When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [13]
Then they were forcing his head under. He tried to catch a quick breath, but got a mouthful of water and chlorine, and gagged.
They held him under the surface, wouldn’t let him up. His legs and arms were caught in a powerful vise. He was being drowned. Oh God, it didn’t make a shred of sense to him.
He tried to thrash.
Tried to break free.
Tried to calm himself.
Frank McDonough heard his neck snap. He couldn’t fight them. He felt his life force ebbing, flowing out of him.
He could see the figures in their soaking-wet clothes wavering before him in the sparkling, clear blue water. His eyes were pinned wide open. So was his mouth. Water flooded his throat and entered his lungs in a terrifying rush. His chest felt as if it would implode, which he actually wanted to happen. He just wanted the awful internal pressure and pain to end.
In an instant, Dr. Frank McDonough understood. He saw the truth as clearly as he could see his own approaching death.
This was about Tinkerbell and Peter Pan.
They had escaped on his watch.
Chapter 12
IT IS ABOUT a forty-minute drive from Bear Bluff to Boulder, if you keep the pedal to the metal, if you really fly.
I tried my best to make the drive in a semi-sane and controlled manner, but I failed miserably. Everything about the drive and the night was a ghostly blur.
I couldn’t stop seeing Frank McDonough as I had known him for the past six years—smiling, and incredibly full of life. I hadn’t been leaving the Bluff much lately. Not for the last 493 days, anyway. Now, I had to go to Boulder.
Frank McDonough was dead. His wife, Barb, had called me in tears. I couldn’t make myself believe it. I couldn’t bear the painful, terrifying, awful thought.
First David, and now Frank. It didn’t seem possible.
I tried to call my best friend Gillian at Boulder Community Hospital. I got her answering machine and left a message that I hoped was coherent.
I tried to call my sister, Carole, but Carole didn’t pick up at the camping site where she was staying with her two girls. Damn, I needed her now.
I heard awful, wailing police sirens before I actually arrived at Frank and Barb McDonough’s ranch house in Boulder. They live close to Boulder Community Hospital, which makes sense, since they both worked there. Barb is a surgical nurse and Frank is the top pediatrician.
Frank was a pediatrician. Oh, dear God, Frank was dead now. My friend, David’s friend. How could it have happened?
The Boulder police sirens were blaring at an ear-piercing level, and they seemed so eerie, so personal, as if they were meant for me.
Just hearing the police sirens brought back so many powerfully bad memories. I had spent months bothering the Boulder police about solving David’s murder. I’d tried to solve it myself for God’s sake. I had questioned parking lot attendants, doctors who used the lot late at night.
Now everything, all the bad memories about David’s murder, came flooding back to me. I couldn’t bear it.
Chapter 13
I’M DR. O’NEILL,”I said, and I pushed my way past a tall, burly Boulder policeman stationed on the familiar, whitewashed porch. “I’m Barb and Frank’s friend. She called me.”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s inside. You can go right in,” he said, doffing his visored cap.
I barely noticed the sprawling ranch house or Frank’s beloved Xeriscaped landscaping. Instead of lush green lawns, hundreds of small, colorful plants dotted the yard. Frank had planned everything with water conservation in mind. That’s the way he was. Always thinking about other people, thinking ahead.
I was numb, and at least partly in denial. The McDonoughs were the couple that David and I were closest to when he worked at the hospital. They had rushed to our house the night David was shot. Barb and Carole and my friend Gillian Puris stayed the night with me. Now here I was in Boulder under similar circumstances.
A woman burst from the front screen door of the house as I was hurrying up the stairs. It