Swimsuit - James Patterson [73]
I hadn’t noticed anything unusual around us on the highway this afternoon. There was no way anyone could have followed us when we took the off-ramp to Santa Barbara. We had been alone for so many miles that we’d practically owned the road.
Ten minutes ago, after the maitre d’ escorted us out of the dining room, he’d told me that the champagne had been phoned in, charged to a credit card by Henri Benoit. That explained nothing. Henri could have called from any point on the globe.
But how had he known where we were?
If Henri hadn’t tapped Mandy’s phone, and if he hadn’t tailed us —
A stunning thought cracked through my mind like a lightning strike. I stood up, and said, “He put a tracking device on your bike.”
“Don’t even think about leaving me in this room alone,” Amanda said. I sat back down beside her, took her hand between both of mine and kissed it. I couldn’t leave her in the room, and I couldn’t protect her in the parking lot either.
“As soon as it’s light tomorrow, I’m dismantling your bike until I find the bug.”
“I can’t believe what he’s doing to us,” Mandy said, and then she started to cry.
Chapter 97
WE HELD on to each other under the bedcovers, our eyes wide open, listening to every footstep overhead, every creak in the hallway outside the room, every groan and pitch of the air conditioner. I didn’t know if I was being rational or extremely paranoid, but I felt Henri watching us now.
Mandy had me tightly wrapped in her arms when she started crying out, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”
I tried to comfort her, saying, “Honey, stop. This isn’t such bad news. We’ll find out how he’s tracking us.”
“Oh, my God — this,” she said, poking me hard high on my right buttock. “This thing on your hip. I’ve told you about it. You always say it’s nothing.”
“That thing? It is nothing.”
“Look at it.”
I threw off the blankets, switched on the lights, walked to the bathroom mirror with Mandy close behind me. I couldn’t see it without contorting myself, but I knew what she was talking about: a welt that had been tender for a few days after Henri had clubbed me in my apartment.
I’d thought it was a bruise from the fall, or a bug bite, and after a few days the soreness went away.
Mandy had asked me about the bump a couple of times, and, yes, I’d said it was nothing. I reached around and touched the raised spot, the size of two grains of rice lying end-to-end.
It didn’t seem so nothing, not anymore.
I rifled through my toiletry kit, dumped it out on the vanity, and found my razor. I beat it against the marble sink until the shaving head broke into parts.
“You’re not going to… Ben! You don’t want me to do it?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll hurt me more than it hurts you.”
“Wow, you’re funny.”
“I’m fucking terrified,” I said.
Mandy took the blade from my hand, poured Listerine over it, and dabbed at the spot on my rump. Then she pinched a fold of skin and made a quick cut.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
She dropped the bloody bit of glass and metal into my hand. It could only be one thing: a GPS tracking device, the kind that are implanted into the necks of dogs. Henri must’ve injected it into my hide when I was lying unconscious on the floor. I’d been wearing this damned bug for weeks.
“Flush it down the toilet,” Amanda said. “That’ll keep him busy.”
“Yeah. No. Tear some tape off that roll, would you?”
I pressed the device against my side, and Mandy ripped off a length of adhesive tape with her teeth. I patted the tape across the chip, securing it to my body again.
“What’s the point of keeping it?” Mandy asked.
“As long as I’m wearing it, he won’t know that I know that he’s tracking me.”
“And… what good is that?”
“It starts the ball rolling in the other direction. We know something he doesn’t.”
Chapter 98
FRANCE.
Henri stroked Gina Prazzi’s flank as his breathing slowed. She had a wonderful peach-shaped ass, perfect