James Patterson - When the Wind Blows

by When the Wind Blows (lit)

  He smiled, and his light blue eyes brightened, and I found that I couldn't look away from them. "Are you Frances O'Neill?"

  "Yeah. It's Frannie, though."

  I took in a face that was cool yet had a touch of warmth. The directness of his eyes sort of nailed me to the spot. He had a fine nose, a strong chin.

  His features held together too damned well. A dash of Tom Cruise, maybe even a little Harrison Ford. Something like that, or so it seemed that night in the bloom of the Jeep's headlights.

  He brushed off his slouchy hat, and a lot of sandy-blond hair shifted and gleamed. Then he was standing in front of me, all six two of him, Re a glossy photo from an L. L. Bean catalog, or maybe Eddie Bauer's. Very serious-looking, though.

  "I've come from Hollander and Cowell."

  "You're a real estate broker?" I croaked.

  "Did I catch you at a bad time?" he asked. "Sorry." At least he was polite.

  "What makes you think that?" I asked. I was all too aware that my jeans were soaked in blood. My sweatshirt looked like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  "I'd hate to see the guy who lost the fight," he said, surveying my appearance. "Or do you dabble in witchcraft?"

  "Some people call it veterinary medicine," I said. "So, what's this about? Why did Hollander and Cowell send you at this time of night?"

  He hooked a thumb toward Bear Bluff's center, where the real estate office is.

  "I'm your new tenant. I signed the papers this afternoon. They said you left everything in their capable hands."

  "You're kidding. You rented my cabin?"

  I'd almost forgotten I'd put the cabin on the block. It's a quarter of a mile back in the woods behind the clinic, and it used to be a hunting shack until David and I moved in. After David died, I started sleeping in a small room at the clinic. A whole lot of things changed for me back then, none of them good.

  "So? Can I see the place?" L. L. Bean said.

  "Just follow the footpath behind the clinic," I told him. "It's a four- or five-minute walk. It's worth it. Door's not locked."

  "I don't get the guided tour?" he asked.

  "Much as I'd love to, I've still got a couple of chickens to kill and some spells to cast before I sleep. I'll get you a flashlight "I've got one in the car," he said.

  I lingered in the doorway as he crunched back to his Jeep. He had a nice way of walking. Confident, not too cocky.

  "Hey," I called out to him. "What's your name?"

  He looked back - hesitated for a half second.

  "Kit," he finally said. "I'm Kit Harrison,"

  Chapter 3

  I WILL NEVER FORGET what happened next. It was such a shock for me, a hard kick in the stomach, or maybe even the side of my head.

  Kit Harrison reached into the Jeep - and he did the unspeakable he pulled a hunting rifle off a silver-metallic gun rack. That son of a bitch.

  I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My flesh crept.

  I yelled at him, loudly, which is so unlike me. "Wait! Hey! You! Wait right there, mister! Hold up!"

  He turned to face me. The look on his face was serene, cool as it had been. "What?" he said. Was he challenging me? Did he dare?

  "Listen." I let the big screen door bang shut behind me and marched fast and hard across the gravel beachhead. No way was I going to have somebody with a hunting rifle on my land. No way! Not in his or my lifetime.

  "I've changed my mind. This is no good. It's not going to work. You can't stay here. No hunters. No how, no way!"

  His gaze returned to the Jeep's interior. He snapped the glove compartment shut. Locked it. He didn't seem to be listening to me at all.

  "Sorry," he said without looking at me. "We made a deal."

  "The deal's off! Didn't you just hear me?"

  "Nope. A deal's a deal," he said.

  He grabbed a torch lamp from inside the car door, a reddish duffel bag, then he took up the hideous rifle in his other hand. I was apoplectic, kept sputtering, "Look here." But he ignored me, didn't seem to hear a word.

  He kicked the Jeep door shut, flicked on his Durabeam flashlight, and casually headed down the path into the woods. The woods sucked up the light and the sound of his retreating footsteps.

  My blood was knocking hard and fast against my eardrums.

  A goddamn hunter was staying in my house.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS NEARLY DARK and the hunters still hadn't found the girl's body. They were bitterly cold and hungry and frustrated as hell, and they were also scared. There would be unfortunate consequences if they failed.

  They had to find the girl.

  And the boy as well - Matthew.

  The five of them walked through the thickly wooded area where they believed the girl had fallen. She should be right there! They had to locate the specimen called Tinkerbell and destroy her, if she wasn't already dead from her fall and the gunshot.

  Put Tinkerbell to sleep, Harding Thomas was thinking as he led the search team. It was a euphemism he used to make moments like this easier: Put somebody to sleep. The way they do with animals. Not death, not murder -just peaceful sleep.

  He thought he knew the precise area where the girl had dropped like a shot from the sky, but there wasn't any dead body flattened on the ground, or hung up in the towering fir trees.

  They certainly couldn't leave her out here, couldn't risk hikers or campers finding the body. What a titanic disaster that would be.

  "Tinkerbell, can you hear me? Are you hurt, honey? We just want to take you home. That's all." Thomas called in the gentlest voice he could manage. It wasn't so hard: he had always liked Max and Matthew well enough.

  Tinkerbell was a code name, and it was what he'd always called her.

  Peter Pan was young Matthew's code. He was Uncle Tommy.

  "Tinkerbell, where are you? Come out, come out. We're not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I'm not even angry at you. This is Uncle Tommy.

  You can trust me. If you can't trust me, who can you trust?"

  "Can you hear me? C'mon, kiddo. I know you're there. Trust Uncle Thomas. There's no one else who can help you."

  Chapter 5

  SHE WAS ALIVE. Amazing, amazing, amazing!

  But Max was hurt, shot, and she didn't know how bad the wound was.

  Probably not too bad, since she hadn't passed out yet, and there didn't seem to be much blood.

  She'd been hanging on to the top of a tree for hours, hidden in thick branches. At least she hoped she was hidden. She tried to be still. Silent, too. Invisible, three.

  Max was shivering, and the whole thing was crashing out of control.

  She really, really wished Matthew was with her. They would give each other strength and hope and words of wisdom. It had always been that way with the two of them. They were inseparable at the School. Mrs. Beattie, the only truly nice one there, called them "inseparable at birth," and the "Bobbsey Twins" - whoever the heck they were. When Mrs. Beattie died, everything had gone bad. Real bad. This bad.

  The woods were crawling with men. Bad ones - the worst creatures imaginable. There were at least a half dozen of them. Hunters killers.

  They were frantically searching for her, and also for Matthew. They had rifles and flashlights.

  Uncle Thomas was one of them, and he was the worst. He had pretended to be their friend... but he was the one who would put you to sleep. He had been a teacher, a scientist, and now he was just a killer.

  "We're not going to hurt you, sweetheart." She mimicked his voice, his phony, insincere manner.

  The one good part was that she didn't need to see them walking in the woods. Her hearing was incredibly acute. It was capable of separating sounds as close together as a thousandth of a second. It was one of her very coolest gifts. She could hear the tiny hum of distant mosquitoes, and the angry twitter of a wren. She heard aspen leaves rustling a half mile away. She wondered if Matthew was anywhere nearby. Was he listening, too?

  "Tinkerbell, can you hear me?"

&nbs
p; Yes, she could hear the pathetic sickos as they hunted for her. She had heard them when they were far away. She heard every footstep, every little cough and sniffle, every hot, smelly breath they took, wishing it would be their last.

  One of them spoke, and she recognized a particularly insensitive guard from the School. "We shoulda brought dogs with us,"

  "Shoulda, coulda, woulda." One of the others ranked on him and laughed. "She's a kid. They both are. If we can't find a little kid we better pack it in."

  Dogs! Max bit down on a cry. Dogs would find her. Dogs were better at this than men. Dogs had special powers, too. Humans were the weakest species. Maybe that was why they could be the meanest animals.

  The wind came up again, angry and howling, and she was reminded of how cold it got out here. She gripped the tree hard, listening intently, until she couldn't hear the hunters at all. For the moment, they were gone.

  Slowly, painfully, she shimmied down the pine tree and stepped cautiously out into the woods.

  Then she ran. She had to find cover. She had to find Matthew before it was too late.

  Chapter 6

  HIS THREE-YEAR-OLD BOY, little Mike, used to like to say that he was "sore afraid of the dark." Kit had just loved that expression.

  He would roar and hug Mike the Tyke against his chest whenever he said it. He could still feel those sweet baby hugs. The thought of it all left him sick and empty, as if he'd been hollowed out and the core of his being tossed away.

  Of course, he was feeling all kinds of things right now. He was investigating what he believed was the most important case of his career and he wasn't supposed to be here. He had been taken off the damn thing. He wasn't even sure if the case was active at the moment.

  So yeah, he was "sore afraid."

  He put away his mountain gear and clothes in the cabin, but only so that everything would look normal if he was being watched, or if someone happened to search the room. It was possible, even likely, that Frannie O'Neill or someone else would be watching him.

  The cabin was modest, not overly decorated, but surprisingly homey and warm. There was a Rumford fireplace built with local granite. Hammered tin lanterns covered most of the mantel. A cozy sheepskin was thrown on the bed.

  He pulled down the shades and quickly undressed. Then he turned off the lights and climbed into bed. Slid the rifle underneath. The gun was part of his cover story as a hunter, but he didn't mind having it around as extra protection. It couldn't hurt.

  I'm supposed to be in Nantucket on vacation. Cooling my jets; getting my head on straight. Maybe I should have gone there. But I didn't, did I?

  Second time I screwed up on that.

  August 9, 1994, was the first screwup.

  He closed his eyes, but he didn't sleep. He waited.

  With his eyes shut tight, he remembered a private talk he'd had with the assistant director of the FBI. He'd gone over the head of his superior to get the meeting.

  He remembered the highlights, as if it had happened yesterday.

  The assistant director had a look on his face, as if he were incredibly superior, and he couldn't believe his time was being wasted by a field agent.

  "I'm going to talk, you're going to listen, Agent Brennan."

  "That would seem to defeat the purpose of the meeting," Tom had said.

  "Only because you don't understand the purpose of the meeting."

  "No sir, I guess I don't."

  "We are trying to cut you some slack because of a tragedy in your personal life. You are making it hard for us, damn near impossible. Hear this, and hear it well. Let your wild-goose chase go. Let the witch hunt end today. Let the case with the missing doctors go, or we will let you go.

  Understood?"

  Kit lay in the dark, and he remembered the meaning, if not the exact words of the assistant director. And yes, he understood.

  So here he was in Colorado. He'd obviously made a choice. He'd gone with conscience over his career.

  He was a goner.

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS QUARTER PAST ELEVEN that night when he threw off the sheepskin cover and climbed out of bed.

  He hurriedly dressed in the dark. A black T-shirt and black warm-up pants pulled over his hundred and eighty pound frame. A black ball cap.

  High-topped Converse - Larry Bird's brand. His own brand since he'd been ten years old and running the roads and playground hardtop of South Boston.

  There was a full moon shining outside. He scanned the tall pine trees, looking from left to right through the bedroom window. He repeated the procedure until he was sure that no one was out there - watching, waiting for him to appear.

  He opened the cabin door and slipped outside into the crispy, cool night air. He felt a little like Mulder in the X-Files. No, actually he felt a lot like Mulder - and Mulder was a fricking nutjob and a half.

  Kit Harrison made his way back down the winding forest trail toward the animal hospital. He knew that Frances O'Neill had a room there, and that she'd lived in the clinic since the death of her husband, David. He knew about Dr. David Mekin, too. Actually, he knew more about David than about his wife. David Mekin had studied embryology at MIT in the eighties. Then he'd worked in San Francisco. Kit had a dozen pages thick with notes on Dr. Mekin.

  He did know a few things about Frannie. He'd done some homework.

  She had a veterinary degree (D.V.M.) from the Colorado State Teaching Hospital at Fort Collins. CSU was also the national center for wildlife biology, and she had done a minor in wildlife. The school had a good reputation, especially for surgery. She was the founder of a local "pet loss support group." She'd had a thriving veterinary practice until her husband's death. She'd been the family breadwinner. Lately, she'd let the business end of her practice slide.

  It took him less than three minutes to get back to the animal hospital.

  The Inn-Patient, as she called it. This was where it would really start for him.

  There was a bright light burning on the front porch, and a shimmering, yellowish light in a window on one side of the house. A Manx cat sat guard at one of the other windows, eyeballing him suspiciously, not moving a whisker.

  He stopped to catch his breath, or maybe just to stop his heart from racing so much. He checked to see if anybody else was out there with him.

  He needed to forage around inside the animal hospital - but probably not tonight. He passed close behind a matching pair of tall pines. He was less than ten feet from one of the brightly lit windows.

  He jumped back suddenly.

  Jesus! She had scared the hell out of him.

  Frannie O'Neill was standing right there in the window, framed in soft light. She was naked as the day she was born. He sucked in a quick breath. It was the last thing he'd expected to see. Like being poked in the eye.

  She didn't see him, thank God. She was busy drying her long brown hair with a fluffy white towel. Pretty hair. Pretty everything, in fact.

  She was a whole lot more attractive than she made herself out to be.

  Very pretty, very alive eyes. Slender, and in good shape. Seriously good shape, actually. Her skin had a healthy glow. She was thirty-three, he remembered from his notes. Her husband, Dr. David Mekin, had been thirty-eight when he died. When he was murdered.

  Kit turned away. She was still up, so there was no way he could check out the house tonight. He didn't want to spy on a naked Dr. O'Neill from outside her bedroom window. It made him feel like a creepy little shit. No matter what else he might be, he wasn't a Peeping Tom.

  He made his way back to the cabin -with the image of Frannie O'Neill still on his mind. Actually, she was burned into his optic nerve.

  Her eyes had a special glint that hinted at a sense of humor he hadn't experienced during their initial meeting. She was definitely prettier than he'd expected her to be.

  And she might be a murderer.

  Chapter 8

  TUESDAY MORNING was finally here.

  Anne Hutton had been waiting on pins
and needles, but right now she felt fine, strangely relaxed and ready.

  Actually, Annie Hutton had a high level of comfort and well-being whenever she visited the in vitro clinic at Boulder Community Hospital.

  The staff at the clinic seemed to have thought of everything and its potential negative or positive effect on mothers-to-be. They were just super and she was fortunate to be working with them.