Read Confessions: The Private School Murders Online
Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Family, #Siblings, #Social Issues, #Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance, #Love & Romance, #Juvenile Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Juvenile Fiction / Family - Siblings, #Juvenile Fiction / Social Issues - Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance, #Juvenile Fiction / Love & Romance
Confessions: The Private School Murders (30 page)
“Who killed you, Adele?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”
Then a gunshot split the air. My eyes flew open and I sighed, loud and long.
“Chill, Tandy. Just calm down and go to sleep.”
I closed my eyes again and started to doze off, but suddenly my subconscious flooded with writhing snakes and skittering spiders.
Yep. Still awake.
After half an hour of flopping around in bed, trying to shut off my brain, I finally threw off my covers and went to my desk. I turned on my computer, thinking I would answer some mail, maybe do a Google search to see if there had been any new developments on the schoolgirl shootings. But the second my e-mail screen came up, I saw a name that obliterated every other thought in my mind. For a split second, I swear my vision went black, but when I came to, the name was still there.
An e-mail message from Royal. [email protected]. And the subject line read:
Tandy, I regret to inform you.
Nothing could be more ominous. Telegrams from
commanding officers to dead soldiers’ next of kin began that way.
I regret to inform you.
My hands started to shake.
Please, God. Please don’t let James be dead.
65
I was fixated on my computer screen.
On the name Royal Rampling. At that moment, there could have been a thousand snakes slithering down the walls, a serial killer breaking into the apartment to take out his next depressed private school girl, and a stealthy reporter sneaking up behind me to ask whether I thought Matthew had really killed Tamara Gee, and I wouldn’t have seen, heard, or sensed any of them.
I stared at my in-box; then, with a trembling hand, I clicked on Royal Rampling’s message.
The e-mail from James’s father filled my screen.
Tandy,
It has come to my attention that you are searching for James all over Europe. You will never find my son. And if you persist in this juvenile and deluded quest, I will unleash cease and desist orders and a few European legal remedies that you can be sure will be unpleasant.
My eyesight blurred. Rampling’s threats bounced off me like Ping-Pong balls. Because beneath them, he’d revealed the only fact that mattered.
James was alive.
I took a breath and blew it out, tears of relief filling my eyes. Then I got up and walked slowly to the bathroom, where I splashed water on my face again and again until I was sure I wasn’t dreaming.
Only when my hands had stopped shaking did I sit down again in front of my computer and continue reading the e-mail where I’d left off.
Here’s a little incentive, Tandy. If you stop this delusional hunt for my son, I may leave you and your brothers a small sum from your wretched parents’ estate. If you continue on your mad quest, I won’t leave you a dime.
By the way, Tandy, I regret to inform you that James doesn’t know that you’re alive. Actually, he doesn’t remember you at all. The memory of your ill-conceived adventure has been deleted from his mind. He wouldn’t know you if he was sitting right there with you now. But don’t worry. His incredibly attractive, highly sophisticated girlfriend, Natasha, makes him very happy.
Take this word to the wise.
I mean it.
Sincerely,
Royal Rampling
66One thing was clear.
Royal Rampling had no respect for James, for me, or for my family. I saved his e-mail, thinking that his threats might be grounds for a lawsuit, but even as I stewed and seethed and wrote furious replies in my mind, I knew that a sixteen-year-old girl taking legal action against an international mega-tycoon’s legion of high-powered lawyers and winning would be impossible. The idea was hilarious, actually. I let out one short private laugh.
And then the pain flooded in.
James was out there somewhere, but Royal Rampling was determined to keep us apart. He’d hit on the one thing that could have trumped my overwhelming need to see
James again—the safety, security, and financial stability of my family. If there was any chance that Rampling would leave me and my brothers something to live on, I had to do what I could to ensure that it happened. I wouldn’t have Harry and Hugo thrown out on the street for anything. Nothing.
Not even a reunion with the only person I’d ever loved. The only person who might ever understand me and my insane family enough to love me back.
I flopped face-first onto my rumpled bed and just let myself cry. And then, when I got sick of feeling sorry for myself, I reached under my pillow for James’s postcards.
He had written two of them in small writing unlike his usual tall scrawl. The back of the one I picked up now was so cramped that my name and address were almost pushed onto the picture side.
I read this last night in
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo.
“Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other
the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars—all the beauties of creation.”
I haven’t forgotten you. I never will.
James
Was that still true? Or had Royal Rampling done the same thing to him that my parents had done to me? Had I really been deleted from his mind? Had a girl named Natasha filled my empty place? I imagined James holding some exotic, dark-haired beauty in his arms, walking with her along a beach on the other side of the Atlantic. Imagined him lifting her face to be kissed… it was too much.
“Enough, Tandy,” I said to myself, shaking my head to clear the images.
I knew what my mother would say if she knew what I was doing right now. This was not productive, this pining over what might never be. And when it came down to it, aside from saving the Dakota from infestation, I hadn’t done anything productive since being flooded with these new memories of James. I hadn’t completed any of my schoolwork. I hadn’t done a thing to help Matthew. I hadn’t avenged Adele Church or even worked on finding her killer.
I stood up, walked to the nearest mirror, and stared myself in the eye.
“You
have
to stop obsessing about James,” I told myself firmly. “It’ll be better for everyone.”
Of course, the second I made this declaration to myself, my mind was filled with
him
.
Dropping onto my back on my bed, I pulled the covers up under my chin, plugged in my earbuds, and cued up a recording of Harry playing the solo part from one of Bach’s concertos. It would have been a perfect sound track for my dreams of James.
But I couldn’t let myself go there anymore.
Instead, I concentrated on the ebb and flow of the music until finally, mercifully, I drifted into sleep.
67Something was tickling my feet.
I woke up with a start, already screaming, and kicked my legs like crazy. My heel hit C.P. right in the forehead and sent her sprawling.
