Lifeguard by James Patterson Page A

not sure I even blinked until I hit the Georgia-
    South Carolina line.
    I pulled off the highway at a place called Hardeeville, a truck stop with a huge billboard sign that advertised YOU’RE PASSING THE BEST SHORT STACK IN THE SOUTH.
    Exhausted, I filled up the car and took an empty booth in the restaurant. I looked around, seeing only a few bleary-eyed truckers gulping coffee or reading the paper. A jolt of fear. I didn’t know if I was a wanted man or not.
    A red-haired waitress with DOLLY on her nametag came up and poured me a sorely needed cup of coffee. “Goin’ far?” she asked in an amiable southern drawl.
    “I sure hope so,” I replied. I didn’t know if my picture was on the news or if someone meeting my eye would recognize me. But the smell of maple and biscuits got to me. “Far enough that those pancakes sure sound good.”
    I ordered a coffee to go with them and went into the men’s room. A heavyset trucker squeezed past me on his way out. Alone, I stared in the mirror and was stunned by the face looking back at me: haggard, bloodshot eyes, scared. I realized I was still in the pitted-out T-shirt and jeans I’d been wearing when I tripped the alarms the night before. I splashed cold water over my face.
    My stomach groaned, making an ugly noise. It dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch with Tess the previous day.
    Tess…
Tears started in my eyes again. Mickey and Bobby and Barney and Dee. God, I wished I could just turn back the clock and have every one of them alive. In one horrifying night, everything had changed.
    I grabbed a
USA Today
at the counter and sat back in the booth. As I spread the paper on the table, I noticed that my hands were shaking. Reality was starting to hit. The people I trusted most in my life were dead. I had relived the nightmare of the previous night a hundred times in the past six hours—and each time it got worse.
    I started to leaf through the paper. I wasn’t sure if I was hoping I would find something or not. Mostly, a lot of articles on the situation in Iraq and the economy. The new interest-rate cut.
    I turned the page and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
    DARING ART THEFT AND MURDER SPREE IN PALM BEACH
    I folded back the page.
    The posh and stately resort town of Palm Beach was shattered last night by a string of violent crimes, beginning with the drowning of an attractive woman in her hotel suite, followed by a brazen break-in and the theft of several priceless paintings from one of the town’s most venerable mansions, and culminating hours later in the execution-style murder of four people in a nearby town.
    Police say they have no direct leads in the brutal series of crimes, and at this point do not know if they are related.
    I didn’t understand.
Theft of priceless paintings…
Dee said the job had been a bust.
    I read on. The names of the people killed. Normally, it’s just abstract, names and faces. But this was so horribly real. Mickey, Bobby, Barney, Dee… and, of course, Tess.
    This is no dream, Ned. This is really happening.
    The article went on to describe how three valuable works of art were stolen from the forty-room mansion, Casa Del Océano, owned by businessman Dennis Stratton.
Valued at a possible $60 million, the theft of the unnamed paintings was one of the largest art heists in U.S. history.
    I couldn’t believe it.
    Stolen? We
had
been set up. We’d been set up royally.
    My pancakes came, and they did look great, as advertised. But I was no longer hungry.
    The waitress filled my coffee and asked, “Everything all right, hon?”
    I tried my best to smile and nod, but I couldn’t answer. A new fear was invading my brain.
    They’ll make the connection to me.
    Everything was going to come out. I wasn’t reasoning very well, but one thing was clear: Once the police went to Sollie, they would make my car.

Chapter 24
    FIRST THING, I had to get rid of my car.
    I paid the check and drove the Bonneville down the road into a strip