Private - James Patterson [17]
Pilser worked like a robot for the next three hours. He didn’t flinch when the head bitch blamed him for screwing up a proposal he hadn’t even compiled. Screw her. At six, he put on his jacket and left for the day.
He drove straight to a hardware store in West Hollywood.
He walked the narrow stocked-to-the-ceiling aisles and picked out a six-foot-long extension cord, a roll of duct tape, and a pair of cotton jersey gloves. Nothing very unusual. He paid cash for his purchases, keeping his head down so the security camera over the cash register didn’t catch his face.
He was so pumped that his hands were sweating.
The big night was only three days away. And he was “it.” On Saturday he was going to kill a girl somewhere in LA.
Chapter 21
THIS WASN’T REALLY sleep, was it? It was more like going to war every night and getting bombed back into reality in the morning.
In my dream this time, I ran across the burning battlefield, Colleen in my arms, blood splashing on my shoes. My heart hammered against my rib cage as she said, “Save me, Jack. I’m the mother of your children.”
The thumping explosion of mortar rounds threw me to the ground. My eyes flew open, and for an instant I had a strong sense that I was still on the battlefield on my last day in Afghanistan.
I remembered most of it, but some crucial recollection was missing, a gap in my memory from the time the helicopter went down and the moment when I died.
I had pushed the missing memory so far into my subconscious, it was subterranean.
I had to dig it up. Had to find out the truth about that day.
If I could retrieve the memory, maybe I could finally sleep.
I was still grasping at wisps of dream and memory when my cell phone vibrated on the nightstand.
I looked at the caller ID, read “out of area.”
I left the phone on the table, sprang out of bed, and flipped on the house security monitors.
I scrutinized the six monitors and saw nothing out of place, so I left them and did an eyeball check of the grounds. Cars streamed by on the Pacific Coast Highway beyond my front gate. There are high fences between my house and my neighbors’ on both sides. The beach was empty at the back of my house.
I was alone.
The phone finally stopped ringing. Light streamed through the glass, and the Pacific crashed outside my bedroom window.
This was the house I’d bought with Justine.
Talk about memories that can haunt you. I still saw Justine in this room, her dark hair fanned out on the white pillow, looking at me with love in her eyes. And you know what? I looked back at her the same way.
I showered and dressed in chinos and a blue oxford shirt, and then the phone started ringing again. I took the damned thing to the dining table I used as a desk and opened it.
“You’re dead,” said the mechanical voice.
“Not yet,” I said.
I made very strong coffee, then spent the next hour and a half making phone calls, confirming appointments.
By the time I met Del Rio at Santa Monica Airport, it was almost ten.
Time to fly.
Chapter 22
WE BOARDED a Cessna Skyhawk SP, a spiffy and reliable single-engine aircraft, and Del Rio took his place beside me. Just like old times.
I looked at Rick. He looked back, our thoughts on the same track: Afghanistan, our friends who’d been killed in the helicopter, the fact that Del Rio had jump-started my heart and I owed him my life.
I wondered if he could tell me more about what happened that last day in Gardez. I’d gotten a medal for carrying Danny Young out of that burning helicopter. But I couldn’t ignore the nagging dreams. Was my mind doing a head-fake: protecting me from an unbearable memory and at the same time prodding me to remember?
“Rick, that last day in Gardez?”
“The helicopter? Why, Jack?”
“Tell me about it again.”
“I’ve told you everything