Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,34
will need to regroup, assess his failures, come up with a whole new plan.
He shakes himself, glances at the bulletin board next to the computers.
Then suddenly focuses.
Nothing on this small corkboard about serial killers. Nothing about the homeless or sick or single-story homes or faking accidental deaths. No, the notes stuck to this bulletin board concern another case altogether, one he’s read about in the papers.
Citizen David. The crusader who blows up buildings and hacks the websites of those who do not subscribe to his inane, politically correct ideology.
“Citizen David,” he mumbles.
He closes his eyes and sits completely still, ideas flashing through his brain like lightning, the adrenaline coursing through him. His hands grip the sides of the wheelchair like he’s bracing for a hurricane—
He opens his eyes.
“Emmy,” he says, “I’m rather looking forward to round two.”
32
I OPEN the door to my apartment as the alarm blares out its shrill warning call. I type in the pass code, and the alarm settles down with a couple of beeps, the light a solid green.
I walk in, flip on the overhead light, drop my work bag, and feel a shudder pass through me. I hold my breath, standing still, listening.
A sound? A movement? A different smell?
I don’t know. All I know is that something is telling me that there is a stranger inside my apartment.
“H-hello?” I whisper, the sudden jolt of fear weakening my voice.
And then it comes, as it has so many times since my attack: My heart throbbing like a volcano about to erupt. Fire engulfing my chest and cascading down my limbs. My breaths ragged and desperate, as if I’m walled off and can breathe only through a tiny hole.
My legs buckle and I fall to the floor. I plant my hands in the carpet, grip the fibers as if I might slide off the world if I don’t hold on. Convinced, absolutely certain to my core, that in my peripheral vision will appear the looming shadow of a stranger coming to hurt me, his feet stopping just short of my face.
If I hold still, I can breathe. Hold still and you can breathe.
But nothing is still; the lights are dimming and flashing, my body is scorched and sweating, the furniture is dancing around me, the ground is quaking, and I know he’s coming, I know that the stranger will stand before me with a creepy smile, dead eyes, and the glint of a scalpel wet with my blood.
You know what I’m going to do to you, the stranger will say, and you can’t stop me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on breathing: Close your eyes and breathe, close your eyes and breathe, close your eyes and…
When I open my eyes, I am shivering, wet from cold sweat. I suck in delicious oxygen and crawl to the living room, past the exercise equipment, to the couch with the quilt my grandmother knit for me when I was a baby. I wrap myself in it and sit on the floor against the couch.
There is nobody here, I tell myself as I shake like a rattle.
Usually that’s enough. It’s like coming down from a nightmare, awakening and realizing it was all a trick of your mind, a bad dream.
But…it’s different this time.
Nobody is here, I think to myself. But somebody was here.
I get to my feet and walk on unsteady legs through my small apartment, turning on every light as I go, half expecting to find clothes thrown everywhere in my bedroom—more than usual, that is—drawers pulled open, file folders dumped, mattresses overturned, an apartment ransacked.
But nothing looks disturbed. My home office is exactly as it was, the wallpaper of notes, the computers, even the chair left just as I always leave it, tucked all the way in under the desk.
The alarm, I recall, was on when I came home. Nobody knows my pass code. If someone had come in, the alarm would have sounded. And if someone managed to get past it, someone with the technological know-how to do something like that, the alarm would have been disarmed, a solid green, not armed with a solid red as it was when I entered.
Don’t be an idiot, Emmy. Nobody was here. Nothing has been taken. It wasn’t some sixth sense talking to you. It was just another panic attack.
Shaken, I pour myself a glass of water, sit down at my computer, and begin my nightly ritual of combing through recent deaths deemed accidental or natural.