Private Read online

  I parked on Wetherly, a tidy residential block, and sat for a while just looking at Justine’s small, beautiful house. I turned my phone back on and tapped in her number.

  Justine answered on the first ring. “Jack. What was this family emergency?” she asked. “You missed the party.”

  “Colleen is going back to Dublin,” I said. “We talked it over. After that I went out to Forest Lawn. I needed time to think.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “ ‘Sure,’ he says,” Justine said, tweaking me. “Well, I’ve had to do some mental reorganization of my own. See, um, Bobby dumped me to go back to his wife. Too bad for Bobby, though; she didn’t want him anymore.”

  I wanted to comfort Justine, and at the same time I was happy to hear this breaking news. Justine was too good for Bobby Petino, or to get tainted by the smudge and stink of California politics.

  I wondered where Justine was right now. I pictured her in a chaise in her study, or lying in bed with the TV turned down, a glass of wine in her hand. My emotional pull toward her was almost a physical force.

  “What are you doing right now?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “I could come over,” I said. “Just for a while.”

  There was a deep pause that I filled with hope.

  “Jack, we both know that would be a bad idea,” Justine said. “Why don’t you just get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I was saying her name when she disconnected the line. I watched the lights go off in her house, one by one.

  And then I drove to my home alone.

  Epilogue

  IT’S A WRAP

  Chapter 120

  OUT-OF-WORK actor Parker Dalton knocked on the door of Suite 34 at the Chateau Marmont.

  He held the folding massage table by its handle, reset his cap with his other hand, and waited on the dark print carpet for Mr. Cushman to invite him in for his daily rub.

  Dalton loved this job, actually. Stars had always stayed at the Chateau, and some of them actually lived here several months at a time. The sightings of Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Matthew Perry, and others made fantastic entries on Dalton’s blog and always gave him hope for his own career.

  Mr. Cushman was no star, but he was a celebrity, what with his wife having been murdered and the killer still on the loose.

  Dalton had tweeted about his sessions with Mr. Cushman, and his friends and innumerable friends of friends begged for more tweets, more details, more snarky observations.

  When Mr. Cushman didn’t come to the door, Dalton phoned his room on the direct line. He heard the phone ring inside the suite, and when Mr. Cushman didn’t pick up, he considered his options.

  Should he leave—or call the front desk?

  It wasn’t exactly rare for Mr. Cushman to be semidrunk when Dalton arrived. But maybe there had been an accident. Maybe he had fallen in the shower.

  Dalton finally called the desk, and within minutes the day manager came up, a tall blond guy with a rockin’ build and the name “Mr. Straus” on the tag on his vest. Straus questioned Dalton briefly and then opened the door to Cushman’s suite.

  Dalton stood at the threshold and called out, “Mr. Cushman.” When there was no answer, he followed Straus into the large suite.

  The spare 1930s-style furniture was undisturbed. Bottles and glasses littered the tabletops, garbage spilled out of trash cans, and white curtains billowed over the unmade bed.

  “I don’t see Mr. Cushman anywhere,” said Dalton.

  “No kidding,” said Straus.

  Dalton watched Straus open the closet doors—and he saw his opportunity to snoop. What did Mr. Cushman wear when he wasn’t naked or in his pajamas?

  The closet was empty and so were the dresser drawers.

  The bathroom, with its wonderful period black-and-white tiles, was a mess: medicine cabinet open, just a used razor and a bottle of aspirin inside, towels all over the floor.

  “Man, looks like he checked out without telling me,” said Parker Dalton.

  “Christ,” said the manager, beginning to shake his head. “He didn’t check out. He bolted.”

  “Are you calling the police?”

  “Be serious. This is the Chateau Marmont.”

  Parker Dalton was tweeting before he left the legendary and, some said, haunted hotel. Oh, man, what a tale he had to tell. By the end of the day, twenty thousand nosy people would know that Andy Cushman had stiffed the hotel and scampered away.

  Chapter 121

  IT WAS LATE afternoon when Del Rio turned off Lobo Canyon and parked his gray Land Rover off Lobo Vista Road.

  The sky was as gray as the car, as gray as his clothes, camouflage he didn’t need because this was such a desolate spot.

  Del Rio was thinking about Jack as he took his Remington 700, fitted with a ten-power scope, from the rear of the car.

  He walked off-road, taking a deer path up an incline through the scrub.

  The rise got steeper, and when the trail bore to the right, Del Rio broke a new path through the weeds, grabbing onto grasses and coyote brush and pulling himself up the hillside in places where his shoes slid on the slope.

  When he reached the plateau, he took in the view of the farmhouse seventy-five yards below him, with its sun-bleached outbuildings and stretch of terrain that looked like a rumpled and dusty carpet had been tossed over the hills.

  Del Rio assumed a prone position with the muzzle of the gun extended over the edge of the bluff.

  Forty minutes crawled by before the back door of the farmhouse opened—and the man he was waiting for came out with a dog, a handsome Rhodesian ridgeback.

  The guy had a rolling walk, wore a plaid shirt, jeans, a brown brimmed hat. He chained the dog to the porch post, patted its head, then picked up a bridle and saddle from a railing before heading to the paddock.

  The guy with the hat saddled up a bay mare and rode it out to a bridle path that led into the hills, where trouble was waiting for him.

  Del Rio lined up his shot where two lines of plaid intersected and squeezed the trigger.

  The mare’s ears went back, and Del Rio saw the hole appear in the rider’s shirt just as the horse rounded a bend.

  Del Rio stood and saw that the rider was still sitting upright, until, as if in slow motion, he tipped to the left and fell to the ground.

  The mare stepped off the trail, dragging the rider by one boot until he fell free. Then the horse stopped and grazed on the dry grass.

  Del Rio picked up his shell casing, put it in his shirt pocket, and walked down the bluff at a right angle to the trail.

  When he reached the hit man’s body, he checked for a pulse. There was none.

  He kicked the contract killer a couple times in the side to be sure he was dead, then said, “Hey, Bo Montgomery, you scum. Shelby didn’t see it coming either.”

  Del Rio wiped down his gun with his shirttails and tossed it over the cliff, saw it bounce and get lost in the miles of unbroken scrub.

  He polished the casing and hurled it after the gun, watched it disappear.

  One shot. One kill.

  Job done. Very professional. Very Private.

  Very personal too, thought Del Rio.

  Jack had loved Shelby—and he loved Jack.

  Chapter 122

  ALL OF OUR major cases were closed at the moment. At least that was true in the Los Angeles office.

  London, Frankfurt, Chicago, and New York were busy, and they were fighting a war in Presti’s office in Rome—which was good for the bottom line, though I didn’t much care about that.

  Our morning meeting in the war room had turned into an ad hoc, standing-room-only, hip-hip-hooray bash. Mo dished up cheesecake, Sci topped up coffee mugs with a jug-size bottle of Bailey’s, and Cruz stood close enough to Sci’s lab assistant Karen to see down her neckline and into her shoes.

  Pressured into saying a few words, Justine took the floor and spoke three
syllables: “We got ’em.”

  The group broke into whooping applause.

  Just then, the door opened, and my new assistant, Cody Dawes, slipped in and made his way toward me.

  “A Jeanette Colton showed up without an appointment, Jack. She’s in reception. What should I do?”

  “I’ll bring her up to my office,” I said. “Get in here, Cody. Get to know people. That’s the most important part of your job here.”

  “Your phones.”

  “This is why we have voice mail.”

  I left the war room and found Jeanette Colton sitting off to the side of the reception desk. The last time I’d seen her, she was neatly coiffed and contained, telling me how she and her tennis star husband and the couple down the street wanted to swap partners.

  I’d referred her to my old friend Haywood Prentiss, thinking it was too bad we couldn’t take the assignment.

  As I closed the distance between us, I could see that something was terribly wrong with Jeanette Colton. There was a fresh handprint on her left cheek, and both eyes were swollen and turning black.

  Her hand felt like a hook when she grabbed my arm and held on.

  “Jack, I have to talk to you. I’m sorry I just showed up like this.”

  “Jesus, what the hell happened? Let’s go upstairs to my office.”

  Her face twisted, and she started to cry. Suddenly she looked like a little girl.

  “I did a bad thing,” Jeanette Colton sputtered as we got into the elevator. “I ran Lars over with his Rolls.”

  “You did what?”

  “I ran him down, backed over him too.”

  “You killed him?”

  She shook her head no. “He was swearing at me when I left. I called an ambulance, but I didn’t wait for it to come. I need your help, Jack. I need the best.”

  We got out of the elevator and headed toward my office, lickety-split. Scratch that about all our major cases being solved.

  “I’ll help you any way I can,” I said, opening my door and stepping aside to let Jeanette walk into my office ahead of me.

  The door yawned open, and both Jeanette Colton and I did a double take. My twin was sitting in my chair, moccasins up on my desk, a smirk on his face.

  Why was he here?

  What new load of garbage was he going to dump on me now?

  “How is it going in the hero business?” Tommy said. “No need for tears, fair damsel in distress. Jack will straighten everything out for you.”

  Chapter 123

  “I JUST NEED a minute, bro,” Tommy said. “And then I’ll get out of your way.”

  I asked Jeanette Colton to take a seat next to Cody’s desk and said I’d be right back. Thirty seconds. I closed the door behind me.

  “Start talking,” I said.

  “It’s more like show-and-tell,” Tommy said, handing me a document from inside a blue folder.

  “Get away from my desk,” I said.

  Tommy snickered, got up, and took a seat in the side chair as I sat down at my desk and unfolded the legal document. I saw Tommy’s name and my dad’s.

  I looked at my brother and said, “Cut to the chase, will you, Junior? My client is in trouble.”

  “She’ll be just fine. I can tell. Anyway, happy to boil it down, twinster. I finished rehab with flying colors and mentioned it to Dad’s lawyer. I got big news. And I mean big.”

  “Dad wasn’t our real father? That’s a relief.”

  Tommy laughed. “Oh, he was our real father, all right. And since I successfully completed treatment, I inherit a bunch of money. Fifteen million, Jack. Same as you, I think.”

  I controlled my expression, but I was shocked. Knowing my father like I did, I figured he was running a Jack-versus-Tommy competition from the grave. The old man was sneaky even in death. Why else hadn’t he told me that he’d put money away for Tommy too?

  “You know what I’m going to do with my inheritance, Jack? I’m going to expand Private Security. We’re going to go global. I have Dad’s name, and I think he would want me to whip you. Private Security is going to be bigger and better than Private Investigations. You can count on it.”

  “Good for you, Tommy. I wish you and your business much success.”

  I stood up, showing him the door without taking a step. “Thanks for stopping by. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

  But Tommy wasn’t done. His smirk broadened.

  “I have something else for you,” he said. He took a slip of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it over.

  It was a check for $600,000, made out to me.

  “We’re even now, Jack,” he said.

  And then he stood and made a gun with his forefinger and thumb, pointed at me.

  “You’re dead, Jack.”

  He said it with an eerie bleat, and I understood that he was imitating the sound his voice had made all those times it came through the electronic gizmo used to disguise it. Seeing his face as he said “You’re dead” had an even more chilling effect than hearing a mechanical voice over the phone. It was that much more real.

  This was my brother; this was my twin.

  He hated me so much that he’d been secretly tormenting me for years.

  I didn’t flinch even though he’d hurt me. I said, “So it has been you, Junior, calling me all this time. I asked you if you were calling, and you lied. And like all the other times I gave you the benefit of the doubt, you turned it back on me.

  “I won’t trust you again, not ever. And by the way, bro. I’m not dead. No way. No how. Not yet.”

  Tommy said nothing. His grin was wooden as he left my office. My womb mate, my sworn enemy, my daily death threat caller headed down the winding nautilus shell staircase and out of sight. I hoped I’d never see him or hear his voice again.

  Fat chance of that.

  I went out and got Jeanette Colton. “My evil twin,” I explained.

  Chapter 124

  I WOKE UP the next morning in accord with my own circadian rhythms.

  For a change, I wasn’t torn out of a nightmare. The phone hadn’t rung. The surf was up behind my house, and the sound of crashing waves was coming through the open windows. Nice.

  Even nicer, Justine was lying next to me.

  I turned to look at her gorgeous face and saw that she was watching me and smiling. I was filled with complete love for this woman.

  She put her arms around my neck and pulled me close to her.

  “The music of the surf,” she said. “I’ve always loved this house.”

  “This house has always loved you.”

  We were on our sides, facing each other. I pulled her thigh over my hip and suddenly we were immersed in a deep kiss, the sound of our breathing overwhelming the rush of the waves.

  I didn’t think I could wait another moment—when the goddamned phone rang on the table.

  Tommy. I reached for the phone, planning to blast him to hell. Then I read the caller ID. It wasn’t Tommy—and still I had to take the call.

  “Jack Morgan,” I said, panting a little.

  Carmine Noccia’s tone was casual, but his message was deadly serious.

  “Sorry, Jack, but I’ve got bad news for you. Andy Cushman was involved in a one-car accident up the coast. He met a turn in the road head-on and went over a cliff near Marin. The car burned right the hell up. There were no skid marks. I think maybe his brakes failed.”

  “You’re sure it was Andy?” I asked. I was having a little trouble talking, and breathing.

  “Oh, yeah. It was him. One of my guys saw it happen. We were keeping an eye on him, you know. Hey. You have a good weekend.”

  I closed the phone but hung on to it for a moment. I thought about my new silent partner, Carmine Noccia. Never a better friend. Never a worse enemy.

  And I thought about how my feelings for Andy had changed once I knew he’d had Shelby murdered.

  Andy had been my closest friend. I’d stood up for him at his wedding. I had expected to be
godfather to Andy’s kids, or at least hang out with him when we were old, jetting around to golf courses, swapping memories, laughing our faces off.

  And now Andy was dead. I knew I would feel something later, but for now I felt nothing for him.

  Nothing at all.

  I got out of bed and opened the sliders. Then I hauled back and hurled the phone as far as I could. Far. When the phone hit the waves, I closed the doors and locked them. I went back to Justine.

  Could she read my face? Sure.

  Could she read my mind? Probably.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She ran her hands down my sides and up my back. “You okay, Jack?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, moving her long dark hair away from her face. “It’s time for a new phone, a new phone number.”

  “Surprise me sometime, okay? Can you do that? Tell me what you’re actually thinking.”

  “I’m thinking we were in the middle of something really good,” I said.

  “I remember.”

  I pulled Justine close, snugged her thigh over my hip. I kissed her again and got lost in the wonder of her. It was good, exactly where I wanted to be. I could tell her anything, and I did.

  “Andy’s dead,” I whispered against Justine’s cheek.

  Acknowledgments

  Our thanks to these top professionals, who shared with us their valuable time and expertise:

  Captain Rich Conklin; Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk; Captain Neil Oswald, USMC; Elaine Pagliaro, MS, JD; Steve Bowen; Ken Zercies; Mark Bruno; and C. Peter Colomello.

  And our special thanks to our researchers, Lynn Colomello and Lauren Sheftell, and of course Mary Jordan, who manages it all.

  About the Authors

  JAMES PATTERSON has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson’s books have sold more than 180 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Mr. Patterson also writes the bestselling Women’s Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the top-selling New York detective series of all time, featuring Detective Michael Bennett.