Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,19

TV?”

“Nana Mama and Ali ordered it off the internet. They just installed it.”

I stepped into our once cozy television room to see it had been transformed into a home theater, with new leather chairs, and a huge, curved 4K resolution HD screen on the far wall. Ali had on a repeat of The Walking Dead, one of his favorites, and the zombies looked like they were right there in the room with us.

“You should see when we switch it to 3D, Dad!” Ali said. “It’s crazy!”

“I can see that,” I said. “Does it do basketball?”

Ali took his eyes off the screen. “They’re right in the room with you.”

I smiled. “You’ll have to show me after dinner.”

“I can do that,” Ali said. “Show you how to run it from your laptop.”

I gave him the thumbs up, and then wandered through the dining room to the kitchen upgrade and great room addition we’d put on two years before.

Nana Mama was bustling at her command-center stove.

“Roast chicken, sweet potato fries, broccoli with almonds, and a nice salad,” she said. “How’s John?”

“Sleeping when I left,” I said. “And dinner sounds great. Nice TV.”

She made a deep inhaling sound, and said, “Isn’t it? I can’t wait to see Masterpiece Theatre on there. That Downton Abbey show.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.

Nana Mama looked over her shoulder, gave me a sour, threatening look, and said, “Don’t you be mocking me, now.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Nana,” I said, trying to hide the smile that wanted to creep onto my face. “Oh, I thought you said you weren’t going to let the lottery money change our lives.”

“I said I didn’t want some big mansion to get lost in,” she snapped. “Or tooling around in some ridiculous car. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some nice things in this house, and still do some good for people. Which reminds me, when is my hot-breakfast program going to be able to start up again?”

I held up my hands. “I’ll find out tonight.”

“I’m not getting any younger, and I want to see that ongoing,” she said. “Endowed. And that reading program for kids.”

“Yes, ma’am, and you’re sure you’re not getting younger? Isn’t there a painting of you in some attic that shows your real age?”

She tried to fight it, but that brought on a smile. “Aren’t you just the smoothest talker in—?”

“Dad?” Ali cried, running into the kitchen.

He looked petrified, on the verge of crying.

“What’s the matter?”

“Someone’s taken over my computer,” he said.

“What?” Nana Mama said.

“There’s this crazy man on the screen now, not The Walking Dead, and he won’t turn off. He’s holding a baby and saying, like, over and over that he’s going to come for you, Dad, even from the grave.”

Chapter 24

In the video clip, Gary Soneji was just as I remembered him: out on one of Grand Central Station’s train platforms, holding the infant, and taunting me.

I’d never seen the video. Never knew it existed, but it was definitely legitimate. After viewing the clip six or seven times, I could see my own shadow stretched in the space between me and Gary Soneji. The camera operator all those years ago had to have been right off my left shoulder.

Was the cameraman a fluke? A random passerby? Or someone working with Soneji?

The clip started again. It appeared on endless loop.

“Dad, this is giving me the creeps,” Jannie said. “Turn it off.”

“Gimme the remote and the computer, Ali,” I said.

“I’ve got homework on this computer,” he said.

“I’ll transfer your homework to the one in the kitchen,” I said, and gave him a gimme motion.

He groaned and handed it to me.

Bree came in the front door. I hit the Power button on the remote, but the screen did not turn off. Instead, it broke from that endless loop to Kelly green.

I tried to turn the screen off again, but it jumped to black, slashed diagonally with a golden beam of light. The camera zoomed closer to that light and you could see a silhouette of a person there.

Closer, it was a man.

Closer still, and it was Soneji.

He was giving the lens the same quarter profile we’d seen in the still image that Gary’s Girl posted on the website forum, the one where his eye and the corner of his mouth conspired to leer right at me.

But this time Soneji spoke.

In that cracking, hoarse voice I’d heard earlier that day in the pine barrens, Soneji said, “You’re not safe in the trees, Cross. You’re not safe in