Watch Over Me Preview
Want a sneak peek at Watch Over Me? Here’s an (unedited) excerpt from chapter one:
The kids slumped against the hood of his squad vehicle, not clinging to each other but wanting to. Their shoulders and hand-stuffed pockets pressed together, brown dust pasted to the toes of their sneakers. Benjamin Patil knew why. Blood hid under the dust.
“You kicked the towel?” he asked them.
“I fell over it,” the boy said. “I didn’t know what it was.”
“Are we in trouble?” the girl asked.
Kids. They must be fifteen, sixteen maybe, and he thought of them as kids. He was only ten years their senior. Only.
When did he get so old?
“You’re trespassing,” Benjamin said, taking his camera from the car. He snapped some photos of the bloody towel, of the red flecks across the grass. He listened to the chirps of his camera, the rustling beneath his feet, the Say’s Phoebe and Dickcissel chattering around him. “Want to tell me what you’re doing out here?”
The teenagers shifted from one hip to another.
“I didn’t think so.” He pulled on a rubber glove, shook open a transparent evidence bag, and grabbed the balled-up towel. It unrolled, and a pulpy, grayish blob plopped to the ground.
“Oh, man. Is that a brain?” the boy asked.
“No,” Benjamin said. “Get in the car, both of you.”
“What–”
“Now.”
He shoveled the towel and placenta into the evidence bag, dropped it through the open window of his nine-year-old Dodge Durango. Head down, he tracked the speckles of blood until they turned to drops, then splotches, leading him toward a thin, heat-eaten stream. Something yellow was tucked in the sloughgrass on the near bank. He strode forward, needleandthread awns snagging his pants, trying to stop him from finding what he knew he’d find. And then he was there, at the stream’s edge, staring at a white grocery sack, yellow smiling face printed on it, two tiny feet twisted in the handles.
“My God.”
He dropped to his knees, clawed at the bag, the plastic stretching like skin, tight over his fingertips. It split and he saw human flesh before a swarm of mosquitoes poured into the air. Benjamin swiped them away; one dove into the sweat on his forehead and stung him. He crushed it against his brow, and, in the same, sweeping motion, gathered an infant from the bag and into his hands.
Startled by the light and the rush of air against its body, the newborn scrunched up its face and wailed, fists flailing like a prizefighter’s, knuckles bluish-gray and filmy. The umbilical cord hung from its – her – belly, a dirty shoelace knotted near the frayed end. Benjamin laid her across his knees, tugged at the buttons of his uniform, opening the top two and then yanking the shirt over his head. He wrapped the baby in it and sprinted to the car.
“Tallah, get up here,” he said.
“It’s a…a– ”
“Just get in the front seat. And belt up.” The girl did, and Benjamin gave her the baby. “Hold onto her, you hear?”
The girl nodded, her arms tightening around the bundle, and Benjamin flipped on his siren.
