Extract: Never Never by James Patterson

Never Never by James Patterson and Candice Fox is a tense and gripping new thriller set in the Australian outback.

When Sydney police department sex crimes detective Harriet Blue is called into her boss’s office, she never imagined it would be to tell her that her brother is the prime suspect in the brutal murders of three women.

Shocked and in denial, Harry is transferred to Perth to avoid the media exposure this case will attract. Harry is sent into the outback – the never never – to investigate the disappearance of mine worker Danny Carter. The mining town is a seedy place, full of money and immoral ways to spend it. As Harry delves deeper into the murky lives of these miners, she finds that Danny isn’t the first to go missing.

Read on for an extract from Never Never…

Never Never
by
James Patterson

Chapter 1

‘IF YOU REACH the camp before me, I’ll let you live,’ the Soldier said.
        It was the same chance he allowed them all. The fairest judgment for their crimes against his people.
        The young man lay snivelling in the sand at his feet. Tears had always disgusted the Soldier. They were the lowest form of expression, the physical symptom of psychological weakness. The Soldier lifted his head and looked across the black desert to the camp’s border lights. The dark sky was an explosion of stars, patched here and there by shifting cloud. He sucked cold desert air into his lungs.
        ‘Why are you doing this?’ Danny whimpered.
        The Soldier slammed the door of the van closed and twisted the key. He looped his night-vision goggles around his neck and strode past the shivering traitor to a large rock. He mounted it, and with an outstretched arm pointed towards the north-east.
        ‘On a bearing of zero-four-seven, at a distance of one-point-six-two kilometres, your weapon is waiting,’ the Soldier barked. He swivelled, and pointed to the north-west. ‘On a bearing of three-one-five, at a distance of one-point-six-five kilometres, my weapon is waiting. The camp lies at true north.’
        ‘What are you saying?’ the traitor wailed. ‘Jesus Christ! Please, please don’t do this.’
        The Soldier jumped from the rock, straightened his belt, and drew down his cap. The young traitor had dragged himself to his feet and now stood shaking by the van, his weak arms drawn up against his chest. Judgment is the duty of the righteous, the Soldier thought. There is no room for pity. Only fury at the abandonment of honour.
        Even as those familiar words drifted through his mind, he felt the cold fury awakening. His shoulders tensed, and he could not keep the snarl from his mouth as he turned to begin his mission.
        ‘We’re greenlit, soldier,’ he said. ‘Move out!’

Chapter 2

DANNY WATCHED THE Soldier disappear in the brief, pale light before the moon was shrouded by clouds. The darkness that sealed him was complete. He scrambled for the driver’s side door of the van, yanked it, pushed against the back window where a long crack ran upwards through the middle of the glass. He ran around and did the same on the other side. Panic thrummed through him. What was he doing? Even if he got into the van, the keys were gone. He spun around and bolted into the dark in the general direction of north-east. How the hell was he supposed to find anything out here?
        The moon shone through the clouds again, giving him a glimpse of the expanse of dry sand and rock before it was taken away. He tripped forward and slid down a steep embankment, sweat plastering sand to his palms, his cheeks. His breath came in wild pants and gasps.
        ‘Please God,’ he cried. ‘Please, God, please!’
        He ran blindly in the dark, arms pumping, stumbling now and then over razor-sharp desert plants. He came over a rocky rise and saw the camp glittering in the distance, no telling how far. Should he try to make it to the camp? He screamed out. Maybe someone on patrol would hear him.
        Danny kept his eyes on the ground as he ran. Every shadow and ripple in the sand looked like a gun. He leapt at a dry log that looked like a rifle, knelt and fumbled in the dark. Sobs racked through his chest. The task was impossible.
        The first sound was just a whoosh, sharper and louder than the wind. Danny straightened in alarm. The second whoosh was followed by a heavy thunk, and before he could put the two sounds together he was on his back in the sand.
        The pain rushed up from his arm in a bright red wave. The young man gripped his shattered elbow, the sickening emptiness where his forearm and hand had been. High, loud cries came from deep in the pit of his stomach. Visions of his mother flashed in the redness behind his eyes. He rolled and dragged himself up.
        He would not die this way. He would not die in the dark.

Chapter 3

THE SOLDIER WATCHED through the rifle scope as the kid stumbled, his remaining hand gripping at the stump. The Soldier had seen the Barrett M82 rifle take heads clean off necks in the Gaza Strip, and in the Australian desert the weapon didn’t disappoint. Lying flat on his belly on a ridge, the Soldier actioned the huge black rifle, set the upper rim of his eye against the scope. He breathed, shifted back, pulled the trigger, and watched the kid collapse as the scare shot whizzed past his ear.
        What next? A leg? An ear? The Soldier was surprised at his own callousness. He knew it wasn’t military justice to play with the traitor while doling out his sentence, but the rage still burned in him.
        You would have given us away, he seethed as he watched the boy running in the dark. You would have sacrificed us all.
        There was no lesser creature on Earth than a liar, a cheat and a traitor. And bringing about a fellow soldier’s end was never easy. In some ways, it felt like a second betrayal. Look what you’ve forced me to do, the Soldier thought, watching the kid screaming into the wind. The Soldier let the boy scream. The wind would carry his voice south, away from the camp.
        The cry of a traitor. He would remember it for his own times of weakness.
        The Soldier shifted in the sand, lined up a headshot, and followed Danny in the crosswires as he got up one last time.
        ‘Target acquired,’ the Soldier murmured to himself, exhaling slowly. ‘Executing directive.’
        He pulled the trigger. What the Soldier saw through the scope made him smile sadly. He rose, flicked the bipod down on the end of the huge gun and slung the weapon over his shoulder.
        ‘Target terminated. Mission complete.’
        He walked down the embankment into the dark.

Chapter 4

IT WAS CHIEF Morris who called me into the interrogation room. He was sitting on the left of the table, in one of the investigators’ chairs, and motioned for me to sit on the right where the perps sit.
        ‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s this all about, Pops? I’ve got work to do.’
        His face was grave. I hadn’t seen him look that way since the last time I punched Nigel over in Homicide for taking my parking spot. The Chief had been forced to give me a serious reprimand, on paper, and it hurt him.
        ‘Sit down, Detective Blue,’ he said.
        Holy crap, I thought. This is bad. I know I’m in trouble when the Chief calls me by my official title.
        The truth is, most of our time together is spent far from the busy halls of the Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills.
        I was twenty-one when I started working Sex Crimes. It was my first assignment after two years on street patrol, so I moved into the Sydney Metro offices with more than a little terror in my heart at my new role and the responsibility that came with it. I’d been told I was the first woman in the Sex Crimes department in half a decade. It was up to me to show the boys how to handle women in crisis. The department was broken; I needed to fix it, fast. The Chief had grunted a demoralised hello at me a few times in the coffee room in those early weeks, and that had been it. I’d lain awake plenty of nights thinking about his obvious lack of faith in me, wondering how I could prove him wrong.
        After a first month punctuated by a couple of violent rape cases and three or four aggravated assaults, I’d signed up for one-on-one boxing training at a gym near my apartment. From what I’d seen, I figured it was a good idea for a woman in this city to know how to land a swift uppercut. I’d waited outside the gym office that night sure that the young, muscle-bound woman wrapping her knuckles by the lockers was my trainer.
        But it was Chief Morris in a sweaty grey singlet who tapped me on the shoulder and told me to get into the ring.
        Inside the ropes, the Chief called me ‘Blue’. Inside the office, he grunted.
        There was none of the warmth and trust shared by Blue and Pops in the ring here in the interrogation room. The Chief’s eyes were cold. I felt a little of that old terror from my first days on the job.
        ‘Pops,’ I said. ‘What’s the deal?’
        He took the statement notepad and a pencil from beside the interview recorder and pushed them towards me.
        ‘Make a list of items from your apartment that you’ll need while you’re away. It may be for weeks,’ he said. ‘Toiletries. Clothes. That sort of stuff.’
        ‘Where am I going?’
        ‘As far away as you can get,’ he sighed.
        ‘Chief, you’re talking crazy,’ I said. ‘Why can’t I go home and get this stuff myself?’
        ‘Because right now your apartment is crawling with Forensics officers. Patrol have blockaded the street. They’ve impounded your car, Detective Blue,’ he said. ‘You’re not going home.’

Chapter 5

I LAUGHED, HARD, in the Chief’s face.
        ‘Good work, Pops,’ I said, standing up so that my chair scraped loudly on the tiles. ‘Look, I like a good prank as much as anyone but I’m busier than a one-armed bricklayer out there. I can’t believe they roped you into this one. Good work, mate. Now open this door.’
        ‘This isn’t a joke, Harriet. Sit back down.’
        I laughed again. That’s what I do when I’m nervous. I laugh, and I grin. ‘I’ve got cases.’
        ‘Your apartment and car are being forensically examined in connection with the Georges River Three case,’ the Chief said. He slapped a thick manila folder on the table between us. It was bursting with papers and photographs, yellow witness reports and pink forensics sheets.
        I knew the folder well. I’d watched it as it was carried around by the Homicide guys, back and forth, hand to hand, a bible of horror. Three beautiful university students, all brunettes, all found along the same stretch of the muddy Georges River. Their deaths, exactly thirty days apart, had been violent, drawn-out horrors. The stuff of mothers’ nightmares. Of my nightmares. I’d wanted the Georges River Three case badly, at least to consult on it due to the sexual violence the women had endured. I’d hungered for that case. But it had been given to the parking-spot thief Detective Nigel Spader and his team of Homicide hounds. For weeks I’d sat at my desk seething at the closed door of their case room before the rage finally dissipated.
        I sank back into my chair.
        ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
        ‘It’s routine, Blue,’ the Chief said gently. He reached out and put his hand on mine. ‘They’re just making sure you didn’t know.’
        ‘Know what?’
        ‘We found the Georges River Killer,’ he said. He looked at my eyes. ‘It’s your brother, Blue. It’s Sam.’