When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [20]
Got milk? Yippee! There was milk, too. She sniffed—it was okay. Barely. She gulped it down right from the carton.
She found a knife in a pie dish and she used it to hack off a large, sticky chunk of apple pie.
It was the best pie she’d ever eaten. No contest. No pie-eating contest, she thought. She grinned. She loved wordplay, any kind of play. Pie play, whatever. She was smart—really smart. That was the way they had made her, right?
Max looked in the freezer for more goodies.
Ooohh! Ooohh! Look what’s in the freezer! Klondike ice cream bars—a full box! What would you do for a Klondike bar?
She ate two Klondike bars, one for each hand. She craved sugar.
Suddenly, little fingers of apprehension started to walk up the back of her neck. Pinfeathers rose at her nape. She hunched her shoulders and listened.
Were the hunters out there? Was Uncle Thomas nearby, ready to pounce on her? Maybe he’d take her back—or maybe just put her to sleep.
She was dying to take a look around the house, though. Curiosity killed the cat, she thought. But not the girl.
She crept silently down the hall. She couldn’t resist this—a real house. Nobody home. What a treat!
“Creepycat. Kittytoes,” she whispered. It was a saying from the School—from when she was little, when she thought little kid thoughts. It probably came from Mrs. Beattie, who had been her nanny, then her teacher. Everything good in her life came before Mrs. Beattie died.
A bathroom was revealed behind a slatted door at the end of the hallway. Gross! Everything was black inside. Black toilet, black tub, black sink, even black soap. She looked longingly at the shower stall, black and glistening behind a clear curtain. She was sticky and dirty everywhere. Disgusting! Almost more than sleep she wanted to be clean. She wanted to feel hot water flow onto her body and her hurt wing, just above the second joint. Obviously, the wing wasn’t hurt too bad, though. Probably just clipped.
Max wound her long blond hair back and around her ears and listened hard for any sound in the house.
There was none. She was sure of it. Her fingers found the light switch. Caressed it. Pressed it!
Light blazed in the black bathroom. Eerie.
She tensed to run—but that seemed kind of stupid. She was alone here. So she stepped all the way into the bathroom and closed the door. Locked it.
Then she saw herself in the mirror.
Four foot ten of her, with the most beautiful wings of anyone who had ever lived. Ever, ever, ever.
She touched her hair. Tilted her face slightly forward.
“I’m beautiful,” she whispered. “I really am, aren’t I? I’m a good girl, and I’m pretty. So why are they trying to kill me?”
Chapter 20
GILLIAN WAS ON THE PHONE first thing in the morning. “I hate it that you’re up in the mountains all alone. Are you all right, Frannie?”
“I’m fine. What time is it? Where are you?”
“The hospital, where else. It’s eight o’clock. So you slept all right?”
“Like a baby, Gil.”
“Liar.”
“You know me so well,” I said and laughed. I was almost awake now. It was beautiful outside my window.
“And isn’t that nice,” Gillian said. “For both of us.”
I let her get back to work, and then I had a thought—a bad one. It was this completely irrational but powerful fear that something might happen to Gillian, that maybe all my friends were in some kind of danger.
I knew it didn’t make rational sense. But still, I felt it.
I spent part of the morning driving back to where I’d stopped my car the night before. Where I had, or hadn’t, seen—what?
I was feeling hyper, maybe a bit hungover, and even a little spiritual. It was the hungover part that gave me pause for the most thought, and doubts. Had I been drunk the night before?
Had Frank McDonough’s death affected my already bruised psyche?
The only trouble was that the more I tried to convince myself that I hadn’t seen her, the more convinced I was that I had.
Two speeding trains of thought came to mind.
Congenital birth defects.
And the brave new world of biotechnology.
I had some knowledge of both fields, so I