James Patterson - Honeymoon

I said nothing. To know Susan as I did was to know she was trying to get it out of her system. The anger, the frustration, the letdown. I figured she probably had one more good primal scream left in her before she could move on.

“Damn it, John, how could you be so fucking stupid!”

And there it was.

When the foundation of the building stopped shaking, she resumed her calm, stoic demeanor. There was still the matter of a serial killer on the loose and the need to catch her. Unfortunately, the reports from the field continued to offer little cause for optimism. Even the media coverage yielded nothing. Nora seemed to have completely disappeared.

“What about our people in the Caymans?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Susan. “The Caribbean, the entire town of Briarcliff Manor, her apartment here in the city, and all points in between; she hasn’t been spotted anywhere.”

“Christ, where is she?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” Susan glanced down at a piece of paper on her desk—scribbled on it was the amount of money frozen in Nora’s account. “Or should I say, the eighteen-million, four-hundred-and-twenty-six-thousand-dollar question?”

It was a staggering number.

“That reminds me,” I said. “What about the tax attorney, Keppler?”

“The one you strong-armed?”

“I prefer the term cajoled. ”

“Either way, Nora hasn’t contacted his office.”

“Maybe I could pay another visit to the guy and—”

She stopped me. “You’re chained to your desk, remember? And who knows what’s going to happen after.” She managed a slight smile. “On the bright side, if you are suspended, perhaps you’ll have more time to spend with your boys.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That all depends if their mother will let me.”

Susan turned around again and gazed out the window. “You know, if you were as good a husband as you are a father, we never would’ve split up.”

Chapter 107

I WAS ALWAYS lousy at sitting still. Now I was supposed to be doing it for an indefinite period. After two days of being chained to my desk, I was already stir-crazy. There was paperwork to be done, but I wasn’t doing it. All I could do was stare out the office window at the gray gloom of downtown New York. And wonder.

Where the hell is she?

The reports coming back from the field were short but hardly sweet. No sign of Nora anywhere. No trace of her. How the hell could she disappear?

The routine was maddening. The phone would ring in my office, I’d listen to the update, and then I’d slam the phone back down. I was being consumed by frustration. The sign on my back was clear for everyone: WARNING! CONTENTS UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE.

The phone rang again. I picked up and braced for more of the same. “O’Hara,” I said.

I heard nothing back.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

“Is anyone there?”

“I’ve missed you,” she said softly.

I shot up in my chair.

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Nora asked. “Did you miss me? Not even the sex? Not even that?”

I was about to answer—I’d opened my mouth, prepared to unleash a venomous rant, but then I stopped myself. I needed to keep Nora on the line.

I hit the RECORD button on my phone, followed by the button next to it, which triggered a trace. Deep breath. “How are you, Nora?”

She laughed. “Oh, c’mon, at least yell at me. The man I knew wasn’t the type to hold back.”

“You mean Craig Reynolds?”

“You’re not going to hide behind the Insurance Man, are you?”

“He wasn’t real. None of it was real, Nora.”

“You wish that were true. Right now the only truth is, you can’t make up your mind. You don’t know if you want to fuck me or kill me.”

“I’m pretty clear on that,” I said.

“That’s your wounded ego talking,” she said. “Speaking of wounded, how are you feeling? You didn’t look too good that night.”

“No thanks to you.”

“I’ll tell you something, O’Hara. It hurts knowing we won’t see each other again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said through clenched teeth. “Trust me, I’ll find you.”

“That’s such a funny word, isn’t it? Trust. I’d imagine your wife doesn’t have much of it for you these days. Gee, I hate to think I broke up your marriage.”

“You can rest easy, your timing was a little off. She’s been my ex-wife for two years.”

“Really? So you are available, O’Hara?”

I looked at my watch. She’d been on for over a minute. Keep talking, O’Hara.

I shifted gears. “How are you managing without money?” I asked.

She snickered. “Plenty more where that came from. It’s everywhere.”

“Is that all this is about? Money?”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing. A girl needs to look out for her future, doesn’t she?”

“What you did goes a little beyond retirement planning.”

“Okay, so maybe there’s a little bit of sport, too. We’re angry, O’Hara. Most women are seething at men. Wake up and smell your bacon burning, sweetie.”

She was beginning to get worked up. Maybe I’d touched a nerve. Good for me.

“What do you have against men, Nora?”

“Do you have an hour? Several, actually.”

“I do. I have all the time you need.”

“But I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “It’s time to go.”

“Wait!”

“Can’t wait, O’Hara. I’ll see you in your dreams.”

Click.

I flipped my wrist and locked in on the second hand of my watch. “Please,” I whispered. I called down to the tech guys. “Tell me you got a location!”

The initial silence ripped through my ears. “Sorry,” I was told. “We missed her.”

I picked up the phone, base and all, and whipped it against the wall. It shattered into pieces.

I’ll see you in your dreams.

Chapter 108

THE GRAY-HAIRED GEEK installing my new phone the next morning gazed down at the scattered pieces of my old one. Then he looked at me with a knowing, seen-it-all smile. “It just fell off your desk, huh?”

“Stranger things have happened,” I said. “Trust me on that one.”

Minutes later the new phone was up and running. At least something was. I remained deskbound, tormented by boredom, not to mention self-doubt and a whole lot of guilt, truckloads of the stuff.

The new phone rang.

My first thought was that an encore was on its way—Nora wanted another conversation, another chance to turn the screws. On second thought, I knew better. Everything about her call the day before said it was a one-time-only event.

I picked up. Sure enough, it wasn’t Nora.

It was the other woman in my life who currently had it in for me. Needless to say, Susan and I weren’t exactly on the best of terms. Still, we remained professional.

“Any word yet from the audio lab?” I asked right away. The recording of my conversation with Nora was being analyzed for possible background noises that suggested her general, if not specific, location. An ocean wave; a foreign language being spoken by a passerby. Just because I couldn’t hear it didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“Yeah, I got the report back,” said Susan. “Nothing they could pick up.”

Technically, it was more bad news, but the way she delivered it—as if it were irrelevant—told me something.

Susan knew something.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“What’s going on? You’re still incredibly fucking stupid, John. If you could hurt me, you would have broken my heart again.”