Contents
About Book
About Authors
Also by James Patterson
Title Page
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
Read on for an Excerpt from REVENGE
Copyright
About the Book
Detective Harriet Blue is clear about two things. Regan Banks deserves to die. And she’ll be the one to pull the trigger.
But Regan – the vicious serial killer responsible for destroying her brother’s life – has gone to ground.
Suddenly, her phone rings. It’s him. Regan.
‘Catch me if you can,’ he tells her.
Harriet needs to find this killing machine fast, even if the cost is her own life. So she follows him down the Australian south coast with only one thing on her mind.
Revenge is coming – and its name is Harriet Blue …
About the Authors
James Patterson
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 375 million copies worldwide. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions, and Maximum Ride series. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and has been the most borrowed author of adult fiction in UK libraries for the past eleven years in a row. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
Candice Fox
Candice is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney’s western suburbs. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.
Candice won back-to-back Ned Kelly awards for her first two novels Hades and Eden. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed Fall and co-writer with James Patterson of the Sunday Times No.1 bestseller Never Never set in the Australian outback.
Also by James Patterson
DETECTIVE HARRIET BLUE SERIES
Never Never (with Candice Fox)
Fifty Fifty (with Candice Fox)
A list of more titles by James Patterson is printed at the back of this book
Chapter 1
SOMETHING WAS NOT right.
Doctor Samantha Parish noticed an odour 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 rear-view mirror. He was silhou-etted 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. ‘Isobe
l, 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.
As they arrived at the clinic, Isobel gave a moan of terror, huddling against her mother as they exited the car. In her ballet get-up, she was the frightened black swan, shoulders bent forward, trying to disappear under her mother’s wing.
She guessed where he wanted to go and turned and walked through the consulting room into theatre 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 towards 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 dif-ficulty, 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 anaesthetic,’ 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 anaesthetic 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 anaesthetic 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, traumatised, 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 orientate 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 bar rooms and drug dens, the basements and attics of city brothels. I had searched for Regan through the underworld, following whispers between depraved men, chasing rumours 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 mouldy 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, alright?’ 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 leapt 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.