I, Michael Bennett

I fell asleep as the sun was coming up and when I woke, it was noon. We were somewhere flat. Ohio. Indiana, maybe. I stared out at the side of the highway into empty farm fields, wondering if I was dreaming. Despite everything, it felt good to be in the middle of nowhere and moving. There was something instinctual about it, that feeling of safety in motion.

I heard a strange sound and realized it was the new phone the marshals had given me in exchange for my old one. I looked at the 212 number as I clumsily thumbed it on. Tara, I thought.

But it wasn’t.

“Mike? Hi. It’s Bill Bedford.”

He was slurring a little, I noticed. In fact, he sounded drunk.

“Hey, Bill,” I said. “I take it you heard about what happened at my building?”

“I did, Mike, but that’s not why I called,” Bill said. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I just got off the phone with NYPD Homicide. Tara’s dead. They just found her.”

I sat up.

“No, no, no,” I said.

“They must have gotten her on the street on her way to work, Mike,” Bill said, sniffling. “She was taken to a motel in the Bronx, and God, Mike, they tore her apart. They found her head floating in the bathtub.”

I closed my eyes and let out a breath.

“Perrine did it himself, too,” Bedford said. “They have him on the motel’s security video waltzing through the door with a big grin on his face. He’s not human. That fucker isn’t human.”

“No, he isn’t,” I agreed as my mind spun.

“I’m so sorry, Mike,” Bill said.

He sounded completely wrecked. I thought about Tara at the St. Regis, how she’d said I’d saved her.

“Me too, Bill,” I said after a bit. “Thanks for calling. It couldn’t have been easy.”

Mary Catherine stirred beside me.

“What is it, Mike? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking back at my kids, then out at the fields, up at the sky.

“It’s okay,” I lied as I fought panic and tears. “Go back to sleep, Mary Catherine. Everything is going to be fine.”

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Published by Century, 2012

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Copyright © James Patterson, 2012

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