Hide and Seek Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 1996 by James Patterson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  The Warner Books name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group.

  First eBook Edition: December 1996

  ISBN: 978-0-446-40929-2

  Contents

  Prologue: Hide & Seek

  I

  CHAPTER II

  Book One: Star-Crossed

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  Book Two: Calm Before the Storm

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  Book Three: Will

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  BOOK FOUR: Dark Side of the Moon

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  BOOK FIVE: Trial & Error

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  CHAPTER 107

  CHAPTER 108

  CHAPTER 109

  CHAPTER 110

  CHAPTER 111

  CHAPTER 112

  CHAPTER 113

  BOOK SIX: Hide & Seek—Again

  CHAPTER 114

  CHAPTER 115

  CHAPTER 116

  CHAPTER 117

  CHAPTER 118

  CHAPTER 119

  CHAPTER 120

  EPILOGUE Night Songs

  CHAPTER 121

  CHAPTER 122

  CHAPTER 123

  A Preview of "Jack & Jill"

  MORE RAVES FOR JAMES PATTERSON AND HIS COMPELLING NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

  HIDE AND SEEK

  “A twisty narrative that barrels along swiftly … a hair-raising ride.”

  —People

  “A novel built for speed.”

  —Boston Globe

  “James Patterson does everything but stick our fingers in a light socket to give us a buzz.”

  —New York Times

  “Masterful. … A riveting psychological thriller. … Patterson gives his admirers a roller-coaster ride through a vivid, emotional tale that leads inexorably to a truly shattering climax.”

  —Naples Daily News

  “Alex Cross is to the 90s what Mike Hammer was to the 50s.”

  —Denver Post

  “Gripping.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Alex Cross is the fictional detective of the 90s.”

  —Ann Rule

  “James Patterson is to suspense what Danielle Steel is to romance.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Patterson develops characters with broad strokes and fine lines. Even the villains are multilayered and believable.”

  —Nashville Banner

  “Patterson's skill at building suspense is enviable, and it's impossible to read the book slowly.”

  —Kansas City Star

  “Patterson is an excellent writer.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “Patterson hit the ball out of the park with his last go-round, the bestselling Along Came a Spider. Kiss the Girls is even better.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “As good as a thriller can get. … With Kiss the Girls, Patterson joins the elite company of Thomas Harris and John Sanford.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  “Warning: Do not read Kiss the Girls on a dark winter night if you are home alone. This is another Patterson scare.”

  —Oakland Press

  “Kiss the Girls is impossible to put down.”

  —Detroit News and Free Press

  “Along Came a Spider is a first-rate thriller—fasten your seatbelts and keep the lights on.”

  —Sidney Sheldon

  “Along Came a Spider is written simply, powerfully, with shifting points of view. The book will satisfy mystery and thriller fans, as well as students of the human condition.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Along Came a Spider deserves to be this season's #1 bestseller and should instantly make James Patterson a household name.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  THE NOVELS OF JAMES PATTERSON

  Featuring Alex Cross

  Mary, Mary

  London Bridges

  The Big Bad Wolf

  Four Blind Mice

  Violets Are Blue

  Roses Are Red

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Cat & Mouse

  Jack & Jill

  Kiss the Girls

  Along Came a Spider

  The Women's Murder Club

  4TH of July (and Maxine Paetro)

  3RD Degree (and Andrew Gross)

  2ND Chance (and Andrew Gross)

  1ST to Die

  Other Books


  The Lifeguard (and Andrew Gross)

  Maximum Ride

  Honeymoon (and Howard Roughan)

  santaKid

  Sam's Letters to Jennifer

  The Lake House

  The Jester (and Andrew Gross)

  The Beach House (and Peter de Jonge)

  Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

  Cradle and All

  Black Friday

  When the Wind Blows

  See How They Run

  Miracle on the 17th Green (and Peter de Jonge)

  Hide & Seek

  The Midnight Club

  Season of the Machete

  The Thomas Berryman Number

  For more information about James Patterson's novels, visit www.jamespatterson.com

  For Carole Anne, Isabelle Anne, and Mary Ellen: the mothers of invention

  Prologue

  Hide & Seek

  I

  I LAY WITHOUT moving in the low, narrow crawl space under the front porch of our home near West Point. My face was pressed tightly against the brutally cold, frozen ground littered with dry leaves and scratchy brambles. I knew I was going to die soon, and so was my baby girl. The words from a song, Crosby, Stills, and Nash—“Our house is a very, very, very fine house”— played in my mind.

  “Don't cry … oh please don't cry,” I whispered into my baby's ear.

  There was no way out—no escape from here, at least not carrying the baby. I was smart, and I'd thought of every possible escape route. None of them would work.

  Phillip was going to kill us when he found our hiding place. I couldn't let him. I just didn't know how I could stop it. I kept my hand lightly over Jennie's mouth. “You mustn't make a sound, sweetheart. I love you. You mustn't make a sound.”

  I could hear Phillip raging above us inside the house. Our house. He was rampaging from floor to floor, ransacking rooms, overturning furniture. Angry. Relentless. Absolutely crazy. Worse than he'd ever been. It was cocaine this time, but really it was life that Phillip couldn't handle very well.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Maggie … come out, Maggie and Jennie … it's only Daddy. Daddy's going to find you anyway,” Phillip screamed over and over until he was hoarse. “Come out, come out, Maggie … game's over.

  “Maggie, I command you to come out wherever the hell you're hiding, you disobedient little bitch.”

  I lay shivering under the old sagging porch. My teeth were chattering again. This couldn't be happening. It was unthinkable. I gently held my little girl, who had wet her pants. “You mustn't cry, Jennie. Please don't cry. Don't cry. You're such a good little girl. I love you so much.”

  Jennie nodded, and stared into my eyes. I wished that this were a nightmare. That it would go away. But it wasn't a bad dream. This was as real as my mother's fatal heart attack when I was thirteen years old and the only one home. This was even worse.

  I could hear my husband, my husband, stomping up and down the stairs of the house. He was still screaming … hadn't stopped screaming for over an hour. Pounding his fist against the walls. Captain Phillip Bradford. Math instructor at the Academy. Officer and gentleman. That was what everyone believed, what they wanted to believe, what I had believed myself.

  The hour stretched to two hours.

  Then to three hours in the pitch-black, freezing-cold crawl space—in this living hell.

  Mercifully, Jennie had finally fallen asleep. I held her to my chest, tried to keep her warm. I wanted to sleep myself, give up the fight, but I knew I mustn't do that. It was very early in the morning. One of Phillip's witching hours—maybe three A.M.? Maybe four?

  I heard the front door slam like a clap of thunder in the night. Loud footsteps exploded on the porch just over my head.

  Jennie woke up. “Shhh,” I whispered. “Shhh.”

  “Maggie! I know you're here. I know it! I'm not a stupid man. There's nowhere to run to.”

  “Daddy … Daddy!” Jennie cried out, the way she had so many times in the safety of her crib.

  A flashlight suddenly shone under the porch. Bright, terrifying light blinded me. A thousand sharp splinters in my eyes.

  “Peekaboo! There you are! There's Jennie and Maggie. There's my two girls,” Phillip shouted in triumph. His voice was so hoarse and raw, it was nearly unrecognizable. I could almost make myself believe that this insane man wasn't my husband. How could he be?

  Two deafening shots came from his gun. He fired right at us. He meant to kill either Jennie or me, maybe both of us.

  I had a surprise for Phillip, just this one time.

  Peekaboo yourself!

  I fired back.

  CHAPTER II

  SOMETIMES, I FEEL as though I'm wearing a horrifying scarlet letter—only the letter is M, for Murderess. I know this feeling will never completely go away and it seems so unfair. It is unfair. It's inhuman and indecent.

  The memories are jagged and chaotic, but at the end so vivid and horrifying that they are etched into my brain. They will be with me forever.

  I'll tell you all of it, sparing no one, especially myself. I know that you want to hear. I know this is a “big news story.” I know what it is to be “news.” Do you have any idea? Can you imagine yourself as a piece of news, as cold black type that everybody reads, and makes judgments about?

  Area newspapers from Newburgh, Cornwall, Middle-town called the first shooting the worst “family tragedy” in the history of West Point. To me, at the time, it seemed as though it had happened to someone else. Not to Jennie and me, or even to Phillip, as much as he may have deserved it.

  Yet a dozen years later, after time and my own denial had clouded the events still further and made even my emotions hazy, a second killing has forced me to remember West Point in all of its horrible vividness.

  I obsessively confront the questions that pound in my brain: Am I a murderer?

  Did I kill not one, but two of my husbands?

  I don't know anymore. I don't know! As crazy as that sounds, I honestly don't.

  It gets terribly cold here—sometimes it seems as cold as it was that Christmas Eve when Phillip died. All I can do is sit in this prison cell, in torment, and wait for the trial to begin.

  I decided to write it all down. I'm writing it for myself—but I'm also writing it for you. I'll tell you everything.

  When you've read it, you decide. That's how our system works, right? A jury of my peers.

  And, oh yes, I trust you. I'm a trusting person. That's probably why I'm here, in all of this terrible trouble.

  Book One

  Star-Crossed

  CHAPTER 1

  Early winter, 1984

  More snow. Another Christmas season. Almost a year after Phillip's death—or as some would have it, his murder.

  I sat back in the yellow cab as it bounced and plowed through the slush-filled New York streets. I was trying to put my mind in a calm place, but it wouldn't be still for me. I had promised myself I wouldn't be afraid—but I was very afraid.

  Outside the streaked, wet taxi window, even the Salvation Army Santa Clauses looked miserable. Nobody sane or sensible was out walking today; those who were would not take their hands from their pockets to make a donation. The traffic cops looked like abandoned snowmen. The pigeons had disappeared from every window-sill and rooftop.

  I glanced at my own reflection in the cab's window. Very long, blond hair, mostly with a mind of its own, but my best physical attribute, I thought. Freckles that no amount of makeup would ever cover. Nose a little out of proportion. Brown eyes that had, I knew, regained at least some of their half-forgotten sparkle. A small mouth, thickish lips—made, as Phillip joked in the happy days, for fellatio.

  The thought of him made me shudder. The idea of sex still makes me afraid, and much worse.

  It had been a year since the terrible shooting at West Point. My recovery was slow, both physically and mentally, and it wasn't complete. My leg still hurt, and my brain didn't function with the clarity I'd once taken prid
e in. I found myself frightened by small noises. I saw threats in nighttime streets when none existed. Previously in pretty good control of my feelings, I had lost that control. I would cry for no reason, grow angry at a neighbor's kindness, be suspicious of friends and afraid of strangers. There were times when I hated myself!

  There had been an investigation, of course, but no trial. If Jennie hadn't been so badly beaten, if it had been only me with bloodied hair and a damaged leg, I might have been sent to prison that first time. But the fact that my three-year-old was injured too made our claim of self-defense more convincing.

  No prosecutor wanted to take on the case, and the military academy was only too happy to have it hushed up.

  Officers, it was a well-known fact, did not attack their wives and daughters. Wives and daughters really didn't exist at the Point. We were decorative.

  So I took flight, and traveled to New York City, where I rented a two-bedroom apartment. It was a second-floor walkup in a dreary brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. I located a day school for Jennie. Our lives began to move at a slower pace.

  But I hadn't found what I wanted most: an end to the pain, a beginning to a new life.

  I was twenty-five years old. I wore the letter M. I had taken someone's life, even if it had been in self-defense.

  No guts, no glory, I urged myself on. I was definitely moving on sheer guts that day. I was chasing a dream I'd held on to and cherished for more than a dozen years.

  Perhaps today that new life would start. But was I doing the right thing? Was I ready for this? Or was I about to make a horribly embarrassing mistake?

  I tightly held a briefcase in my lap, filled with songs I had written during the past year. Songs—the music and the words—were my way of exposing my pain and expressing my hopes for the future.

  Actually, I'd been writing songs since I was ten or eleven. Mostly in my head, but sometimes on paper. The songs were the one thing that everybody seemed to like about me, the one thing I did well.

  Were they any good? I thought maybe they were, but Jennie and a squirrel named Smooch were the only ones who had heard them, and, eager for praise as I was, I knew enough not to trust the opinion of a four-year-old, or a squirrel.

  Soon, though, there would be another listener. I was on my way to audition the songs for Barry Kahn, the Barry Kahn, the singer-composer who had electrified America a decade ago and now was one of the most important record producers in the world.

  Barry Kahn wanted to hear my songs.

  Or so he said.