Authors: James Patterson
AFTER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of weight training, twenty minutes on the rowing machine, and another forty-five on the treadmill, Spence Harrington was dripping with sweat. He peeled off his clothes and carefully studied every inch of his body in the mirror that filled one entire wall of his home gym.
He had a body mass index of twenty and was trying to drive it down to the teens. Not bad for a guy who could smell forty a few birthdays away. One of the pluses of giving up bad habits was being able to build a body that looked this good naked. He wasn’t sure who liked looking at it more—him or Kylie.
He padded to the bathroom, tossed his wet gym clothes in the hamper, took a ten-minute shower, toweled himself dry, and crawled into bed.
Spence had the fifteen-minute power nap down to a science, and he set the timer on his iPhone for sixteen minutes. He was asleep before the first sixty seconds had ticked off. A quarter of an hour later, he awoke to the familiar sound of Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You, Babe,” a ringtone homage to his favorite movie,
Groundhog Day.
The thermostats throughout the three-bedroom apartment were set at sixty-four degrees, and as soon as he tossed the top sheet off, the cool air puffed playfully on his warm skin. He sank back down into the pillow and ran a hand along his belly until it settled between his legs. He cupped himself and inhaled deeply. He and Kylie hadn’t had sex since she started her new job. He closed his eyes, pictured her naked in bed next to him, and immediately felt himself grow hard.
Nothing like exercise, a hot shower, and a near-death experience to get a guy horny, he thought as he removed his hand and sat up on the edge of the bed. He picked up the phone and called his wife.
“How you doing?” she said.
“I’m showered, naked, and as randy as a billy goat on a Viagra binge,” he said. “How about you?”
“Fabulous. I just spent the last two hours with my masseuse. Oh, no wait, that was Internal Affairs debriefing me after the shooting to see if I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress, or if I’m still fit for duty.”
“And?”
“Bad news, Goat Boy. I’m on the job till we catch this bastard. How is Shelley holding up?”
“He’s as happy as Heloise on double coupon day. His doc gave him some pain meds, and he went back to the office and got a call from Electronic Arts. They’re one of the biggest video game companies on the planet, and after the shoot-out this morning, they suddenly got interested in us.”
“That was fast,” Kylie said.
“That’s the game biz. Anyway, they asked if they could send a couple of developers tonight to check out the pilot. And you know how Shelley’s brain works. He said yes, then immediately called a dozen other video game developers, and now Sony and Nintendo will be there too.”
“Spence, Benoit has explosives,” Kylie said. “There aren’t enough cops or dogs to go around, and a private party won’t be one of our priorities. Make sure Shelley hires some security.”
“I already told him that, but he’s not worried.”
“Somebody shot him,” Kylie said. “Doesn’t he think it could happen again?”
“No. He thinks the girl just wanted to shoot at a bunch of movie and TV people, and she figured she’d nail somebody famous at Ian’s memorial. But as far as Shelley is concerned, all he’s having tonight is a private meeting with a bunch of boring business guys. The real glitzy stuff with the loud music and the boldface names will be at Kiss and Fly, 230 Fifth, Tenjune—places like that. That’s where you should be looking for this nut job—hold on a sec, someone’s ringing up from downstairs.”
He pushed star zero to get the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Hey, Mr. Harrington. It’s Trevor from the Silvercup mailroom. I got a package for you—looks like script changes.”
“Bring it up, Trev. Seventh floor. Thanks.”
He clicked back.
“Who was that?” Kylie said.
“The escort service is here. I called them a few hours ago. Ordered up a hooker.”
“How did you know I wouldn’t be there?”
“I didn’t. In fact, I was hoping we could make it a three-way.”
“You’re terrible.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“Have fun with your hooker and your video games,” Kylie said.
“And you be careful chasing bad guys. I love you.”
“Love you too. Got to go.”
The doorbell rang, and Kylie hung up. Spence grabbed a pillow, put it in front of him, and hustled to the door.
“Hey, Trevor, I’m not dressed,” he said. “Can you just slide it under the door?”
“It’s too thick,” Trevor said, “but how about if I just drop it in front of the door and go.”
“Perfect.”
“No problem, sir. Have a nice night.”
Spence put an ear to the door and listened as the envelope hit the carpet. Trevor walked to the elevator. It was already parked at seven, so the doors opened immediately. They closed, and the elevator went down to the lobby.
Still holding the pillow in front of him, Spence stepped outside, bent down, and reached for the envelope.
The Chameleon, hugging the wall outside the door, pointed the stun baton at Spence’s right shoulder and squeezed the trigger. One million volts surged through Spence Harrington’s body and dropped him to the floor.
“Like I told you, Spence,” Gabriel said. “Script changes. Your part just got a lot bigger.”
“IT’S AMAZING HOW easy it is to buy one of these stun batons,” Gabriel said as he pulled Spence’s body across the threshold. “Only fifty bucks on the Internet. The real pain in the ass was getting it delivered. Can you believe that Tasers and stuns are legal in forty-four states, but they can’t be shipped to goddamn New York? Or Jersey.”
He kicked the front door shut and dragged Spence into the living room.
“But you got to love these companies that sell shit like this on the Web. Right there on their site, in big red type, it says, ‘Do you live in a prohibited delivery zone? Don’t worry. Give us an alternate shipping address from any legal area and we can still ship it for you!’ So I drive to Connecticut, where they’re allowed, except that they’re restricted to in-home use. But I figure I’m legal because I’m only zapping you here in your home.” Gabriel laughed.
“Anyway, I rent a box at the UPS Store in Stamford, drive back a week later, and there it is waiting for me. ‘Discreetly packaged,’ as promised. Like I said, it was a pain in the ass, but it’s all part of preproduction.”
He lowered Spence’s head and shoulders to the floor, got a sturdy chair from the dining room table, and centered it ten feet from the front door.
“Now, I know you can’t talk yet, but you can hear me. I need you up in this chair. I’ll do most of the heavy lifting, but you got to help. Otherwise, zap, zap, zap. It’s an amazing little piece of business, this baton. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight reviews on the website gave it five stars. You can see why.”
Gabriel planted his hands under Spence’s armpits, grunted hard, and lifted him into the chair.
“Funny you should be naked,” he said. “It wasn’t in the script, but I like it. Makes you more vulnerable on camera. And the movie’s already rated R, so a little nudity doesn’t change anything.”
It took ten minutes for Spence to come to. By that time, his ankles and calves were duct-taped to the legs of the chair, and there was more tape wrapped around his torso, trapping his arms and hands behind him. A third swath of duct tape covered his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw Gabriel hovering in front of him.
“Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty. Your prince has been waiting.”
He rested the tip of the stun baton on the chair between Spence’s open legs. “I’m taking the tape off your mouth,” he said. “If you yell, your voice will go up about twelve octaves.”
Spence nodded, then winced as Gabe yanked hard to remove the tape. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“I’m The Chameleon,” Gabriel said.
Spence stared at him in disbelief. “I don’t…I don’t understand. That’s the name of my new show. The Chameleon is my new character.”
“The one you stole from me,” Gabriel said. “I submitted that idea to you two years ago. I’m The Chameleon.”
The man was insane, and Spence shook his head, trying to process the information. “Okay,” he said. “You’re The Chameleon. I’m screening a pilot tonight. The central character is a private detective—a master of disguise. He’s also called The Chameleon. It’s a coincidence. I never stole—”
“I don’t care if you changed him to a detective or a bus driver or an astronaut,” Gabriel said, the anger raising his voice. “It’s still my idea. I sent it to you. I
trusted
you.”
“I believe you,” Spence said. “The thing is, people send me ideas every day, but I can’t read them. Most TV producers never read unsolicited pitches unless they come from an agent we work with.”
“Most TV producers lie through their teeth,” Gabriel said.
“I swear I’m telling you the truth,” Spence said. “The Chameleon is an idea that I had four years ago. I’ve been developing it ever since, and I finally—what are you doing?”
The Chameleon reached into his backpack. “Look what we have here,” he said. “And you thought the cattle prod was bad? This little movie of mine is just full of surprises, isn’t it?”
Spence screamed. “Help! Somebody! Help!”
Gabriel’s fist connected with Spence’s nose, and the screams were replaced by the sound of cartilage crunching and snapping. He pulled Spence’s head back and violently wrapped the duct tape around his mouth three times.
“You not only took my idea,” Gabriel said, holding up the object of Spence’s terror. “You took my life. And now, guess what, pretty boy? It’s payback time.”
THERE ARE THREE dozen dogs in NYPD’s Emergency Services K-9 Unit. Half of them work narcotics, the other half are bomb sniffers. A few have been cross-trained to find cadavers. Even in a city the size of New York, on any given day, eighteen bomb-sniffing dogs would be more than enough.
But this was not any given day.
I called Sergeant Kyle Warren, the K-9 coordinator for all of NYPD. He’s only thirty-two years old, but he’s been training dogs since he was ten. I laid out the problem, and all he said was “I’m on it.”
Two hours later, Warren called back. He had recruited dogs from the state police in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and from as far north as the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department. By 5:00 p.m., our K-9 contingent was up to thirty-two.
Kylie and I were at the precinct, sticking pushpins into a map of the city that was tacked to a corkboard wall. Since we didn’t have enough dogs to cover every possible target, we had to decide which of them warranted a canine handler to be stationed there full-time, and which could be swept and then have the dog sent on to the next venue.
“I think Spence is right,” Kylie said. “The meatpacking district has to be the prime target. It’s where most of your A-listers are going to be. We should have at least half a dozen bomb-sniffing dogs working this area.”
“Knowing those A-listers,” I said, “I’ll bet we’d hit the jackpot if we sent in a couple of narco dogs as well.”
Kylie’s cell rang. Except it wasn’t her usual ringtone.
“Has my husband lost his mind?” she said. “It’s a Skype call from Spence. Does he really think I have nothing better to do than video-chat?”
“Consider yourself lucky,” I said. “He only calls me in the middle of the night.”
She held up her iPhone and connected to Skype.
“Oh my God. Zach…”
I looked over her shoulder. There on the iPhone screen was Spence, bound, gagged, and sitting totally naked in a chair.
“Spence…” was all Kylie could get out.
And then Gabriel Benoit stepped into the picture.
“Hello, Detective MacDonald. And there’s your sidekick, Detective Jordan, right behind you. I don’t know if you found my apartment yet,” Benoit said, “but I found yours.”
“What do you want?” Kylie said.
“I want you to suffer the same way you made me suffer. Do you know who that woman was that you killed this morning?”
“She was a cold-blooded murderer,” Kylie said. “She opened fire on a bunch of defenseless people.”
“Lexi was as innocent as a child,” Benoit said. “If she killed anyone, it’s because they deserved it.”
“What do you want?” Kylie repeated.
“Do you know how painful it is to lose someone you love?” Benoit asked.
Kylie didn’t answer.
“You’re about to find out,” he taunted.
He held up a fat block of C4 to the camera. There was a digital timer taped to it with one black wire and one white wire, both connected to a detonator buried deep in the plastic.
“You have thirty minutes,” Benoit said. “And then I will have taken from you, the same way you have taken from me.”
He pushed a button. The digital timer flashed 29:59 and began to count down the seconds. When it got to 29:55, he removed it from view, and once again we were looking at Kylie’s living room. Five seconds later, he hung up.
The screen went dark, but the last image I had seen would forever be burned onto my brain. Spence Harrington, naked, totally helpless, taped to a chair in his own apartment, alone and afraid, waiting to die.
KYLIE BOLTED.
I grabbed a radio and was right behind her, taking the stairs two at a time.
“I need a PPV!” she yelled at Sergeant McGrath as she careened into the front desk and pushed aside a civilian. “Two-one-seven in progress.”
McGrath didn’t hesitate. If there was any bad blood from the earlier meeting, it was forgotten. A Two-one-seven was an assault with intent to kill, and Kylie was clearly a cop on a mission.
“Sixty-four Forty-two,” he said. “Chevy Caprice out front. Fastest PPV we got. Keys are in it.”
Kylie flew out the door and raced for the Chevy. She opened the front door, and I grabbed her by the arm.
“We should call the bomb squad,” I said.
She shoved me off.
“No. By the time they suit up, mobilize, find my apartment, and decide the safest way to defuse the bomb, Spence will be dead. It’s either me,” she said, “or you and me. Are you in or out?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“In!” I yelled, throwing myself into the passenger side as she peeled out and blasted through the red light on Lexington, light bars flashing, siren screaming.
“We should call for backup,” I said.
“Not until we get there and we can assess the situation,” she said, swinging onto Fifth. “We can’t take a chance on having some gung ho rookie showing up and deciding to play hero.”
“You think it’s any better to send a gung ho wife to play hero?”
“Dammit, Zach, I’ve got twenty-eight minutes,” she said. “I know where Spence is and how to get there, and I don’t have time to brief a backup unit and get them up to speed.”
Kylie made a hard right onto Central Park South, the ritzy stretch of 59th Street that runs from Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue to Columbus Circle at Eighth. The street was lined with dozens of horse-drawn hansom cabs waiting to take willing tourists on a twenty-minute trot through the park for fifty bucks plus tip. Kylie leaned on the siren, then hopped the double yellow line into the eastbound lane, where there was a lot less traffic.
“We went through a list of every possible target,” she said. “How did we not think of Spence?”
“We were looking for the big cinematic finale,” I said. “But Benoit just turned this around into a vendetta. You killed his girlfriend.”
“Right,” she said. She turned left onto Seventh Avenue, skidded into the fire lane, and floored the Caprice. “So if Spence dies, it’s my fault.”
My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates,” I said. “McGrath must have told her we took off on a Two-one-seven.”
“Don’t pick it up,” Kylie said.
“Are you out of your mind?” I said. “She’s our boss.”
“Yes, right now I am totally out of my mind, and if we tell our boss what we’re doing, she might pull the plug. Zach, I know that Spence doesn’t mean much to you, but if you care about me, please, please, please don’t answer the phone.”
If I cared about her? Had I ever stopped caring? And now all that emotional baggage was threatening to drag down the only other thing I cared about. My career.
The phone rang a second time.
Cates’s caller ID flashed on the screen. Below that were two buttons. One green, one red: accept, decline.
They may just as well have said: lose, lose.
I will probably regret this for the rest of my life,
I thought.
I pressed one of the buttons.