The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club Series #6) by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

From Barnes & Noble

In this installment of James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series, hell is breaking loose all over San Francisco. The police are racing frantically to solve -- or at least make sense of -- a recent spate of kidnappings that target children and their nannies. In the absence of ransom demands, officials can only guess at a motive. And the Murder Club grapples with a crisis even closer to home: After a brutal attack, one of their members is struggling to stay alive. Get ready for an adrenaline rush -- James Patterson is on the loose.

From the Publisher

When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies—but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face—with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success.

Library Journal

With the Women's Murder Club down one member after a brutal attack, Lindsay Boxer has her hands full: she's trying to stop a nasty bunch from snatching children off the street and find time for the new love of her life. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

• Read a Sample Chapter

Read a Sample Chapter

The 6th Target

Little, Brown and Company

Chapter One

A shadow falls across him, a kid's voice asking, "Mister, could you take our picture?"

Fred shakes his head - no, no, no - anger winding him up like a watch spring, like a wire tightening around his head.

He wants to smash the kid like a bug.

Fred averts his eyes, sings inside his head, Ay, ay, ay, ay, Sau-sa-lito-lindo, trying to shut down the voices. He puts his hand on Bucky to comfort himself, feeling him through his blue nylon Windbreaker, but still the voices pound in his brain like a jackhammer.

Loser. Dog shit.

Gulls call out, screaming like children. Overhead, the sun burns through the overcast sky and turns him as transparent as glass. They know what he's done.

Passengers in shorts and visors line the rails, taking pictures of Angel Island, of Alcatraz, of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A sailboat flies by, mainsail double-reefed, foam flecking the rails, and Fred doubles over as the bad thing whips into his mind. He sees the boom swing. Hears the loud crack. Oh, God! The sailboat!

Someone has topay for this!

Startling him, the ferry's engines grind into reverse and the deck vibrates as the ferry comes into dock.

Fred stands, works his way through the crowd, passing eight white tables, lines of scuffed blue chairs, his fellow ferry riders giving him the eye.

He enters the open compartment at the bow, sees a mother berating her son, a boy of nine or ten with light-brown hair. "You're driving me crazy!" the woman shouts.

Fred feels the wire snap. Someone has to pay.

His right hand slips into his jacket pocket - finds Bucky.

He slips his finger into the trigger loop.

The ferry lurches as it bumps the mooring. People grab on to one another, laughing. Lines snake out from the boat, bow and aft.

Fred's eyes shoot to the woman who is still belittling her son. She's small, wearing tan clam diggers, her breasts outlined in the soft skin of her white blouse, nipples pointing straight out.

"What's wrong with you, anyway?" she yells over the engines' roar. "You really piss me off, buster."

Bucky is in Fred's hand, the Smith & Wesson Model 10, pulsing with a life of its own.

The voice booms, Kill her. Kill her. She's out of control!

Bucky points between the woman's breasts.

BLAM.

Fred feels the jolt of the gun's recoil, sees the woman jump back with a little hurt yelp, a red stain blooming on her white blouse.

Good!

The little boy follows his mother's fall to the deck with his big round eyes, strawberry ice cream plopping out of his cone, pee spreading across the front of his pants.

The boy did a bad thing, too.

BLAM.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The 6th Target by James Patterson Maxine Paetro Copyright © 2007 by James Patterson. Excerpted by permission.
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