Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,18

awoke, Elizabeth Navilus, a top speech-language pathologist, was waiting. She was part of a team of specialists rotating through the room, performing the various exams on the JFK Coma Recovery Scale, a method of diagnosing the extent of brain damage.

Navilus ran Sampson through a brief battery of tests. She found that John’s cognitive awareness as expressed through his language comprehension was growing by the moment. But he was having trouble speaking. The best he could do was chew at the air and hum.

It crushed me.

Out in the waiting area, Navilus told us to take hope from the fact that head trauma patients often exhibit understanding before being able to respond.

Later, when Nana Mama had left for home to cook dinner, and Bree to the office, and Billie to the cafeteria, I sat by John’s side.

“I was there when you were shot,” I told him. “It was Soneji. Or someone who looked just like him.”

Sampson blinked, and then nodded.

“I came close to catching him this morning,” I said. “He was watching when we dug up Soneji’s body.”

He looked away and closed his eyes.

“I’m going to get him, John,” I said. “I promise you.”

He barely nodded before sagging off to sleep.

Sitting there, watching him, I felt better, stronger, and more humbled and in debt to my Lord and savior than ever before. The idea of Sampson dying must have been as much of an abomination to God as I thought it was.

If that wasn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

Chapter 23

I stayed at the hospital until nine, promised Billie I’d be back in the morning, and headed home. Given what had happened the last time I’d exited GW Medical Center and looked for a cab, my head was turning three-sixty.

I saw no threat, however, and stepped to the curb. As I did, Soneji’s voice from earlier in the day echoed back to me.

I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.

It sounded so much like Gary, it was scary. I’d had multiple conversations with him over the years, and Soneji’s tone and delivery were unmistakable.

After I’d gotten into the cab and given the driver my home address, I almost pushed these thoughts aside. But then I blinked, remembering how his voice had cracked weirdly and turned hoarse when he said, “I know I didn’t hit you. I did, you would have gone down like the shit bag you are.”

It sounded like he had something wrong in his throat. Cancer? Polyps? Or were his vocal cords just straining under the tensions wound up inside him?

I tried to remember every nuance of our encounter in the pine barrens, the way he’d swaggered into the trees, finger held high. Where was the gun then? Had he been trying to lure me in for a shot?

In retrospect, it felt like he had, and I’d fallen for it. Where was all the training I’d done? The protocol? I’d reacted on emotion, charging into the pines after him. Just the way Soneji had wanted me to.

That bothered me because it made me realize that Soneji understood me, could predict my impulses the way I could predict his a dozen years before. I mean, how else would he have known to be at the cemetery when I was there to exhume his body? What or who had tipped him?

I had no answers for that other than the possibility Soneji or The Soneji had us bugged. Or had it just seemed the rational thing to do at some point, given the fact that I’d seen someone who looked just like him at least three times now?

These unanswerable questions weighed on me the entire ride home. I felt depressed climbing from the taxi and waiting for the receipt. Soneji, or whoever, was thinking ahead of me, plotting, hatching, and acting before I could respond.

Climbing the porch stairs, I was beginning to feel like I was a fish on a hook with some angler toying with me, messing with my lip.

But the second I stepped inside the house, smelled something savory coming from Nana Mama’s kitchen, and heard my son, Ali, laughing, I let it go. I let everything about the sonofabitch go.

“Dad?” Jannie said, coming down the stairs. “How’s John?”

“He’s got a fight and a half ahead of him, but he’s alive.”

“Nana Mama said it’s, like, a miracle.”

“I’d have to agree,” I said, and hugged her tight.

“Dad, look at this,” Ali called. “You can’t believe how good this looks.”

“The new TV,” Jannie said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

“What new