15th Affair by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

told them everything we knew. Everything but the one thing I wasn’t ready to give up, and I knew Richie had my back.
    I didn’t say a word about Joe.

CHAPTER 18
     
    WHEN CINDY CALLED me at 10:30 p.m., I was bordering on despair. I still hadn’t heard from Joe, the baby was crying, and although I had done everything I knew to calm her, nothing worked. She was frantic and I didn’t know why. I had thrown on a robe and was going across the hall to get Mrs. Rose when the phone rang.
    Cindy didn’t wait for me to say hello.
    “I got a hit,” she said.
    “I have to call you back.”
    “Really?”
    Julie let out a freshly minted over-the-top howl. Why?
    “
Really,
” I said, and then, “I’ll call you back.”
    I felt the baby’s forehead and checked her diaper, and both were fine. I carried her to the kitchen, patting her back while I warmed up a bottle. Was she sick? Or was she simply channeling my anxiety?
    I took her back to her room, sat down in the rocker, fed her, and tried to soothe myself. Julie took the bottle, and of course she couldn’t cry and suck at the same time. Mercifully.
    When she fell asleep in my arms, I put her into her bed as gently as possible. She barely stirred, but I stood over her watching until her breathing deepened and I was sure she was in a nice solid sleep.
    I nuked a cup of milk for myself, stirred in some Green & Black’s powdered chocolate, and set it on the end table next to the big sofa, giving myself permission to just sit quietly and calm the hell down.
    I had dozed off when the phone rang.
    Joe
.
    I found the phone where I’d dropped it on the floor near the sofa and caught it on the fifth ring.
    “Christ, Lindsay,” Cindy said. “What the hell is wrong with you? I said I have a
hit
on one of your suspects.”
    “The baby,” I said. “She was having a tantrum.”
    “Everything OK?”
    “I think so.”
    “OK,” Cindy said, moving on. “The blond-haired woman from the hotel. Someone wrote in saying he knows her. Are you free now? Or should I just tell Richie?”
    “Put me on speaker and tell us both,” I said into the phone.
    Richie grunted, “I’m here.”
    “Good. Cindy, who is the blonde? Who the hell is she?”

CHAPTER 19
     
    CINDY’S ANONYMOUS TIP could blow open the whole case.
If
it was good. If it was
true.
    I took my laptop to the big sofa in the living room, and, leaving Julie’s door open, I got to work. I typed the name
Alison Muller
into one law enforcement database after another, and when she didn’t come up, I Googled her.
    At 11 p.m., I called Brady.
    He cleared the sleep from his throat, and after he said his name, I said, “Cindy got an anonymous tip on the mystery blonde from the hotel. We should keep it to ourselves until Conklin and I can chase it down.”
    Every cop knows that the FBI doesn’t like to share. Once they’re involved, they take over the case and cut you out of it. You’re lucky to read about it in the papers.
    I said so and Brady grunted without committing himself. Then he asked, “What did you find out?”
    “According to Cindy’s source, her name is Alison Muller. She’s thirty-five, an executive at Aptec, a software company in Silicon Valley. The tipster told Cindy that he knows her, that his family and the Mullers live on the same street in Monterey.”
    “You’ve got an address?”
    “I do.”
    I heard Yuki in the background saying, “Brady, who’s calling this late?”
    Brady said to her, “It’s Lindsay. We’ll be off soon.”
    I said, “I found info on Muller on Aptec’s website. She’s married to Khalid Khan, the composer. They have two children, five and thirteen years old. She’s a graduate of Stanford with a PhD in mathematics from MIT and she’s fluent in Spanish and Chinese. Speculating, but she and Chan may have met at Stanford.”
    There was a pause as Brady thought things over.
    He said, “OK. I’ll call Monterey PD and have them sit on Muller’s house until morning. You and