Detective Teaghan Beaumont is getting closer and closer to discovering the truth about Darien Marshall. But there’s a twist that she—and you, dear listener—will never see coming.
BookShots LIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSON
Novels you can devour in a few hours
Impossible to stop reading
All original content from James Patterson
Release date:
January 3, 2017
Publisher:
Little, Brown and Company
Print pages:
144
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I love my family. Truly, madly, deeply. But some days I could just…
Hey, I don’t want to complain. It just gets hectic sometimes. What am I saying? It’s hectic all of the time. Like when you’re wrangling dinner for three hungry children, none of whom like to eat the same thing.
For instance, last month our oldest, Jordan, decided he was a vegetarian. It was family movie night, and we’d put in Bambi. Safe choice, right? Hah. When Jordan asked why that mean hunter shot Bambi’s mother, we told him the truth (we always tell our kids the truth): the hunter was gathering food for his family.
Well, poor Jordie looked at us, looked down at the cheeseburger on his tray, then looked up at us again and said, “They ate Bambi’s mother?!” And that was the end of meat for our oldest boy.
Our middle child, Jonathan, will only eat protein in nugget form. He doesn’t care if it’s processed or organic or even made of Bambi’s mother. If it’s a breaded nugget, he’ll eat it. And nothing else.
As for our sweet baby Jennifer…well, she insists on feeding herself and the food usually goes everywhere except in her mouth. Her high chair ends up looking like a crime scene. It would be easier to drape yellow tape across it than to wipe it all down.
Somehow I manage to get enough nutrients into their young bodies to sustain life another twelve hours (that is to say, until breakfast), help the two older boys with their baths, hose down our baby girl in the kitchen sink, squeeze them all into jammies, crack open the adventures of Babar, Lord of the Elephant Kingdom, for story time, and then finally, at long last…bedtime.
But my day’s not over. You’re forgetting about the crime scene in the kitchen.
After sorting the dishes and wiping down all surfaces and taking Jennifer’s high chair to a toxic-waste dump (where it will be buried for at least fifty-eight years before becoming safe for human contact), I gather up the trash and recycling and walk them out to the plastic bins behind our town house.
We’re lucky enough to live a stone’s throw from beautiful Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River. Sometimes I put the kids in their coats and take them down to the river to watch the regatta teams pull and push their way around.
But proximity to the park means you get all kinds of critters creeping out of the woods. Such as squirrels, which love to gnaw at our plastic garbage bins. Fun fact: squirrels were first introduced to American parks right here in Philadelphia back in 1847. Someone decided that visitors to Franklin Square would be amused by the little buggers, so they released three of them, along with some food and nesting boxes.
Well, I’m sure squirrels were jolly fun back then, but today their descendants are brazen little jerks that chew through industrial-grade plastic to get to our garbage.
Which reminds me. I should have one by now.
I walk downstairs to our finished basement, and sure enough, there’s a nut-brown squirrel angrily shrieking and bouncing around the wire cage. Well, Mr. Bushy Tail, maybe you shouldn’t be breaking into people’s garbage bins? After pulling on the rubber gloves and slipping on the breathing mask, I carry the squirrel to the back room with the furnace and the hot-water heater.
Once I close the door, the room is perfectly sealed; there’s no way anything can escape—not even air. Which is the idea.
I turn the nozzle and listen to the gentle hiss. It’s incredibly soothing. Mr. Bushy Tail has no idea what’s about to happen to him.
Which is also the idea.
CHAPTER 2
Teaghan Beaumont holds her baby boy and runs through her options.
She’s already changed his diaper—twice. Offered him the breast, but he twisted away, grumpy. Given him a few drops of simethicone, in case he was suffering from gas pains. Nope. Perhaps he’s overtired? Yeah, well, so is Teaghan. Join the club, kid.
Baby Christopher wails on and on, despite her strolling the length of their apartment with him nestled on her shoulder, cooing to him, singing to him. Though maybe Teaghan should stop that; her husband always says she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.
“It’ll be okay, tough guy,” Teaghan murmurs over the baby’s pitiful screams. “It’ll be okay.” She’s not sure if she’s reassuring her son or herself.
It’s 3:00 a.m., and in five hours Teaghan will have to return to the Job after six long, wonderful, wearying weeks of maternity leave. Technically, she’s allowed eight weeks, but their savings account doesn’t care about technicalities. They need her paycheck now.
Her husband, Charlie, is a freelance writer, and his paychecks come sporadically at best. And during these past six weeks, Teaghan doesn’t think he’s opened his laptop once. Not that she blames him. How could he concentrate on work when he has a beautiful new son in their apartment?
Charlie has always wanted a family, having grown up in a house full of rambunctious kids raised by loving, supportive parents. Teaghan’s experience was somewhat, um, different, to put it lightly. Sure, a big family sounded fine in the abstract. Something to look forward to someday. In the meantime, though, Teaghan’s Job was everything. Hell, she had a hard enough time fitting her husband into her schedule.
But Charlie reminded her that time was running out, and Teaghan knew he was right. Talk about a biological raw deal. Men could technically father a child well into their nineties, but forty-year-old women attempting to carry a child are considered “high risk.” The phrase always bugged Teaghan. High risk? As if the contents of her uterus might explode?
“It’s okay, little one,” she murmurs. “It’s okay. Your mommy might be losing her mind, but I promise, you’ll be fine.”
His cries bounce off the upstairs walls of their duplex brownstone apartment. Her childless hipster neighbors upstairs must be loving this.
Despite her advanced age of thirty-six, Teaghan gave birth to a healthy baby boy with ten fi. . .
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