Let’s Play Make-Believe Read online

  “John,” I said, kneeling beside him and taking his hand. “Hold on now. Cavalry’s coming.”

  He seemed not to hear, just stared vacantly past me toward the wall.

  I started to cry. I couldn’t stop. I shook from head to toe, and then I wanted to shoot the man who’d done this. I wanted to shoot him twenty times, completely destroy the creature that had risen from the dead.

  Sirens closed in on the school from six directions. I wiped at my tears, and then squeezed Sampson’s hand, before forcing myself to my feet and back out into the cafeteria, where the first patrol officers were charging in, followed by a pair of EMTs whose shoulders were flecked with melting snowflakes.

  They got Sampson’s head immobilized, then put him on a board and then a gurney. He was under blankets and moving in less than six minutes. It was snowing hard outside. They waited inside the front door to the school for the helicopter to come, and put IV lines into his wrists.

  Sampson went into another convulsion. The parish priest, Father Fred Close, came and gave my partner the last rites.

  But my man was still hanging on when the helicopter came. In a daze I followed them out into a driving snowstorm. We had to shield our eyes to duck under the blinding propeller wash and get Sampson aboard.

  “We’ll take it from here!” one EMT shouted at me.

  “There’s not a chance I’m leaving his side,” I said, climbed in beside the pilot, and pulled on the extra helmet. “Let’s go.”

  The pilot waited until they had the rear doors shut and the gurney strapped down before throttling up the helicopter. We began to rise, and it was only then that I saw through the swirling snow that crowds were forming beyond the barricades set up in a perimeter around the school and church complex.

  We pivoted in the air and flew back up over 12th Street, rising above the crowd. I looked down through the spiraling snow and saw everyone ducking their heads from the helicopter wash. Everyone except for a single male face looking directly up at the Life Flight, not caring about the battering, stinging snow.

  “That’s him!” I said.

  “Detective?” the pilot said, his voice crackling over the radio in my helmet.

  I tugged down the microphone, and said, “How do I talk to dispatch?”

  The pilot leaned over, and flipped a switch.

  “This is Detective Alex Cross,” I said. “Who’s the supervising detective heading to St. Anthony’s?”

  “Your wife. Chief Stone.”

  “Patch me through to her.”

  Five seconds passed as we built speed and hurtled toward the hospital.

  “Alex?” Bree said. “What’s happened?”

  “John’s hit bad, Bree,” I said. “I’m with him. Close off that school from four blocks in every direction. Order a door-to-door search. I just saw the shooter on 12th, a block west of the school.”

  “Description?”

  “It’s Gary Soneji, Bree,” I said. “Get his picture off Google and send it to every cop in the area.”

  There was silence on the line before Bree said sympathetically, “Alex, are you okay? Gary Soneji’s been dead for years.”

  “If he’s dead, then I just saw a ghost.”

  We were buffeted by winds and faced near-whiteout conditions trying to land on the helipad atop George Washington Medical Center. In the end we put down in the parking lot by the ER entrance, where a team of nurses and doctors met us.

  They hustled Sampson inside and got him attached to monitors while Dr. Christopher Kalhorn, a neurosurgeon, swabbed aside some of the blood and examined the head wounds.

  The bullet had entered Sampson’s skull at a shallow angle about two inches above the bridge of his nose. It exited forward of his left temple. That second wound was about the size of a marble, but gaping and ragged, as if the bullet had been a hollow point that broke up and shattered going through bone.

  “Let’s get him intubated, on Propofol, and into an ice bath and cooling helmet,” Kalhorn said. “Take his temp down to ninety-two, get him into a CT scanner, and then the OR. I’ll have a team waiting for him.”

  The ER doctors and nurses sprang into action. In short order, they had a breathing tube down Sampson’s throat and were racing him away. Kalhorn turned to leave. I showed my badge and stopped him.

  “That’s my brother,” I said. “What do I tell his wife?”

  Dr. Kalhorn turned grim. “You tell her we’ll do everything possible to save him. And you tell her to pray. You, too, Detective.”

  “What are his chances?”

  “Pray,” he said, took off in a trot, and disappeared.

  I was left standing in an empty treatment slot in the ER, looking down at the dark blood that stained the gauze pads they’d used to clean Sampson’s head.

  “You can’t stay in here, Detective,” one of the nurses said sympathetically. “We need the space. Traffic accidents all over the city with this storm.”

  I nodded, turned, and wandered away, wondering where to go, what to do.

  I went out in the ER waiting area and saw twenty people in the seats. They stared at my pistol, at the blood on my shirt, and at the black hole where Soneji’s bullet had hit me. I didn’t care what they thought. I didn’t—

  I heard the automatic doors whoosh open behind me.

  A fearful voice cried out, “Alex?”

  I swung around. Billie Sampson was standing there in pink hospital scrub pants and a down coat, shaking from head to toe from the cold and the threat of something far more bitter. “How bad is it?”

  Billie’s a surgical nurse, so there was no point in being vague. I described the wound. Her hand flew to her mouth at first, but then she shook her head. “It’s bad. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  I hugged her and said, “He’s a strong man. But he’s going to need your prayers. He’s going to need all our prayers.”

  Billie’s strength gave way. She began to moan and sob into my chest, and I held her tighter. When I raised my head, the people in the waiting room were looking on in concern.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I muttered, and led Billie out into the hallway and to the chapel.

  We went inside, and thankfully it was empty. I got Billie calmed down enough to tell her what had happened at the school and afterward.

  “They’ve put him into a chemical coma and are supercooling his body.”

  “To reduce swelling and bleeding,” she said, nodding.

  “And the neurosurgeons here are the best. He’s in their hands now.”

  “And God’s,” Billie said, staring at the cross on the wall in the chapel before pulling away from me to go down on her knees.

  I joined her and we held hands and begged our savior for mercy.

  About the Authors

  James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

  James O. Born is an award-winning crime and science fiction novelist as well as a career law enforcement agent. A native Floridian, he still lives in the Sunshine State.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Prologue

  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
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  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  An Excerpt from “The Trial”

  About the Authors

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  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 © 2016 by James Patterson

  Cover design by Kapo Ng

  Cover photograph by Sue Patterson

  Cover © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First ebook edition: August 2016

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  ISBN 978-0-316-36051-7

  E3-20160629-NF-DA