James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

“Listen, we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” said Sarah. “Before we can get the paper’s blessing, we need someone else’s. The father of the bride, if you will.”

I knew she wasn’t talking about her actual father, Conrad Brubaker, whom she’d described to me as a retired art history professor usually found swinging a 7 iron on the back nine somewhere out in La Quinta, California. She was referring to Dan Driesen, who would surely have an aversion to dangling one of his agents as human bait.

“Maybe I can get Walsh to call him,” I said, only to immediately shake my head in contradiction. “On second thought…maybe that isn’t the best idea.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Talk about another blessing we’ll need.”

She was right. I had a little issue to work out with my own boss. My suspension. Throw in the breaking news of the John O’Hara Killer and I could already hear Frank Walsh yelling at me.

Jesus Christ, it’s not enough you’ve already got one serial killer coming after you—now you want to arrange for another? You don’t need therapy, O’Hara, you need a damn straitjacket!

“Yeah, cancel Walsh running interference,” I said. “Driesen is all yours.”

Sarah turned to LaSalle. “When is the Sunday wedding section viewable online?” she asked.

“Saturday at five.”

That gave us less than three days. I glanced at my watch. Sixty-eight hours, to be exact.

“Amazing,” said Sarah. “Who would’ve thought planning a fake wedding could be harder than planning a real one?”

“At least we’ve got one thing to look forward to,” I said, keeping a straight face.

“What’s that?”

“The honeymoon, of course.”

Chapter 87

“SOMEHOW I ALWAYS pictured Paris,” said Sarah. “You know, a hotel room on the Left Bank with an Eiffel Tower view.” She gazed around our tiny, rustic cabin with its knotty-pine paneling and let out a slight chuckle. “This ain’t Paris.”

No, it wasn’t. Not even close.

But for Cindy and Zach Welker, a couple of avid environmental types who first met—as the Vows column explained—on intersecting trails while hiking in Telluride, it was perfect. Two weeks in a Lewis Mountain cabin deep in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. A little secluded bliss in the great outdoors.

“Hey, who knows?” wrote Zach, otherwise known as me, on our wedding website. “We may even venture out of the cabin once or twice during the honeymoon and do some actual hiking.”

Of course, the Lewis Mountain cabins weren’t really all that secluded, not if you knew what—or whom—you were looking for. Fifteen dollars for an automobile pass at the park entrance and you were in.

Heck, any serial killer could do it.

Or so we—Sarah, I, and the four other agents from the Washington, D.C., field office who were stationed in the brush outside—were hoping. The D.C. agents were rotating with other agents on eight-hour shifts.

That was the only way Dan Driesen would ultimately go along with the plan. He still wasn’t entirely sold on it, but he could hardly deny the ancillary benefit of having me surrounded by other agents. The Honeymoon Murderer wouldn’t know what hit him, and the John O’Hara Killer wouldn’t even know where to look for me.

In other words, my idea wasn’t as crazy as it first sounded to him.

Ditto for Frank Walsh, who was willing to cut enough corners and red tape to essentially suspend my suspension. I had a badge and company firearm again. “Until further notice,” he said.

Throw in the tag-team arm-twisting of Driesen and Walsh to get the New York Times to cooperate with our fictitious Vows article, and here we were, Sarah and I playing the role of tree-hugging crunchy-granola newlyweds who just happened to be locked and loaded. Birkenstocks and Glocks, I was calling us.

Now the only question was whether or not the plan would work.

Sarah, fully aware of the irony, summed it up best. “After all the time and effort we went through to get here I’d be seriously disappointed if no one tried to kill us.”

Chapter 88

“A PARIS HONEYMOON, huh? Sounds nice,” I said, pouring myself some more coffee from the stove. We’d just finished dinner and were hanging out in the small sitting area outside the bedroom. As modest as our cabin was, it did, thankfully, have indoor plumbing, a small kitchen, and electricity.

The mosquitoes they threw in for free.

“What about you?” asked Sarah, tugging on the bottom of her sweatshirt from the University of Colorado, Cindy Welker’s alma mater. “Where would you want to spend your…”

Her voice trailed off, her face flushing red with embarrassment. She’d forgotten. I was once married. I’d already had a honeymoon.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Really, it’s fine. For the record, we went to Rome.”

“Was it great?”

“It absolutely was,” I said. “Right up until I broke my arm.”

“You broke your arm on your honeymoon?”

“Yep. I tripped and fell down the Spanish Steps while eating a double scoop of chocolate gelato.”

She started to crack up. For someone so attractive, she had this really goofy laugh, almost like Arnold Horshack’s from Welcome Back, Kotter . I liked it.

“I know—how clumsy, right?” I started laughing, too. “Damn good gelato, though.”

It occurred to me that up till now Sarah and I had barely talked about our lives outside of work. Felt pretty good. Natural. I could sense she thought so, too.

“So tell me about your two boys,” she said.

“Ah, my favorite subject…”

I told her about Max and John Jr. while trying to keep the excessive fatherly pride at a minimum. Still, it was hard not to gush, especially given how much I was missing them. When I finally shut up about how great they were, Sarah simply stared at me and smiled.

“What? What’s that look for?” I asked.

“I was thinking how lucky they are to have you as a father,” she said. “They mean the world to you, don’t they?”

“They do, but it’s the other way around. I’m the lucky one,” I said. “Now, what about you? Do you and your boyfriend both want kids?”

She shot me a look. “Nice try, O’Hara. You just want to know if I’m dating anyone.”

“Well, we are on our honeymoon, after all. It’s only fair that I know.”

“In that case, the answer’s no. I’m not currently cheating on you with anybody.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she stopped me with a raised palm.

“And please don’t tell me how surprising it is,” she said. “You know, the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Actually, all I was going to say is that I understand. It’s got to be hard for you.”

She looked at me, unsure. “How do you mean?”

“You’re a female FBI agent. You’re trained in hand-to-hand combat and you carry a gun,” I said. “Most guys would be intimidated by that.”

Her look suddenly changed. She was staring back at me as if I’d just tapped into her innermost thoughts. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“Lucky guess,” I said. “But don’t get any ideas. I’m still sleeping on the couch again tonight.”

She started laughing again. We both did. Then we both suddenly stopped.

The cabin had gone pitch black. Every light around us, even the one hanging over the porch outside, had gone dark.

The power was out.

Chapter 89

I WASN’T SURE which sound I heard first, the window shattering or the shots being fired. But I was damn sure I felt the bullet that grazed my shoulder.

“Down!” I yelled. “Down, Sarah!”

My eyes had adjusted barely enough to see the outline of Sarah hitting the floor with me as more bullets—one, two, three—came through the window, the shards of glass landing all over us. How the hell is this happening?