Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(6)

“What secret?”

“The one I told you. Remember?”

“No.” Jerry doesn’t remember Doobie telling him any secrets.

Doobie’s face is close to Jerry’s, and his black eyes are blacker than black. “The bad guys knew that heaven is the best place to be. They wanted to go there. They chose to go there. It’s better than anywhere on earth. A hell of a lot better than here. Hell . . . Heaven . . . get it?”

He grins, and Jerry can see that his teeth are black in the back.

“So . . .” Doobie shrugs and pulls back. “You should go. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Go where?”

“Heaven.”

“Heaven?” Rollins echoes. “Ain’t none of us goin’ to heaven, brother. We all goin’ straight to—”

“Not Slow Boy,” Doobie cuts in, turning to look at Rollins.

Jerry can’t see his face, but it must be a dirty look because Rollins quickly shuts his mouth and turns away.

“You . . . you’re going straight to Heaven,” Doobie whispers, turning back to Jerry. “You can go now, if you want to.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I told you. It’s better than being stuck here for another fifty years, or longer. You can have cake there.”

Jerry’s mouth waters at the thought of it.

He hasn’t had cake in years. Ten years.

“But I . . . I can’t fly a plane into a—”

“You don’t have to.” Doobie’s voice is low. So low only Jerry can hear it. “There are other ways to get there, you know? There are easy ways to get yourself out of here, Jerry.”

Jerry.

Not Slow Boy.

“I could help you,” Doobie says. “I’m your friend. You know that, don’t you?”

Jerry swallows hard, suddenly feeling like he wants to cry. A friend—he hasn’t had a friend in a long time.

He thinks of Jamie . . .

No. Jamie wasn’t your friend. Jamie was your sister, and she died when you were kids. She didn’t come back to you all those years later, like you thought. That wasn’t real.

“Jerry,” Doobie is saying, and Jerry blinks and looks up at him.

“What?”

“We’ll talk about this later, okay? After the lights go out. I’ll help you. Okay?”

Jerry doesn’t even remember what they were talking about, but he doesn’t want to tell Doobie that, so he says, “Okay.”





Chapter Two

Glenhaven Park, Westchester County, New York

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

“Mommy!”

“Shh!” Allison hurries to the foot of the stairs and looks up to see her older daughter leaning over the railing at the top. “Daddy’s still sleeping, honey, and I don’t want—”

“No, he’s not.” Mack appears behind their daughter, having just come out of the master bedroom, looking like he just rolled out of bed. Unshaven, barefoot, and wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, he tells Allison, “I sent her to come get you.”

“Why?”

“Daddy wants you to watch TV with him,” Hudson informs Allison matter-of-factly, and turns briskly away as if to announce, My work here is done.

A moment later, the door to her bedroom closes, and Allison knows that the world’s most efficient six-year-old has resumed getting ready for school, even though the bus won’t be here for over an hour.

Allison scoops up J.J. as he crawls rapidly past her.

“Al,” Mack says from the top of the stairs, above J.J.’s bellowed protest. “Come up here.”

“Gee, honey, as much as I’d love to lie around in bed and watch TV with you”—Allison lifts the wriggling baby’s pajama-clad butt to her nose, sniffs, makes a face—“he needs to be changed, and I’m heating the griddle for pancakes, and—”

“That stuff can wait. You have to see this.”

“See what?” Something about his tone makes her doubt that it’s just one of the commercial spots on his network, which is usually the case when he summons her to the television.

“Come up and I’ll show you.”

“Everything okay?”

“Just come here,” Mack tells her. “I have the TV paused.”

Ah, the beauty of the bedroom DVR. After Mack got the new job, he went out and bought three new plasma televisions and TiVos for all of them—one for the living room; one, still sitting in a box, designated for the about-to-be-painted sunroom; and one for the master bedroom.

Allison initially protested. “Dr. Cuthbert”—he’s the sleep specialist Mack recently started seeing at her insistence—“said you’re supposed to use the room only for sleeping and sex, remember?”

“Well, lately, I haven’t been using it for either of those things, so . . .”

Point taken. She’s been too tired at night for anything more strenuous than falling asleep.

“Anyway, the bedroom TV is for you,” Mack told her at the time. “This way, you can tape all those reality shows you like to watch up here, and I won’t have to sit through them downstairs.”

That sounded good in theory. But Mack’s the one who spent the whole day yesterday in front of the bedroom TV, moping around and channel surfing when he was supposed to be painting.