You've Been Warned

by James Patterson; Howard Roughan

  Of course, that’s what makes for good photographs. I mean, when’s the last time a smile won the Pulitzer?

  Still, after the morning I’ve had, I decide to keep the camera tucked away in my shoulder bag. I’m feeling a little preoccupied. I’d say my head is in the clouds, except there aren’t any today. It’s a beautiful blue-skied morning in the middle of May, the kind of day that makes people happy to be alive.

  So I take a deep breath and berate myself. Snap out of it, Kristin! And for a while, I do.

  Right up until I turn the corner onto Madison.

  And scream.

  Not just a little one either.

  I scream at the top of my lungs.

  Chapter 5

  OMIGOD. Omigod.

  The police cars, the ambulances, the twirling beams of blue and red light.

  This can’t be happening. It isn’t possible.... But there it is anyway. Plus an awful smell in the air—like something burning!

  The crowd gathered in front of the same hotel and the gurneys being wheeled out the entrance.

  Can’t be! Cannot!

  But it is.

  My dream... it’s happening!

  Everything just as I saw it. Every person too—the pin-striped businessman, the bike messenger, the mother with her stroller—all watching the murder scene.

  And that smell—that’s new—but what is it?

  I close my eyes, squeezing them tight as if to reboot my brain. Am I really seeing this?

  Yes. I am seeing this, every insane detail.

  My eyes blink open, and I’m still standing on the corner of 68th and Madison, in front of the Fálcon Hotel. The Fálcon, of all places.

  I want to run away. I know I should bolt while the bolting’s good. Instead, I reach for my camera.

  Don’t think, just shoot.

  But I am thinking.

  As my finger clicks madly away, I’m thinking that this is impossible, that it can’t be real, and the more I think this, the more I know I have to keep shooting.

  I need proof.

  The same powerful undertow as the one in my dream grabs hold of me as I inch closer to the entrance of the Fálcon. I look up at the windows of the surrounding brownstones and see the woman in curlers taking a bite out of her bagel.

  Click, click, click.

  My heart is pounding, pounding, pounding, as if there’s a big bass drum inside my chest.

  I look at my hands. Then at my arms. There’s a rash all over me—or maybe it’s hives.

  Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The final body is being wheeled out of the hotel, and this is the last chance for me to run away.

  I don’t run.

  My feet don’t move, and my camera lens is fixed on the four gurneys gathered on the sidewalk. I’m gasping for air, drowning in my own fear, just about to lose it big-time.

  Because I know what happens next.

  “Help!” I yell out.

  The mere thought of the zipper moving on that body bag is enough. I don’t need to wait to see it happen. Once was plenty.

  I lower my camera and frantically wave my arms.

  “Help!” I yell again, much louder this time. “Please, help!”

  I’m shaking as I start to cry, the tears streaming down my cheeks. The rash, the hives—it’s getting worse.

  This is unbearable.

  “Please, someone, listen to me.”

  And that’s when someone does.

  Chapter 6

  I SEE HIS EYES FIRST, very dark, intense, and unblinking, staring right into mine.

  He’s dressed in a gray suit, nothing fancy, jacket open with a loose tie, yellow-and-red stripe. Clipped to his belt is a scuffed-up badge. NYPD?

  With a deliberate gait bordering on slow, he weaves his way through the crowd and walks up to me. All this time, his eyes never leave mine. I guess he heard me screaming. I smell his aftershave... and tobacco.

  “Oh, thank God,” I say, a relieved hand slapping my chest. “Are you with the police?”

  “I’m a detective, yes.”

  I point back at the hotel. “Hurry, you have to do something.”

  He gives me a strange look before glancing over his shoulder. “Excuse me? I have to do what?”

  I jab my finger at the gurneys again, the words tripping over my tongue. “The zipper... over there... the one on the...” I take a deep breath and spit it out. “The person in that last body bag is still alive!”

  The detective looks at the hotel again. It’s not quite a smirk on his hardened face when he turns back to me, but it’s close. There is something unsettling about this man, deeply so.

  “Lady, I can assure you the person in that bag is dead. They’re all dead.”

  “Please, just go check.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I won’t go check. Did you hear what I just told you?”

  “You don’t understand, Detective. The zipper on that last body bag, it’s going to—”

  I stop myself cold. Hold it right there, Kris. Not another word!

  I complete the sentence in my head and suddenly, embarrassingly, I realize how crazy it all sounds. I sneak a quick peek at that last body bag, which still hasn’t moved. I want to tell this guy about the dream; I want to make him believe me.

  So of course I can’t tell him about the dream.

  “I’m sorry,” I say meekly, starting to put away my camera. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I just got scared.”

  “Four murders,” he says. “That’s scary, all right.”

  I can feel the detective’s eyes on me as I fumble with the lens cap for my camera, but I don’t look at him. And as I turn to slink away as quickly as possible, I don’t say another word. No good-bye, no apology, no nothing. Way to go, Kristin. You’ve just made a complete fool of yourself.

  It’s been a morning to remember.

  Four dead bodies.

  Déjà dead?

  Whatever.

  PART 2

  Chapter 7

  THE RASH, whatever it was, is gone now. So is that awful burning smell. Why was that different than in my dream?

  Thankfully, I’m not very good at running and dwelling, otherwise I’d be obsessing about what did or didn’t just happen as I race up to the Turnbulls’ building on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park.

  For now, what I force myself to think about is that I’m late for work and how that’s a major no-no with the boss, something Louis, the morning doorman for the building, is all too pleased to point out as I blow by him.

  “Uh-oh,” he says, slowly shaking his nearly bald head. “Somebody’s in trouble. Never let ’em see you sweat, Miss Kristin.”

  “Good morning to you too, Louis,” I say over my shoulder.

  “Overslept, huh?”

  If only.

  I hop on the elevator and press PH for the penthouse, the top, the ritz.

  Eighteen stories later, I step out onto the black-and-white-checked marble of the foyer that separates the only two apartments on the floor. My rushed footsteps echo as I steer left to the Turnbull residence with key in hand.

  Please let her be in a good mood.

  Fat chance.

  Opening the door, I see Penley’s rail-thin frame standing before me. It doesn’t matter how much Restylane she’s got spackling her frown lines, I can tell she’s pissed.

  “You’re late,” she announces, her voice detached and chilly.

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t work for me, Kristin.” She picks a piece of lint from her designer workout clothes. Nearly every morning, she heads to the gym after I arrive. “You know I have to be able to rely on you,” she says.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “From where I’m standing, I’m not so sure you do. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you don’t.”

  I look at Penley “the Pencil” Turnbull and want to scream so loud it will break crystal, and there’s plenty of it in earshot. Her patronizing tone, the way she r
efuses to yell at me because that would be sooo middle-class, it drives me absolutely bonkers.

  Penley folds her arms. It’s her Mommie Dearest pose. Actually, her Step mommie Dearest pose. “So, can I still rely on you, Kristin?”

  “Yes, of course you can.”

  “Good. I’m glad we’ve had this little talk.”

  She begins to walk away, then stops, very nearly pirouettes. Almost as an afterthought, she updates me on the kids, of whom she isn’t the natural mother. Their real mother died in a shooting accident the year Sean was born. “Dakota and Sean are both in the kitchen, finishing their breakfast. Oh, and be sure to double-check that they have everything for school. I don’t want to get another note home saying they forgot something. It’s embarrassing.”

  Yes, Your Highness.

  I watch Penley glide down the hallway to her bedroom before I start for the kitchen. I only get a few steps when the phone rings. I pick it up in the study.

  “Hello, Turnbull residence.”

  “Is the boss in the room?”

  It’s Michael.

  I lower my voice. “No. You just missed the mistress.”

  “Were you late?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she a bitch to you?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “I guess you’ve got a point there,” he says. “So, how are you, anyway?”

  “Michael...”

  “What?”

  “What did I tell you about calling me here?”

  “Who says I called for you?”

  “Yeah, right, like you actually want to speak with Penley.”

  “What, a guy can’t talk to his wife?”

  “You know what I mean; it’s risky.”

  “I keep telling you, Penley doesn’t believe in answering the phone. That’s what she has you for.”

  Right then, I hear a voice behind me. Her voice. “Who is that, Kristin?” asks Penley.

  I nearly swallow my stomach.

  “Oh, gosh, you startled me,” I say, breathless.

  She couldn’t care less. “I asked who you were talking to.”

  “No one,” I answer.

  “It’s obviously someone.” She gives me a disapproving glare. “That’s not a personal call, is it? Because you know how I feel about those when you’re supposed to be working.”

  “No, it’s not a personal call,” I assure her. Unless, of course, you count your husband.

  “Then who is it?”

  I think fast. “It’s some guy from Lincoln Center. He wants to know if you’d be interested in attending an opera series they’re doing.”

  Penley cocks her head and shoots me a suspicious look.

  So I gamble.

  “Here,” I say, offering her the phone. “You can talk to him if you want.”

  Penley—a devout macrobiotic dieter—looks at the phone as if it’s a Twinkie. No, worse—a fried Twinkie. She wants nothing to do with any “salesman type,” even one from Lincoln Center.

  She sniffs. “I thought we were on that do-not-call list.”

  “You know, you’re right,” I say, relishing the thought of repeating this to Michael. He’s undoubtedly been listening the entire time. “We are on that do-not-call list,” I say into the phone.

  Sure enough, as I hang up I can hear him laughing hysterically.

  Michael Turnbull, my almost perfect man, loves to live on the edge. And he loves it even more when I join him there.

  Chapter 8

  ILOVE DAKOTA AND SEAN. Who wouldn’t?That’s the message lettered on T-shirts I gave the Turnbull kids last Christmas. It also happens to be absolutely true. I feel sorry for the kids because their stepmother is such an uncaring bitch toward them.

  As we ride the elevator down to the lobby, Sean stares up at me with his big blue curious eyes. At age five, everything—and I mean everything—is a question for this darling little boy.

  “Miss Kristin, how old are you?” he asks.

  His sister, Dakota, seven going on seventeen, immediately chimes in. “You’re not supposed to ask a woman how old she is, dummy!”

  “That’s okay, sweetheart. Sean can ask me anything.” I flash him a reassuring smile. “I’m twenty-six.”

  He blinks his baby blues a few times as if mulling it over. “That’s really old, isn’t it?”

  Dakota slaps her forehead. “Oh, brother! And I mean brother.”

  I laugh—something I do a lot when it’s just the three of us, especially during our daily trek to Preston Academy, or as New York magazine prefers, “The ‘it’ school for tykes on the Upper East Side that’s harder to get into than Fort Knox.”

  “Miss Kristin, why do kids have to go to school?” asks Sean without missing a beat.

  “That’s easy. So they can learn lots of neat things and grow up to be really smart like their parents,” I explain. “Isn’t that right, Dakota?”

  “I guess,” she says with a shrug.

  Sean blinks again. “Are you smart, Miss Kristin?”

  “I like to think I am,” I say.

  Yet it’s moments like this that make me wonder, and question myself. I care about these two kids so damn much and would never do anything to hurt them. So why am I having an affair with their father?

  I know why.

  I can’t help myself.

  Michael is wonderful, and he loves me, and I love him as much as we both do Dakota and Sean.

  As for stepmom Penley, she treats the kids like fashion accessories, to be seen adoringly at her side like an Hermès or a Chanel bag. She doesn’t make time for them as much as she allots it, scheduling the two children into her life the same way she does luncheons and museum committee meetings.

  I hate the term home wrecker, and if for one moment I thought I was actually wrecking something wonderful, I’d be out of their lives in an instant. But I spend a lot of time in that penthouse apartment, and I see what’s going on.

  Yes, maybe my head knows better. In my heart, however, I’m convinced that the four of us—Dakota, Sean, Michael, and me—are destined to be together.

  It’s going to happen.

  Soon.

  Chapter 9

  WE BOUND OFF the elevator and right into the playful smile of Louis. “Well, if it isn’t the Three Musketeers!” he exclaims.

  Louis reaches to the side of his doorman’s coat and brandishes an imaginary sword. On cue, Sean goes for his. Their daily make-believe duel lasts all the way across the lobby.

  It’s always fun to watch, especially today. After the morning I’ve had, this ritual—this return to normalcy—is exactly what I need.

  I laugh and cheer Sean on as Louis pretends to be fatally wounded. With all the gusto of a B movie actor, he drops to his knees and dies a slow, painful death.

  Maybe that’s what does it.

  Or maybe it’s simply being outside again.

  Either way, no sooner do I set foot on the sidewalk than my thoughts return to the Fálcon Hotel and my dream—that horrible, horrible dream—coming to life.

  Instantly, I’m awash in all the disturbing images again. They’re vivid in my mind and at the same time confusing. New Yorkers, more than anyone, don’t like things they can’t rationally explain. That goes for nonnative New Yorkers as well. Like me.

  “Miss Kristin, is everything okay?”

  It’s not Sean asking the question this time, it’s Dakota. Not only is she mature for her age, I think she’s also a mind reader.

  “Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re squeezing extra tight this morning.”

  I look down and, sure enough, I can see the white of my knuckles wrapped around her tiny hand. Same for the one around Sean’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, loosening my grip. “I guess I like holding on to you both so much, I never want to let go.”

  “Fine with me,” says Sean blithely.

  We continue walking, and I struggle to clear my mind of all the bad images from earli
er. It’s near impossible. A howling ambulance passes us on the street, and it’s as if I’m seeing it all yet again. The body bags, the zipper...

  The woman’s hand covered with blood.

  “Miss Kristin, you’re doing it again,” says Dakota, trying to wiggle her fingers free.

  “Yeah,” says Sean. “You’re like my G.I. Joe with kung fu grip!”

  A few minutes later we arrive at Madison and 74th, and the imposing wrought-iron gates of the Preston Academy. I kneel to kiss Sean and Dakota good-bye.

  “Have a great day, my angels.”

  “You too, Miss Kristin,” chirps Sean. “Have a great day.”

  Dakota peers into my eyes. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “I’m sure,” I answer.

  But of course I’m not.

  Then I wink at the kids, and they wink back. They have killer winks too.

  I stand there and watch the kids dash off, joining their classmates marching up the steps to the school. They look so happy, so carefree.

  So innocent.

  Chapter 10

  THE TWO BEST THINGS about my job disappear through the front door of Preston Academy, and I’m left walking back to the worst thing.

  Penley.

  That and what she likes to call “light housekeeping,” or sometimes “chores.”

  While the kids are at school, Penley keeps me busy with... well... busy work. Let’s just say the woman is extremely anal-retentive. Last week, while having me organize the pantry, she insisted I arrange the cans of soup in alphabetical order.

  As for the “heavy housekeeping”—changing the bed linens, washing and ironing, cleaning the bathrooms, et cetera—that’s taken care of by Maria, the twice-a-week maid. I think she’s great. Originally from Morelia, Mexico, she’s an incredibly hard worker and boasts a wonderful smile. As for how she manages to put up with Penley and her biting tongue, I can only attribute it to Maria’s very limited grasp of the English language.

  I, on the other hand, can understand perfectly all the ridiculously demeaning things that Penley says to me on a daily basis.

  So rushing back to that penthouse apartment after dropping off Dakota and Sean holds little appeal. I prefer to take my time, today being no exception. Since I haven’t been able to make any sense of what happened, or seemed to happen, earlier, I’m trying to keep my thoughts on anything but.