When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [38]
Light through the picture window continued to glow and flicker. It was definitely light from a TV. Thomas peered inside, saw a family room laid out before him.
Halogen lamps, all of them off. A telescope on a tripod. A DUB video player. Custom armchairs upholstered in burlap coffee bean bags that read “Product of Guatemala, 50-lbs” and “Product of Yemen, 50-lbs.”
An overstuffed sofa sat right under the window. Max was lying on it. She was asleep, curled up in her own wings.
“Thank God,” Harding Thomas whispered under his breath.
Chapter 38
MAX HEARD the squeak, squeak, squeak. The noise was coming from outside on the deck. She pictured everything that was supposed to be out there.
She kept her eyes closed, but she was awake and alert and knew something very wrong was going on outside the house. She’d been dozing under a musty old Indian blanket. Now she felt a cold shadow fall between herself and the moon.
She slipped open her eyes, tilted up, and there he was—Uncle Thomas had found her. That traitor, that terrible liar.
He was standing outside the picture window. He’d brought along his sidekicks. Three or four other men. Trackers! Hunters! Killers!
Max’s mind and her body screamed, FLY.
FLY, FLY, FLY AWAY FROM HERE!
She couldn’t fly, though. Not in the living room with its low ceilings and the clutter of heavy furniture.
You’re strong. Incredibly strong.
Be strong now!
So Max rolled real fast off the sofa. A table toppled over. Magazines went flying—Los Angeles, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Details.
A metal chair came crashing through the window! Reflexively, she threw her arms over her face. Shards and splinters of glass showered everywhere around her and cut her, but not too badly.
“NO!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Get away from me! Get away!”
The long hallway between the living room and the bedroom stretched out before her, beckoned.
Be strong! Be gone!
Moonlight white as bone streamed through the bedroom door that was half open at the end of the hall. A Jacuzzi encased in lime-green terrazzo was visible off the bedroom. Max flung herself toward the bedroom with full speed and full strength.
Don’t look back! Just go, go, go! You’realot faster than they think you are. And maybe, just maybe, they don’t want you dead after all.
The bedroom window was open—her escape hatch. She’d left it that way—just in case she needed one. And boy, did she ever need one.
She took off halfway down the hall. She was flying real fast inside the house and this was beyond tricky, beyond smart, beyond sane.
She didn’t know if she could pull it off, though. Would this work? Could it?
But then she found herself shooting through the open window like a missile leaving its halo, only the halo was almost too small for the missile. Her wing clipped the frame. Wood splintered! Pain stabbed her bad shoulder! “Ouch,” she cried out.
But Max was flying again—and for the second time, somebody was shooting at her. Trying to kill her? Or just wing and capture her?
“Screw you, Uncle Thomas!” she yelled at the top of her voice, not even bothering to look back. “Go to hell.”
He yelled at her. “I’ve got Matthew! I’ve got your brother, all right. You come back. I’ve got Peter Pan.”
Chapter 39
MAX WAS SHIVERING BADLY as she hid in the crown of the tallest, fullest fir tree she could find. If she couldn’t see them, then she figured that the hunters couldn’t see her. Was that true? Was that the way it worked? She prayed that it was so.
What was it that Uncle Thomas had yelled? His exact words? I got Matthew?… Or, I’ve got Matthew?
Were they out here trying to kill her? Or just get her back to the School?
She knew this much: Visitors had come to the School… to see her and Matthew. To examine them carefully and talk about them… and then what?
Max couldn’t stop the shaking, couldn’t make her teeth stop chattering, hitting together until they hurt. She began to cry. She couldn’t stop crying. She was sobbing