Tick Tock (Michael Bennett, #4)

by James Patterson

Prologue SEXY BEAST One LIKE THE LUXURY CO-OPS and five-star French eateries located in Manhattan’s Silk

Tom McGinnis, or McGirth, as he was more casually known due to his not-so-girlish figure, was the department’s chief of detectives, Miriam’s boss and perhaps the most egregious power-hungry ballbuster in the NYPD.

Like Oscar Wilde said, “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best,” he thought.

“At the age of six, I wanted to be a cook. At seven, I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

“The fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason,” I said. “Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives.”

Pascal said that the heart has reasons that reason itself knows nothing about.

“Go give your Da a kiss,” Seamus instructed my kids. And incredibly, somehow, all at the same time, that’s exactly what they did.

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ORANGE LAKE, NEW YORK SIXTY MILES NORTH OF NEW YORK CITY STARTING TO GASP AS she climbed the increasingly steep slope of the tangled hiking trail, Mary Catherine was about to take a breather when the tree line opened. Glancing out over the open ridge, she immediately halted in her tracks, as what was left of her breath was suddenly taken.

Off to the right, the flat lake and majestic foothills of the Catskill Mountains glowed in the soft morning light like a priceless Hudson River School landscape come to life. Mary Catherine stood for a moment, mesmerized by the exhilarating vista, the distant golden hills, the mile-long expanse of silvery blue water, smooth and

perfect as a freshly tucked-in sheet. Only for a moment. Two geese floating by the near shore of the lake took frantic, honking flight as a large projectile landed in the wa...

Who was she kidding? she thought as she hauled Eddie up and sent him scurrying ahead of her along the forest path. She

knew the reason, or at least the main one. His name was Mike Bennett, the NYPD detective father of these ten crazy kids, stuck back in the city on a case. Which meant she was on riot patrol without backup here at the Bennett family lake house. At least until the weekend.

I LOOKED DOWN the barrel of my Glock 19 service weapon. Lori Armstrong, a tall detective with long blond hair from the Forty-Third precinct, stood across from me. Hector Nunez, a crimes and missing-persons detective, who looked like he should play linebacker for the Jets, was about to knock on the door.

We were three stories up in the dark, musty, hot hallway of an apartment building off Castle Hill Avenue near the I-278 overpass. I could feel the vibration of every semi that rumbled by.

This was an arrest I needed. I desperately wanted some...

mind and satisfy my sense of justice. Some cops found refuge in their homelife. I found that it worked both ways. Right now, I needed to be at work and get some distance so I could be the man I wanted to be at hom...