Free Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) by James Patterson Page B

happen?’ Pops asked.
    ‘How do you think? I’m radioactive from spending too much time with Tox Barnes. I’m practically glowing. Cops are coming out of the woodwork to mess with me.’
    ‘Who?’ Pops asked. ‘Which cops?’
    I sighed. Pops knew I’d never snitch.
    ‘No one’s forcing you to stay with him.’ Nigel shrugged. ‘Just drop him. He’ll solve it himself. There’s a new sexual assault on the case board this morning. Tell him you’ve got to prioritise that.’
    I closed my eyes and revelled in a private fantasy in which I thumped Nigel’s head back into the wall behind him.
    ‘Maybe I should just drop him,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll give the sexual assault to one of the probationary detectives and jump over onto the Georges River task force. Oh, wait! I forgot! I don’t have a penis!’
    Nigel sighed.
    ‘Did you seriously shut me out of that case because I’m a woman?’ I asked. ‘Or do you actually have a reasonable motive? Like, do you have a suspect? Why don’t you think you can trust me with your suspect?’
    Both men were quiet. Again I felt that strange tingling up the back of my neck that told me something was very wrong here. That there was something very important being hidden from me. But one look at Nigel’s face convinced me it was just him and his team being misogynistic assholes. He looked like one.
    Soon I would know how wrong I was.

CHAPTER 37
    IT TOOK FIVE minutes just to get the mop across the room, shuffling the thing with his knees and feet, knocking it against the walls, the shower cubicle, his sleeping wife. Another hour to get the handle through the screw loop over and over, turning the screw just a quarter-inch at a time. He sat triumphantly in the middle of the tiny room, exhausted, looking at the porthole propped open with the mop, the glorious blue sky outside. His face had swollen with pressure around the duct tape gag, sweat pouring down his neck. He tried to rouse Jenny. If he could get her to wake, try to slip her smaller gag off by rubbing her face against the frame of the shower, shout for help out the porthole. She woke briefly, blinked at him with uncomprehending, bloodshot eyes. No. It was up to Ken to save them both.
    The big man stood, steeled himself and climbed up onto the toilet seat. He looked outside and saw no one. Never mind. There might be people only yards away, out of view. He got down and kicked the second shelf of the cupboard down. Jenny’s bathroom products scattered everywhere. Perfume bottles shattered. Shampoo and moisturiser and toner, all manner of women’s things. Ken grabbed a shampoo bottle awkwardly by the neck between his big and second toes and hopped over to the toilet, almost losing his balance and falling by the shower. He climbed up, and with an agonising stretch of groin and hip and thigh muscles he didn’t know he still possessed, he leaned against the shower, raised one leg and slid the shampoo bottle through the porthole.
    He heard the gentle splash. Looked outside and saw no one. Ken hopped down, shuffled to the pile of toiletries and grabbed another bottle with his toes. He had to work as fast as he could. He wanted a steady stream of floating debris, more than the usual marina junk. Someone would spot his breadcrumb trail. Someone would rescue them before Hope got back from wherever she was.
    It was their only chance of survival.

CHAPTER 38
    IT TOOK SOME serious cage-rattling through the strip clubs, bars and brothels of Kings Cross to hunt down information on Hope. I heard fragments of her tale from homeless girls lounging in the back doorways of the supermarkets and kebab shops there. She was whispered about by conspiratorial old men in the upper rooms of Pussy Cats, Showgirls and Porky’s, where the rubber stairs glowed all day long with neon lights.
    A crow-like old madam on Ward Avenue with a split lip told us her full name – Hope Stallwood – and where she’d been staying. But like most working girls,