The Quickie
James Patterson
 NYPD Detective Lauren Stillwell is sitting in her car when she sees her husband Paul walk in to the St. Regis Hotel with a young and attractive blonde on his arm. Lauren and Paul are having marital problems so she assumes that Paul is having an affair. Enraged, Lauren goes to see her police partner Scott and they have sex. Their night is interrupted when Paul shows up and Scott goes out to confront him. From a window, Lauren sees Paul kill Scott and throw his body in his car and drive away. Several hours later, Lauren is called to a scene where a body has been found—Scott's body. Lauren and Scott's affair was a secret so no one suspects her involvement. She is, in fact, assigned as lead investigator. Through her investigation, Lauren discovers evidence of Paul's involvement in their home (gun, bloody clothing, etc.) and, in an attempt to protect Paul, Lauren tries to concoct a way to frame Scott's killing on someone else. Fortunately, Scott worked as an undercover drug cop and one of his cases was against two drug-trafficking brothers, Victor and Mark Ordonez. They quickly emerge as promising suspects, thanks to their extensive criminal histories. Lauren and her team track Victor to a night club where there is a foot pursuit. Lauren and her current partner Mike Ortiz track Victor to a train yard where Ortiz manages to kill Victor, but not before Victor wounds Lauren. During her recovery, Lauren decides to come clean with Paul about their respective affairs when Paul reveals a bombshell: he wasn't having an affair at all. Instead, the young blonde Lauren saw him with was a recruiter for a company looking to hire Paul. The new company pays Paul 3 times his current salary which allows Paul and Lauren to move to Connecticut from New York City. Even though Lauren is mortified that her affair and Scott's death resulted from a gigantic misunderstanding, she keeps it to herself. Over the next few weeks and months, Paul and Lauren's relationship strengthens and Lauren eventually discovers she is pregnant. Even though her plan to mask Paul's involvement in Scott's death seems to be working, Lauren is disgusted with the dishonesty of it and decides to resign from the NYPD. One evening while in Connecticut visiting their new home, Paul is knocked unconscious by Mark Ordonez—Victor's brother—who then kidnaps Lauren. Mark's plan is to fly Lauren in a small plane out over the Atlantic Ocean and then drop her in as retribution for her part in killing Victor. As Mark and Lauren are driving away, Paul intervenes by ramming his car into Mark's car. Mark stops to kick and beat Paul some more, but while walking back to his car, Mark is run over and killed by a passing truck carrying cars. At a retirement party thrown by her colleagues, Lauren learns from a cop friend that the tarp Scott's body was found wrapped in—a tarp belonging to Lauren and Paul—had a viable DNA sample on it. This DNA belongs to Paul and Lauren is scared it might spoil her otherwise perfect coverup. The cop friend says that while the sample has not been identified, it has been matched to a sample from an unsolved robbery in Washington DC 5 years earlier. The cop friend gives the evidence to Lauren since it was her case. Lauren struggles with whether to hide the evidence or pursue it, but ultimately decides to pursue it. In her mind, however, she already knows what the evidence says: Paul was involved in the Washington robbery. One day, Lauren follows Paul from his office in New York City. He goes on a secretive plane trip to Washington DC and Lauren follows him. Once in DC, Lauren sees Paul change his clothing and ditch the glasses he normally wears. She then sees him get picked up by a woman in black Range Rover SUV. Lauren uses her police contacts to find out who owns the SUV and she shows up at the woman's home. While there, she sees Paul and is shocked to discover him chaperoning a little girl (~4 years old) to school. Paul is a father. She confronts Paul there and discovers that he was in Washington 5 years ago for business and met the woman at the bar of the hotel he was staying at. An NCAA ticket conference is going on at the hotel and, after a bit of drinking, the woman convinces Paul that one of the men in the hotel swindled her out of a bunch of money. Inebriated Paul confronts the man and there is a struggle during which Paul is cut. He manages to get the woman's money back, but leaves a blood sample behind. Paul then got the woman pregnant, resulting in the 4 year old girl he was chaperoning around earlier. Since then, Paul has snuck down to Washington DC from New York periodically, concealing the trips in his normal travel schedule for work. Lauren is incensed, which only gets worse when she learns that the SUV-owning woman is pregnant. With Paul's twins. Lauren then arrests Paul. When she puts him in his car, Paul draws a gun from the glove compartment, throw Lauren out of the car, and speed off. In the course of the chase, Lauren sees Paul's car fall into a river. She dives in after him and they proceed to fight underwater. Lauren manages to knock Paul out, but he is still strapped in his car and drowns. The story ends with Lauren and her newborn son Thomas living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she runs her own private investigation company.