Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Also by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge
Title Page
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Part One
Chapter 1
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
Part Two
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
Part Three
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
Part Four
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
Epilogue
Chapter 104
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
Forced into hiding from a mass murderer seeking vengeance, Detective Michael Bennett must decide whether to stay and protect his family, or hunt down the man who is hunting them.
When Bennett arrested Manuel Perrine, he thought he had brought an end to the drug cartel boss’s reign of terror and would get justice for the murder of his best friend. But then, during the trial, Perrine escaped.
In a bloody shoot-out, Bennett killed Perrine’s wife. Now he wants nothing more than to make Bennett suffer, to make him pay.
The whole family are moved to a safe-house in California. But as Perrine’s attacks on US soil become more vicious and more daring, it’s clear there is a war coming.
No one, anywhere, is safe.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Detective Michael Bennett novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
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 specifically for young readers. James is a founding partner of Booktrust’s Children’s Reading Fund in the UK. In 2010, he was voted Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards in New York.
MICHAEL LEDWIDGE is the author of ten novels, including seven New York Times bestsellers co-authored with James Patterson. He lives with his wife and three children in Connecticut.
ALSO BY JAMES PATTERSON
DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
ALEX CROSS NOVELS
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Jack and Jill
Cat and Mouse
Pop Goes the Weasel
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Four Blind Mice
The Big Bad Wolf
London Bridges
Mary, Mary
Cross
Double Cross
Cross Country
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
I, Alex Cross
Cross Fire
Kill Alex Cross
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Alex Cross, Run
Cross My Heart (to be published November 2013)
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES
1st to Die
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private LA (with Mark Sullivan, to be published January 2014)
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
NON-FICTION
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
ROMANCE
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
FAMILY OF PAGE
-TURNERS
MAXIMUM RIDE SERIES
The Angel Experiment
School’s Out Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Final Warning
Max
Fang
Angel
Nevermore
DANIEL X SERIES
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)
Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)
Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)
Game Over (with Ned Rust)
Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)
WITCH & WIZARD SERIES
Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Gift (with Ned Rust)
The Fire (with Jill Dembowski)
The Kiss (with Jill Dembowski)
MIDDLE SCHOOL NOVELS
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou)
Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts)
I FUNNY
I Funny (with Chris Grabenstein)
I Even Funnier (with Chris Grabenstein, to be published December 2013)
TREASURE HUNTERS
Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein)
CONFESSIONS SERIES
Confessions of a Murder Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Private School Murders (with Maxine Paetro, to be published October 2013)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Daniel X: Alien Hunter (with Leopoldo Gout)
Maximum Ride: Manga Vol. 1–7 (with NaRae Lee)
For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit www.jamespatterson.co.uk
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PROLOGUE
FATHER AND SON
ONE
IT WAS THREE A.M. on the button when the unmarked white box truck turned onto the steep slope of Sweetwater Mesa Road and began to climb up into the exclusive Serra Retreat neighborhood of Malibu, California.
Majestic mountain peaks rising to the left, thought Vida Gomez as she looked out from the truck’s passenger seat. Nothing but moonlit ocean to the right. No wonder so many movie stars lived here.
As if the sights matter, Vida thought, tearing her eyes off the million-dollar view and putting them back on the screen of the iPhone in her lap. What was up with her? She never got distracted on a job. She took a calming breath. She seriously needed to buckle down. Taking her eye off the ball here would not be prudent. Not tonight.
She was in the midst of typing a text when out of the corner of her eye she noticed the driver trying to look down her shirt again. No wonder she was a little off her game, she thought with a muffled sigh. The new, pudgy driver that the cartel had sent at the last minute was incompetence walking on two legs. That was just like them to send her some fat-assed chump for “training” at the last minute. All he had to do was drive, and apparently, he couldn’t get even that done.
The next time the oaf let his eyes wander, Vida made a command leadership decision. She calmly lifted the MGP-84 machine pistol in her lap and placed the long, suppressed barrel to one of his stubbled chins.
“Do you think we’re on a hot date here tonight? On the way to the prom, maybe? By all means, give me your best line, Romeo. If it’s good enough, maybe we’ll skip first and go straight to second base,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” the suddenly sweating driver said after a long, tense beat. “I made a mistake.”
“No, that was your parents,” Vida said, digging the gun in hard under his fleshy chin. “Now, here’s the deal. You can either (a) keep your eyes on the road, or (b) I can splatter what little brains you possess all over it instead. Which do you prefer?”
“A,” the driver said, nodding rapidly after a moment. “I choose a. Please, señorita.”
“Excellent,” Vida said, finally lowering the chunky black metal pistol. “I’m so glad we had this little talk.”
The truck killed its lights before they pulled into the darkened driveway of 223 Sweetwater Mesa Road ten minutes later. She was about to retext the alarm company tech they’d bribed when he finally texted back. It was a one-word message, but it was enough.
Disabled, it said.
She wheeled around and slid open the small window that separated the rear of the truck from the cab. The eight cartel soldiers crouched there were wearing black balaclavas over their faces, black fatigues, black combat boots.
“Ándele,” she barked rabidly at them. “It’s time. What are you waiting for?”
The truck’s rear double doors opened silently, and the black-clad men issued forth onto the shadowed driveway and began gearing up. They strapped themselves into military-grade personal protective equipment, black nuclear-biological-chemical suits. Each suit had a self-contained breathing apparatus and was made of rubber over reinforced nylon and charcoal-impregnated felt.
Vida joined her men, slowly and carefully fitting the positive-pressure mask over her face before meticulously checking the suit’s material for any slits or gaps, as per her extensive training. When she was done, she bit her lip as she stared up at the seven-thousand-square-foot mission-style house behind the wrought iron gate. She let out a tense breath and closed her eyes, wondering if she was going to throw up the flock of butterflies swirling in her stomach.
She felt stage fright every time right before a job, but this was ridiculous. It was the uncertainty of what they were about to try. What they were about to do was … something new, something so volatile, so incredibly dangerous.
I really don’t want to do this, Vida thought for the hundredth time.
Who was she kidding? As if she had a choice after accepting her latest promotion. The path before her was excessively simple. Either go through with what the cartel had ordered or blow her own brains out right here and now.
She stared at the machine pistol in her heavy rubber-gloved hand, weighing her options. Then, after another moment, she did what she always did. She pulled herself the hell together and nodded to her right-hand man, Estefan. Two muffled coughing sounds ripped the warm quiet as he blew off the hinge bolts of the iron walkway gate beside the driveway with a suppressed shotgun.
“Remember, now. No guns unless completely necessary,” Vida said through the face mask’s built-in microphone as one of the men handed her a small video camera. “You all know why we are here. We are here to leave a message.”
One by one, the men nodded. The only sound now was that of their breathing from the interior speakers, an amplified metallic, metronomic hiss. Vida turned on the camera and pointed it at the men as they poured through the open gate and converged on the darkened house.
TWO
THREE THOUSAND MILES EAST of balmy Serra Retreat, it was cold and raining along the still-dark shore of south-western Connecticut. Downstairs, in his basement workout room, Michael Licata, recently appointed don of the Bonanno crime family, was covered in sweat and grunting like a Eurotrash tennis pro as he did his Tuesday kettle-bell workout.
As he felt the burn, Licata thought it was sort of ironic that out of all the rooms in his new, $8.8 million mansion on the water in moneyed Westport, Connecticut, he liked this unfinished basement the best. The exposed studs, the sweat stains on the cement, his weights and beat-up heavy bag. Pushing himself to the limit every morning in this unheated, raw room was his way of never forgetting who he was and always would be: the hardest, most ruthless son of a bitch who had ever clawed his way up from the gutter of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
The short and stocky fifty-year-old dropped the forty-pound kettle bell to the concrete floor with a loud crack as he heard the intercom buzz on the basement phone. It was his wife, he knew from bitter experience. Not even six-thirty a.m. and already she was on his case, wanting some bullshit or other, probably for him to pick up their perpetually late
housekeeper, Rita, from the train station again.
And he’d imagined that by working from home instead of from his Arthur Avenue social club in the Bronx, he could get more done. Screw her, he thought, lifting the bell back up. The man of the house wasn’t taking calls at the moment. He was freaking busy.
He was stretched out on the floor, about to do an ass-cracking exercise called the Turkish get-up, when he looked up and saw his wife. She wasn’t alone. Standing there in the doorway with her was his capo and personal bodyguard, Ray “The Psycho” Siconolfi.
Licata literally couldn’t believe his eyes. Because how could it be possible that his stupid wife would bring Ray here, into his sanctuary, to see him shirtless and sweating like a hairy pig in just his bicycle shorts?
“You’re kidding me, right?” Licata said, red-faced, glaring at his wife as he stood.
“It’s my fault?!” Karen shrieked back at him, like his very own silk-pajama-clad witch. “You don’t answer the frigging phone!”
That was it. Licata turned like a shot-putter and slung the kettle bell at her. Before she could move, the forty-pound hunk of iron sailed an inch past her ear and went right through the Sheetrock, into the finished part of the basement, popping a stud out of the frame on the way. She moved then, boy. Like a scalded squirrel.
“This better —” Licata said, staring death up into his six-foot five-inch bodyguard’s eyes, “and, Ray, I mean better—be fucking good.”
Ray, ever expressionless, held up a legal-sized yellow envelope.
“Somebody just left this on the gatehouse doorstep,” Ray said, handing it to him. “I heard a truck or something, but when I came out, it was gone.”
“What the—? Is it ticking?” Licata said, shaking his head at him.