Hide & Seek - James Patterson [3]
The thought of him made me shudder. The idea of sex still makes me afraid, and much worse.
It had been a year since the terrible shooting at West Point. My recovery was slow, both physically and mentally, and it wasn't complete. My leg still hurt, and my brain didn't function with the clarity I'd once taken pride in. I found myself frightened by small noises. I saw threats in nighttime streets when none existed. Previously in pretty good control of my feelings, I had lost that control. I would cry for no reason, grow angry at a neighbor's kindness, be suspicious of friends and afraid of strangers. There were times when I hated myself!
There had been an investigation, of course, but no trial. If Jennie hadn't been so badly beaten, if it had been only me with bloodied hair and a damaged leg, I might have been sent to prison that first time. But the fact that my three-year-old was injured too made our claim of self-defense more convincing.
No prosecutor wanted to take on the case, and the military academy was only too happy to have it hushed up.
Officers, it was a well-known fact, did not attack their wives and daughters. Wives and daughters really didn't exist at the Point. We were decorative.
So I took flight, and traveled to New York City, where I rented a two-bedroom apartment. It was a second-floor walkup in a dreary brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. I located a day school for Jennie. Our lives began to move at a slower pace.
But I hadn't found what I wanted most: an end to the pain, a beginning to a new life.
I was twenty-five years old. I wore the letter M. I had taken someone's life, even if it had been in self-defense.
No guts, no glory, I urged myself on. I was definitely moving on sheer guts that day. I was chasing a dream I'd held on to and cherished for more than a dozen years.
Perhaps today that new life would start. But was I doing the right thing? Was I ready for this? Or was I about to make a horribly embarrassing mistake?
I tightly held a briefcase in my lap, filled with songs I had written during the past year. Songs—the music and the words—were my way of exposing my pain and expressing my hopes for the future.
Actually, I'd been writing songs since I was ten or eleven. Mostly in my head, but sometimes on paper. The songs were the one thing that everybody seemed to like about me, the one thing I did well.
Were they any good? I thought maybe they were, but Jennie and a squirrel named Smooch were the only ones who had heard them, and, eager for praise as I was, I knew enough not to trust the opinion of a four-year-old, or a squirrel.
Soon, though, there would be another listener. I was on my way to audition the songs for Barry Kahn, the Barry Kahn, the singer-composer who had electrified America a decade ago and now was one of the most important record producers in the world.
Barry Kahn wanted to hear my songs.
Or so he said.
CHAPTER 2
I WAS PETRIFIED.
And then it got much worse.
“You're late,” he said. Those were his very first words to me. “I work on a very tight schedule.”
“It was the snow,” I said. “It took forever to find a cab, and then it kept skidding. I guess I was nervous and asked the driver to go faster, only he went slower, and—”
Jesus, I thought. You sound like a dumb parakeet. Pull yourself together, Polly. Right now!
He was unmoved. Seemed like a real bastard. “You should have left earlier. My days are full. I plan ahead. So should you. Would you like coffee?”
The question, the sudden politeness, took me by surprise. “Yes, please.”
He rang for his secretary. “Cream and sugar?” I nodded. His secretary appeared. “Coffee for Ms. Bradford, Lynn. The works. Danish?” I shook my head. “Nothing for me,” he instructed, his voice filled with the huskiness that made his singing so distinctive.
He dismissed Lynn with a wave, then sat at his desk with his eyes closed, as though he had all eternity. I wondered: Who the hell is this guy?
He was in his early forties, I guessed, with a receding hairline