Chapter 1
Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
She stared at the last three seconds of her life.
A red double-decker full of passengers was racing straight at her, and she couldn’t do anything but stare at it.
Like the traffic and everything else surrounding it, the bus seemed to move in slow motion, but Madeline was more than certain that it was zooming in full speed in reality.
The bus was going to crush her the same way the kidnap and ransom ordeal had cut short Jo’s life.
Jo was like her sister. They had grown up together, but they might not grow old together.
Madeline kept staring at the bus. It was real. It was enormous. And her psychic ability didn’t seem to help at all—if she did have such ability.
Five
