Liar Liar Read online

  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 © 2018 by James Patterson

  Excerpt from The Chef copyright © 2019 by James Patterson

  Cover design by Anthony Morais; photographs by Mark Owen, Trevillion Images (woman); Radius Images / Alamy Stock Photo (sunset); Shutterstock (house)

  Author photograph by Stephanie Diani, courtesy of Investigation Discovery

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  littlebrown.com

  facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany

  twitter.com/littlebrown

  First North American ebook edition: January 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-0-316-41825-6

  E3-20181025-DA-NF

  E3-20181108-DA-NF-ORI

  E3-20181112-DA-PC-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Five weeks later 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

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  One week later Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  An Excerpt from THE CHEF

  Books by James Patterson

  Newsletters

  Chapter 1

  SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT.

  Doctor Samantha Parish noticed an odor as she pulled the door of her Prius closed. An earthy, almost metallic smell, the distinct reek of male sweat. As soon as the lock clicked, she knew one corner of her world was out of place.

  When he spoke from the back seat, a part of her wasn’t even surprised.

  “Try to stay calm,” he said.

  But his deep, soothing tone made staying calm impossible. His self-assurance told her he was speaking from experience. This was the moment his victim usually panicked.

  Doctor Parish’s first impulse was to push open the door and roll out of the vehicle. The quickly darkening parking lot was full of cars where other mothers waited. Teenage girls in black leotards, matching pink silk bags hanging from thin shoulders, were filing between the vehicles from the door of the nearby hall. When Samantha tried to move, she found her body was frozen.

  “Don’t make a sound,” the man said. “Put your hands on the wheel. Eyes straight ahead.”

  Her shaking hands moved to the steering wheel, gripped hard. She smelled blood. Rain or stagnant water, something almost swampy.

  She chanced a look in the rearview mirror. He was silhouetted against the sun setting beyond the nearby park. Shaved head. Tall. Broad, powerful shoulders.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was far smaller than she had intended.

  A click. The sound of a gun.

  Doctor Parish felt tears sliding down her cheeks. “Please, just take the car.”

  He said nothing. What are we waiting for? she wondered. Then it hit her, hard in the chest, like a punch. She’d forgotten all about Isobel. She turned, her mouth twisted in a silent howl just as her eleven-year-old daughter opened the passenger-side door.

  “No!” Doctor Parish could hardly form the words. “Isobel, ru—”

  The child didn’t even look at her mother. She was wearing those little white headphones, cut off from the world around her. She flopped into the car and pulled the door shut behind her with a whump, locking her inside their nightmare.

  When they arrived at the clinic, Isobel gave a moan of terror, huddling against her mother as they exited the car. In her ballet getup, she was the frightened black swan, shoulders bent forward, trying to disappear under her mother’s wing.

  They walked to the doors, and Samantha swiped their way into the darkened space.

  She guessed where he wanted to go and turned and walked
through the consulting room into theater three. They passed a large poster of a woman with perfectly symmetrical breasts, a chart showing liposuction before-and-after shots. Parish Lifestyle and Body Enhancement Clinic was embossed in thin letters on a stainless-steel plate above the door.

  What he wanted from them was becoming clear, at least to Samantha. She watched him undressing carefully in the surgery room, easing a messily bandaged shoulder out of the torn shirt. His clothes were filthy, his skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat. She could smell already that the wounds were septic. Trying to control her shaking, she straightened, let go of her daughter, and took a step toward him.

  “You want me to help you,” she said. It was the first time such a concept had ever repulsed her.

  She helped him peel away the bandages. Three puncture wounds, one in the side, two in the shoulder. The wound in his side had an exit hole at the back. A bullet. It was the ones in the shoulder that bothered him the most. The bullets were still in there. As he peeled the last of the blackened bandages away, blood began seeping from the wounds.

  “Lie down,” she instructed, gesturing to the operating table.

  He didn’t lie, but sat on the edge of the table with some difficulty, the gun pinned under one hand, a finger on the trigger guard. Samantha went to the shelves and began filling a tray with tools.

  “I’ll need to administer an anesthetic,” she said.

  “No,” he answered. He was panting now with pain. “No injections.”

  “But I can’t—” She whirled around, gestured to his wounds. “I can’t perform surgery on you without a local anesthetic at least.”

  “You’ll have to,” he said. She waited for more, but there was none. He wasn’t willing to let her inject him with something—didn’t trust her not to administer a general anesthetic and knock him out. But he trusted her with a scalpel. Why? She could slash him. Stab him. Then, of course, what good would that do? A nicked artery would put him down in three minutes, maybe longer. Long enough for him to fire the gun at her, or Isobel. Long enough for him to swing one of those huge fists.

  The wounds were days old. He’d clearly been hiding somewhere filthy, waiting for the strength to enact his plan.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” she said, low enough that her daughter couldn’t hear. “The one they’ve been looking for. Regan Banks.”

  He didn’t answer. She watched his cold eyes appraising the scalpel in her hand.

  “You’re not going to let us live, are you?” she said.

  Again, no answer came.

  Five weeks later

  Chapter 2

  I DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH. But when I did, my mind turned in circles, repeating their names like a mantra, connecting them end to end. When I was really tired, my lips moved. I sometimes woke to the sound of my own whispering.

  Rachel Howes, Marissa Haydon, Elle Ramone, Rosetta Poelar.

  Regan’s girls. The innocent lives he had taken. He had left their bodies ruined on lonely stretches of sand, horrors to be discovered by strangers.

  Tox Barnes, my friend, left for dead in my own apartment.

  Caitlyn McBeal, a smart young American woman reduced to skin and bones, traumatized, crawling on her belly out of Regan Banks’s grasp.

  “Samuel Blue,” I whispered through my dreams.

  My brother. All I’d had left in the world. The only man who would never abandon me, never judge me.

  I didn’t know why Regan Banks had seized on my brother. But my research, my gut instinct, and what my friends had been able to determine was that Regan Banks was obsessed with him. Regan, a boy from the suburbs, a foster kid like me, had spent fifteen years in prison, incarcerated for the brutal murder of a young woman when he was just seventeen. Regan had found Doctor Rachel Howes working late in a veterinary clinic and unleashed his first deadly passion on her, paying for it with hard time. Not long after his release, girls began appearing on the shores of the Georges River, beaten and strangled, sexually violated. I had wanted in on the case, but no one would approve my assignment. Soon enough, I found out why. My colleagues already had a suspect for the murders, and he was my own flesh and blood.

  I knew Sam was innocent. But I was the only person making that claim. There had been evidence in my brother’s apartment, put there, he said, by someone else. While I’d fought to secure my brother’s release, I’d managed to convince two friends to help me, Tate “Tox” Barnes and Edward Whittacker. Together we’d found the man we’d believed to be the real Georges River Killer. A man who’d set out to destroy my brother’s life. Tox had taken Regan on and almost got himself killed. Whitt had got achingly close to catching him, only to have him slip away, wounded and wild, into the night.

  I’d thought it was over. That once we caught Regan, my brother would be set free.

  But that dream was snatched away from me. My brother was stabbed in prison and died only hours before I’d planned to visit him and tell him the good news.

  I was the only one left to speak for Sam now. For him and all of Regan’s victims. But my plan had changed. I wasn’t just going to clear my brother’s name by forcing Regan to admit to framing him. Regan deserved to die for the lives he had taken.

  I, Detective Harriet Blue, needed to be the one to kill him.

  A sound broke through my dreams. I snapped awake, bolted upright in the stiff motel bed. For a moment, I had to orient myself. I had been on the run for five weeks, shifting from motel room to motel room, trying to stay under the radar while I hunted my brother’s killer. I had looked for him where I knew bad men felt safe. I’d wandered homeless camps, where armies of wanted men hid their faces in shadowed hoods and blankets, huddled around campfires. I’d squinted into the corners of blackened, stinking barrooms and drug dens, the basements and attics of city brothels. I had searched for Regan through the underworld, following whispers between depraved men, chasing rumors through the streets. In five weeks, I hadn’t found him, but I hadn’t given up.

  There were no warrants for my arrest. But to my colleagues in the Sydney police, my intentions were clear. I had gone off the map so that Regan couldn’t find me, so that I could get my revenge for what he had done to my family. I had disappeared because I knew that if my colleagues in the police discovered where I was, they’d try to convince me not to commit that final devastating act. The act that would mean giving up everything. My career. My life. My freedom.

  And I couldn’t let them do that.

  As I sat listening in the dark, I knew someone was coming.

  Chapter 3

  THE ROOM WAS a strange T-shape, narrow in the stem so that the end of the bed almost touched a dresser against the opposite wall. At the rear, the room turned left to an old chipboard closet and right to a moldy bathroom. The front window looked out into a parking lot stuffed with cars. I’d left the heavy curtains open a crack so that the red light from the motel’s NO VACANCY sign poured in through the lace. The light flickered as a figure passed before it. I heard the telltale blip of a police radio.

  “Yeah, Command, we think we’ve got her. Have that rover stand by for our call. Over.”

  Patrol officers. I could hear the squeak of their leather boots. Shadows moved under the door. Three men. Two cops and the motel’s owner, most likely. My backpack was zipped up, ready to go, as always. I’d slept fully dressed. I threw myself out of the bed and dragged on my shoes as a heavy fist began to beat on the door.

  “Harry, we know you’re in there. Open up!”

  I slipped the backpack on and went to the end of the T-shaped room, tucked myself into the corner by the closet, and waited. Before me, the open bathroom door, the shower and toilet beyond. I heard the jangle of the motel owner’s keys.

  “Harry?” one of the officers called. “Go easy, all right?” I heard a subtle tremor in his voice.

  He knew my reputation.

  Chapter 4

  THEY’D BEEN STUPID. The patrol cops had told the backup car to hold off, wanting to be heroes
. Big men who had grabbed the snarling feral cat Harriet Blue and finally shoved her in a cage where she belonged. Their first mistake.

  Their second mistake had been coming into the room and leaving the lights off, thinking they’d have a tactical advantage over me in the dark. They probably expected to catch me in my underwear, still half asleep.

  Wrong. I knew the room, they didn’t, and I’d set the place up for a situation just like this. I listened as they ran into the drawers I’d left pulled out at the bottom of the bed, blocking their path forward. In the red light from the motel sign, I saw them separate as I’d hoped they would, one climbing over the bed while the other tried to shut the awkward, rickety wooden drawers. I took the small packet of soap I’d left on the carpet in front of the closet and tossed it through the bathroom door. It made a clattering sound on the toilet lid.

  The first officer jumped off the bed and leaped forward at the sound, into the bathroom. I popped up, grabbed the handle of the door, and pulled it shut on him, slipping the slide bolt closed. I’d set the same trap in every motel room I’d stayed in, taking the lock from the inside of the door and screwing it onto the outside with a screwdriver I kept in my backpack. I’d never used the trap before, but now it worked like a charm. I smiled in the dark.

  “Hey! Hey! What the fuck?” he yelled.

  I turned, left him beating on the inside of the bathroom door, and faced the second officer, who was blocking my path to freedom.

  “Don’t,” he said, his arms out, as though to catch me. “Harry, come on. Give us a break.”

  I didn’t know this young officer. Didn’t want to hurt him. But I was on a mission to bring down a killer, and I would do what it took to stay free.

  He was backing up toward the exit. I couldn’t let him get there. I made a leap for the bed, and that encouraged him. He came forward, grabbing at my legs while I tucked into a roll and landed on the other side of the mattress.

  His arm came around my shoulders. I jutted my elbow hard into his ribs, got nowhere, kicked the wall, and shoved myself backward, propelling him onto the mattress. The shock of it was enough to loosen his grip.

  The motel owner, a squat, hairy man, was standing helplessly just outside the doorway as I sprinted out into the night.