Free Hide and Seek by James Patterson Page A

eyes.
    A woman reporter with frazzled blond hair leaned in close over the restraining ropes at the side door. “Maggie! Over here, Maggie. Please?” she pleaded.
    My head rose involuntarily, my eyes went to hers.
    “What about Patrick?” she suddenly asked, a TV eye mercilessly staring behind her. “Did you murder him too? Did you, Maggie?”
    I have never spit at a human being. I don't spit. Ever
… but that morning I spat at that reporter. I don't know what possessed me.
    The TV camera caught it—the incident, the shot, was on every TV news program, played over and over again. An uncontrollable temper. The
real
Maggie Bradford?
    What about Patrick?
    Did you murder a third man, Maggie?
    Is anybody going to be surprised if you did?

CHAPTER 25
    “ A CCOUNTANTS DON'T KNOW shit. So why in hell do we pay them a cent? Now
there's
some cost savings I could live with!”
    Thus spoke Patrick O'Malley, standing in the bathroom of the unfurnished Tower Suite of his unfinished, unnamed, unopened hotel on Sixty-fifth Street and Park Avenue.
    He was glaring at his accountant, his
C.F.O.
, Maurice Freund. Freund had heard his boss's opinion of accountants before. “But we do know costs,” he said, unruffled, “and you're costing yourself an unnecessary fortune.”
    “Pears soap is necessary,” O'Malley raged. “Porthault towels are
necessary
. A Jacuzzi in the Tower Suite bathroom is
essential
.”
    Freund sighed and shrugged. “The good news is that every room is booked. The bad news is that we're losing money on every booking.”
    “We'll refigure the damn rates. When you promise the best you deliver the best, and this hotel will
be
the best, goddamnit, or that soap goes right up your ass.”
    “As long as it's Pears,” Freund said, grinning.
    O'Malley grunted. “The construction's on schedule?”
    “Yup.
Their
schedule. Eight months late at an overrun of twenty percent.”
    “That's still less than you estimated originally?”
    “Ten percent less.”
    “Then take the soap and the towels from that ten percent.”
    “No way.” Freund took O'Malley's arm and steered him out of the suite toward the makeshift elevator. “Knowing you, there'll be overruns everywhere. The rates go up.”
    If O'Malley had an opinion, he didn't express it. Rather, he said, “I know what to name the hotel.”
    Good news
, Freund thought.
And about time
. “What?”
    “I want to call it The Cornelia.”
    “The Cornelia. Splendid!” Freund knew his boss was watching his reaction closely, but his pleasure was genuine, his smile sincere. “That's good. The perfect choice, Patrick.”
    “I don't believe a world-class hotel's ever been named after a woman.” O'Malley sounded almost shy.
    “Then it's a unique name for a unique hotel. Besides, the time is right.”
    “She was a unique woman,” O'Malley said. “That's for certain. We can finally agree on something, Maurice.”
    Freund took his hand and gravely shook it. The accountant actually seemed to have
felt
something. “The hotel's her testimonial. Your tribute to the one woman you loved.”

CHAPTER 26
    F OR TWENTY YEARS, Cornelia and Patrick O'Malley were one of New York's most courted and undeniably popular couples. Seeming opposites—he, the gruff, self-made entrepreneur who had parlayed a string of motels into a grand hotel chain in the United States, Europe, and Asia; she, the society beauty who outraged her family, the Whitings, by falling in love with, and then marrying,
a Catholic who had not gone to Princeton
—they were actually perfectly matched. Cornelia's cool tempered his heat; Patrick's passion aroused her own; and in the richest of rich skies in which they orbited like moons, no scandal was ever attached to them. Despite innumerable temptations, he remained faithful to her, and his support gave her strength. Beneath her regal demeanor she let herself grow soft and trusting—only for him, forever for him.
    Until forever was cut short by a glioblastoma that