JESSIE'S HANDS FLUTTERED like a tiny bird's wings beating against the sheets. Then they were very still. Jessie was gone.

The Night Walker came forward and bent low over the hospital bed. The young woman's skin was mottled and bluish, clammy to the touch, her pupils fixed. She had no pulse. No vital signs. Where was she now? Heaven, hell, nowhere at all?

The silhouetted figure retrieved the fallen call device, then tugged the blankets into place, straightened the young woman's blond hair and the collar of her gown, and blotted the spittle from her lips with a tissue.

Nimble fingers lifted the framed photo beside the phone on the bedside table. She'd been so pretty, this young mother holding her baby. Claudia. That was the daughter's name, wasn't it?

The Night Walker put the picture down, closed the patient's eyes, and placed what looked to be small brass coins, smaller than dimes, on each of Jessie Falk's eyelids.

The small disks were embossed with a caduceus—two serpents entwined around a winged staff, the symbol of the medical profession.

A whispered good-bye blended with the sibilance of tires speeding over the wet pavement five stories below on Pine Street.

"Good night, princess."

< Previous Chapter   |   Next Chapter >

Copyright © 2006 by James Patterson