James Patterson - You’ve Been Warned

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.

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.

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 refuses 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. ”