The Quickie by James Patterson Page B

foyer, my hand — my evil, betraying, foul hand — rubbing her thin back as she screamed louder and louder.
    “NOOO! NOOO! NOOO!”
    “I know,” I whispered in her ear. “I know.”
    “YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT!” she screamed in my face, clawing me away from her. I reared back, covering myself. One of her long nails had raked a red line diagonally across my forehead. Then she collapsed sideways to the floor.
    “You don’t knoooow!” she cried into the hardwood floor. “You don’t know! You don’t!”

Chapter 31
    MIKE LIFTED BROOKE THAYER UP and put her on the couch in the family room. After I closed the front door, I spotted a blonde girl in pink Disney Three Princesses pajamas. She was staring down at me from the top of the stairs.
    “Hey, sweetheart,” I said. “Your mommy is going to be all right. My name’s Lauren.”
    The adorable little girl said nothing. She just continued to stare at me with her big blue eyes.
    “Maybe you should go back to sleep, honey,” I said, taking a step up the stairs toward her.
    She screamed then. In a pitch so high and violent, I had to avert my face and cup my ears.
    Brooke shot past me up the stairs, the siren quitting immediately as the girl was scooped up into her mother’s arms.
    I stood there as the mother and daughter rocked back and forth. On a side table in the living room, I spotted a picture of Scott in his uniform. He had his arm around a pregnant Brooke. It looked like it was taken in a park somewhere. The sun was shining brilliantly.
    When Brooke and her daughter started keening at the same pitch, I suddenly thought about the gun in my bag. I visualized it. The way its steel shone like chrome under the light. Its almost feminine curves. I imagined the cold of its barrel placed against my temple, the feel of its hair trigger on the second joint inside my right index finger.
    I stood in Scott’s house and thought of my gun, and of what I had done, and I wondered how much more of this I could take.
    You’re not a bad person,
I tried to tell myself.
At least you weren’t before tonight.

Chapter 32
    POOR BROOKE WAS STILL ROCKING her four-year-old daughter when a baby started crying from somewhere behind them in the upstairs hall.
    Slowly, I climbed to the top.
    “Do you want me to check on the baby?” I asked Brooke.
    Brooke’s eyes seemed to stare right through me. She said nothing, not a word.
    “Try to find an address book in one of the kitchen drawers and call a family member to come,” I called down to Mike.
    I walked past Brooke, following the cries to the nursery at the back of the house.
    A mobile of mitts and bats dangled above the crib, and there was a Mets night-light.
    The baby boy couldn’t have been even six months. I lifted up the tiny, wailing child.
    His whole body trembled with each cry, a sound that seemed too big for his size. I cupped him against my chest, and he stopped crying almost immediately. I sat down in the rocking chair and held him close, thankful to escape the noise below for a short while.
    Even under the wretched circumstances, I noticed how wonderful he smelled. How pure. I swallowed hard when he finally opened his big eyes. His big, warm brown eyes.
    He looked exactly like Scott.
    I was the one who started crying then. This baby in my arms no longer had a father, I thought.
    Way to go, Lauren. Way to go.
    “Give him to me,” Brooke barked, suddenly charging into the room with a bottle. The baby boy seemed to smile at me as I handed him over to his mother. Brooke was still crying, but she seemed to be over the initial shock.
    “Can I call someone for you?” I offered.
    “I already spoke to my mom,” Brooke said. “She’s on her way.”
    She looked straight into my face for the first time. Her brown eyes were surprisingly kind.
    “Look,” she said. “I scratched you. I’m so sorry. I . . .”
    “Please,” I said quickly. “Don’t you dare be sorry. You’re the one who needs help now. You and your