The Palm Beach Murders by James Patterson (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

mind screams, He’s twice your age! But he pours her shots of clear, sweet rum between dances, and she kind of loves how she feels in his muscular arms.…

Sometime after midnight, the party is broken up by local cops. It’s not so much a raid as a gentle shakedown, in which the trust fund kid is expected to fork over a tiny sliver of said fund. When your sister looks around, she realizes the twins have already left the yacht, pretty much abandoning her.

One of the cops is kind enough to offer her a ride back. He’s very friendly. So friendly, he insists on a good-night kiss before she goes home. She offers him one. He pushes things further. She pushes back. He gently insists with the manner of someone who is used to hearing no, but also used to completely ignoring it.…

Now imagine your sister coming to her senses a little. Those old warnings from Mom and Dad are nagging at her, so she parts ways with the cop and decides to go for a walk to clear her head. Sand beneath her feet, ocean spray on her face, and all that. This was a nice diversion to fantasyland, but now it’s time to return to reality.

But it’s darker on the beach than she realized. And before she can make it back to the party—hands reach out from the darkness and grab her.

She fights back. With everything she’s got. Deep down, at the animal instinct level, she knows: this person means to do her harm.

But the stranger’s hands, they’re too powerful, and she’s had too much to drink. They pull on her wrists and she’s brought down to her knees, then tumbles down onto the sand.

Still, she refuses to give up. Whatever those hands want with her, it can’t be good. She punches, she kicks, she scrambles up to her feet, and she thinks she’s just about to make it when…

She’s tackled, hard—her face smashing into the beach. She inhales to scream and sucks coarse sand down her throat.

Her attacker does not care. The hands, so incredibly powerful, drag her choking body down to the water’s edge. She tries to hold on. Struggles to undo the mistakes she thinks she’s made tonight. If she can only hold on a little longer…

But the tracks from her fingers, as they claw at the beach, will be erased by the tide the next morning.

Chapter 2

THE STINGRAYS

“Paige Ryerson’s body was never found,” Matthew Quinn says, continuing his tale as he sprays the inside of a Teflon pan with coconut oil.

The five of them, as usual, gather in the oversized kitchen where Quinn is cooking breakfast. His $7,000-a-month Cambridge loft has plenty of other places where they can gather, but they prefer to talk about their cases over a hot meal. In this instance: the Sunday morning omelet station.

The other four take in the details of Quinn’s story as the pan heats up.

“That last bit is your theory, of course,” says Theo Selznick, who is standing at Quinn’s immediate right. The stocky, clean-cut man has known Quinn the longest, and he expects to be served first.

“My theory?” Quinn asks, as he cracks an egg over the side of a silver bowl.

“You know, the part about the hands grabbing her out of the darkness and all that. The last person to see her alive was the cop with the sweet lips, right? As far as we know, Paige Ryerson is still alive and well somewhere in paradise. Oh, and no cheese in mine, please.”

“It’s not an omelet without cheese,” Quinn says.

“You’ve known me since college,” Theo replies. “When have you ever known me to give a damn about the rules?”

Quinn cracks another egg. “Kate? How about you?”

Kate Weber, standing to Quinn’s left, has a stormy look on her thin face. “If she were my sister, I’d be rounding up the lifeguard, the rich kid, the captain, and the cop and work them over hard until I learned the truth. Maybe twice, just to be sure.”

“No,” Quinn says. “On your omelet, I mean.”

“Oh,” Kate says. “Just egg whites, please.”

“That’s also not an omelet, either,” Theo says. “You know, according to the rules.”

Quinn expertly cracks three eggs and separates the yolks from the white by using the two halves of the shell. His movements are fluid, relaxed—almost sleight-of-hand.  He admires Kate’s Spartan tastes. She was the same way in the US Army, when they briefly served together. No muss, no fuss. Just get the job done.

“Believe me, Kate,” Quinn says as he works. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to gather those men in a room and squeeze them until they pop. But you know how we work. We never let—”

“—our targets know they’re in our crosshairs,” says Jana Rose, who has positioned herself directly opposite Quinn. “We know, Matthew, honey. Maybe you could have that embroidered on a quilt.”

Quinn smiles at Jana, who has the classic beauty of a stage actor from another era. She’s the only one who dares to tease him like this. Even Theo—whom Quinn has known since they were roommates at Harvard—knows there are limits. But Jana knows Quinn more intimately than anyone else in this room. Or the planet, for that matter.

“And what would you like, Jana?” Quinn asks.

“Now, you know I don’t like eggs,” she says.

“Which is why you’ll find Greek yogurt and a small fruit salad in the fridge at knee-level.”

Jana’s face lights up. “Wonderful.”

From the other side of the kitchen comes a sigh. “I guess it’s up to me, then.”

The fifth member of the team, Otto Hazard, is perched on the kitchen counter, apart from the group. As usual. Otto met Theo in “finishing school”—the US Penitentiary at Leavenworth—making him the only member of the team without a direct connection to Quinn. So he constantly tries to earn his place, with a curious combination of bravado and laid-back disinterest.

“What are you thinking, Otto?” Quinn asks.

“That I’m gonna be the only one who will order a real omelet. Six eggs,