James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

I couldn’t blame the guy for being mad as hell. Up until that moment, my reputation had merely preceded me. Now I’d managed to exceed it in ways that would surely get me suspended again, if not booted from the Bureau forever.

Sure, Sarah was a big girl and had made her own decision to join me in Birdwood, but now she was lying unconscious after thirteen hours and counting, having lost more blood than, quote, “most folks live to tell about.”

This according to her doctor, who delivered the line with a face so straight it could cut glass.

“Visiting hours are over in fifteen minutes,” announced the nurse as she left the room. She might as well have rung the bell ringside at Madison Square Garden.

Gentlemen, touch gloves and come out fighting.

Driesen circled me for a moment, as if waiting to see whether I’d offer up some lame excuse or, worse, try to argue that I hadn’t done anything wrong. But that would just be me leaning into his first punch. That much I knew not to do.

Finally, as I simply stared back at him in silence, he unloaded on me.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m—”

“Shut up!” he said. “Do you realize how many ways to Sunday you screwed things up?”

“I know that—”

“SHUT UP!” he yelled. “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!”

I stood up, taking a step toward him. “THEN STOP FUCKING ASKING ME QUESTIONS!” I yelled back.

It was a bad move, but I couldn’t help it. Besides, what was one more bad move on the heels of so many others?

Driesen got up in my face so tight I could count his pores. The thought of leaning into his punch was no longer a metaphor. The guy looked as if he actually wanted to take a swing at me.

It was only fitting, then, that I’d be saved by the bell, courtesy of the same woman who’d rung it in the first place.

The nurse and her pink smock stormed back into the room, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the floor like nails on a blackboard.

“That’s it!” she snapped. “Visiting hours are over!”

Driesen looked at her for a moment, his eyebrows angled as if trying to decide how to respond. He opted for calm and apologetic. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “We’ll keep it down.”

“You’re damn right,” she said in reply. “I want you both out of here… now! ”

For good measure, she pointed toward the door, like a gestapo Babe Ruth calling his home-run shot.

Of course, as the reigning expert in the room on bad moves, I could’ve told her she should’ve quit while she was ahead.

On a dime, Driesen scrapped calm and apologetic in favor of outright apocalyptic. In a voice louder than I thought humanly possible, he laid into this short and stout woman so fast and furious that it would’ve been funny if it weren’t so scary.

That’s when I knew. Driesen was more than Sarah’s boss. He was a mentor—her rabbi, a father figure. We both really needed her to be okay.

Score one for screaming like a madman.

No sooner had Driesen let up for a second, if only to catch his breath, than we heard the best sound in the world…a voice I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear again.

“Jeez, can’t a girl get some sleep around here?”

In unison we all turned to Sarah lying in the bed, her eyes now open. Driesen smiled. I smiled. Even the nurse smiled.

Then Sarah smiled.

She was going to be okay.

Chapter 114

I WANTED TO rush over to her. Hold her. Kiss her. At the very least I wanted to take her hand so I could feel her touch against mine.

All things I couldn’t do.

With Driesen in the room I was merely Sarah’s colleague at the Bureau who was very happy to see that she was going to survive. All smiles and relief—from a proper and platonic distance.

Sarah’s doctor was summoned. As soon as he arrived Driesen waved me over to the corner of the room by the door. There was no more yelling, no more right up in my face. Chalk it up to the overwhelmingly good feeling in the room. Still, as he spoke, there was no mistaking the tone. He was dead serious.

“This is what happens now, whether you like it or not,” he began before detailing what would be my open-ended stay at the Bureau Hotel back in New York until Sinclair was caught. House arrest, for all intents and purposes. “Are we clear?”

“We’re clear,” I answered.

The only freedom I had was once again choosing whether or not to pull the boys from camp to join me.

“Think about it for a moment while I make a couple of calls,” said Driesen, reaching for his cell.

He left the room, finally leaving Sarah and me alone. Hospitals are one big revolving door, and there was no telling when a nurse, doctor, or even Driesen would return, so I made it fast. The kiss. The hug. The chance to tell her that she scared the hell out of me. The one thing I didn’t need to tell her was that I hadn’t felt this way about another woman since my wife had died.

But Sarah had figured that out on her own.

“I recognized him,” she said, referring to Sinclair. “But he recognized me first.”

“Only by a fraction of a second,” I said.

She glanced at her shoulder and then her other arm, both heavily bandaged. “That’s all it took.”

I squeezed her hand, smiling. “Lucky shots.”

Sure enough, without so much as a knock on the door, another nurse strolled in. I quickly let go of Sarah’s hand, although this particular nurse was so preoccupied with the bouquet of yellow lilies she was carrying that it hardly seemed to matter. “These just arrived for you,” she announced. She placed them down on the windowsill, but not before burying her nose deep into the bouquet, breathing deeply. “They smell terrific.”

Sarah looked at the flowers and then back at me as the nurse walked out. There had to be at least two dozen lilies, beautifully arranged.

“Don’t look at me; I didn’t send them,” I said.

She laughed. “It sure wasn’t Driesen. Flowers are definitely not in his repertoire.”

“Maybe it’s standing operating procedure from Quantico,” I said jokingly. “One dozen for every bullet you take.”

I walked over to the bouquet, spotting a small envelope attached to the lip of the glass vase. Pulling out the card, I read it silently.

“Who’s it from?” she asked.

I didn’t answer right away. I was reading the card for a second time, thinking. Thinking fast.

Sarah tried again. “John, who are they from?”

I looked up at her, shaking my head. “So much for my Quantico theory,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“They must have screwed up the names. These are for someone named Jessica Baker,” I said. “I’ll go clear it up with the nurse.”

I walked over and gave Sarah a kiss on the forehead. Then I walked out of the room, onto an elevator, and out of the hospital. I didn’t go see the nurse. And I made damn sure that Dan Driesen didn’t see me.

I hated lying to Sarah, but it would have been worse if she had to lie to protect me. I could practically hear Driesen cursing my name and asking Sarah where the hell I was going.

But she wouldn’t be able to tell him. No one would. No one knew where I was going now.

This hunch was all mine.

Chapter 115

THE RAIN WAS relentless, beating down on my windshield so hard that the wipers could barely keep up. If I had been driving, I would’ve had to pull over. But I wasn’t driving.

For the past two days, I’d been parked on an access road within Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. To get there I’d taken two flights from Birdwood, Nebraska, driven one rental car from Westchester County Airport, and made one stop at the local Stop & Shop to load up on food and water.