Ыоуве Been Warned   ::   Patterson James

So why aren’t my feet moving?

All I have to do is turn around and head up and over to Fifth Avenue. Easy as pumpkin pie.

And yet I don’t. It’s as if that powerful undertow has taken hold of me again, fighting my urge to walk away.

What, are you nuts, Kristin?

No, I’m not. I’m one of the sanest people I know. That’s what makes all of this so strange.

Inexplicably, I feel drawn to the Fálcon and what happened there this morning.

What did happen there?

I don’t know, do I? Not really.

I need to watch the news. I need to develop the pictures too. But first I need to do something else.

Walk away.

Quickly, I do just that.

See? I’m back in control.



Chapter 11



I RUSH THROUGH the door of my apartment at a few minutes after five that night.

I should be exhausted. Penley had me polish every piece of silverware for sixteen place settings, including not one, not two, but three different-sized salad forks. Three, for crying out loud!

And as she occasionally peered over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t miss a spot, I fantasized about stabbing her with all of them.

On the bright side -always on the bright side – were Dakota and Sean. After I picked up my little sweethearts from school in the afternoon, we walked to Central Park and played tag and “nanny in the middle” in the Sheep Meadow for over an hour.

Like I said, I should be exhausted.

But I’m not. I’m too anxious to be tired, too tense. I’m dying to find out what happened at the Fálcon Hotel this morning. I need to have this strange mystery solved.

I put down my bag, kick off my flats, and grab a Vitamin Water from the fridge – the peach-mango flavor, a personal favorite. Then I head straight for the TV and the start of the first “Live at Five” news program I can find.

“Good afternoon, here’s what’s happening…,” begins the perfectly coiffed male anchor. Seriously, it looks as if he’s wearing a hair helmet.

He and his female cohort take turns reading “the top stories of the day.” A water main break in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Yet another fatal stabbing in Queens. A taxi that jumped the curb down on Wall Street and collided with the cart of one very angry hot-dog vendor.

But nothing about the Fálcon.

How could that be?

If a runaway cab taking out a bunch of hot dogs is considered newsworthy, certainly the death of four people at a hotel in Midtown is as well.