1st to Die - James Patterson [98]
I met him at the door, wrapped in a bedsheet. His big blue eyes went wide with surprise.
“I’ll need to see some ID.” I grinned.
“Have you been drinking?” he said.
“No, but we’re about to.” I pulled him into the bedroom.
At the sight of the champagne, he shook his head. “What is it you want to tell me?”
“Later,” I said. I poured him a glass and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. “But trust me, it’s good.”
“It’s your birthday?” he said smiling.
I let the bedsheet drop. “I would never do this for just my birthday.”
“My birthday, then.”
“Don’t ask. I’ll tell you later.”
“You broke the case,” he exclaimed. “It was Joanna. You found something that broke the case.”
I put my fingers to his lips. “Tell me that you love me.”
“I do love you,” he said.
“Tell me again, like you did at Heavenly. Tell me that you won’t ever leave me.”
Maybe he sensed it was Negli’s talking, some crazy hysteria, or that I just needed to feel close. He hugged me. “I won’t leave you, Lindsay. I’m right here.”
I took his shirt off—slowly, very slowly—then his trousers. He must’ve felt like the delivery boy who had stumbled into a sure thing. He was as hard as a rock.
I brought a glass of champagne to his lips, and we both took a sip from it.
“Okay, I’ll just go with this. Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said.
I drew him to the bed, and for the next hour we did the one thing I knew I would have missed most in the world.
We were in the middle of things when I felt the first terrifying rumbling.
At first it was so weird, as if the bed had speeded up and was rocking faster than we were; then there was a deep, grinding sound coming from all directions, as if we were in an echo chamber; then the sound of glass breaking—my kitchen, a picture frame falling off the wall—and I knew, we knew.
“It’s a goddamn quake,” I said.
I had been through many of these—anyone who lived here had—but it was startling and terrifying every time. You never knew if this was the Big One.
It wasn’t. The room shook, a few dishes broke. Outside, I heard the bleat of horns and triggered car alarms. The whole thing lasted maybe twenty seconds—two, three, four vibrating tremors.
I ran to the window. The city was still there. There was a rumble, like a massive humpback whale breaching underground.
Then it was still—eerie, insecure, as if the whole town were holding on for balance.
I heard wailing sirens, the sound of voices shouting on the street.
“You think we should go?” I asked.
“Probably… we’re cops.” He touched me again, and suddenly I was tingling all over, and we melted into each other’s arms. “What the heck, we’re Homicide, anyway.”
We kissed, and once again we were locked into a single, intertwined shape. I started to laugh. The list, I was thinking. The skybox. Now an earthquake. This sucker’s starting to get pretty long.
My beeper went off. I cursed, rolled over, glanced at the screen.
It was the office.
“Code one eleven,” I told Chris.
Emergency Alert.
“Shit,” I muttered, “it’s just an earthquake.”
I sat up, pulled the sheet over me, called in on the phone next to the bed.
It was Roth buzzing me. Roth never buzzed me. What was going on? Immediately, I transferred to his line.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Dusting off some debris,” I said, and smiled toward Chris.
“Get in here. Get in here fast,” he barked.
“What’s going on, Sam? This about the quake?”
“Uh-uh,” he replied. “Worse. Nicholas Jenks has escaped.”
Chapter 111
AS HE SAT SHACKLED TO THE SEAT of the police van on the way back from Napa, Nicholas Jenks watched the impassive eyes of the patrolman across from him. He plotted, schemed. He wondered how much it would take to buy his freedom.
One million? Two million? After all, what did the fool take home? Forty grand a year?
He figured the steely-eyed officer was someone above reproach, whose commitment to his duty was unquestioned. If he were writing it, that’s who he would have put in the car with him.
Five million, then. He smirked.
If he were writing it. That notion possessed