Hide & Seek - James Patterson [99]
CHAPTER 122
SUDDENLY, WILL SCREAMED with a tremendous force that echoed through the hospital. I whirled around toward him.
He shrieked again, his body rocking violently.
Aides came running down the hallway. A burly male nurse appeared with a plastic-sheathed needle clasped in his fist. I sensed that this had happened before.
“Mmahhlah!” Will screamed.
I thought that he might be having a stroke. Certainly this was some kind of fit.
“Mmahhlah. Mmahhlah,” he continued to shout. His face and neck were bright red. His veins stood out against his skin.
I stared at Will in horror. Maggie? Mother? What in God’s name was he trying to tell me?
In his eyes, there wasn’t the slightest comprehension or recognition. He was pushed down firmly onto the bed, and I felt his legs shrivel.
The Blond Arrow, shriveling.
I had to get out of there. I nearly ran from the room. There was nothing I could do for him anymore. Norma was waiting for me at the end of the corridor.
“Maggie! My God! What was that? What the hell happened in there? You okay?”
I put my arms around her and held Norma tightly, as though to blot out those screams. Finally, the two of us walked out of the building and onto the black-topped parking area, the trees now ghostly silhouettes.
Halfway across the parking lot I turned. I felt as though someone had just stepped out of a grave.
I had the powerful intuition that something was chasing after me. Mmahhlah … Mmahhlah was coming fast, right behind me.
Those lifeless, haunting eyes …
But there was no one looking out from Will’s hospital window. There was no one when I looked back.
CHAPTER 123
IN HIS BARREN, insular hospital room Will screamed and screamed. Screamed and screamed. Until his throat was raw and felt as though it had splinters in it. Still, he continued to scream.
As the night-shift aides tried to feed him his dinner, changed him, and put him to bed, he continued to scream. His strength, his stamina, were amazing to all of them. He was still young, and very athletic, and so powerfully strong.
“Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah!” He cried over and over.
“Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah!
“MMAHHLAH!”
He had seen Maggie today. He’d been aware of everything. He’d wanted to speak to her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Mmahhlah was all he could get out.
Why didn’t she understand him? Why didn’t anyone?
“Mmahhlah.”
I’m alive!
I’m alive!
Please don’t leave me like this!
I’m trapped inside this body. Can’t you see that? Won’t you help me?
“Mmahhlah!
“Mmahhlah!”
I’m alive!
I was halfway home to Bedford when it hit me, and I understood what Will had been trying to say to me at the hospital.
He was badly slurring his words, jumbling them together. Mmahhlah was I’m alive. He could think, and understand. He just couldn’t mouth the words clearly.
It took my breath away.
But I never went to see him again.
I never will.
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WARNER BOOKS.
PROLOGUE
The Games Begin
I
Sam Harrison swung his agile body out of the silver-blue Ford Aerostar, which he had parked on Q Street in the Georgetown section of Washington. Horror stories and games are popular for a good reason, he was thinking as he locked the vehicle and set its alarm. Not the comfortable sit-around-the-campfire horror tales and games we used to cherish as kids, but the real live horror stories that are everywhere around us these days.
Now I’m living one myself. I’m about to become part of the horror. How easy it is. How terribly, terribly easy to move past the edge and into the darkness.
He had stalked and shadowed Daniel Fitzpatrick for two long weeks. He’d done his job in New York City, London, Boston, and finally, now in Washington, D.C. Tonight, he was going to murder the United States senator. In cold blood, execution-style. No one would be able to figure out why. No one would have a clue that might matter later