You've Been Warned Read Free

of the Fálcon. I look up at the windows of the surrounding brownstones and see the woman in curlers taking a bite out of her bagel.
    Click, click, click.
    My heart is pounding, pounding, pounding, as if there’s a big bass drum inside my chest.
    I look at my hands. Then at my arms. There’s a rash all over me — or maybe it’s hives.
    Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The final body is being wheeled out of the hotel, and this is the last chance for me to run away.
    I don’t run.
    My feet don’t move, and my camera lens is fixed on the four gurneys gathered on the sidewalk. I’m gasping for air, drowning in my own fear, just about to lose it big-time.
    Because I know what happens next.
    “Help!” I yell out.
    The mere thought of the zipper moving on that body bag is enough. I don’t need to wait to see it happen. Once was plenty.
    I lower my camera and frantically wave my arms.
    “Help!” I yell again, much louder this time. “Please, help!”
    I’m shaking as I start to cry, the tears streaming down my cheeks. The rash, the hives — it’s getting worse.
    This is unbearable.
    “Please, someone, listen to me.”
    And that’s when someone does.

Chapter 6
    I SEE HIS EYES FIRST, very dark, intense, and unblinking, staring right into mine.
    He’s dressed in a gray suit, nothing fancy, jacket open with a loose tie, yellow-and-red stripe. Clipped to his belt is a scuffed-up badge.
NYPD?
    With a deliberate gait bordering on slow, he weaves his way through the crowd and walks up to me. All this time, his eyes never leave mine. I guess he heard me screaming. I smell his aftershave . . . and tobacco.
    “Oh, thank God,” I say, a relieved hand slapping my chest. “Are you with the police?”
    “I’m a detective, yes.”
    I point back at the hotel. “Hurry, you have to do something.”
    He gives me a strange look before glancing over his shoulder. “Excuse me? I have to do
what?
”
    I jab my finger at the gurneys again, the words tripping over my tongue. “The zipper . . . over there . . . the one on the . . .” I take a deep breath and spit it out. “The person in that last body bag is still alive!”
    The detective looks at the hotel again. It’s not quite a smirk on his hardened face when he turns back to me, but it’s close. There is something unsettling about this man, deeply so.
    “Lady, I can assure you the person in that bag is dead. They’re
all
dead.”
    “Please, just go check.”
    He shakes his head. “No, I won’t go check. Did you hear what I just told you?”
    “You don’t understand, Detective. The zipper on that last body bag, it’s going to — ”
    I stop myself cold.
Hold it right there, Kris. Not another word!
    I complete the sentence in my head and suddenly, embarrassingly, I realize how crazy it all sounds. I sneak a quick peek at that last body bag, which still hasn’t moved. I want to tell this guy about the dream; I want to make him believe me.
    So of course I
can’t
tell him about the dream.
    “I’m sorry,” I say meekly, starting to put away my camera. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I just got scared.”
    “Four murders,” he says. “That’s scary, all right.”
    I can feel the detective’s eyes on me as I fumble with the lens cap for my camera, but I don’t look at him. And as I turn to slink away as quickly as possible, I don’t say another word. No good-bye, no apology, no nothing.
Way to go, Kristin. You’ve just made a complete fool of yourself.
    It’s been a morning to remember.
    Four dead bodies.
    Déjà dead?
    Whatever.

Chapter 7
    THE RASH, whatever it was, is gone now. So is that awful burning smell.
Why was that different than in my dream?
    Thankfully, I’m not very good at running and
dwelling,
otherwise I’d be obsessing about what did or didn’t just happen as I race up to the Turnbulls’ building on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park.
    For now, what I force myself to think about is that I’m late for work and how that’s a