Truth or Die

by James Patterson

  “Like this?” she asked, unsure, propping the butt of the gun high against her shoulder.

  “Actually, you want to bring it a little lower, sweetheart,” said Brennan, guiding the stock down a few inches.

  “And I aim by looking through …?”

  “You want to line up the front and rear sights,” he said, pointing them out.

  “So now what happens?” she asked, closing one eye to aim.

  “Now you try to shoot one of the clay disks that will be coming out of those little houses to your left and right,” said Brennan.

  “Just one?”

  He chuckled. So did more than half of the other men in the crowd. “Or two, if you’d like,” said Brennan. “Feel free to shoot them both. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little optimism.”

  With that, he looked back at Shahid and gave him a wink.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” said Beverly.

  “Great,” said Brennan. “All that’s left to do is say—”

  But Beverly Sands knew exactly what to say. Among other things.

  “Pull!” she yelled.

  As fast as the pigeons were released from the traps, they shattered even faster. First the low one, then the high one. Two quick blasts and they were blown to pieces … all over Abigail Brennan’s lawn.

  Casually, Beverly handed the shotgun back to a stunned Brennan and immediately looked down at her hand.

  “What do you know?” she said with a perfect shrug. “I think I broke a nail.”

  CHAPTER 85

  I’D BEEN around a lot of good defense attorneys, and the best of them were always lightning quick on their feet while oozing grace under pressure at all times. They also knew a no-win situation when they saw one.

  In other words, there was no way Josiah Brennan was taking his turn with that shotgun.

  “All right, then,” he said, turning to his guests with the best self-deprecating laugh he could muster. “I think it’s lunchtime.”

  The menu back on the patio was an eclectic mix of upscale and down-home. Next to the grilled New Zealand baby lamb chops were baked beans and corn bread. The napkins were linen, the utensils plastic. If the red velvet cake and the trifle were too rich for you, there was a tray of Rice Krispie treats made by the Brennans’ nine-year-old daughter, Rebecca, who looked like a mini-me of her mother.

  I figured a half hour to eat and mingle and blend in with the crowd. Then it was time to get lost. As for my permission to wander aimlessly in someone else’s home, that was as easy as three words. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  I made sure to pose the question to Mr. Henchman, since he was the only guy whose job it was to make sure I didn’t do what I was about to do. In his mind, at least for a few minutes, I was accounted for inside the house.

  “Down the hall, second left,” he told me.

  Closing the door behind me in the bathroom, I counted to thirty while staring at an equestrian-patterned wallpaper that even Ann Romney would’ve passed on. In case Mr. Henchman was standing watch, I then flushed the toilet and ran the sink for a few seconds.

  But he wasn’t standing watch. I was a guest, after all. That would’ve been weird.

  Walking out of the bathroom free and clear, I immediately turned into Monty Hall on speed. What’s behind door number one? And two? And three?

  Pay dirt came with door number four. The mahogany bookshelves, the studded leather couch and matching armchairs, the painting over the marble fireplace depicting a mute of hounds in pursuit of a fox—basically, just the overwhelming stench of testosterone—left no doubt that I was in Brennan’s home office.

  And sitting atop a huge partners desk the size of a pool table was the whole reason for my being there. Quickly, I reached for my new prepaid cell phone and dialed Owen, who was waiting back at the hotel.

  “Okay, I’m standing in front of his computer,” I said. “It’s a laptop, a Toshiba.”

  “That’ll work,” Owen said. “You remember what to do?”

  I did. First, I had to install the flash drive he’d given me, only it wasn’t a flash drive. It just looked like one. Owen called it a “phantom” because it overrode any and all password requirements—from accessing internal documents to e-mail accounts—and left no trace of the user. It would be as if I had never even been there. A phantom.

  “Okay, we’re up,” I said, staring at the desktop page. Thankfully, it booted up quickly. “We’re on his wireless network. Ready on your end?”

  “Ready.”

  I brought up Internet Explorer, typing in the Web address Owen had given me, which was a series of numbers that meant nothing to me until he explained that it was pi multiplied by pi to the tenth decimal. Yeah, that figured, too …

  “Do you see it?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  The “it” was a site he’d named Moonshine, because, according to Owen, it was homemade and always did the trick. The kid was like a Vegas magician, the way he had a name for everything. The difference being, his tricks weren’t illusions. They were real.

  “Okay, give me about thirty seconds,” he said.

  In layman’s terms, Owen was now hijacking Brennan’s hard drive, gaining access to every document he had. In the scheme of things, needing only a half minute to do that was like building Rome in a day. But from where I was standing, it was feeling like forever.

  I kept looking at the door, fearing the worst. It would be the next second or the next second after that when someone would turn that handle and walk in on me. Mr. Henchman, or even worse, Brennan himself. Some things you simply can’t talk your way out of.

  “C’mon, Owen,” I said to the beat of the tick-tick-tick in my head. “Tell me we’re done.”

  “Just a little longer,” he said.

  “I’m starting to get a bad feeling.”

  “That’s called paranoia.”

  “No, it’s called empirical evidence,” I said. “Have you been keeping a diary this week, by any chance?”

  “Good one,” he said. “Now do me a favor, will you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go back to the party.”

  Click. He was done.

  I pocketed my phone, exiting the browser and powering down the laptop as quickly as I could. All the while, I kept glancing at the door, willing it to remain closed.

  But it wasn’t the door I should’ve been worried about. It was the desk.

  The desk?

  CHAPTER 86

  I TOPPLED to the floor so fast there wasn’t even time to break my fall. Instead of throwing out my hands, the best I could do was lead with my shoulder. Better a cracked collarbone than a cracked skull.

  What the hell just happened? Did I really just get decked by the desk?

  Sort of.

  Right there under it, and still gripping my ankles, was the Annie Oakley of skeet shooting herself, Beverly Sands. What on earth she was doing there I was certain we’d get to in a moment. But first, it was pure instinct as I tried to kick myself free. I almost did, too, until she grabbed both my shins.

  Uh-oh. My shins.

  The second she felt the holster beneath my pant leg, out came a snub-nosed .38 that was strapped to her inner thigh courtesy of a tricked-out leather garter belt. Very La Femme Nikita.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “Why do you have a gun?”

  “Right back atcha,” I would’ve said if it hadn’t been for the fact that her gun was aimed right at my head.

  Instead, “I’m Trevor Mann,” I answered, trying to catch my breath. “We met when you arrived, remember?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t write for the Times.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You don’t look smug enough,” she said. “You’re also too nervous to be law enforcement.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry I can’t be more cool for you with a gun in my face.”

  She was losing her patience. “What the hell are you doing in here? Who was that on the phone? And what do you want
with Brennan’s computer?”

  “Jesus, one at a time, will you? Slow down.”

  She motioned over her shoulder toward the door. “We don’t have that luxury.”

  “Whatever I tell you, you won’t believe me,” I said.

  She was about to respond, her mouth open to form the first word. But she suddenly stopped, pointing at me.

  “Trevor Mann,” she said, repeating my name as if running it through her memory. “Why does that ring a bell?”

  “The NYPD pension fund?”

  She nodded. Bingo. “You’re that lawyer.”

  “Yes, I’m that lawyer.”

  Her finger was still pointing at me, but fortunately the gun wasn’t. She lowered it. “Honest to a fault,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “That wasn’t a compliment,” she informed me. “But go ahead, I might just believe you now.”

  There are times to talk and there are times to shut up. Then there are times when you’re on the floor with a woman wearing a leather garter-belt holster in the private office of a rich and powerful man who’d be less than understanding, to put it mildly, should he walk in on you.

  Whatever you tell her, Mann, make it fast….

  With that, I gave the quickest possible summation of what I was doing and why. “We think Brennan is involved with something he shouldn’t be.”

  “Join the club,” she said. “But who’s we?”

  “Me and the guy on the phone.”

  “Were you hacking Brennan’s e-mail?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Was it something more than that?”

  The way she asked the question, she sounded—of all things—hopeful.

  That was when it clicked, what she was doing underneath the giant desk. I could see the wires running straight down from the top through a grommet-covered hole.

  “You were bugging his phone, weren’t you? And I walked in on you,” I said.

  “Something like that,” she replied, mimicking me.

  “Who are you, then?” I asked.

  She thought for a second, weighing the truth versus a possible lie. The truth won out. “My name’s not Beverly Sands, it’s Agent Valerie Jensen,” she said. “I’m with the NSA.”

  “Since when do you guys have field agents?”

  “We don’t. Just like we also don’t bug phones,” she said, standing. Without the slightest hint of modesty, she hiked up her white sundress, reholstering her .38 along her inner thigh. “C’mon, we’ve got to get back to the party.”

  I stood up, falling in line behind her. We were ten feet from the door when she suddenly motioned for me to stop.

  The next thing I knew, she was kissing me.

  CHAPTER 87

  BEFORE I could figure out what the hell was going on, the door of Brennan’s office opened. The hinges had the distinct sound of a train flying off the tracks.

  Immediately, Valerie broke away from me. We’d been caught in the act: our mouths agape, eyes wide with surprise. But between the two of us, I was the only one not acting.

  Valerie had heard the footsteps and had seen the turn of the door handle. Talk about thinking fast on your feet. Agent Jensen was even faster with her lips.

  “Are you two cheating?” the young girl asked.

  Staring at us with her arms crossed, waiting for an answer, was the Brennans’ nine-year-old daughter, Rebecca.

  “Cheating?” asked Valerie.

  “You know, like, having an affair? You came to the party with a different man,” Rebecca said. “I saw you, don’t lie.”

  “No … no, honey,” I said, shifting quickly into denial mode. It was pure reflex. “We were just—”

  Valerie cut me off faster than a New York City cabdriver. “Yes, you caught us,” she said. “We’re having an affair.”

  I looked at her, stunned. Did you really just say that?

  She really did.

  Little Rebecca nodded with the kind of self-satisfied grin kids get when a grown-up treats them like a grown-up. She pointed at me.

  “You better be careful, then,” she said. “I saw this movie on TV, and when the husband found out, he killed the other guy with a snow globe.”

  “Ooh, I’ve seen that movie, too,” said Valerie. She turned to me, raising her hands to act it out. “You get hit right in the head with the snow globe—bam!—and blood starts gushing down your forehead and—”

  “I know, I know!” said Rebecca excitedly. She was rocking from her heels to her tiptoes. “Wasn’t it gross?”

  “Totally gross,” said Valerie. “Like, gag me with a giant spoon.”

  Rebecca giggled. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re also really pretty.”

  “Thank you,” said Valerie. “I think you’re really pretty, too.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, and your mother tells me that you go to the Sidwell Friends School, so I bet you’re really smart, too.”

  Rebecca liked every word she was hearing. “Did you know that Sasha and Malia Obama go there?”

  “I did know that,” said Valerie. “Have you met them?”

  “Yeah, they’re nice, which is cool because they really don’t have to be, I guess.”

  I kept doing the smartest thing I could do at that point, and that was keep my big mouth shut. Brilliantly, effortlessly, Valerie was bonding with this girl quicker than Krazy Glue. Sooner rather than later, though, she’d have to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Can you keep a secret?

  But out of nowhere, another question beat us to it. Oh, no …

  “Rebecca, what are you doing?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 88

  WE ALL froze as Mr. Henchman appeared in the doorway. As he glared at Valerie and me, it was the closest I’d ever come to being able to read another man’s mind.

  Two random guests where they absolutely shouldn’t be. Whatever’s going on, it isn’t right.

  “You know you’re not supposed to be in here,” he said to Rebecca. There was little doubt, though, that he was talking to all three of us. “You could really get in trouble.”

  Valerie and I looked at Rebecca, our collective fate now in the hands of a nine-year-old ginned up on the movie Unfaithful.

  I was starting to think we didn’t have a snow globe’s chance in Hell.

  Especially when Mr. Henchman applied the full-court press. “Well, Rebecca? What am I supposed to tell your father?”

  Then again, some kids you can only press so far.

  “Geez, Walt, don’t have a cow!” she bellowed. “I was just giving them a tour of the house.” Both her hands then landed squarely on her hips. “But if you’re so desperate to tell my father something, maybe it should be how you like to drink all his liquor when he’s not home.”

  Oh, snap. Out of the mouths of babes …

  Never had I seen a guy so big back down so fast. The upper hand now wore pink nail polish with glitter.

  And on that note …

  “Thank you again for the tour, Rebecca. I think I’ll be getting back to the party now,” said Valerie.

  “Yes, I really should be getting back, too,” I added. “But this certainly has been fun.”

  I followed Valerie out of Brennan’s office while “Walt” remained behind to chat a little more with Rebecca. If I had to guess, I’d say he was negotiating a keep-silent agreement with her in order to keep his job.

  For a few seconds, at least, Valerie and I were alone again.

  “Come here,” she said, quickly pulling me over to the wall in the hallway. Next thing I knew, she was moving toward my mouth again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Counselor,” she said, her thumb removing a smudge of her lipstick from my lower lip. She was cleaning me up, that was all. “Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss.”

  She took a step back, making sure she’d gotten it all. A satisfied nod told me she had.

  “So now what?” I asked.

>   “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether what you suspect about Brennan is true,” she said.

  “And if it is?”

  She smiled. “Then you and me? This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  CHAPTER 89

  ONE HOUR later, and from one hot seat into another.

  I kept shifting around in my chair, trying to get comfortable, but I knew it wasn’t the chair. It was me. I had that uneasy feeling, the kind you get when you think you’re being watched. Only, in this case, I knew for sure I was being watched.

  In the parking lot. In the lobby. In the elevator. In the hallway. And ultimately, in the conference room. There were cameras everywhere. Everything was being recorded.

  Welcome to the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

  “What fun have you brought us now, Valerie?” asked Jeffrey Crespin.

  Based on his tone alone, I was fairly certain the word fun in that question bore little resemblance to the actual definition of the word. Suffice it to say, Valerie Jensen had never been awarded Employee of the Month.

  No wonder, really. When I’d asked her before the meeting why an agent working undercover would risk drawing so much attention to herself with her skeet shooting exhibition on Brennan’s lawn, she told me she simply couldn’t help it. Quote, “I just hate those penis-measuring contests that men always have.”

  Crespin, who was introduced to me as a deputy director of some counterterrorism division I’d never heard of, listened patiently in his suit and tie as Valerie—now in sweatpants, a Northwestern T-shirt, and a ponytail—finished briefing him about her Saturday afternoon at Brennan’s house, which had necessitated her dragging Crespin away from a charity dinner and into the office on a Saturday night.

  The long and short of it? Their ongoing investigation to prove Shahid Al Dossari was helping to launder Saudi money that was ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda operatives had suddenly collided with some Columbia Law School professor posing as a writer with the Times and his unseen partner, who were conducting their own little investigation.