Now You See Her, page 22
“That’s right,” he said with a nod. “Peña was an informant who was going to rat us out to the Feds. I was actually chasing him over the beach, planning to kill him, when I heard you drag-racing down the beach road. As he ran to the sidewalk to wave you down, I shot him three times with a suppressed gun. Next thing I know, he falls into the street in front of your spinning car. There was no way you could have avoided him.”
I shook my head, my eyes slits of disbelief and pain.
Peter nodded. “At first, I thought I was going to have to kill you, too, until I smelled alcohol on your breath and came up with a quick plan. I never got a chance to thank you for giving him a lift back to my house. Great job, Jeanine.”
As Peter’s hands went around my throat again, something happened. A cold ball of pure hatred formed behind my eyes. It traveled down my left arm into my hand, where it formed itself into a claw.
I swung up stiff-armed and buried my sharp nails into the pink, fleshless wound on the side of Peter’s head where his ear used to be. Then I raked them down.
Peter flung himself off me, shrieking. I turned over and lifted myself to my knees, flailing through the pile of fallen books, looking for the gun. I spotted black metal under the couch and dove for it. I pulled the heavy gun up off the floor, in toward my stomach, and slipped my finger over the trigger.
Swinging it around at Peter, I squeezed. Nothing happened. The trigger wouldn’t move. I pushed the safety in with my thumb and then raised the gun again. It still wouldn’t fire.
I screamed as Peter booted me in the side of the head. The gun went flying out of my hands. It spun as it sailed over the hardwood, down the hallway, and toward the bedroom.
“It’s called a double-action pistol, you dumb bitch. You need to squeeze the trigger really hard in the beginning to get off the first round,” Peter said, stepping toward it. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
I jumped up and ran in the opposite direction. I was going to run out the front door screaming for help, but I knew what Peter would do to Emma.
I turned at the last second and ran into the kitchen. I grabbed at the knife block beside the stove. The big eight-inch Henckels slid easily into my grip. I raised it over my head and ran back into the living room.
Peter, standing by the bedroom doorway, now had the gun trained at my face. He actually laughed as he watched me coming.
Still chuckling, he tried to pull the trigger.
Nothing happened. Instead of disengaging the safety, I must have put it on!
I kept coming and swinging as I dove forward. The barrel of the gun hit me in my mouth, knocking two of my teeth loose. I still kept coming.
My knuckles brushed the smooth underside of Peter’s freshly shaven chin as I came down with all my might.
I opened his throat and buried the knife to the hilt in his collarbone.
He fell back into my bedroom, making a wet, gagging sound. I remember warm blood in my eyes and on my cheeks as I turned and ran for Emma. Kicking books away, I found Emma’s hand and dragged her to the door before she groggily got to her feet. We hobbled out of the apartment and down the stairwell, clutching each other.
A woman with a bad face-lift, walking her Labradoodle, screamed and took off sprinting when she saw me come out of the building’s service entrance onto the sidewalk in my bloody bathrobe. When we got to the Korean grocery store on the corner of Third Avenue, I stopped by the florist sink beside the racks of cheap roses. I was still hosing the glass out of Emma’s eyes when the first cop car jumped the curb.
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Chapter 117
“JEANINA! Get in here!” Charlie screamed from the office at ten to seven on Saturday morning.
I lifted my head off the pillow and sighed at the pet name Charlie had invented on the way back from our honeymoon the month before.
Charlie’s was the first face I saw when I woke up in the hospital a day after Peter’s attack and the last one I’d seen every night since. Not only had he forgiven me, but he’d done the impossible: helped me to forgive myself.
I’d also underestimated the response from my boss and firm. Tom couldn’t have been more supportive or understanding once everything came out. I even got a postcard from Justin Harris. It was from Antigua, where he’d relocated after he was finally cleared. He’d given me a standing offer to visit anytime.
He was going to be waiting awhile. I didn’t think I’d be heading back down to the Caribbean any time soon.
“Jeanina!” Charlie called again.
I crawled out of bed and stepped into the hall.
“What’s he hollering about?” Emma said with a groggy smile as she poked her head out of our new Upper West Side apartment’s second bedroom.
“No idea,” I said, happily noting the lack of bags under Emma’s eyes. She’d been having fewer and fewer nightmares. She was definitely moving on and so was I. We’d just about wiped the last of Peter off our shoes.
“Jeanina!” Charlie screamed again as I walked into his office. “Oh, there you are.”
“What is it?” I said.
“We need to celebrate,” Charlie said, springing up from his office chair.
He clicked a button on his laptop. The printer turned on with a long beep before pages start spitting out.
“I’m done!” he said triumphantly. “My book is finally done.”
“You’re done? Congratulations! Oh, Papa Charlie,” I said, giving him a kiss. “But wait a second. What’s your story about, anyway?” I said coyly, as if I hadn’t been editing the damn thing for the last year.
It was actually a really good lyrical detective story set in Dallas, where Charlie had grown up. Charlie had talent. Tons of it, in fact. Grisham had to watch his back.
“OK, here’s the pitch for Spielberg,” he said, his bathrobe billowing as he raised his hands. “It starts out with this young, very attractive girl on spring break in South Florida.”
He was joking, of course. I decided to go along. I’d go along with Charlie anywhere from here on out.
“A young Gisele Bündchen type?” I said, leaning in and kissing him.
“Exactly,” Charlie said with an intense nod. “She falls in love with this unbelievably handsome, muscular lawyer.”
I grabbed his biceps. “So it’s a romance with a sexy lawyer? I’m liking this already. Is there a trial?”
“Better,” Charlie said. “They get a guy off death row.”
I smiled at him, started laughing. “Does everyone live happily ever after?”
Charlie stopped. He grabbed his stubbled chin, thinking it over, as he looked up at the ceiling.
“You’ll just have to wait for the sequel,” he finally said with a grin.
What would you do if you faced your wife’s killer? Forgive… or get your revenge?
For an excerpt, turn the page.
Ethan Breslow couldn’t stop smiling as he reached for the bottle of Perrier-Jouët Champagne chilling in the ice bucket next to the bed. He’d never been happier in his whole life. He’d never believed it was possible to be this happy.
“What’s the world record for not wearing clothes on your honeymoon?” he said jokingly, his chiseled six-foot-two frame barely covered by a sheet.
“I don’t know for sure. It’s my first honeymoon and all,” said his bride, Abigail, propping herself up on the pillow next to him. She was still catching her breath from their most daring lovemaking yet. “But at the rate we’re going,” she added, “I definitely overpacked.”
The two laughed as Ethan poured more Champagne. Handing Abigail her glass, he stared deep into her soft blue eyes. She was so beautiful and—damn the cliché—was even more so on the inside. He’d never met anyone as kind and compassionate. With two simple words she’d made him the luckiest guy on the planet. Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?
I do.
Ethan raised his Champagne for a toast, the bubbles catching a ray of Caribbean sunshine through the curtains. “Here’s to Abby, the greatest girl in the world,” he said.
“You’re not so terrible yourself. Even though you call me a girl.”
They clinked glasses, sipping in silence while soaking everything in from their beachfront bungalow at the Governor’s Club in Turks and Caicos. It was all so perfect—the fragrant aroma of wild cotton flowers that lingered under their king-size canopy bed, the gentle island breeze drifting through open French doors on the patio.
Back on a different sort of island—Manhattan—the tabloids had spilled untold barrels of ink on stories about their relationship. Ethan Breslow, scion of the Breslow venture-capital-and-LBO empire, onetime bad boy of the New York party circuit, had finally grown up, thanks to a down-to-earth pediatrician named Abigail Michaels.
Before he’d met her, Ethan had been a notorious dabbler. Women. Drugs. Even careers. He tried to open a nightclub in SoHo, tried to launch a wine magazine, tried to make a documentary film about Amy Winehouse. But his heart was never in it. Not any of it. Deep down, where it really counted, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He was lost.
Then he’d found Abby.
She was loads of fun, and very funny, too, but she was also focused. Her dedication to children genuinely touched him, inspired him. Ethan cleaned up his act, got accepted at Columbia Law School, and graduated. After his very first week working for the Children’s Defense Fund, he got down on one knee before Abby and proposed.
Now here they were, newly married, and trying to have children of their own. Really trying. That was becoming a joke between them. Not since John and Yoko had a couple spent so much time in bed together.
Ethan swallowed the last sip of Perrier-Jouët. “So what do you think?” he asked. “Do we give the DO NOT DISTURB sign a break and venture out for a little stroll on the beach? Maybe grab some lunch?”
Abby nudged even closer to him, her long, chestnut-brown hair draping across his chest. “We could stay right here and order room service again,” she said. “Maybe after we work up a little more of an appetite.”
That gave Ethan an interesting idea.
“Come with me,” he said, sliding out of the canopy bed.
“Where are we going?” asked Abigail. She was smiling, intrigued.
Ethan grabbed the ice bucket, tucking it under his arm.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Abby wasn’t sure what to think at first. Standing there naked with Ethan in the master bathroom, she placed a hand on her hip as if to say, You’re joking, right? Sex in a sauna?
Ethan put just the right spin on it.
“Think of it as one of your hot yoga classes,” he said. “Only better.”
That pretty much sealed the deal. Abby loved her hot yoga classes back in Manhattan. Nothing made her feel better after a long day at work.
Except maybe this. Yes, this had great potential. Something they could giggle about for years, a real honeymoon memory. Or, at the very least, a tremendous calorie burner!
“After you, my darling,” said Ethan, opening the sauna door with good-humored gallantry. The Governor’s Club was known for having spectacular master bathrooms, complete with six-head marble showers and Japanese soaking tubs.
Ethan promptly covered the bench along the back wall with a towel. As Abby lay down, he cranked up the heat, then ladled some water on the lava rocks in the corner. The sauna sizzled with steam.
Kneeling on the cedar floor before Abby, he reached into the ice bucket. A little foreplay couldn’t hurt.
Placing an ice cube between his lips, he leaned over and began slowly tracing the length of her body with his mouth. The cube just barely grazed her skin, from the angle of her neck past the curve of her breasts and all the way down to her toes, which now curled with pleasure.
“That’s… wonderful,” Abby whispered, her eyes closed.
She could feel the full force of the sauna’s heat now, the sweat beginning to push through her pores. It felt exhilarating. She was wet all over.
“I want you inside me,” she said.
But as she opened her eyes, Abigail suddenly sprung up from the bench. She was staring over Ethan’s shoulder, mortified.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s someone out there! Ethan, I just saw somebody.”
Ethan turned to look at the door and its small glass window, barely bigger than an index card. He didn’t see anything—or anyone. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Abby nodded. “I’m sure,” she said. “Someone walked by. I’m positive.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“It was probably just the maid,” said Ethan.
“But we’ve still got the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.”
“I’m sure she knocked first and we didn’t hear her.” He smiled. “Given how long that sign’s been out there she was probably wondering if we were still alive in here.”
Abby calmed down a bit. Ethan was probably right. Still. “Can you go check to make sure?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. For a laugh, he picked up the ice bucket and put it in front of his crotch. “How do I look?”
“Very funny,” said Abigail, cracking a smile. She stood up and handed him the towel from the bench.
“I’ll be back in a jiff,” he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled it toward him. Nothing happened.
“It’s stuck. Abby, it won’t open.”
“What do you mean the door won’t open?”
In a split second, the smile had disappeared from Abby’s face.
Ethan pulled harder on the handle, but the sauna door wouldn’t budge. “It’s like it’s locked,” he said. Only they both knew there was no lock on the door. “It must be jammed.”
He pressed his face against the glass of the little window for a better view.
“Do you see anyone?” Abigail asked.
“No. No one.”
Making a fist, he pounded on the door and shouted. “Hey, is anyone out there?”
There was no response. Silence. An annoying silence. An eerie silence.
“So much for it being the maid,” said Abby. Then it dawned on her. “Do you think we’re being robbed and they’ve locked us in here?”
“Maybe,” said Ethan. He couldn’t rule it out. Of course, as the son of a billionaire, he was less concerned about being robbed than being locked in a sauna.
“What do we do?” asked Abby. She was starting to get scared. He could see it in her eyes, and that frightened him.
“The first thing we do is turn off the heat,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He hit the Off button on the control panel. He then grabbed the ladle sitting by the lava rocks and held it up to show Abby. “This is the second thing we do.”
Ethan wedged the ladle’s wooden handle into the doorjamb as though it were a crowbar, leaning on it with all his weight.
“It’s working!” she said.
The door shifted on its hinges, slowly beginning to move. With a little more muscle Ethan would be able to—snap!
The handle splintered like a matchstick, sending Ethan flying headfirst into the wall. When he turned around, Abby said, “You’re bleeding!”
There was a gash above his right eye, a trickle of red on his cheek. Then a stream. As a doctor, Abby had seen blood in almost every conceivable way and always knew what to do. But this was different. This wasn’t her office or a hospital; there were no gauze pads or bandages. She had nothing. And this was Ethan who was bleeding.
“Hey, it’s fine,” he said in an effort to reassure her. “Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
She wasn’t convinced. What had been hot and sexy was now just hot. Brutally hot. Every time she breathed in, she could feel the sauna’s heat singeing the inside of her lungs.
“Are you sure the sauna’s off?” she asked.
Actually, Ethan wasn’t sure at all. If anything, the room was beginning to feel hotter. How could that be?
He didn’t care. His ace in the hole was the pipe in the corner, the emergency shutoff valve.
Standing on the bench, he turned the valve perpendicular to the pipe. A loud hiss followed. Even louder was Abby’s sigh of relief.
Not only had the heat stopped, there was actually cool air blowing in from the ceiling vent.
“There,” said Ethan. “With any luck, we’ve triggered an alarm somewhere. Even if we didn’t, we’ll be okay. We’ve got plenty of water. Eventually, they’ll find us.”
But the words were barely out of his mouth when they both wrinkled their noses, sniffing the air.
“What’s that smell?”
“I don’t know,” said Ethan. Whatever it was, there was something not right about it.
Abby coughed first, her hands desperately reaching up around her neck. Her throat was closing; she couldn’t breathe.
Ethan tried to help her, but seconds later he couldn’t breathe, either.
It was happening so fast. They looked at each other, eyes red and tearing, their bodies twisted in agony. It couldn’t get worse than this.
But it did.
Ethan and Abby fell to their knees, gasping, when they saw a pair of eyes through the small window of the sauna door.
“Help!” Ethan barely managed, his hand outstretched. “Please, help!”
But the eyes just kept staring. Unblinking and unfeeling. Ethan and Abby finally realized what was happening. It was a murderer—a murderer who was watching them die.
Learn more about Second Honeymoon.
Excerpt from Second Honeymoon copyright © 2013 by James Patterson
The truth will set you free—if it doesn’t kill you first.
For an excerpt, turn the page.
“Where exactly did it happen?” I asked.
