JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 300 million copies worldwide and he has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past nine years in a row. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions and Maximum Ride series. James is the proud sponsor of the World Book Day Award and has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
Three thieves have planned the perfect diamond heist. They’ve monitored the Hatton Garden jeweller for months and are ready to make the hit. But they were not expecting a rival crew to show up at exactly the same time.
After a bloody fight, the three thieves come away with the diamonds and set off to meet their buyer in Amsterdam. But now it’s not only the police who are chasing them, and not only the diamonds that are at stake.
ALEX CROSS NOVELS
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Jack and Jill
Cat and Mouse
Pop Goes the Weasel
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Four Blind Mice
The Big Bad Wolf
London Bridges
Mary, Mary
Cross
Double Cross
Cross Country
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
I, Alex Cross
Cross Fire
Kill Alex Cross
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Alex Cross, Run
Cross My Heart
Hope to Die
Cross Justice
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES
1st to Die
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro)
14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro)
15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro)
DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
Gone (with Michael Ledwidge)
Burn (with Michael Ledwidge)
Alert (with Michael Ledwidge)
PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox)
Private Paris (with Mark Sullivan)
NYPD RED SERIES
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 4 (with Marshall Karp)
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
Invisible (with David Ellis)
The Thomas Berryman Number
Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan)
Murder House (with David Ellis)
NON-FICTION
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
ROMANCE
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
First Love (with Emily Raymond)
OTHER TITLES
Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge)
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THE THIEF’S GLOVED fingers beat against the steering wheel, a rhythm as hectic as the young man’s darting eyes.
‘You’re doing it again,’ the woman beside him accused, rubbing at her face to drive home her irritation.
The thief turned in his seat, his wild eyes quickly shifting to an angry focus.
She wouldn’t meet the stare, he knew. She never did, despite the fact that she was five years his senior, and tried to order him about as if she had the rank and privilege of family.
‘Doing what?’ He smiled, his handsome face made ugly by resentment.
The woman didn’t answer. Instead, she rubbed again at her tired eyes. Her name was Charlotte Taylor, and anticipation had robbed her of any sleep the previous night. Instead she had lain awake, thinking of this day. Thinking of how failure would condemn the man she loved.
Charlotte tried again to hold the gaze of the man beside her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes – she saw the past in them.
And what did he see when he looked at her? That a once pretty girl was now cracked from stress and sorrow? That her shoulders stooped like a woman of sixty, not thirty? Charlotte did not want to feel that scrutiny. That obnoxious charity she had suffered from family and strangers for nine years.
‘It’s OK if you’re scared,’ she baited the thief, knowing that aggression would be one way to distract her from her niggling thoughts.
‘Me? I’m excited,’ the younger man shot back.
And he was.
Today was the day. Today was the day when years of talking, months of planning and weeks of practice would pay off.
Lives were going to change, and it would all start here.
‘I’m excited,’ the thief said again, but this time with a smile.
His name was Alex Scowcroft, an unemployed twenty-five-year-old from north-west England’s impoverished coast. Today the thief was far from home, his white panelled rental van parked up beneath a blue October sky on Hatton Garden, the street that was the heart of London’s diamond trade.
Charlotte was not excited. In truth, she was sick to her stomach. She had never broken the law – not in any meaningful way, anyway – and the thought of being caught and convicted turned her guts into knots. And yet, the thought of failure was infinitely worse.
As she always did when she needed comfort, Charlotte pulled a blue envelope from the inside pocket of her worn leather jacket. The letter was grimy from oily fingers, and teardrops had smudged the ink. The blue paper was the mark of military correspondence, given to soldiers at war so they could write to their loved ones.
Hoping to take strength from the words, Charlotte looked over the faded letter.
Catching sight of the ‘bluey’, Scowcroft stopped his fidgeting. ‘Was that –’
‘His last one.’
‘He never wrote me any letters.’ Scowcroft smiled. ‘Knew I couldn’t write one back.’
Charlotte folded the letter away, replacing it into the pocket that would keep it closest to her heart.
‘You’re his brother, Alex. You two don’t need to put words on paper to know how you feel about each other.’
Uncomfortable at the sincerity in her words, Scowcroft could only manage a violent nod before turning his gaze back out of the window, his chest sagging with relief as he saw a man approaching.
‘Baz is back.’
Gaunt-faced and stick thin, Matthew Barrett entered the van through its sliding door and pushed his bony skull into the space between Charlotte and Scowcroft.
‘Same as it’s been every day,’ he told them in a voice made harsh by smoking only the cheapest cigarettes. ‘The shops are opening. No sign of any extra security. If he sticks to the same pattern again today, our man should be here in ten.’
Scowcroft exhaled hard with anticipation. ‘Get your gear on.’
Behind him, Barrett changed from the street clothes of his reconnaissance into a similar style of assault boot and biker jacket worn by his two accomplices. Finally, he pulled a baseball cap tight onto his head, and brought up the thin black mask that would obscure his features. Eyeing himself in the mirror, Barrett thought aloud: ‘Assume that we’ve been spotted as soon as we pull off. Don’t try to be stealthy. Maximum violence. We get out. We shock. We grab. We extract.’
‘I know the plan,’ Scowcroft grunted.
‘I know you do, mate,’ Barrett told him with the patience of a mentor. ‘But there’s no such thing as going over it too many times. Five minutes,’ he concluded, looking at the van’s dashboard clock.
Scowcroft turned the ignition, and four minutes passed with nothing but the throb of the van’s diesel engine for distraction. It was Charlotte who broke the silence.
‘If they get me, but you two pull this off, I don’t want Tony to see me in prison. I don’t want him to see me like that.’
Barrett reached out and placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. ‘Since when does anyone tell Tony what to do? He loves you, Char, and when he’s back to us, he’d be seeing you on Mars if that’s what it took.’
Charlotte eased at the words and rolled down her balaclava, her piercing blue eyes afire with righteous determination.
‘For Tony, then.’
‘For Tony,’ the two men echoed, voices thick with grit and love.
Barrett looked again at the van’s dashboard. ‘Five minutes is up.’
In the driver’s seat, Scowcroft’s fingers began to beat against the steering wheel once more.
‘He’s here,’ he told them, and put the van into gear, pulling out into the lazy traffic of a Friday mid-morning.
A few pedestrians, mostly window-shoppers, ambled along the pavements, but Scowcroft’s eyes were focused solely on a burly skinhead who looked as if he’d been plucked from a prison cell and clad in Armani. More precisely, Scowcroft focused on what was in the man’s hand – a leather holdall. A leather holdall that would change their lives.
The big man’s stride was slow and deliberate. Scowcroft reduced the van’s speed to a running pace and glided close to the kerb.
The moment had come.
‘Go!’ he shouted, overcome by excitement.
Then, as they had practised dozens of times, Charlotte threw open the heavy passenger door so that the metal slammed into the big man’s back, the leather holdall flying free as he collapsed onto the pavement.
‘He’s dropped it, Baz! Go!’ Scowcroft shouted again as he stood on the brakes. Barrett threw himself from the van’s sliding door, his eyes scanning for the bag and finding it beneath a parked car.
‘I see it!’ Barrett announced from outside, but Scowcroft’s eyes were elsewhere. And widening in alarm.
‘Shit,’ he cursed.
He’d expected to see pedestrians flee the scene. He’d expected to see a brave one try to interfere. But what Scowcroft had not expected to see was two motorcycles coming at them along the pavement, the riders hidden ominously behind black visors.
With gut instinct, Scowcroft knew that the bikers were coming for the contents of the bag.
‘Shit!’ he repeated, then spat, because years of talking, months of planning and weeks of practice were about to come undone.
So Alex Scowcroft formulated a new plan. One which any Scowcroft would have made.
He reached beneath his seat and pulled his older brother’s commando dagger from its sheath. Charlotte saw the blade the moment before she saw the incoming bikers, and grasped the implications. She looked to Scowcroft for leadership.
‘Would you die for my brother?’ he asked her.
She nodded, swallowing the fear in her throat.
‘Would you kill for him?’
Her eyes told him that she would.
‘Then get out and fight.’
SCOWCROFT AND CHARLOTTE flew from the van’s doors like fury, adrenaline coursing through their veins.
‘Baz!’ Scowcroft shouted. ‘Leave the bag where it is and get over here! We’ve got a problem!’
‘Leave the bag?’ Charlotte questioned aghast, a ball hammer in her shaking hands.
‘They’ll snatch it and go. We need them off those bikes.’
With no sign of the holdall, the black-helmeted riders slowed their pace. Scowcroft could feel their gaze now falling on him and his two accomplices from behind the tinted visors.
Barrett came running up beside the others.
‘The bag’s by the front-left wheel arch. I can grab it quick, but what about them?’ he asked, then took in the sight of Scowcroft’s commando dagger. For a moment, Scowcroft thought Barrett would tell him to put the weapon away. Instead, Barrett drew an identical blade from a sheath on his lower leg.
‘Just remember, drive the blade, don’t slice,’ Barrett encouraged the younger man, brandishing his own dagger in an attempt to scare off the riders and avoid bloodshed.
It didn’t work.
The bikers had their own weapons – five hundred pounds of metal, and that metal could reach sixty miles per hour in the time it took to close the gap to Scowcroft and his companions.
The bikes revved hard, leaving rubber on the pavement. Side by side, they came forward in a cavalry charge of steel.
Barrett and Charlotte darted left and pressed themselves into the cover of a shallow doorway, but Scowcroft dived for the holdall beneath the wheel arch, the bikers aiming for the easy target of his exposed body. They saw the chance to cripple the man as he grasped for his prize, and engines roared louder as throttles were held open.
Then, as his accomplices waited for the dreadful moment of impact, Scowcroft pressed his body down into the tarmac, squeezing himself beneath the car, and flung the holdall into the face of the closest rider.