He knew what she wanted to hear next, so he told her. “Well, I won’t have a bitchy wife for much longer. I swear to God I won’t, Boo. I love you dearly, and I’m going to leave Lucy soon.”

He looked at her heavily made-up face and watched as tears formed and ruined her look. “I love you, Geoff,” she whispered, and Shafer smiled as if he were pleased to hear it.

God, he was so good at this.

Lies.

Fantasies.

Role-playing games.

He unbuttoned the front of her mauve silk blouse, fondled her, then carried her inside to the sofa.

“This is my idea of therapy,” he whispered hotly in Boo’s ear. “This is all the therapy I need.”

Chapter 60

I HAD BEEN UP since before five that morning. I had to call Inspector Patrick Busby in Bermuda. I wanted to talk to him every day, sometimes more than once, but I stopped myself.

It would only make things worse, strain my relations with the local police, and signal that I didn’t trust them to handle the investigation properly.

“Patrick, it’s Alex Cross calling from Washington. Did I catch you at a good time? Can you talk for a moment now?” I asked. I always tried to sound as upbeat as possible.

I wasn’t, of course. I had been up pacing the house, and already had breakfast with Nana. Then I’d waited impatiently until eight-thirty Bermuda time to call Busby at the station house in Hamilton. He was an efficient man, and I knew he was there every morning by eight.

I could picture the thin, wiry policeman as we talked on the phone. I could see the tidy cubicle office where he worked. And superimposed over everything, I could still see Christine on her moped waving good-bye to me on that perfectly sunny afternoon.

“I have a few things for you from my contact at Interpol,” I said. I told him about an abduction of a woman on Jamaica earlier in the summer, and another in Barbados; both were similar, though not identical, to Christine’s disappearance. I didn’t think they were connected, really, but I wanted to give him something, anything.

Patrick Busby was a thoughtful and patient man; he remained silent until I had finished talking before asking his usual quota of logical questions. I had observed that he was flawed as an interrogator because he was so polite. But at least he hadn’t given up.

“I assume that neither abduction was ever solved, Alex. How about the women who were taken? Were they found?”

“No, neither woman was seen again. Not a sign of them. They’re still missing.”

He sighed into the phone receiver. “I hope your news is helpful in some way, Alex. I’ll certainly call the other islands and check into it further. Anything else from Interpol or the FBI?”