The Private School Murders

by James Patterson

  I wanted to take Jacob’s advice. I wanted to kick back and enjoy myself and just let this tremendous feat of human engineering squire me directly to the guy I loved, and I tried. I did. I went to the spa and got a massage but was so fidgety I only lasted ten minutes before I got up, scaring the hell out of the masseuse, and walked out. I tried to float in the pool, but my brain was too crowded with what-ifs.

  What if James had changed?

  What if my memories of him had been tainted and twisted by Dr. Narmond’s mind-altering machine and he wasn’t at all as I remembered him?

  Or, worst of all, what if I had changed so much that James didn’t like me? The real me? The me I was now, off the drugs?

  I ended up falling off the float and nearly drowning myself. Then, after a healthy salad lunch with my brothers, I got so obsessive I threw up over the railing.

  Lovely, I know.

  But it all begged the question: How the hell was I going to survive an entire week of this? Would I even make it to Paris, or would they have to sedate me and fit me for a straitjacket before I ever got there?

  93

  Exercise. Exercise turned out to be my savior. It expelled all my nervous energy, got my blood pumping in a positive way, and cleared my mind. I was jogging around deck seven that afternoon when it finally got through to me, what Jacob had said about being with my brothers, really being with them.

  I didn’t even know where we would be living next week, or on what continent. Now was the moment for quality time.

  So I joined in on Matthew’s exercise routine, morning and late afternoon. Working out with him finally relaxed me enough to do all the other things Jacob had suggested. I went to the Canyon Ranch Spa with Harry. We had massages and mud baths (separately, of course) and I indulged in all manners of facials and nail treatments. I had my hair cut a couple of inches while I was at it, and added a blond streak to the front.

  I also swam with Hugo. My little brother was like a fish. He loved being in the water. We did laps, we played ball, we made up stories and laughed and made friends with some other kids on the cruise.

  Harry and I stretched out on lounge chairs and just talked. He told me that C.P. really listened to him and he’d been missing that in his life. I realized she’d done the same for me. I guess lately Harry and I hadn’t been quite as tight as we’d been right after our parents’ deaths.

  “I know you listen to me, too, Tandy,” Harry said. “But you’ve been so… unstoppable lately, you know? C.P. just chills out and lets me talk.”

  “I get it,” I told him. “But when we get home, wherever that turns out to be, I promise I’ll try to be there for you more.”

  Harry smiled. “Right back at ya.”

  I went to the dance club with Jacob, and it turned out that, for an old guy, he could really dance. We held a contest to see who could spin the longest without hitting the deck, and when Jacob took out a table full of party girls, I laughed so hard I almost hyperventilated.

  Once Jacob was able to see straight again, he grasped my arm and smiled.

  “It’s great to hear you really laugh, Tandy,” he told me. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  I took my grandfather Max’s five-franc piece to the jewelry store, and they put a gold band around the perimeter and added a loop and a gold chain. I was wearing it now, and I didn’t think I would ever take it off.

  I sat in the Golden Lion pub with Matthew.

  The lounge is in the bow of the ship, on the second level, so we were really close to the waves breaking around the prow. Matthew told me about Tamara and his grief at the loss of her and their unborn child, and how betrayed he still felt by our parents in every way.

  “I’m not going to take my share of the inheritance, Tandy. I’m going to go back to the team next season, and I make enough on my own,” he told me. “You guys keep the money, and if you ever need more, just let me know. In fact, let me know if you need anything. Blood, internal organs…”

  I laughed and shoved his arm. “Gross!”

  Matthew smirked and tipped his head toward the sun. He was looking healthier every day, morphing back into confident Matthew Angel, football star. I even caught a couple of girls eyeing him as they walked by.

  Hugo made friends with the sailors. He learned knots. He learned celestial navigation. He lifted huge metal parts and humped them around the deck, showing off, making people’s jaws drop. He lifted a two-hundred-pound man in a lounge chair. And then he lifted the man’s even bigger wife.

  Hugo was so in his element, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d eventually decided to make his living on a cruise ship. But it was Harry who landed an actual gig—in the piano bar.

  He played old favorites. He played pop. He played compositions of his own. After a couple of days, he had a following of swooning young girls and retirees and music lovers who wanted his picture and his autograph.

  I took a class in vegetable carving. I read fiction. I signed up for lessons in meditation, and I did it, on deck, smelling the sea, unfrightened by the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing around the ship for hundreds of miles except changing sky and deep, deep water. I did rest. I really did.

  And finally, finally, land was in sight and at four thirty in the morning, the regal Queen Mary 2 sailed majestically into the British port of Southampton.

  And even after all that resting and clearing my head, all I could think about was James.

  94

  Jacob, my brothers, and I boarded a plane at London Heathrow Airport and flew to Paris. Before we’d checked into the Hotel George V, we had a plan.

  I would meet James privately at the appointed time and place, and then, after an hour or so, I would bring him with me to Gram Hilda’s house, where we would meet up with my family to see what could be our new home.

  “How do you feel?” Jacob asked as he put me in a taxi.

  I felt like my skin was humming. Like everything inside me was fresh and clean and pure. I felt like anything could happen.

  “Perfect,” I told him succinctly.

  Jacob smiled. “We’ll stay in the hotel until we hear from you, Tandy. Call. Don’t forget to call. Is your phone charged?”

  I nodded. Then Jacob forced money into my hand and told the driver to take me to the Louvre.

  I was so deep in thought, it was as if I blinked once and the ride was over. I handed the driver some folded money and got out of the cab at the Place du Carrousel, the plaza fronting the world-famous Louvre, home of the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.

  There, in the plaza, near the gigantic, iconic glass-and-metal pyramid, was where I stood. Somehow, I stood still, even though every cell in my body seemed to be vibrating with anticipation.

  At just before noon, there were countless people crossing the plaza: couples holding hands, dog walkers, and bicyclists.

  The calm I had cultivated over the last week had vanished. My back was to La Pyramide, but in front of me was a wide cityscape with limitless hundred-and-eighty-degree views. I looked everywhere at once, my eyes flashing over the faces of strangers, searching, searching, searching for James. I must have looked insane.

  And I kind of was.

  Where was he? Was I in the right place? Would he show up? Oh, God, what if he didn’t show up?

  “Tandy!”

  My heart leapt into my throat. I whirled around, scanning the throng. The world was still busy whizzing by me. With no one coming to me.

  Of course, I’d imagined it.

  Of course.

  95

  And then I saw him.

  His hair was darker and longer than I remembered, and for a second I was sure once again that I’d hallucinated the sound of my name. He was dressed all in brown, a leather flight jacket, tan backpack, khaki-colored pants. James always wore blue. Always. At least a little bit of it.

  Maybe it wasn’t him.

  But then the figure waved. He seemed to be haloed in sunlight. I squinted as he started across the street
and the figure of this beautiful boy came into focus.

  It was him. It was really, really him.

  I waved back and James started to run. He dodged traffic, leapt over a railing, and then he was with me, right in front of me, smiling his now oh-so-familiar smile.

  He was exactly as I remembered him. Exactly.

  “Hey,” he said with a grin.

  “Hi,” I replied, as casually as I’d have done if we’d been meeting after school at the Starbucks on the corner of West Seventy-Sixth Street.

  And then I fell hard against him, murmuring, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…” and he held me in his arms and buried his face in my hair.

  It felt like we stood clutching each other like that for hours. Nothing else mattered. Not the people trying to brush by us, or the insanity of the past few weeks, or even what our parents had done to us. All that mattered was this pure connection. It was still there, exactly as it had always been. It hadn’t been erased by lasers at Fern Haven. Or by time and distance.

  Nothing could change this love. Nothing.

  I inhaled the scents of warm leather and earthy evergreen shampoo and held him even tighter.

  Finally, James pulled back. He cupped my face in his hands. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s really you.”

  “Why?” I asked, my heart thumping dangerously. “Do I look different?”

  He grinned and touched the streak in my hair. “I like the hair.”

  I reached up to the nape of his neck. “I like yours, too.”

  We gazed at each other for a moment, the beaming smiles on our faces full to overflowing. And at that moment, we communicated this telepathically, I know: There is just so much to say to you right now, I don’t even know where to start.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said instead. “I just got off the train and came right here.”

  “I don’t care,” I told him, looking up into his gray-blue eyes, the palm of my hand now lingering on his cheek. “I would’ve waited all day.”

  James smiled. He lifted my palm and kissed it. “You have absolutely no clue how much I missed you, Tandy.”

  James pulled me to him, and with my heart pounding fiercely against his chest, he kissed me, shyly first, then hungrily. At the touch of his lips, something inside me exploded. All the longing and hoping and wishing, all the confusion and anger and fear I’d been clinging to burst like fireworks.

  And then, because we were in the Place du Carrousel in Paris and it couldn’t have been more perfect, James lifted me off my feet and swung me around and around. I could feel tourists watching us, a few sentimental bursts of applause from the romantics, not to mention a lot of annoyed or indifferent people skirting around us, but I didn’t care.

  I just laughed and laughed, until I was crying.

  Finally, James placed my feet firmly on the ground. “I love you,” he whispered into my ear.

  “I love you, too,” I replied.

  But when his radiant gaze flicked over my shoulder a moment later, his expression went slack.

  “What’s wrong?” I whirled around.

  I saw that a black car had pulled up on the plaza. Three men got out, and with a sharp, visceral shock, I realized that I had seen at least one of them before.

  The broad-shouldered man with clipped graying hair and a flattened nose was one of the men who had handled me so roughly in the SUV that dumped me at Fern Haven.

  And I recognized another man from pictures.

  He was tall, at least six-foot-two, and had thick black hair that was pure white at the temples. He wore a black trench coat and was carrying a briefcase and a camera case by a strap over his shoulder. He looked focused. And he looked mean.

  “James,” he called out. “We have to talk, son.”

  James spun me around so that I was looking only at him. “It’s my father, Tandy. You have to run.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you.”

  His grip on my shoulders tightened. “Where are you staying?”

  I gave him the name of the hotel.

  “Please. I’ll find you again. I will,” he said desperately. “But if he gets his hands on you, he’ll hurt you. He’ll crush you, Tandy. Just run.”

  There was no way. No possible way that after everything I’d been through, after everything we’d been through, I was going to let another psychotic parent tear us apart. I reached for James’s hand and looked into his eyes.

  “I have a better idea.”

  With that, I turned to face Royal Rampling. I stood my ground. I knew now what I was capable of. I knew who I was. I had survived Royal Rampling and worse. Maybe he could hurt me, but no one had the power to crush me. Not ever again.

  I focused on James’s father and shouted, “We’re not afraid of you!” I pointed at him and looked around at the crowd. “Kidnapper! Kidnapper!”

  James caught on to the plan and started yelling, too. “I’m not your property. I don’t belong to you!”

  Concerned citizens started to gather, streaming toward the scene we were creating. Camera phones pointed at Royal Rampling, and I saw more than one bystander hastily dialing a phone or raising it like he or she was about to record the scene on video.

  It was working. If I had to guess, I’d say the gendarmes would arrive soon.

  Royal Rampling and the huge oafs who worked for him stopped cold. Rampling faked a smile, then told his henchmen to stand down. I could hear James’s ragged breathing as we faced off with his father.

  “Ce n’est pas fini jusqu’à ce que je dis c’est fini,” Rampling called out. “It’s not over until I say it’s over.”

  Then, with a wicked smile, Royal Rampling got into his car, and it peeled out into the chaotic Parisian traffic.

  And I was left, for now, in the arms of his beautiful son.

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  BEGAN…

  AND WHAT REALLY

  HAPPENED TO

  MALCOLM AND

  MAUD ANGEL.

  TURN THE PAGE FOR A PREVIEW.

  1

  I have some really bad secrets to share with someone, and it might as well be you—a stranger, a reader of books, but most of all, a person who can’t hurt me. So here goes nothing, or maybe everything. I’m not sure if I can even tell the difference anymore.

  The night my parents died—after they’d been carried out in slick black body bags through the service elevator—my brother Matthew shouted at the top of his powerful lungs, “My parents were vile, but they didn’t deserve to be taken out with the trash!”

  He was right about the last part—and, as things turned out, the first part as well.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Please forgive me.… I do that a lot.

  I’d been asleep downstairs, directly under my parents’ bedroom, when it happened. So I never heard a thing—no frantic thumping, no terrified shouting, no fracas at all. I woke up to the scream of sirens speeding up Central Park West, maybe one of the most common sounds in New York City.

  But that night it was different.

  The sirens stopped right downstairs. That was what caused me to wake up with a hundred-miles-an-hour heartbeat. Was the building on fire? Did some old neighbor have a stroke?

  I threw off my double layer of blankets, went to my window, and looked down to the street, nine dizzying floors below. I saw three police cruisers and what could have been an unmarked police car parked on Seventysecond Street, right at the front gates of our apartment building, the exclusive and infamous Dakota.

  A moment later our intercom buzzed, a jarring blatblat that punched right through my flesh and bones.

  Why was the doorman paging us? This was crazy.

  My bed
room was the one closest to the front door, so I bolted through the living room, hooked a right at the sharks in the aquarium coffee table, and passed between Robert and his nonstop TV.

  When I reached the foyer, I stabbed at the intercom button to stop the irritating blare before it woke up the whole house.

  I spoke in a loud whisper to the doorman through the speaker: “Sal? What’s happening?”

  “Miss Tandy? Two policemen are on the way up to your apartment right now. I couldn’t stop them. They got a nine-one-one call. It’s an emergency. That’s what they said.”

  “There’s been a mistake, Sal. Everyone is asleep here. It’s after midnight. How could you let them up?”

  Before Sal could answer, the doorbell rang, and then fists pounded the door. A harsh masculine voice called out, “This is the police.”

  I made sure the chain was in place and then opened the door—but just a crack.

  I peered out through the opening and saw two men in the hallway. The older one was as big as a bear but kind of soft-looking and spongy. The younger one was wiry and had a sharp, expressionless face, something like a hatchet blade, or… no, a hatchet blade is exactly right.

  The younger one flashed his badge and said, “Sergeant Capricorn Caputo and Detective Ryan Hayes, NYPD. Please open the door.”

  Capricorn Caputo? I thought. Seriously? “You’ve got the wrong apartment,” I said. “No one here called the police.”

  “Open the door, miss. And I mean right now.”

  “I’ll get my parents,” I said through the crack. I had no idea that my parents were dead and that we would be the only serious suspects in a double homicide. I was in my last moment of innocence.

  But who am I kidding? No one in the Angel family was ever innocent.

  2

  “Open up, or my partner will kick down the door!” Hatchet Face called out.

  It is no exaggeration to say that my whole family was about to get a wake-up call from hell. But all I was thinking at that particular moment was that the police could not kick down the door. This was the Dakota. We could get evicted for allowing someone to disturb the peace.