“A full ride,” Bailey said quietly. “Books and incidentals, too.” She could take the scholarship to Harvard Med, if she could get in. Or Columbia Law. And Bailey implied that once she made her decision, phone calls would be made to ensure her application to whatever program got “very special” attention.
“I know you don’t need any advice from anyone, Ramona, especially not me,” Bailey had said. “But listen to me. You. Take. That. Scholarship.”
So maybe he did know a little about life, Ramona thought then. And maybe she could learn something about it herself by reading between the lines of the detective’s offer. For instance, if Ramona didn’t take the scholarship and told everyone how she’d been stabbed by the lumbering old man with the black eyes who was supposed to be dead, then she would be tangled up in these folks’ business for a long, long time. That was in his eyes, too.
He didn’t need to press her. She’d decided that it was time to leave this place, for good. She’d said nothing to Bailey, but nodded once and closed her eyes, and Ramona Best got amnesia right there in the hospital bed in Northam, Mass., before President Wingate came into the room, trying not to make any noise with his loafered feet.
But not before Detective Bailey took her hand and said, “You saved Charlie,” and cried a little, and the Icy Hot feeling went away from her chest and she nodded once more.
Suddenly, a blast of noise filled the car and Ramona started. She glanced at her rearview mirror, her eyes wide with fear and her heart going a million miles an hour.
A fat white guy in a Chevy TrailBlazer was leaning out his driver-side window, pointing up at the streetlight.
“Hey! You wanna fucking go,” he shouted. “Or what?”
Ramona looked up at the light. It was glowing green in the bright sunlight. She let her hand drift out of the open window. She gave the man the finger, vigorously, then hit the gas, turned the wheel left, and gunned up the ramp of 95 South, the Altima’s engine sounding loud and smooth.
Good-bye, Wartham, she thought to herself. See you when I see you.
As she got to the top of the ramp, her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror for one last look at the place where she’d spent the last four years of her life. Behind the asshole in the TrailBlazer, which was lumbering up the ramp after her, the little stand of pines stood. She couldn’t tell if the thickening of the shadows behind them was because of the shift in her view or if there was something else there, among the bright green branches.
Ramona watched the pines until the Altima crested the top of the ramp and the sight of trees was replaced by a long ribbon of cars heading south.
About the Author
NICHOLAS WOLFF is a pseudonym for an acclaimed New York Times bestselling author. He lives in New Jersey.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Nicholas-Wolff
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Nicholas Wolff
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition June 2016
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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco
Cover design by Black Kat Design
Cover image © Denis Tangney Jr/iStockphoto (road); © Tammy Fullum/iStockphoto (fire sky)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wolff, Nicholas, author.
Title: The binding : a novel / Nicholas Wolff.
Description: First Gallery Books trade paperback edition. | New York : Gallery Books, 2016.
Subjects: LCSH: Plague—Fiction. | Horror fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Horror. | FICTION / Occult & Supernatural.
Classification: LCC PS3623.O559 B56 2016 (print) | LCC PS3623.O559 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046668
ISBN 978-1-5011-0271-4
ISBN 978-1-5011-0272-1 (ebook)
The Binding Page 36
