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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Cover design by Brian Lemus; image © Mark Owen / Arcangel Images

  Author photograph by Sue Patterson

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  ISBN 978-1-4789-4678-6

  E3-20170523-NF-DA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Moores Are Missing

  Part One: Off the Face of the Earth Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Two: The Ends of the Earth Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  The Housewife Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Absolute Zero Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  About the Authors

  BookShots.com

  Newsletters

  The Moores Are Missing

  James Patterson

  with Loren D. Estleman

  Part One

  Off the Face of the Earth

  Chapter 1

  Forty-one years old.

  I was all ready for forty. I’d prepared for it since thirty-nine. Forty-one blindsided me. When I blew out the candles last Tuesday, it struck me that time was speeding up, like a recorded tape whirling faster as it approaches its end. Before I know it, I’ll be fifty, with hair growing out of my ears. Sixty next, getting around with a walker. Then my threescore and ten, and then death.

  Thank God for Kevin; he’s three months older and never whines. Like he said at my party: “Look at it this way, old-timer: Would you really want to relive your twenties, have to learn that crap all over again?” His seize-the-day attitude is contagious. He’s spread it through his family, which is why I spend so much time at their place. My standing weekly appointment to shoot hoops with Kevin is mainly an excuse to see the Moores.

  It’s an atypical Pacific Northwest Saturday in early spring: the sun is coming up, revealing what will be a bright blue sky scraped clean of clouds. There’s still a chill in the air left over from the night. We like to get going and play early, before breakfast. Maybe we should be playing golf instead. If we played golf.

  I ring the magic bell. Kevin’s grin, Margo’s quiet smile, will ease my worries. They’re aging gracefully, visibly in love with each other and devoted to their kids, who love and respect them (when they’re not driving them nuts, like healthy normal teenagers).

  No one comes to answer. Margo will be cooking breakfast, the fan in the stove hood whirring loudly. Kevin in the bedroom, tying his sneakers Just Right. Josh and Gabby listening to hip-hop or playing video games in the den or texting, whatever it is young people do for entertainment now.

  Ray, you’re thinking like an old crank.

  I ring again, wait, then reach for the button a third time. On impulse I try the door instead. The knob turns.

  I frown. Our side of town has had two break-ins in six months, and less than
a week ago a terrifying home invasion in Sackville, minutes from here, that left three people shot to death. We don’t leave our doors unlocked anymore.

  “Guys? It’s Ray. LeBron couldn’t make it.”

  I start to open the door. I don’t want to spook them. I push it just enough to stick my face through the gap. “Hel-lo-o-o?”

  Is it my imagination, or does my voice echo?

  I step across the threshold into the house. I raise my voice. “Kevin? Margo?”

  Buzz-click! I jump almost out of my shoes. But it’s just the sound made by the retro mechanical clock on the fake fireplace mantel changing numerals. The place is that quiet.

  “It’s me, Ray,” I say, cupping my hands around my mouth. I’m an invader now. Well-meaning neighbors have been struck down with baseball bats under similar circumstances. “Ray Gillett, not Freddie Krueger.”

  The house is done in excellent taste, but no antiseptic showcase. Margo manages a doctor’s office, and has decorated with the same attention to detail that she brings to files and scheduling. The open living room, cozy den, spacious kitchen, three bathrooms—one on the ground floor, two on the second—are clean and relatively uncluttered. The bedrooms likewise.

  And deserted. Huh. If they were in the backyard, I would have seen them as I walked over.

  A side door in the kitchen opens into the attached garage. Margo’s red Buick is there. There’s an old oil stain on the concrete floor where Kevin parks the Flex he drives to work and uses on family outings. Maybe—but no, why would they go off on a lark when they know I’m coming?

  I start to worry. This is not Moore behavior, even on Saturday, the most unpredictable day of the week.

  Upstairs, I check drawers and closets. I’m violating my best friends’ privacy, pure and simple. If they came home, this would be hard to explain. But I can’t leave. What would I do with the rest of my Saturday, not knowing why I’d been stood up? More important:

  “Where are the Moores?” I say it aloud.

  Everything’s in place, as far as I can tell. All tidy—Josh’s and Gabby’s things casually if not carelessly kept—with no obvious sign of anything missing. Suitcases and duffels stashed out of the way in all the bedrooms. I lift Kevin and Margo’s luggage by the handles. They feel empty.

  I sit on the edge of Josh’s mattress, feeling out of place. Is there any space more private than someone’s bedroom? Or anything ruder than someone outside the family entering it without being invited?

  Then I see the cell phone on Josh’s dresser.

  What college freshman leaves home without a way to text his friends?

  I get up and go back over old ground. In Gabby’s room I draw a pink sweater off the foot of the bed, revealing her iPhone in a padded pink cover.

  Picking up the pace now, to the master bedroom. Kevin’s slim gray phone is in a stand on the table on one side of the neatly made bed, Margo’s blue case on the matching table on the other side.

  I reach for Kevin’s, then withdraw my hand. How far is it acceptable for a worried friend to dig into someone’s privacy?

  Strangers disappear, always for a reason. Not whole families with deep roots in the community. Not the Moores. There’s no sign, as they say on TV, of a struggle. Silly even to think in those terms. They went out for pancakes and got caught in traffic on the way back, or simply lost track of time.

  Leaving all their cell phones behind.

  Worried? I wished I were only that. I don’t know a word for the chilled feeling I got. It was like the feeling in a nightmare, when your car flies over a hill and there’s nothing on the other side.

  There’s a landline in the kitchen, a yellow wall unit on an old-fashioned long coiled cord. I unhook the receiver, listen for the dial tone, and peck out 911.

  Chapter 2

  “I wouldn’t be too concerned, Mr. Gillett. You said the car’s gone. Sometimes people just play hooky, without thinking to tell their friends. Maybe to unplug for a while. Kind of inconsiderate; but no reason to issue an AMBER Alert.”

  The Willow Grove police station wouldn’t interest a Hollywood director scouting locations. The chief’s office in the one-story brick building could belong to an insurance agent. The walls are painted a cheery apple-green and the framed family photo on the desk looks like a publicity still from Leave It to Beaver.

  It’s my first visit. I know Cam Howard well enough to say hello to, but thank God I’ve never had any official business with his department. He’s middle-aged and solidly built, in an inexpensive blue suit with a tie that I suspect clips on. On him the outfit resembles a uniform. His hair is black and so thick you can see the marks of the comb. Sitting in the swivel behind his plastic woodgrain desk, he gives an impression of coiled strength.

  “I thought of the same explanation, and rejected it,” I say. “You don’t know the Moores as well as I do, Chief. They never just take off. Kevin is the chief financial officer for a solid firm in the city and Margo runs a doctor’s office. Their son is studying for a business degree, and their daughter belongs to the honor society at Willow Grove High. They’re the most responsible people I’ve ever met.”

  Howard smiles tightly. “I know them; Kevin, anyway. He donates generously to the Police Athletic League. We take each other to lunch sometimes.”

  “He never told me that.”

  “He wouldn’t, in case you asked how we know each other. He’s the best kind of philanthropist. He never brags. I think he’s a swell guy, and from what I’ve seen of his wife and kids, it’s a Moore family trait. They all put folding green in the collection plate every Sunday.”

  “You go to the same church?”

  “Knowing the community makes my work easier.”

  “In that case, you better call me Ray.”

  “Ray, I was a big-city cop for fifteen years, and if nothing else, I learned that people are anything but consistent. It’d be easier for us cops if they were, like on TV when a crook steps out of character and nails himself. That’s why I asked you to come down, instead of sending a team to the house.” He drops the reassuring smile. “I’m not brushing you off. Let’s wait forty-eight hours, like it says in the book. If we don’t hear from them by then, I’ll turn loose the bloodhounds.”

  “Anything can happen in forty-eight hours.”

  “So can nothing. They come home, everybody lives happily ever after, and you’re glad we waited. Misplaced good intentions can be as hard on a friendship as betrayal.”

  I lean forward in my chair, my fists clenching. “Chief. Cam. They all left their cell phones behind. Not just one of them. All of them. Who does that?”

  “Someone who wants a holiday without any interruptions.”

  “Their kids are teenagers. You can’t pry them away from their cells with a crowbar.”

  “You can if you have their respect as a parent.” His eyes flick toward the family photo, then back to me.

  “Cam. Chief. Just whose side are you on?”

  “What’ve you got to make you suspect there is a side? You said there were no signs of force. Your friend stood you up for a date. As emergencies go, that rates pretty close to the bottom.”

  “This is pointless.” I scrape back my chair and stand up. “An entire family falls off the face of the earth and all you can say is they’re on a picnic.”

  “I said maybe. It’s part of the job. Sit down.”

  Calm as his tone is, I can’t overlook the command in it. I sit.

  He shrugs. “Okay, the phone part’s unusual. It’s still not enough to justify a full-scale missing-persons investigation. I’m not a private detective. I serve the community, not one household, no matter how much they give back to it. The worst deadbeat in town is entitled to the same amount of protection as the pastor at St. Matthew’s.”

  “You’re the chief. You’re supposed to give the orders, not take them.”

  “If I were to say that, I’d be out on my can. You should come to a town council meeting and listen to the cranks spo
ut off every time someone in this department makes an honest mistake; you’d think we picked their pockets. How will they react if I put out an APB, get everyone in a lather, and then the Moores come back from the beach at sundown with sand in their shoes?”

  “How will they react if the Moores don’t come back at all and you did nothing?”

  Howard’s frown is as tight as his smile. “I’m liking them more and more, the friends they’ve got. I’ll look into it, okay? Make some calls.”

  “You mean like the highway patrol, the hospitals, the”— I swallow. I can’t say morgue. “I can do that myself. I need to know you’re doing something I can’t.”

  “There’s a difference between when it’s a civilian calling and when it’s a cop. I have personal contacts with the state police. They can act unofficially, circulating descriptions throughout the department, minus the paperwork involved with a formal investigation. That’s a thousand pair of trained eyes prowling the state and reporting directly to me. I’ll call you if I hear anything.” He spreads his hands. “Ray, it’s the best I can do.”

  I press my lips tight, then nod. I give him a card. “I work at home. That number’s good night and day. My cell’s on the back.”

  He slips the card into his shirt pocket and holds out his hand. “Kevin’s my friend, you’re his friend. I’d like you to be mine as well.”

  Chief Cam Howard has a firm, dry grip. I don’t find it as comforting as I’d like.

  Chapter 3

  I work out of my home full-time. The basement’s full of stereo receivers, toy rocket launchers, video-game consoles, and Waterpiks. A Golden Nerd Award stands on my bedroom dresser, presented to me by the National Association of Industrial Artists.

  I’ve found that when an attractive woman in a cocktail bar asks my occupation, “writer” gets better mileage when I leave out the adjective “technical.” When I told my barber I’m a writer, my time in his chair went from fifteen minutes to an hour. He’s writing a book, just like everyone else; in his case a history of the razor. Like every barber I’d ever had, he can’t talk and cut hair at the same time, so he stands in front of me waving a comb in one hand and scissors in the other, describing the development of the steel blade from imperial Rome through fin-de-siècle France with enthusiastic gestures. I resolved to clarify my job description from that day forward.