Jacob Fielding stood in a small room and stared at a body. It was a dead body, someone he could have saved but chose not to. Jacob had let the person die because, in his view, it was the right thing to do.
He watched in silence, felt the air in his lungs catch and flutter as he tried to stay calm. What was he going to do now? How could he explain? People wouldn’t understand. They’d say he was a killer.
The body hadn’t moved in the seven minutes Jacob Fielding stared at it, but it had made some unpleasant sounds that would lodge in his memory and prove difficult to get rid of.
“All of us play the same tune sooner or later,” Jacob’s best friend said. “The black symphony of the dead.”
Milo Coffin with the dyed hair and the dark humor. He of all people would know.
Jacob took out Mr. Fielding’s Zippo lighter and flicked it open, searching for a distraction. He heard the clank of metal and the sandpaper jingle of fire coming to life.
He held the flame under his fingers and wished it would burn, but it didn’t.
Jacob Fielding had come to believe that death was his closest friend. It was there when he stood in front of the mirror in the morning, there when he wrote and talked and slept. Death was always watching, trying to decide if the time had come to step into the spotlight.
Jacob Fielding was an expert in his field, and death was his subject.
It was the enemy he had come to love.
Excerpted from Thirteen Days to Midnight by Carman, Patrick Copyright © 2010 by Carman, Patrick. Excerpted by permission.
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