Chapters (42)
- Cover Page
- EARLY BIRD BOOKS
- Praise for the Writing of Richard North Patterson
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- About the Author
Henry’s hands trembled. “You talk about something you don’t understand. I’d go to cocktail parties, pretending to be happy, and all the time I’m hoping, looking for someone whose eyes don’t slide away. Furtiveness becomes a way of life.”
“That’s no answer.”
He looked across at me. “I’d found someone, Adam. A man with a wife and three children.”
I pulled out a cigarette and began tamping one end on my wristwatch. “Who is he?”
“I can never tell that.”
I looked up. “Rayfield would find that convenient.”
“It doesn’t matter.” For a moment Henry’s face was almost serene. “I love him,” he said simply.
I lit the cigarette and smoked half of it. Night had fallen. Henry sat in a circle of lamplight as if cornered by darkness. Finally I said, “Tell me what happened, leaving out his name.”
“You won’t try to find him, Adam.”
“I won’t even assume that he exists.”
“Then you don’t believe me.”
“Just tell it,” I said angrily.
Henry checked his cuffs and tie knot with quick, nervous gestures. “There’s not much to tell,” he said reluctantly. “We’d arranged to meet. He told his wife he was going on a trip. I got the room and called Lydia to say I was too tired to drive home. I’d used that excuse before; she knew what it meant. Usually she treated it with weary, almost tolerant, contempt. But this time she was intrusive, tense sounding. Who was I with, she asked. When I wouldn’t say, she grew angry. There was something we had to discuss, right now. Couldn’t it wait, I asked. She hesitated, then said, ‘It’s waited too long already.’ But I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get off the phone.” His voice was hoarse. “I just wanted to be with him. So I told her I’d be back in the morning and hung up.”
“Then you never learned what she wanted.”
He shook his head. “Jason and the will, perhaps. But I didn’t return to find out. If I had, she might have lived.”
“And now you wonder.”
“Yes.” He spoke intently. “But there’s something more. I have this terrible sense of buried connections, that what’s happened to all three of us—even Lydia’s death—is entwined with what I am. I have to know, Adam.”