Джеймс Паттерсон: The House Next Door

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 © 2019 by James Patterson

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First ebook edition: January 2019

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ISBN 978-0-316-50439-3

E3-20181112-DA-ORI-NF

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

dedication

The House Next Door

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

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

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

EPILOGUE

The Killer’s Wife

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

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

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

We. Are. Not. Alone

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

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

About the Authors

James Patterson Recommends

Newsletters

For the Karps—

your house isn’t exactly next door, but it’s plenty close enough. We couldn’t imagine better neighbors or friends.

The House Next Door

James Patterson

with Susan DiLallo

Prologue

“Hurry,” I heard someone say. “He’s losing a lot of blood.”

Blood?

Stunned, I sat there for I don’t know how long, listening to the whir of police sirens. Vaguely aware of flashing lights and a flurry of voices around me.

“Ma’am, can you hear me?” one of the voices asks. I squint and look up. It’s a policeman, his face close to mine. He looks concerned. “Are you okay?”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I nod my head yes.

“Do you remember what happened?” the cop asks.

Do I? I’m not sure.

I remember being afraid. Very afraid. A scream. A crash. The screech of metal. And then—

Something is trickling down the front of my face. I taste blood. I lift my hand to brush it away, and a sharp pain rips across my elbow. I look down. A bump the size and color of a plum is throbbing there.

The cop calls out to an EMT guy. “She’s conscious. But her arm looks kinda banged up.”

Suddenly there is a commotion next to me. They have cracked open the door on the driver’s side to get to the driver. More flashing lights. Another ambulance. More voices.

“Come look at this,” someone says, and the cop crosses to the driver’s side. They have lifted the driver out and put him on a gurney. Blood has seeped across his neck, down his shirt.

“He hit his head on the wheel?”

“That’s what I thought, at first,” says the EMT guy. “But look.”

“Jesus,” says the cop. “Is that…?”

“Right,” says the other man. “A bullet hole.”

Suddenly, everything changes.

“Ma’am,” the cop says, “I need you to step away from the car.”

Cradling my arm, he helps me onto a gurney. As they wheel me over to an ambulance, I hear the crunch of broken glass. Then I see the second car, on its side, just to the left of mine. Half on, half off the road. The whole front side of it is smashed in. And slumped over the steering wheel…

I know that car. I know that driver! Slowly, bits and pieces of memories start to come back. A pop. A flash of light. And then it hits me: the horror of what I’ve done.

The two men I love—bruised, bleeding, dying—maybe dead?

And, dear God, it’s all my fault …

Chapter 1

Six months earlier

You want to know the whole story? Let me start from the day when everything began to fall apart.

Just an ordinary school morning.

Joey is scrambling to finish his homework. Caroline is still asleep. Ben can’t find his oboe. And my husband and I are arguing.

“This whole oboe thing is ridiculous,” Ned says, gesturing with a piece of seven-grain toast. “The kid hates the oboe. He doesn’t practice from one week to the next. And why he needs an oboe tutor…”

“So he can keep up with the other fourth-graders,” I call out from the bottom of the hall closet, on my knees, searching.

“You’re kidding, right?” Ned yells. But I know what he means. I’ve heard the school orchestra play. Even on a good day, it makes your teeth hurt.

Ben stands there, Pop-Tart in hand, watching as I push aside various snow boots.

“Would it kill you to help me look?” I say.

“Me? Why do I have to help?”

From the kitchen Ned shouts, “Because it’s your damn oboe. You’re the one who lost it.”

“I left it right here on the hall table,” Ben says. “Donna must’ve put it somewhere.”

Donna is the cleaning lady who shows up on Mondays, cleans her little heart out, and for the next six days is systematically blamed for everything that’s lost or broken. Poor Donna has had more things pinned on her than our local supermarket bulletin board.

I get up off my knees. Ned is standing next to me, still fuming. I know I have a choice: Let It Go, as Maggie, our couples therapist, has suggested, or Push Back Gently .

“Look. He’s finally learning to play the scales properly,” I say. Gently.

“And for that I pay seventy-five dollars a week?”