Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
Sleepwalker (38 page)
Always a guy who liked to rock the boat, Rocky is also a lifelong Red Sox fan, despite having grown up in Yankees territory. He still lives there, too—he’s a detective with the NYPD.
In the grand scheme of Vic Shattuck’s life, old pals and baseball rivalries and homemade macaroni casseroles probably matter more than they should. He’s rarely around to enjoy simple pleasures. When he is, they help him forget that somewhere out there, a looming stressor is going to catapult yet another predator from the shadows to wreak violent havoc on innocent lives.
September 10, 2001
New York City
6:40
P.M.
“H
ey, watch where you’re going!”
Unfazed by the disgruntled young punk, Jamie continues shoving through the sea of pedestrians, baby carriages, and umbrellas, trying to make it to the corner before the light changes.
Around the slow-moving elderly couple, the dog on a leash, a couple of puddle-splashing kids in bright yellow slickers and rubber boots . . .
Failing to make the light, Jamie silently curses them all. Or maybe not silently, because a prim-looking woman flashes a disapproving look. Hand coiled into a fist, Jamie stands waiting in the rain, watching endless traffic zip past.
The subway would have been the best way to go, but there were track delays. And God knows you can’t get a stinking cab in Manhattan in weather like this.
Why does everything have to be such a struggle here?
Everything, every day.
A few feet away, a passing SUV blasts its deafening horn.
Noise . . .
Traffic . . .
People . . .
How much more can I take?
Jamie rakes a hand through drenched hair and fights the reckless urge to cross against the light.
That’s what it’s been about lately. Reckless urges. Day in, day out.
For so long, I’ve been restrained by others; now that I’m free, I have to constantly restrain myself? It’s so unfair.
Why can’t I just cross the damned street and go where I need to go?
Why can’t I just do whatever the hell I feel like doing? I’ve earned it, haven’t I?
Jamie steps off the curb and hears someone call, “Hey, look out!” just before a monstrous double city bus blows past, within arm’s reach.
“Geez, close call.”
Jamie doesn’t acknowledge the bystander’s voice; doesn’t move, just stands staring into the streaming gutter.
It would be running red with blood if you got hit.
Or if someone else did.
It would be so easy to turn around, pick out some random stranger, and with a quick, hard shove, end that person’s life. Jamie could do that. It would happen so unexpectedly no one would be able to stop it.
Jamie can feel all those strangers standing there, close enough to touch.
Which of them would you choose?
The prune-faced, disapproving biddy?
One of the splashing kids?
The elderly woman, or her husband?
Just imagine the victim, the chosen one, crying out in surprise, helplessly falling, getting slammed by several tons of speeding steel and dying right there in the gutter.
Yes, blood in the gutter.
Eyes closed, Jamie can see it clearly—so much blood at first, thick and red right here where the accident will happen. But then the gutter water will sweep it along, thin it out as it merges with wide, deep puddles and with falling rain, spread it in rivulets that will reach like fingers down alleys and streets . . .
Imagine all the horror-struck onlookers, the traumatized driver of the death car, the useless medics who will rush to the scene and find that there’s nothing they can do . . .
Nothing anyone can do.
And somewhere, later, phones will ring as family members and friends get the dreaded call.
Just think of all the people who will be touched—tainted—by the blood in the street, by that one simple act.
I can do that.
I can choose someone to die.
I’ve done it before—twice
.
Ah, but not really. Technically, Jamie didn’t do the choosing. Both victims—the first ten years ago, the second, maybe ten days ago—had done the choosing; they’d chosen to commit the heinous acts that had sealed their own fates. Jamie merely saw that they got what they deserved.
This time, though, it would have to be different. It would have to be a stranger.
Would it be as satisfying to snuff out a life that has no real meaning in your own?
Would it be even better?
Would it—
Someone jostles Jamie from behind.
The throng is pressing forward. The traffic has stopped moving past; the light has changed.
Jamie crosses the street, hand still clenched into an angry fist.
USA Today
and
New York Times
bestseller WENDY CORSI STAUB is the award-winning author of more than seventy novels. She lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband of twenty years and their two children. Learn more about Wendy at
www.wendycorsistaub.com
.
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Finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award
“Solid gold suspense!”
Lee Child
“Wendy Corsi Staub is a master storyteller!”
New York Times
bestselling author Brenda Novak
“Each twist and turn is methodical, meant to build anxiety as she cleverly yanks the rug out from underneath.”
Suspense
Magazine
“Once Staub’s brilliant characterizations and top-notch narrative skills grab hold, they don’t let go.”
Publishers Weekly
(★Starred Review★)
“I couldn’t put it down!”
Lisa Jackson (on
Live to Tell
)
“Wendy Corsi Staub is an author not to be missed.”
Bookreporter.com
“If you’ve never read this fantastic author, you’re truly missing out on some of the greatest domestic suspense stories around.”
New Mystery Reader
Sleepwalker
Nightwatcher
Hell to Pay
Scared to Death
Live to Tell
Coming Soon
Shadowkiller
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpts from
Shadowkiller
and
Nightwatcher
copyright © 2013, 2012 by Wendy Corsi Staub.
SLEEPWALKER
. Copyright © 2012 by Wendi Corsi Staub. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062070319
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062070302
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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