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Harlan Coben is the #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including I Will Find You, The Match, Win, Fool Me Once, Stay Close, and The Stranger, as well as the award-winning Myron Bolitar series. Coben has more than eighty million books in print in more than forty languages worldwide, and several of his novels have been made into Netflix series. The winner of Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards, he lives in New Jersey.

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No Second Chance

Signet Book

Chapter One

At least, that is what I want to believe. I lost consciousness prettyfast. And, if you want to get technical about it, I don't even rememberbeing shot. I know that I lost a lot of blood. I know that a second bulletskimmed the top of my head, though I was probably already out bythen. I know that my heart stopped. But I still like to think that as I laydying, I thought of Tara.

FYI: I saw no bright light or tunnel. Or if I did, I don't rememberthat either.

Tara, my daughter, is only six months old. She was lying in her crib.I wonder if the gunfire frightened her. It must have. She probably beganto cry. I wonder if the familiar albeit grating sound of her cries somehowsliced through my haze, if on some level I actually heard her. Butagain I have no memory of it.

What I do remember, however, was the moment Tara was born. Iremember Monica-that's Tara's mother-bearing down for one lastpush. I remember the head appearing. I was the first to see my daughter.We all know about life's forks in the road. We all know about openingone door and closing another, life cycles, the changes in seasons. But themoment your child is born ... it's beyond surreal. You have walkedthrough a Star Trek-like portal, a full-fledged reality transformer. Everythingis different. You are different, a simple element hit with a startlingcatalyst and metamorphosed into one far more complex. Your world isgone; it shrinks down to the dimensions of-in this case, anyway-asix-pound fifteen-ounce mass.

Fatherhood confuses me. Yes, I know that with only six months onthe job, I am an amateur. My best friend, Lenny, has four kids. A girland three boys. His oldest, Marianne, is ten, his youngest just turnedone. With his face permanently set on happily harried and the floor ofhis SUV permanently stained with congealed fast food, Lenny remindsme that I know nothing yet. I agree. But when I get seriously lost orafraid in the realm of raising a child, I look at the helpless bundle in thecrib and she looks up at me and I wonder what I would not do to protecther. I would lay down my life in a second. And truth be told, if pushcame to shove, I would lay down yours too.

So I like to think that as the two bullets pierced my body, as I collapsedonto the linoleum of my kitchen floor with a half-eaten granolabar clutched in my hand, as I lay immobile in a spreading puddle of myown blood, and yes, even as my heart stopped beating, that I still triedto do something to protect my daughter.

I came to in the dark.

I had no idea where I was at first, but then I heard the beeping comingfrom my right. A familiar sound. I did not move. I merely listened tothe beeps. My brain felt as if it'd been marinated in molasses. The firstimpulse to break through was a primitive one: thirst. I craved water. Ihad never known a throat could feel so dry. I tried to call out, but mytongue had been dry-caked to the bottom of my mouth.

A figure entered the room. When I tried to sit up, hot pain rippedlike a knife down my neck. My head fell back. And again, there wasdarkness.

When I awoke again, it was daytime. Harsh streaks of sunlightslashed through the venetian blinds. I blinked through them. Part of mewanted to raise my hand and block the rays, but exhaustion would notlet the command travel. My throat was still impossibly parched.

I heard a movement and suddenly there was someone standing overme. I looked up and saw a nurse. The perspective, so different from theone I was used to, threw me. Nothing felt right. I was supposed to bethe one standing looking down, not the other way around. A whitehat-one of those small, harshly triangular numbers-sat like a bird'snest on the nurse's head. I've spent a great deal of my life working in awide variety of hospitals, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a hat like thatoutside of TV or the movies. The nurse was heavyset and black.

"Dr. Seidman?"

Her voice was warm maple syrup. I managed a very slight nod.

The nurse must have read minds because she already had a cup ofwater in her hand. She put the straw between my lips and I suckedgreedily.

"Slow down," she said gently.

I was going to ask where I was, but that seemed pretty obvious. Iopened my mouth to find out what had happened, but again she wasone step ahead of me.

"I'll go get the doctor," she said, heading for the door. "You just relaxnow."

I croaked, "My family ..."

"I'll be right back. Try not to worry."

I let my eyes wander about the room. My vision had that medicated,shower-curtain haze. Still, there were enough stimuli getting through tomake certain deductions. I was in a typical hospital room. That muchwas obvious. There was a drip bag and IV pump on my left, the tubesnaking down to my arm. The fluorescent bulbs buzzed almost, but notquite, imperceptibly. A small TV on a swinging arm jutted out from theupper right-hand corner.

A few feet past the foot of the bed, there was a large glass window. Isquinted but could not see through it. Still, I was probably being monitored.That meant I was in an ICU. That meant that whatever waswrong with me was something pretty bad.

The top of my skull itched, and I could feel a pull at my hair. Bandaged,I bet. I tried to check myself out, but my head really did not wantto cooperate. Dull pain quietly boomed inside me, though I couldn'ttell from where it originated. My limbs felt heavy, my chest encasedin lead.

"Dr. Seidman?"

I flicked my eyes toward the door. A tiny woman in surgical scrubscomplete with the shower cap stepped into the room. The top of themask was untied and dangled down her neck. I am thirty-four yearsold. She looked about the same.

"I'm Dr. Heller," she said, stepping closer. "Ruth Heller." Giving meher first name. Professional courtesy, no doubt. Ruth Heller gave me aprobing stare. I tried to focus. My brain was still sluggish, but I couldfeel it sputtering to life. "You are at St. Elizabeth Hospital," she said ina properly grave voice.

The door behind her opened and a man stepped inside. It was hardto see him clearly through the shower-curtain haze, but I don't think Iknew him. The man crossed his arms and leaned against the wall withpracticed casualness. Not a doctor, I thought. You work with them longenough, you can tell.

Dr. Heller gave the man a cursory glance and then she turned her fullattention back to me.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You were shot," she said. Then added: "Twice."

She let that hang for a moment. I glanced toward the man againstthe wall. He hadn't moved. I opened my mouth to say something, butRuth Heller pressed on. "One bullet grazed the top of your head. Thebullet literally scraped off your scalp, which, as you probably know, isincredibly rich with blood."

Yes, I knew. Serious scalp wounds bled like beheadings. Okay, Ithought, that explained the itch on top of my head. When Ruth Hellerhesitated, I prompted her. "And the second bullet?"

Heller let out a breath. "That one was a bit more complicated."

I waited.

"The bullet entered your chest and nicked the pericardial sac. Thatcaused a large supply of blood to leak into the space between your heartand the sac. The EMTs had trouble locating your vital signs. We had tocrack your chest-"

"Doc?" the leaning man interrupted-and for a moment, I thoughthe was talking to me. Ruth Heller stopped, clearly annoyed. The manpeeled himself off the wall. "Can you do the details later? Time is of theessence here."

She gave him a scowl, but there wasn't much behind it. "I'll stay hereand observe," she said to the man, "if that's not a problem."

Dr. Heller faded back and now the man loomed over me. His headwas too big for his shoulders so that you feared his neck would collapsefrom the weight of it. His hair was crew cut all around, except in thefront, where it hung down in a Caesar line above his eyes. A soul patch,an ugly smear of growth, sat on his chin like a burrowing insect. All inall, he looked like a member of a boy band gone to serious seed. Hesmiled down at me, but there was no warmth behind it. "I'm DetectiveBob Regan of the Kasselton Police Department," he said. "I knowyou're confused right now."

"My family-" I began.

"I'll get to that," he interrupted. "But right now, I need to ask yousome questions, okay? Before we get into the details of what happened."

He waited for a response. I tried my best to clear the cobwebs andsaid, "Okay."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

I scanned my memory banks. I remembered waking up that morning,getting dressed. I remembered looking in on Tara. I rememberedturning the knob on her black-n-white mobile, a gift from a colleaguewho insisted it would help stimulate a baby's brain or something. Themobile hadn't moved or bleated out its tinny song. The batteries weredead. I'd made a mental note to put in new ones. I headed downstairsafter that.

"Eating a granola bar," I said.

Regan nodded as if he'd expected this answer. "You were in thekitchen?"

"Yes. By the sink."

"And then?"

I tried harder, but nothing came. I shook my head. "I woke up oncebefore. At night. I was here, I think."

"Nothing else?"

I reached out again but to no avail. "No, nothing."

Regan flipped out a pad. "Like the doc here told you, you were shottwice. You have no recollection of seeing a gun or hearing a shot oranything like that?"

"No."

"That's understandable, I guess. You were in a bad way, Marc. TheEMTs thought you were a goner."

My throat felt dry again. "Where are Tara and Monica?"

"Stay with me, Marc." Regan was staring down at the pad, not atme. I felt the dread begin to press down on my chest. "Did you hear awindow break?"

I felt groggy. I tried to read the label on the drip bag to see whatthey were numbing me with. No go. Pain medication, at the very least.Probably morphine in the IV pump. I tried to fight through the effects."No," I said.

"You're sure? We found a broken window near the rear of thehouse. It may have been how the perpetrator gained entry."

"I don't remember a window breaking," I said. "Do you knowwho-"

Regan cut me off. "Not yet, no. That's why I'm here asking thesequestions. To find out who did this." He looked up from his pad. "Doyou have any enemies?"

Did he really just ask me that? I tried to sit up, tried to gain somesort of angle on him, but there was no way that was going to happen. Idid not like being the patient, on the wrong end of the bed, if you will.They say doctors make the worst patients. This sudden role reversal isprobably why.

"I want to know about my wife and daughter."

"I understand that," Regan said, and something in his tone ran acold finger across my heart. "But you can't afford the distraction, Marc.Not right yet. You want to be helpful, right? Then you need to stay withme here." He went back to the pad. "Now, what about enemies?"

Arguing with him any further seemed futile or even harmful, so Igrudgingly acquiesced. "Someone who would shoot me?"

"Yes."

"No, no one."

"And your wife?" His eyes settled hard on me. A favorite image ofMonica-her face lighting up when we first saw Raymondkill Falls, theway she threw her arms around me in mock fear as the water crashedaround us-rose like an apparition. "Did she have enemies?"

I looked at him. "Monica?"

Ruth Heller stepped forward. "I think that might be enough fornow."

"What happened to Monica?" I asked.

Dr. Heller met up with Detective Regan, standing shoulder to shoulder.Both looked at me. Heller started to protest again, but I stopped her.

"Don't give me this protect-the-patient crap," I tried to shout, fearand fury battling against whatever had put my brain in this fuzz. "Tellme what happened to my wife."

"She's dead," Detective Regan said. Just like that. Dead. My wife.Monica. It was as if I hadn't heard him. The word couldn't reach me.

"When the police broke into your home, you had both been shot.They were able to save you. But it was too late for your wife. I'msorry."

There was another quick flash now-Monica at Martha's Vineyard,on the beach, tan bathing suit, that black hair whipping across thosecheekbones, giving me the razor-sharp smile. I blinked it away. "AndTara?"

"Your daughter," Regan began with a quick throat-clear. He lookedat his pad again, but I don't think he planned on writing anythingdown. "She was home that morning, correct? I mean, at the time of theincident?"

"Yes, of course. Where is she?"

Regan closed the pad with a snap. "She was not at the scene whenwe arrived."

My lungs turned to stone. "I don't understand."

"We originally hoped that maybe she was in the care of a familymember or friend. A baby-sitter even, but ..." His voice faded.

"Are you telling me you don't know where Tara is?"

There was no hesitation this time. "Yes, that's correct."

It felt as if a giant hand were pushing down on my chest. I squeezedmy eyes shut and fell back. "How long?" I asked.

"Has she been missing?"

"Yes."

Dr. Heller started speaking too quickly. "You have to understand.You were very seriously injured. We were not optimistic you would survive.You were on a respirator. A lung collapsed. You also contractedsepsis. You're a doctor, so I know I don't have to explain to you how seriousthat is. We tried to slow down the meds, help you wake up-"

"How long?" I asked again.

She and Regan exchanged another glance, and then Heller saidsomething that ripped the air out of me all over again. "You've been outfor twelve days."

Chapter Two

"Twelve days," I repeated.

"We have a trace on your various phones-home, business, cell-"

"Why?"

"In case someone calls in a ransom demand," he said.

"Have there been any calls?"

"Not yet, no."

My head dropped back to the pillow. Twelve days. I'd been lyingin this bed for twelve days while my baby girl was ... I pushed thethought away.

Regan scratched at his beard. "Do you remember what Tara waswearing that morning?"

I did.



Continues...

Excerpted from No Second Chanceby Harlan Coben Copyright © 2004 by Harlan Coben. Excerpted by permission.
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