James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

God, will she still be alive? Sarah wondered. Please let her be alive.

Immediately, she tried to erase the image of the girl from her mind. Never get attached to the victim, she’d been taught. Messes with your focus.

It was a hard lesson to learn, and even after seven years on the job she wasn’t fully there.

Pop! Pop-pop-pop!

Right down the line, from Thrifty to Enterprise, Budget to National, the trunks began to open. Economy, midsize, premium, even the SUVs.

The cops were spread out, the staff from every rental company was racing around with key fobs in hand, their thumbs pressing furiously.

Pop! Pop-pop!

Sarah ran from car to car, looking and looking and looking. Up one row and down another. Empty…empty…empty…

“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”

Everyone was in on the act now, all the cops and attendants, even the renters themselves. A businessman, sweating all the way through the jacket of his tan suit, was dashing from trunk to trunk.

It was chaos, but the good kind. All the pieces working together.

“Every car! We check every car!” yelled Sarah, moving on to the next lot, which belonged to one of the local companies, Sunshine Rentals.

That’s when she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

There was one piece of this puzzle that didn’t fit.

Chapter 29

HE WAS THE undertow in the tide of people working with a single purpose.

One guy, a mechanic, who was walking—make that slinking—away from all the action, glancing over his shoulder while seemingly doing his best to appear invisible. But in his bright yellow Sunshine Rentals jumpsuit, that was a tall order.

Sarah caught herself. She was about to yell out to him.

Instead, she fell in line behind him, camouflaged by the commotion around her. If this guy had more in common with Travis Kingslip than just a jumpsuit, what mattered most was where he might lead her.

“Hey!” she suddenly heard.

She turned to see police chief Trout maybe twenty yards away, looking at her with a “What’s up?” expression.

Sarah raised her index finger across her lips— Shh! —and then pointed at the mechanic, who was heading toward the back corner of the Sunshine lot, where they repaired and washed the cars.

Trout nodded, taking an angle on the guy to Sarah’s left. They were coming at him in a wide V shape.

Behind them there were still a host of cars with unopened trunks, even a couple more lots from other local rental agencies. But as Sarah took a few more steps, all her focus fell upon a white Chrysler Sebring near a short cinder-block wall. The convertible was on an angle, up in the air. A jack was under the left front tire—or, rather, under the space where the tire should’ve been.

The mechanic was heading straight toward it.

Sarah and Trout traded glances. This guy could’ve simply been trying to help make sure no car was left unchecked, but there was something about his walk—and the way he’d been looking over his shoulder. If he was trying to help anyone, thought Sarah, it might only be himself.

Careful, now. Stay close but not too close. Like a late afternoon shadow …

The mechanic, of average height and scrawny, walked up to the white Sebring. But not to the trunk. He opened the driver’s side door, reaching down while keeping his back toward Sarah. She was shielded.

Trout wasn’t.

“Gun!” he suddenly yelled.

Sarah reached for hers as the mechanic spun around, the barrel of a pistol aimed directly at her chest. It was a coin toss who would fire first. Instead…

Wham!

Diving through the air, Trout threw every inch and pound of his former linebacker’s body against the mechanic. He’d sprinted across the asphalt, tackling the guy with a powerful hit before he could pull the trigger.

The two fell to the pavement with a horrific, bone-crushing thud—the mechanic taking the worst of it by far. He was flattened out, his head bleeding, at least one front tooth gone.

But he never let go of his gun.

Trout’s momentum flung him past the mechanic, and he somersaulted onto his back. Immediately, he rolled to his stomach, ready to fire his SIG Sauer P229 pistol.

Only he was too late. The mechanic had him dead to rights.

BLAM!

The mechanic stood motionless for a second, his finger frozen on the trigger. The only movement was the blood spurting from his neck.

Sarah fired a second shot, and finally the mechanic dropped his gun. It fell to the ground. Then he did the same.

Travis Kingslip had a partner.

Sarah walked straight past the mechanic without checking for a pulse. She knew dead when she saw it.

“Thanks,” said Trout, joining her at the Sebring. “You scared me.”

“No. Thank you,” said Sarah.

Trout opened the driver’s side door, then pressed the button on the far left of the dash to unlock the trunk.

Pop!

There she was. Just as Sarah had pictured her before reminding herself not to make it personal. Will I ever master that rule? Do I really want to?

Lying on the floor of the trunk, bound and gagged, was a thirteen-year-old girl who had gone missing only that morning. The sun had practically turned the trunk into an oven. She was barely conscious, suffering from heatstroke.

But she was alive.

She was going to be okay. Maybe because Sarah had made it personal.

Chapter 30

THE DO NOT DISTURB sign outside Sarah’s hotel room in Tallahassee hung there a little late the following morning. Let it be, let it be.

After sleeping in, she went for a four-mile run, returned for a long shower, and then happily ate the cheesiest of cheese omelets from room service, putting back all the calories she’d burned the previous day. Bacon and toast, too. Yum.

She watched barely a minute of CNN before flipping over to VH1 Classic to check out a few videos. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.

Most of the songs she didn’t know—or even like—but that didn’t matter. She cranked up the volume anyway, even more so when they played the old Guns N’ Roses video for “November Rain.” She absolutely loved that song. It reminded her of her teenage years in Roanoke, Virginia. Back then, a girl either had a crush on the lead guitarist, Slash, or thought he was gross. Sarah was definitely one of those who had a crush.

As for the plan for the rest of the day, that was simple. There was no plan.

Maybe she’d go lie out by the pool, do a little reading. Sarah loved biographies and had been carrying around a biography of the cartoonist Charles Schulz, which she never seemed to have the time to start. Now she did.

A whole twenty-four hours, she figured.

This was her mental health day, long overdue, and while the aftermath of nabbing Travis Kingslip involved a mountain of paperwork, she had no intention of tackling any of it right away. Not a chance.

Tomorrow, Agent Brubaker would return to work at Quantico. Today, Sarah Brubaker was playing hooky.

And it felt positively fantastic. All the way up until she spread her towel on a chaise lounge by the pool, stretched out, and turned to page 1 of the Schulz biography.

That’s when her cell rang.

Oh, no. Please, no …

It wasn’t her personal phone. That she could’ve ignored. This was her satellite-encrypted work phone, property of the FBI.

On the other end was her boss, Dan Driesen, and he wasn’t calling just to say hi. He’d already sent his congratulatory e-mail for the Kingslip capture. This was something else.

“Sarah. Need you back here for a briefing,” he said. “Fast. Today.”

In person, Driesen was relatively easygoing and patient. On certain subjects—government bureaucracy, fly fishing, or classic cars, for instance—he could even talk your ear off.