James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

“It might.”

“Maybe put on some Barry White?”

“Now we’re talking. I think I have the picture now.”

No one could blame us for kidding around a bit. And as my father used to say with his hand wrapped around a Ballantine Ale, “Screw ’em if they tried.”

After a ridiculous number of phone calls and a considerable amount of maneuvering, we’d finally managed to account for all the remaining Vows couples through local police. They were safe and sound. For some reason the killer had spared them. Now, why was that?

As for Charlie and Melissa Cosmer, they were currently packing up their suitcases at the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, in Maui and heading home with an FBI escort, courtesy of the Honolulu office. Needless to say, they weren’t too pleased. But better to cut short their honeymoon than their lives.

Sarah reached for her cell. “I’ve got to call Dan back,” she said. “He’s waiting to hear where we stand.”

Of course, Sarah’s first call to Dan Driesen hours earlier had been to let him know that the John O’Hara Killer wasn’t, as she put it, “the only game in town.” He had company. The Honeymoon Murderer, we were calling him.

Unfortunately, coming up with the name was the only thing that was easy. Coming up with anything else—his motive, why he chose some Vows couples and not others, and how he knew where they were honeymooning—was proving a little more difficult.

Trying to link the victims together was like twisting a Rubik’s cube. We looked for similar names, schools, jobs, socioeconomic backgrounds—anything and everything, from hair color to how the couple first met. But we kept coming up with nothing. Bubkes.

“Hey, before you call Driesen again, we need to make another call first,” I said.

“To whom?” she asked.

As badly as I needed a shower, there was something else I needed even more. Food.

“How about the nearest Chinese restaurant?” I said. “I’m starving. I’m actually getting woozy.”

Sarah nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Me, too.”

We’d been working nonstop since we arrived at the New York Times offices without so much as a Tic Tac.

I dialed Emily LaSalle’s extension and asked her where we could place an order. She’d been holed up in her office the entire time, scouring the Internet to see if the Gawker.coms of the world had made the connection yet between her Vows columns and the honeymoon murders. It was only a matter of time.

“Ming Chow’s is right down the block, and they deliver,” she said. “I recommend the kung pao chicken.”

“Great. Do you know the number?” I asked.

“Actually, you can order online from their…” Her voice trailed off. I thought maybe we got disconnected.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Wait one second,” she said.

Actually, it was more like ten seconds, or about the time it took for her to rush down to the conference room in her sky-high heels. She was half out of breath when she pushed through the door.

“Do you remember when I said I gave you all the information we had on each Vows couple?” she asked.

Sarah and I answered in stereo. “Yeah.”

“Well, I just thought of something else,” she said.

Chapter 85

THAT WAS IT. The link. Literally.

“Websites,” said LaSalle, tugging on her double strand of pearls. “Couples these days have their own wedding websites…some of them do, at least.”

Before she could even finish the sentence, Sarah’s thumbs were pounding away on her BlackBerry again.

“I’ll take the victims,” she called out.

I quickly grabbed the MacBook that LaSalle had let us borrow. Divide and conquer.

“I’ll take the rest,” I said. In other words, the newlyweds who were spared.

I Googled the names of the first couple on our list, Pamela and Michael Eaton. They were the Vows couple who appeared the week after the Kellers. In addition to their names, I added a few more words you’d expect to see on a wedding website— gift registry and reception . That oughta do it, I thought.

Nothing was coming up, though. Meanwhile, Sarah yelled out like it was Friday night at the Elks lodge. “Bingo!”

“Which couple?” I asked.

“The Pierces…from the airport,” she said. “It says at the top of the site that it was created by Scott Pierce’s best man.” She scrolled down on her phone, her eyes quickly scanning. “Oh, get this—there’s even a section called The Honeymoon.”

“Christ—it actually says where they were going?”

“Worse.” She read it to me. “The lovebirds will be flying off the next day from JFK to Rome. Guess all those frequent flyer miles they had on Delta really came in handy.”

“They might as well have just put targets on their backs,” I said.

All I could suddenly think about was my conversation with John Jr. up in his room the night before he left for camp. You never know who’s reading about you online, I’d told him. Case in point, no?

Sarah and I kept searching for other websites. We were able to verify the pattern lickety-split: all the victims had a website. Those who didn’t were still alive.

There was one exception, but it actually proved the rule. One couple who was spared had a website but, unlike the victims’, theirs didn’t divulge any details about the honeymoon.

“So now we know,” I said. This was exactly how the killer was targeting his victims.

Sarah drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Yes, but now what do we do?”

“I know what I have to do,” said LaSalle.

I’d almost forgotten that she and her pearls were still in the room. “What’s that?” I asked.

“I have to suspend the Vows column effective immediately,” she said.

Of course. It was common sense. The right thing to do. Who could argue with that?

Well, actually, I could.

I got out of my chair, walked over to Sarah, and promptly got down on one knee. She looked at me as if I were crazy. Ditto for LaSalle.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Sarah.

“Proposing,” I answered. “Sarah Brubaker, will you marry me?”

Chapter 86

“GET UP, YOU fool,” she said.

I took that for a yes.

It was the way Sarah said it—the “Holy shit, O’Hara, you might be onto something” tone in her voice. I knew instantly that we were on the same page.

Of the wedding section, to be exact.

The idea was a lot of things—risky, dangerous, a candidate for the Hazard Pay Hall of Fame—but it was also something else: the best chance we had to stop this thing. I was sure of it. So was Sarah.

Poor Emily LaSalle, however, wasn’t sure what the hell to think.

“I’m sorry, what just happened?” she asked with a hand on her hip.

“You’re looking at the next Vows couple,” I explained.

It took a few seconds, but she finally got it. After another few seconds, though, her face went from “Aha” to “Oh, wait.” There were frown lines everywhere, and she looked overly concerned.

“I don’t know if the Times can do that,” she said. “I mean, that’s a decision for—”

“Your publisher, of course,” I said. “And trust me, I understand the ramifications.”

Whether it was Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bush White House when the NSA was engaged in domestic eavesdropping, or the Obama administration after the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top Taliban commander, there have been occasions during which the Times has been asked to delay or “sit on” a particular story in the interest of national security.

However, this was different. Yes, people’s lives were in danger, but this request would have the paper printing a story they knew up front wasn’t true. Notwithstanding the fact that most staunch conservatives already had a name for that phenomenon—they called it the Times editorial page—it was easy to understand how this threshold might be one the so-called Gray Lady wouldn’t want to cross.