Copyright © 2000 by James Patterson
All rights reserved.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
First eBook Edition: October 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-40932-2
The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Contents
Copyright
Prologue: The Women's Medical Center
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Book One: The Investigators
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Book Two: Kathleen And Collen
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Book Three: Nativity
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Epilogue: Noelle, Noelle
Chapter 112
Prologue
Book One: David And Melanie
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
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Also by James Patterson
The Thomas Berryman Number
Season of the Machete
See How They Run
The Midnight Club
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Hide & Seek
Jack & Jill
Miracle on the 17th Green
(with Peter de Jonge)
Cat & Mouse
When the Wind Blows
Black Friday (formerly Black Market)
Pop Goes the Weasel
For Charles and Isabelle Patterson
Special thanks to Maxine Paetro, who helped me to remodel and to restore this scary old beach cottage of a story.
Prologue
THE WOMEN’S MEDICAL CENTER
Chapter 1
SUNDOWN HAD BLOODIED the horizon over the uneven rooftops of South Boston. Birds were perched on every roof and seemed to be watching the girl walking slowly below.
Kathleen Beavier made her way down a shadowy side street that was as alien to her as the faraway surface of the moon. Actually, she was here in Southie because it was so frozen, so obscure to her. She had on a fatigue jacket, long patterned skirt, and black combat-style boots — the urban streetwear look. The boots rubbed raw circles into her heels, but she welcomed the pain. It was a distraction from the unthinkable thing she had come to do.
This is so spooky, so unreal, so impossible, she thought.
The sixteen-year-old girl paused to catch her breath at the sparsely trafficked intersection of Dorchester and Broadway. She didn’t look as if she belonged here. She was too preppy, maybe too pretty. That was her plan, though. She’d never bump into anyone she knew in South Boston.
With badly shaking hands, she pushed her gold wire-rimmed glasses back into her blond hair. She’d washed it earlier with Aveda shampoo and rinsed it with conditioner. It seemed so absurd and ridiculous to have worried about how her damn hair would look.
She squeezed her eyes shut and uttered a long, hopeless cry of confusion and despair.
Kathleen finally forced open her eyes. She blinked into the slashing red rays of the setting sun. Then she scanned her Rolex Lady Datejust wristwatch for the millionth time in the past hour.
God, no. It was already past six. She was late for her doctor’s appointment.
She pushed forward into the ruins of Southie. Ahern’s funeral parlor loomed in her peripheral vision, then slipped away. She hurried past the crumbling St. Augustine’s parish church, past hole-in-the-wall bars, a boarded-up strip of two-storied row houses, a street person peeing against a wall covered with graffiti. She thought of an old rock song, “Aqualung,” by Jethro Tull.
She whipped herself forward, as she often did to protect herself against the New England cold. Tears ran from her eyes and dribbled down over her chin.
Hurry, hurry. You have to do this terrible thing. You’ve come this far.
It was already twenty after the hour when she finally turned the corner onto West Broadway. She instantly recognized the gray brick building wedged in between a twenty-four-hour Laundromat and a pawnshop.
This is the place. This . . . hellhole.
The walls were smeared with lipstick-red and black graffiti: Abortion = Murder. Abortion is the Unforgivable Sin. There was a glass door and beside it a tarnished brass plaque: women’s medical center, it read.
Sorrow washed over her and she felt faint. She didn’t want to go through with it. She wasn’t sure that she could. It was all terribly, horribly unfair.
Kathleen pressed her hand to the doorplate. The door opened into a reassuring reception room. Pastel-colored plastic chairs ringed the perimeter. Posters of sweet-faced mothers and chubby babies hung on the walls. Best of all, no one was here at this late hour.
Kathleen took a clipboard left out on a countertop. A sign instructed her to fill out the form as best she could.
Ensconced in a baby blue chair, she printed her medical history in block letters. Her hands were shaking harder now. Her foot, trapped in her trendy combat boot, wouldn’t stop tapping.
Kathleen probed her memory for something, anything, that would make sense of this. Nothing did! This can’t be happening to me! I shouldn’t be in the Women’s Medical Center.
She had made out with boys, but damn it, damn it, damn it, she knew the difference between kissing and . . . fucking.
She’d never gone all the way with anyone. Never even wanted to. She was too old-fashioned about sex — or maybe just a prude, or maybe just a good girl — but she hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d never been touched down there by a boy. Wouldn’t she know it if she had? Of course she would.
So how could she be pregnant?
She couldn’t. It wasn’t physically possible. She was a good kid, the best. Everybody’s friend at school.
Kathleen Beavier was a virgin. She’d never had sexual intercourse.
But she was pregnant.
Chapter 2
A SUDDEN WAVE of nausea came over Kathleen and nearly knocked her to the floor. She felt dizzy and thought she might throw up in the waiting room.
“Get yourself together,” she muttered softly. You’re not the first one to go through this kind of thing. You won’t be the last, kiddo.
She glanced at the clock over the reception desk with no receptionist. It was nearly six-thirty. Where was the receptionist? More important, where was the doctor?
Kathleen wanted to run out of the women’s clinic, but she fought off the powerful instinct. She couldn’t sit here any longer! She couldn’t stand the waiting. Where was everybody?
“Let’s do this,” she
said between clenched teeth. “No time like the present.”
She stood and walked to a pinewood door directly behind the reception desk. Kathleen took a deep breath, possibly the deepest of her life. She turned the metal handle, and the door opened.
She heard a soft, mellow voice coming from down the hall. Thank God someone is here after all.
She followed the sound.
“Hello,” Kathleen called out tentatively. “Hello? Anybody? I’m a patient. I’m Kathleen Beavier. Hello?”
The door at the far end of the hall was partially open, and Kathleen heard the pleasing voice inside. She slowly pushed the door open all the way.
“Hello?”
Something was wrong. It didn’t feel right to Kathleen. She felt she should leave, but it had taken her so much courage to come here in the first place.
The air was thick, almost viscous. There was a smell of alcohol. But something else, too? Kathleen put her hand to her mouth.
It took her a few seconds to take in the full, horrifying effect of what she saw.
A young, dark-haired woman was hanging from a hook high up on the wall. She wore a white medical coat. Her name tag read DR. HIGGINS. A cord was slipknotted crudely around her neck, which seemed stretched to at least twice its normal length.
The neck and face were congested a brutal dark red. There was petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, which were frozen in fear. The woman’s brown hair cascaded over her shoulders.
Trembling, Kathleen reached out and touched the woman’s hand. It was still warm, and damp. Dr. Higgins. Her doctor.
This woman had just died!
In a panic, Kathleen jerked her hand away. She wanted to run, but some force held her there. Something so powerful. So awful.
She saw a stethoscope coiled beside a pad of paper. On the pad was written Kathleen’s name.
“Oh, nooooooo!” she screamed. There was a gathering in her stomach as fear and guilt and shame overpowered her in one sickening, wrenching movement.
At that instant, she realized she couldn’t stand being in this world anymore. The thought was so strange, so overwhelming, it was almost as if it weren’t her own.
A tray of instruments glittered near the pad of paper. Kathleen took up a sharp blade. It was ice-cold and menacing in her hand.
She heard a voice — but no one was there. The Voice was deep, commanding. You know what you have to do, Kathleen. We’ve talked about it. Go ahead, now. It’s the right thing.
In the space between the pink cuff of her Ralph Lauren oxford cloth shirt and the crease of her left wrist, she sliced. The skin parted.
See how easy it is, Kathleen? It’s nothing, really. Just the natural order of things.
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