The 6th Target by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Page B

ears.
    “I’m Joe’s girlfriend,” I said. I felt naked and raw, wishing I had a badge to flash at her. Any badge.
    Oh, Joe, what have you done?
    “I’m Milda,” she said, jumping up from the couch, leading me into the kitchen. “I work here. I clean house for Mr. Molinari.”
    I laughed, not out of humor but out of shock.
    She yanked a check out of her pants pocket and stuck it out for me to see.
    But I was barely focusing on her. Images from the last few days were flying around inside my head.
    And now this young woman’s presence was undoing whatever hold I had over my emotions.
    “I finished early and I just thought I’d sit for a few minutes,” she said as she washed the dishes she’d used. “Please don’t tell him, okay?”
    I nodded numbly. “No. Of course not.”
    “I’m leaving now,” she said, turning off the taps. “I don’t want to be late to pick up my son, so I’m going now, okay?”
    I nodded.
    I went down a hall, pushed open the door to the bathroom. I opened the medicine chest and scanned the boxes and bottles, looking for nail polish, tampons, makeup.
    Coming up empty, I went to the bedroom, a large carpeted space with a view of the courtyard. I threw open Joe’s closet door, checked the floor for women’s shoes, ran my hands through the rack. No skirts, no blouses.
What was I doing
?
    I knew Joe, didn’t I?
    I turned back to the bed and was about to undo the bedding and inspect the linens when I saw a photo on the night table. It was of me and Joe six months ago in Sausalito, his arm around me as the breeze whipped my hair across my face. We both looked in love.
    I pressed my hands to my eyes.
    I was so ashamed. The sobs simply poured out of me. I just stood there in Joe’s bedroom and cried.
    And then I left and went back to California.
     
Part Two
BROWN-EYED GIRL
     
Chapter 28
     
    MADISON TYLER HOPSCOTCHED over the lines in the sidewalk, then raced back to her nanny’s side, grabbing her hand as they walked toward Alta Plaza Park, Madison saying, “Were you
listening
, Paola?”
    Paola Ricci squeezed Madison’s small hand.
    Sometimes the little girl’s enchanting five-year-old precocity was almost more than Paola could understand.
    “Of course I was listening, darling.”
    “As I was saying,” the girl said in the funny grown-up way she had, “when I play Beethoven’s
Bagatelle
, the first notes are an ascending scale, and they look like a blue ladder —”
    She trilled the notes.
    “Then, the next part, when I play C-D-C, the notes are pink-green-pink!” she exclaimed.
    “So you
imagine
that those notes have colors?”
    “No, Paola,” the little girl said comically, patiently. “The notes
are
those colors. Don’t you see colors when you sing?”
    “Nope. I guess I’m a ninny,” Paola said. “A ninny-nanny.”
    “I don’t know what a ninny-nanny
is
,” Madison said, her dazzling smile setting off sparks in her big brown eyes. “But it sounds very funny.”
    The two laughed hard, Madison grabbing Paola around the waist, burying her face in the young woman’s coat as they passed the exclusive Waldorf School, only a block and a half from where Madison lived with her parents.
    “It’s Saturday,” Madison whispered to Paola. “I don’t have to even
look
at school on Saturday.”
    Now the park was only a block away, and seeing the stone walls surrounding it, Madison got more excited and changed subjects.
    “Mommy says I can have a red Lakeland terrier when I get a little older,” Madison confided as they crossed Divisadero. “I’m going to name him ‘Wolfgang.’ ”
    “What a serious name for a little dog,” Paola said, intent on crossing the street safely. She barely glanced at the black minivan idling outside the park’s fence. Expensive black minivans were as common as crows in Pacific Heights.
    Paola swung Madison’s arm, and the child jumped up onto the curb, then stopped suddenly as someone got out of the vehicle and came quickly toward