.

“Gina,” she says, looking away from the video game players. “Please.”