Honeymoon - James Patterson [82]
“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.”
She was holding out on me.
“I know that, Susan. There’s something else.”
She chuckled at my intuitive grab. “How fast can you get to my office?”
Chapter 109
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Susan and I were speeding north out of New York City, and after an hour-fifty on the road we pulled onto the grounds of the Pine Woods Psychiatric Facility in Lafayetteville, New York.
“This should be interesting for you,” Susan said as we got out of my car and headed toward the main building, a brick tower of eight floors. “Meet the parent. Nora’s mom lives here, O’Hara.”
I gave a half smile. I could tell that Susan