The Pretender

  James Patterson

  With Andrew Bourelle

  Prologue

  I speed through the desert along a dirt road, my Jeep leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The setting sun gives the desert landscape a reddish hue. The only thing visible in any direction, besides sagebrush and cacti, is a run-down shack up ahead. Marco’s car is already parked outside.

  I have the feeling I’m walking into a trap.

  On my passenger seat sits a black satin sack about the size of a sandwich bag, containing a few million dollars’ worth of diamonds. Other than that, I have only a gas station cup half full of soda. I have no gun. No knife. I bet Marco has one or the other.

  Or both.

  I’d been telling Marco for weeks that I was going to quit after this heist—what we’d called “the job to end all jobs”—and Marco had not been happy about it. He’d even joked that he wasn’t going to let me leave. I didn’t think much of it, but then Marco insisted that we rendezvous here, in the middle of nowhere. We had always met in public places before.

  I stop the Jeep about a hundred yards from the shack and let it sit, idling in neutral. I take a drink from my soda. I think about shifting the Jeep into gear and taking off. Then I get an idea.

  I wedge the Styrofoam cup between my legs and pull off the lid. I pick up the satin bag and pour the diamonds into my soda. The stones, ranging in size from grains of sand to corn kernels, collect in a pile on top of the ice. They shimmer in the sunlight, and then they sink without a trace into the brown liquid. I put the lid back on and hold the cup up, weighing it. The cup is heavier, but everything about it still looks normal.

  I park my Jeep next to Marco’s Dodge Charger. There’s a film of desert dust over both our cars.

  The shack looks like something left over from a nuclear war. The windows are all broken. The front door is missing. Most of the shingles have been yanked off the roof by wind. The walls are full of holes and covered in graffiti, as if teenagers had come out here and taken turns with sledgehammers and spray paint.

  As I approach the building, I drink from the cup as if it’s an ordinary soda. My feet crunch on glass and other debris as I step over the threshold. Marco is sitting on a metal chair at a table missing one of its legs. He is idly carving a piece of wood with a serrated folding knife. Rays of sunlight poke through the walls, illuminating the dust floating in the air.

  “Logan!” Marco says, his face lighting up when he sees me.

  He’s dressed as he always is, in dark slacks and a gray sport coat over a black T-shirt.

  He jams the knife into the table and stands. He extends his hand to shake mine, but instead I lean in to give him a hug, hoping to figure out if he’s got a weapon inside his sport coat. He looks surprised, but he hugs me back.

  My chest bumps against a pistol tucked into a shoulder holster.

  “We did it,” I say, clapping him on the back.

  “We sure did, old friend,” Marco says. “We sure as hell did.”

  I settle into a wobbly chair across from Marco’s seat. I set the cup of soda on the table.

  Marco sits across from me. His steel-gray eyes bore into me.

  “So?” Marco says.

  “So,” I say, smiling and acting as if nothing is wrong.

  “So,” Marco repeats, “where are the rocks, man?”

  “I’ve got them,” I say, being deliberately vague.

  “I want to see them, dude.”

  “There’s time for that.”

  “Are they in the Jeep?” Marco says.

  I shrug.

  “Stop fucking around,” he says jokingly—but I can see in his eyes he’s not kidding.

  He rises and takes a step toward the door, but then hesitates and grabs his knife off the table. I watch him through the window as he opens the Jeep door and looks around inside. Behind him, the sun is an orange blob in the distant haze, seconds from disappearing below the horizon.

  Marco comes storming back, holding the empty satin bag. He flings it at me.

  “What the hell are you trying to pull?” Marco says.

  “What the hell are you trying to pull?” I say, rising out of my chair. “You set up a rendezvous in the middle of nowhere. You brought a gun. I’m not stupid, Marco. You were going to kill me as soon as I showed you the diamonds.”

  Marco stares at me for a moment, and then reaches into his jacket and pulls out the pistol.

  “Congratulations,” Marco says. “You’ve got it all figured out.”

  “You couldn’t just let me go, could you?”

  He looks at me like I’ve insulted him. “What did you think you were going to do?” he says. “Pretend you’re just like everybody else? Meet a girl and settle down? Live a normal life?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “I won’t let you just ride off into the sunset, old friend,” he says, and he aims the Beretta M9 at my face.

  I take a sip from my soda. “You can’t kill me, Marco. If you shoot me, you’ll never know where the diamonds are.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Logan. Tell me where the diamonds are or I’ll put a bullet through your goddamn brain.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Flush the diamonds down the toilet.”

  I would happily give Marco his half of the diamonds, but I can’t do that, given the predicament. I would be dead the moment Marco saw the first diamond come spilling out of the cup. My only chance of survival is the hope that Marco won’t kill me because he knows that if he does, the diamonds will be gone forever.

  I step backward toward the door.

  I can see Marco considering his options, realizing he hasn’t thought this all the way through. He has the gun, but I hold all the cards. He is, at his core, a businessman. And no businessman would light a match to millions of dollars. If there’s any chance he can get the money later, he’ll take it. After years of working with him, I know how patient he can be. He never rushes a job. And if I walk out that door, I become his next job.

  “There was no need to do this,” I say. “There was plenty for both of us. I never would have betrayed you.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Marco says. “There’s no honor among thieves.”

  “There should be.”

  I turn my back on him and walk to the Jeep. The sun is gone now, casting a dying orange afterglow into the darkening sky.

  “Good-bye, old friend,” I call over my shoulder.

  “Good-bye,” Marco says. “For now.”

  Chapter 1

  Two Years Later

  Hannah stares out at Lower Echo Lake, a long, feather-shaped sheet of blue glass with forested mountain peaks rising up around it. In the early morning, the lake is calm. The still water reflects the brilliant blue sky like a mirror. The land is silent.

  She steps out of her car and inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the cool mountain air. Hannah’s lived in the Lake Tahoe Basin for a year now, but she’s never hiked here.

  There is a path that runs four miles along Lower Echo Lake and Upper Echo Lake, twin alpine bodies of water lined with vacation cabins. Then the trail ascends into a remote area called Desolation Wilderness, a beautiful terrain of pine forests, granite rock formations, and ice-cold lakes. Her destination today is Lake Aloha, which, she’s been told, gets its name from a series of islands resembling Hawaii that brave hikers can swim out to.

  She doesn’t expect to do any swimming today. It’s mid-September, and there’s already a chill in the air. And she’s never gotten used to the cold water in this mountain community. Even on the hottest summer day, she will barely dip her toe in Lake Tahoe. But she wants to see Lake Aloha for herself.

  As a reporter for the Lake Tahoe Gazette, she works long hours and doesn’t get out nearly enough to enjoy the place she lives in. She has no real friends—no boyfriend—and as her first summer here draws to an end, she recently realized she wasn’t actually getting out and doing enough in her spare time. She knows numerous people in town, but they’re all coworkers or sources for her articles. She’s decided her lack of friends shouldn’t stop her from trying to have fun.

  This short hike is an attempt to do just that.

  She pulls her daypack from her backseat and double-checks to make sure she has everything she needs: water, food, sunscreen, first-aid kit.

  The parking lot is empty, but suddenly a Jeep Wrangler pulls into a nearby space. She recognizes the driver, a man she’s seen at the gym. He is cute, probably in his early thirties like her, with sandy blond hair and the body of an athlete. She doesn’t know his name. They’ve never spoken. But as he steps out of his vehicle, his eyes meet hers, and he offers her a smile. His expression is friendly, maybe even a little flirtatious, and it seems to say, I know you from somewhere, don’t I?

  Hannah returns his smile, but then she feels self-conscious. She turns away, throwing her pack over one shoulder. She saunters down to the general store, wondering if the mystery man is watching her.

  Her plan is to take the water taxi across the two Echo Lakes, cutting four miles off what would otherwise be an eleven-mile one-way hike. There is a kid, probably no more than twenty, with a patchy beard and acne bumps on his forehead, waiting behind the counter.

  She asks him about the water taxi, and he explains that he can take her. She pays and then goes outside to wait in the taxi, a long wooden motorboat with benches along the port and starboard sides for passengers.

  Today, it looks like she’s the only passenger.

  The guy from the gym h as one leg propped up on the bumper of his Jeep, and he’s rubbing sunscreen onto his muscular legs. He’s obviously going to hike around the lakes. No shortcut for him. Hell, Hannah thinks, he might run the eleven miles to Lake Aloha. He looks like he could do it.

  The kid comes out and hops into the boat. He grabs the starter cord to start the motor but hesitates.

  “Hey, man,” he calls up to the guy from the gym. “You want a ride? It’s twelve bucks.”

  The guy looks up and seems to think about the offer.

  “Sure,” he says. “Be right there.”

  Hannah’s heartbeat accelerates. She has a strange suspicion that the guy agreed simply for an opportunity to spend time with her. She tells herself she’s being silly, but when he jogs down the pier and steps into the boat, he sits only a few feet from her.

  “Hi,” he says, flashing her an electric smile and extending his hand. “My name’s Logan.”

  Chapter 2

  Hannah’s editor once told her that most people in the news business tend to be introverted. Journalism is a job that forces otherwise shy, socially awkward people to step out of their comfort zones and talk to other people. Hannah never thought much of the theory, but now, sitting next to Logan, she wonders if her editor is onto something.

  Under the protective cloak of her job title, Hannah never has any problem talking to complete strangers, even asking them intimate personal questions. She can handle complaints from the public about her coverage of an issue. She can go into her editor’s office and demand better positioning for one of her stories. But, if she’s honest with herself, she knows her confidence is really an act. Here she is sitting next to a cute guy, and she feels completely tongue-tied.

  They are both quiet. As handsome as he is, he might be just as introverted as she is.

  The boat zips along the water, giving them a wonderful vantage of the scenery on both sides of the lake. They pass one vacation home after another. Accessible only by boat or hiking trail, the cabins line the lake, each with their own private pier. Most of the cabins look empty, closed up for the end of the season. There are a couple of girls in bathing suits goofing around on a dock at the far end of the lake, probably daring each other to jump into the ice-cold water but neither taking the plunge. Otherwise, no one is around.

  Hannah checks her phone, just to give her hands something to do, and sees that there’s no service out here.

  Finally, she takes a deep breath and says, “I think I’ve seen you at the gym.”

  Logan smacks his knee. “I knew you looked familiar.”

  Hannah mentions that she’s seen him in the afternoon spinning class, the least crowded of all the classes because it’s in the middle of the afternoon when most people are working.

  “I sometimes go there to get the blood flowing before I’m on deadline,” Hannah says. “I work at the Lake Tahoe Gazette.”

  He starts asking questions about her job, and then their conversation seems to become more and more natural. Relief washes over her like a warm wave. Why was it so hard to start talking to him? There’s obvious chemistry.

  She reaches into her daypack and pulls out a business card. She hands it to him, suddenly feeling awkward again. She’s giving him her number in the guise of professional courtesy, but she hopes he’ll see through her pretense to know her real intention: she wants him to call and ask her out.

  He asks if she has a pen and an extra card, and the next thing she knows, he’s writing down his telephone number on the back of one of her business cards.

  “If you ever want to go to a class together,” he says, “give me a call. You know, for motivation.”

  She stares at the card. He’s written his full name, first and last—Logan Bishop—and his cell phone number.

  Hannah smiles. She can’t help herself. Logan’s green eyes are telling her that he’s looking for more than a gym buddy. She looks away, feeling her cheeks flush.

  “So, what about you?” she says. “What do you do for a living?”

  He looks away, his embarrassment palpable.

  “I don’t really like to say,” he says, squirming visibly in his seat. “I have a little trust fund that I’m living on right now.”

  “Oh,” Hannah says.

  She realizes she hasn’t hidden her surprise very well. She wants to say something to recover from it, to show him that this doesn’t bother her. But the truth is she’s never known anyone with a trust fund. Someone from a family rich enough that he doesn’t have to work. Perhaps the news shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her. But she’s from a blue-collar, working-class family—she was the first to go to college—and the thought of someone who simply has enough that he doesn’t need to be employed is so foreign to her that she can’t quite even grasp what that kind of life would be like.

  Especially since she’s a journalist, one of the lowest-paying jobs there is for a college graduate. She works really hard—fifty to sixty hours a week—for her meager wages.

  “I’m not exactly rich,” Logan says, backtracking. “It won’t last forever. It’s just temporary while I figure some things out.”

  “Sounds great,” Hannah says. “No need to be ashamed.”

  She can tell from his face that things have changed between them.

  Stop being a snob, she tells herself. Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.

  “So, how do you spend your days?” she asks, trying to move the conversation along and get past this awkwardness.

  He shrugs. “Hiking, swimming, skiing. Depends on the weather, I guess.”

  “Wow,” she says. “That must be nice.”

  Now he looks even more embarrassed.

  The weird thing about him is that he doesn’t seem like some rich asshole living off Mommy and Daddy’s allowance. He seems like a down-to-earth guy. He is nice and he has a certain boyish charm. He doesn’t seem smarmy or pretentious. He seems like the kind of guy she could really enjoy spending time with.

  The boat zips along, and they are both silent. The end of the first lake is approaching. She wants to start over, change the subject.

  I’ve still got a little time to salvage this situation, she thinks.

  Then she notices one of the girls on the pier. Probably fourteen or fifteen, she is jumping up and down on the dock, yelling and waving her arms. Hannah can’t make out what she’s saying because of the whining boat motor.

  “What’s that girl doing?” she says to Logan.

  He turns, noticing the girl for the first time.

  “Hey,” he says to the pilot, “let off the motor for a second.”

  The pilot does as he’s told, and the boat slows to a crawl. The motor idles, still audible but much quieter.

  “Help!” the girl on the dock screams. She points into the water. “My sister!”

  The message is clear: her sister is drowning.

  Chapter 3

  “Go!” Logan yells to the pilot.

  The kid does as he’s instructed. He presses down on the throttle, and the propeller digs into the water, the bow lifting into the air. The boat surges forward, rising and falling, chopping into the water. It makes up the gap to the pier in seconds. The pilot cuts the engine at the last instant and yanks the rudder so the boat swings parallel to the dock.

  Before the sidewall even touches the dock, Logan leaps out and dives into the water. He cuts the surface with hardly a splash. His action is so sudden that Hannah gasps.

  The boat rocks in the waves it created, but the water is incredibly clear, and Hannah can see Logan under the surface, a blur swimming toward another blur.

  The water must be glacially cold. Fed entirely from snowmelt, the lake is frigid all summer long, but this late in the season and this early in the morning, swimming would be like jumping into a bucket of ice water.

  Hannah feels suddenly very helpless. This is an emergency, and she wants to help. What can she do?

  You’re a journalist, her inner editor’s voice says. Cover what’s happening.

  Now Hannah has a purpose. She hops out of the boat onto the deck, next to the girl. Hannah pulls out her phone, turns it to video mode, and begins to record.

  A second after the camera begins to record, Logan bursts from the surface with the drowning girl in his arms. He begins swimming toward shore, holding one arm around her. The girl, maybe eleven or twelve, is completely limp. Her hair floats on the surface like strands of seaweed.

 

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