Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

her life. This town deserved to burn. She walked along the pier between the yachts and looked at the glowing city towers reflected in the black harbour. Soon she’d be underway.
    Her plan was to leave the memories of what she had done to Jenny and Ken Spelling behind, along with the memories of her father and his sweaty, grabby hands. She’d try to replace the night beast he’d become after her mother’s death with the man she remembered from her early childhood, his eyes set on the horizon, one warm hand on hers as he taught her to direct the helm, taking them out towards the edge of forever. She’d leave them behind with the memories of her almost skeletal mother curled up in the tub she’d died in, with the smoke-saturated bedrooms of the Black Garter hotel where she’d worked for almost all of her adult life. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the red lamplight out the front of the house of horrors, the men smoking there, looking at their phones, talking about the girls inside and which ones provided which services. Soon, when she closed her eyes, it would be the Caribbean sun burning red light there. Or maybe Key Largo. She hadn’t decided yet.
    As she powered the
New Hope
east out over the South Pacific, she’d jettison the images that sometimes zapped through her. Claudia’s howling mouth as she’d sailed downward into the blackness of the ocean, the anchor yanking her soundlessly into the dark. Her confused eyes as Hope had come into the kitchen after they’d secured the Spellings in the bathroom, the hammer in her fist.
    I thought we were in this together …
    Her squeal of disbelief as Hope had raised the hammer above her head.

CHAPTER 23
    HOPE STILL CARRIED the hammer with her in Jenny’s cream Louis Vuitton handbag. She supposed she’d have to get rid of that, too. She was dreaming as she wandered along mooring number 17 and almost ran into the overweight man with the clipboard standing there.
    ‘Oh! Sorry!’
    ‘It’s all right,’ he laughed. His name tag said ‘Steve’. ‘Is this your yacht here?’
    ‘Yes, it is, actually.’ Hope smiled. ‘It’s just come out of dry dock. I signed in at the office.’
    ‘Yes, yes, that’s all good.’ Steve glanced at his clipboard. ‘I’m actually just doing a safety inspection. The coastguard makes us do spot checks now and then on all the moorings.’
    ‘Uh-huh.’ Hope chewed her lip. She listened to the boat beside them. Was that thumping she could hear? Could Steve hear it too?
    ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just … It’s so weird.’ Steve pointed with his pen to a red cone-shaped device strapped to the side of the deck. ‘I’m running checks on all the EPIRBs to make sure they’re all registered and up to date, and this one isn’t right.’
    Hope shifted her handbag on her shoulder. ‘An EPIRB?’
    ‘It’s an emergency position-indicating radio beacon.’ Steve looked at the sky, recited the words carefully. ‘Ha, that’s what I think it stands for, anyway. That beacon gets wet and it’ll send a signal to the coastguard telling them you’re in trouble. You’ll want to chuck it in the water long before you start to sink, though!’
    ‘Right,’ Hope laughed.
    ‘They also kind of act like a microchip would in your family dog,’ Steve said. ‘They’re registered to particular people, and particular boats, in case the boat gets lost. Or the people get lost! Ha! Now, I’m seeing that your boat here is the
New Hope
. But when I look up your EPIRB number on the computer, it says this boat should be
Dream Catcher
.’
    Steve tipped his clipboard, which he used to balance a thin computer tablet. Hope hardly glanced at the numbers on the screen.
    ‘Did you change your vessel’s name, Ms …’ Steve looked at the screen, ‘Ms Spelling?’
    ‘Uh, no.’ Hope wiped sweat from her neck. ‘No, this is … This is a different vessel. That we … we only recently purchased, my husband and I.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘I mean,