Jeffrey Epstein’s entry in the National Sex Offender Registry (National Sex Offender Registry)
Epstein’s Little Saint James island, U.S. Virgin Islands: a privately owned cay (nicknamed Little Saint Jeff’s) whose owner locals affectionately refer to as Richie Rich (© Chris Bott / Splash News / Corbis)
Epstein’s Gulfstream, photographed on Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, January 2015 (© Chris Bott / Splash News / Corbis)
Epstein’s longtime pilot, Larry Visoski, was at the controls as Epstein’s Gulfstream left Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, January 2016. (Jae Donnelly)
When Prince Andrew and Epstein were seen strolling together through New York’s Central Park in 2011, shortly after Epstein’s release from jail, the duke was forced to quit his role as the British government’s global trade envoy. (Jae Donnelly / News of the World)
Stephen Hawking, photographed in March 2006 aboard an Atlantis submarine that was custom-fitted by Epstein to accommodate his wheelchair. Hawking was attending the conference “Confronting Gravity,” “a workshop to explore fundamental questions in physics and cosmology,” sponsored by the J. Epstein VI Foundation and the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics (CERCA) at Case Western Reserve University, at the Ritz Carlton, St. Thomas, USVI. (Courtesy CERCA, Case Western University)
A framed photo of Florida governor Charlie Crist and Scott Rothstein in Rothstein’s office in Fort Lauderdale, autographed by Charlie Crist: Scott—You are amazing! Charlie Crist (Carline Jean © Sun Sentinel / ZUMAPRESS.com)
Epstein’s current residence, the storied building formerly known as the Herbert N. Straus Mansion, on East 71st Street just off Central Park, was acquired by Leslie Wexner in 1989. (Laura Hanifin)
Epstein, a longtime benefactor, with an unidentified friend, attended the 2014 New York Academy of Art’s Tribeca Ball, presented by Van Cleef & Arpels, at the New York Academy of Art on April 7, 2014, in New York City. (Billy Farrell / BFAnyc.com)
Nadia Marcinkova, Michele Tagliani, Sarah Kellen, and Teala Davies, photographed at the New York Academy of Art’s Tribeca Ball, April 14, 2004 (Rob Rich / SocietyAllure.com)
Sarah (formerly Kellen/Kensington) and husband, NASCAR driver Brian Vickers, arrive on the red carpet at the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. (Jeff Moreland / Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
Nadia Marcinkova and Larry Visoski, Epstein’s personal pilot, in what appears to be the cockpit of a Gulfstream G-II (YouTube)
Michael and Janet Reiter at the Palm Beach Police Foundation Policemen’s Ball at Mar-a-Lago, January 2012 (Debbie Schatz / Palm Beach Daily News / ZUMAPRESS.com)
Retired Palm Beach police detective Joe Recarey, November 2013 (Meghan McCarthy / Palm Beach Daily News / ZUMAPRESS.com)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
James Patterson received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community at the 2015 National Book Awards ceremony. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most number one New York Times bestsellers, and his books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide.
http://www.JamesPatterson.com
http://www.facebook.com/JamesPatterson
John Connolly has been an investigative reporter for twenty-five years, the last twelve of them with Vanity Fair. He has written scores of nonfiction pieces for numerous national magazines.
Tim Malloy is a thirty-year veteran of print and television journalism. He has won eight Emmys as an investigative reporter, documentary maker, and war correspondent. He appears in print, on the Web, and on TV as a political analyst.
BOOKS BY JAMES PATTERSON
Featuring Alex Cross
Cross Justice
Hope to Die
Cross My Heart
Alex Cross, Run
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Kill Alex Cross
Cross Fire
I, Alex Cross
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
Cross Country
Double Cross
Cross (also published as Alex Cross)
Mary, Mary
London Bridges
The Big Bad Wolf
Four Blind Mice
Violets Are Blue
Roses Are Red
Pop Goes the Weasel
Cat & Mouse
Jack & Jill
Kiss the Girls
Along Came a Spider
The Women’s Murder Club
15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro)
14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro)
Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
The 9th Judgment (with Maxine Paetro)
The 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
1st to Die
Featuring Michael Bennett
Bullseye (with Michael Ledwidge)
Alert (with Michael Ledwidge)
Burn (with Michael Ledwidge)
Gone (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
The Private Novels
The Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private India: City on Fire (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: #1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
NYPD Red Novels
NYPD Red 4 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
Summer Novels
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Beach Road (with Peter de Jonge)
Lifeguard (with Andrew Gross)
Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
The Beach House (with Peter de Jonge)
Stand-alone Books
Woman of God (with Maxine Paetro)
The Murder House (with David Ellis)
Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan)
Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge)
Invisible (with David Ellis)
First Love (with Emily Raymond)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
The Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
Against Medical Advice (with Hal Friedman)
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
You’ve Been Warned (with Howard Roughan)
The Quickie (with Michael Ledwidge)
Judge & Jury (with Andrew Gross)
Sam’s Letters to Jennifer
The Lake House
The Jester (with Andrew Gross)
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
/> Cradle and All
When the Wind Blows
Miracle on the 17th Green (with Peter de Jonge)
Hide & Seek
The Midnight Club
Black Friday (originally published as Black Market)
See How They Run
Season of the Machete
The Thomas Berryman Number
For Readers of All Ages
Maximum Ride
Maximum Ride Forever
Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure
Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel
Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel
Max: A Maximum Ride Novel
The Final Warning: A Maximum Ride Novel
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports: A Maximum Ride Novel
School’s Out—Forever: A Maximum Ride Novel
The Angel Experiment: A Maximum Ride Novel
Daniel X
Daniel X: Lights Out (with Chris Grabenstein)
Daniel X: Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)
Daniel X: Game Over (with Ned Rust)
Daniel X: Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)
Daniel X: Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)
Witch & Wizard
Witch & Wizard: The Lost (with Emily Raymond)
Witch & Wizard: The Kiss (with Jill Dembowski)
Witch & Wizard: The Fire (with Jill Dembowski)
Witch & Wizard: The Gift (with Ned Rust)
Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
Middle School
Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Middle School: Save Rafe! (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Middle School: Ultimate Showdown (with Julia Bergen, illustrated by Alec Longstreth)
Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou, illustrated by Neil Swaab)
Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Confessions
Confessions: The Murder of an Angel (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Private School Murders (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions of a Murder Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
I Funny
I Funny TV (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Laura Park)
I Totally Funniest: A Middle School Story (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Laura Park)
I Even Funnier: A Middle School Story (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Laura Park)
I Funny: A Middle School Story (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Laura Park)
Treasure Hunters
Treasure Hunters: Peril at the Top of the World (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Treasure Hunters: Secret of the Forbidden City (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Other Books for Readers of All Ages
Cradle and All (teen edition)
Jacky Ha-Ha (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Kerascoët)
House of Robots: Robots Go Wild! (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Public School Superhero (with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Cory Thomas)
House of Robots (with Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Juliana Neufeld)
Homeroom Diaries (with Lisa Papademetriou, illustrated by Keino)
Med Head (with Hal Friedman)
santaKid (illustrated by Michael Garland)
For previews and information about the author, visit JamesPatterson.com or find him on Facebook or at your app store.
YOU CAN ONLY PUSH ALEX CROSS SO FAR
For an excerpt, turn the page.
He changed identity like many warriors do before battle. He called himself Mercury on nights like these.
Dressed in black from his visor helmet to his steel-toe boots, Mercury had his motorcycle backed up into a huge rhododendron bush by the Rock Creek Parkway south of Calvert Street. He sat astride the idling bike and cradled a U.S. Army surplus light detection and ranging device. He trained the lidar on every vehicle that went past him, checking its speed.
Forty-five miles an hour, on the money. Forty-four. Fifty-two. Routine stuff. Safe numbers. Boring numbers.
Mercury was hoping to see a more exotic and inflated figure on the screen. He had good reason to believe a bloated number like that would appear before this night was over. He was certainly in the right place for it.
Built in the 1920s, Rock Creek Parkway had been designed to preserve the natural scenic beauty of the area. The winding four-lane road ran from the Lincoln Memorial north through parks, gardens, and woods. It was 2.9 miles long and split in Northwest DC. Beach Drive, the right fork, headed northeast, deeper into the park. The parkway itself continued on to the left and curled back northwest to the intersection with Calvert Street.
Forty-three miles an hour, according to the lidar display. Forty-seven. Forty-five.
These numbers were not surprising. The parkway was on the National Register of Historic Places and was maintained by the National Park Service; it had a set speed limit of forty-five miles an hour.
But the parkway’s meandering route was about as close to a Grand Prix circuit as you could find in or around the District of Columbia. Elongated S curves, chicanes, a few altitude changes, straightaways that ran down the creek bottom—they were all there, and the road was almost twice the length of the fabled Grand Prix course at Watkins Glen, New York.
That alone makes it a target, Mercury thought. That alone says someone will try. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the night after.
He’d read an article in the Washington Post that said that on any given night, the odds were better than one in three that some rich kid or an older prick sucking big-time off the federal teat would bring out the new Porsche or the overhorsed BMW and take a crack at Rock Creek. So might the suburban kid who’d snuck out the old man’s Audi, or even a middle-aged mom or two.
All sorts of people seemed obsessed by it. One try every three nights, Mercury thought. But tonight, the odds were even better than average.
A few days ago, a budget crisis had closed the U.S. government. All funding for park law enforcement had been frozen. No salaries were being paid. Park rangers had been sent home for liability reasons. There was no one looking but him.
Hours went by. Traffic slowed to a trickle, and still Mercury aimed the lidar gun and shot, read the verdict, and waited. He was nodding off at a quarter to three that morning and thinking that he should pack it in when he heard the growl of a big-bore engine turning onto the parkway from Beach Drive.
On that sound alone, Mercury’s right hand shot out and fired up the bike. His left hand aimed the lidar at the growl, which became a whining, buzzing wail of fury coming right at him.
The instant he had headlights, he hit the trigger.
Seventy-two miles an hour.
He tossed the lidar into the rhododendrons. He’d return for it later.
The Maserati blew by him.
Mercury twisted the accelerator and popped the clutch. He blasted out of the rhododendrons, flew off the embankment, and landed with a smoking squeal in the parkway not a hundred yards behind the Italian sports car.
The Maserati was brand-new, sleek, black; a Quattroporte, Mercury thought, judging by the glimpse he had gotten of the car as it roared past him, and probably an S Q5.
Mercury studied such exotic vehicles. A Maserati Quattroporte S Q5 had a turbo-injec
ted six-cylinder engine with a top speed of 176 miles per hour, and it boasted brilliant transmission, suspension, and steering systems.
Overall, the Maserati was a worthy opponent, suited to the parkway’s challenges. The average man or woman might think a car like that would be impossible to best on such a demanding course, especially by a motorcycle.
The average person would be wrong.
Mercury’s bike was a flat-out runner of a beast that could hit 190 miles an hour and remain nimble through curves, corkscrews, and every other twist, turn, and terrain change a road might throw at you. Especially if you knew how to drive a high-speed motorcycle, and Mercury did. He had been driving fast bikes his entire life and felt uniquely suited to bring this one up to speed.
Eighty miles per hour; ninety. The Maserati’s brake lights flashed in front of him as the parkway came out of the big easterly curve. But the driver of the Italian sports car was not set up for the second turn of a lazy and backward S.
Mercury pounced on the rookie mistake; he crouched low, gunned the bike, and came into the second curve on a high line, smoking-fast and smooth. When he exited the second curve, he was right on the Maserati’s back bumper and going seventy-plus.
The parkway ran a fairly true course south for nearly a mile there, and the Italian sports car tried to out-accelerate Mercury on the straight. But the Maserati was no match for Mercury’s custom ride.
He drafted right in behind the sports car, let go of the left handlebar, and grabbed the Remington 1911 pistol Velcroed to the gas tank.
Eighty-nine. Ninety.
Ahead, the parkway took a hard, long left turn. The Maserati would have to brake. Mercury decelerated, dropped back, and waited for it.
The second the brake lights of the Italian sports car flashed, the motorcyclist hit the gas and made a lightning-quick jagging move that brought him right up next to the Maserati’s passenger-side window. No passenger.