Dark Pursuit
Brandilyn Collins
Kaitlan Sering's estranged grandfather, novelist Darell Brooke, was the legendary King of Suspense--until an auto accident left him unable to concentrate. Now she's begging him to protect her from a real serial killer. Can his muddled mind devise a plan to catch the murderer?
PRAISE FOR NOVELS BY BRANDILYN COLLINS
One of the Best Books of 2007 … Top Christian suspense of the year.
Library Journal, for Crimson Eve
The excitement starts on page one and doesn’t stop until the shocking end … [Crimson Eve] is fast-paced and thrilling.
Romantic Times
The action starts with a bang … and the pace doesn’t let up until this fabulous racehorse of a story crosses the finish line.
Christian Retailing, for Crimson Eve
Collins crafts an unparalleled cat and mouse game wrought with mystery and surprise.
TitleTrakk.com, for crimson eve
A chilling mystery. Not one to be read alone at night.
RT BOOKclub, for Coral Moon
Thrilling … one of those rare books you hurry through, almost breathlessly, to find out what happens.
Spokane Living, for Coral Moon
… a fascinating tale laced with supernatural chills and gut wrenching suspense.
Christian Library Journal, for Coral Moon
… fast-paced … interesting details of police procedure and crime scene investigation … beautifully developed [characters] …
Publishers Weekly, for Violet Dawn
A sympathetic heroine … effective flashbacks … Collins knows how to weave faith into a rich tale.
Library Journal, for Violet Dawn
Collins expertly melds flashbacks with present-day events to provide a smooth yet deliciously intense flow … quirky townsfolk will help drive the next books in the series.
RT BOOKclub, for Violet Dawn
Skillfully written … Imaginative style and exquisite suspense.
1340mag.com, for Violet Dawn
A master storyteller … Collins deftly finesses the accelerator on this knuckle-chomping ride.
RT BOOKclub, for Web of Lies
… fast-paced … mentally challenging and genuinely entertaining. Christian Book Previews, for Web of Lies
Christian Book Previews, for Web of Lies
Collins’ polished plotting sparkles … unique word twists on the psychotic serial killer mentality. Lock your doors, pull your shades—and read this book at noon.
RT BOOKclub, Top Pick for Dead of Night
This one is up there in the stratosphere … Collins has it in her to give an author like Patricia Cornwell a run for her money.
Faithfulreader.com, for Dead of Night
… spine-tingling, hair-raising, edge-of-the-seat suspense.
Wordsmith Review, for Dead of Night
A page-turner I couldn’t put down, except to check the locks on my doors.
Authors Choice Reviews
Collins keeps the reader gasping and guessing … artistic prose paints vivid pictures … High marks for original plotting and superb pacing.
RT BOOKclub, for Stain of Guilt
… a sinister, tense story with twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Wordsmith Shoppe, for Stain of Guilt
… an abundance of real-life faith as well as real-life fear, betrayal and evil. This one kept me gripped from beginning to end.
Contemporary Christian Music magazine, for Brink of Death
Collins’ deft hand for suspense brings on the shivers.
RT BOOKclub, for Brink of Death
This gripping murder mystery thrills from page one.
christianbookpreviews.com, for Brink of Death
Compelling … plenty of intrigue and false trails.
Publishers Weekly, for Dread Champion
Finely-crafted … vivid … another masterpiece that keeps the reader utterly engrossed.
RT BOOKclub, for Dread Champion
… riveting mystery and courtroom drama.
Library Journal, for Dread Champion
The cleverly complex plot, realistic courtroom drama, well-sketched secondary characters, and strong pacing make this book a fascinating read.
dancingword.com, for Dread Champion
Chilling … a confusing, twisting trail that keeps pages turning.
Publishers Weekly, for Eyes of Elisha
A thriller that keeps the reader guessing until the end.
Library Journal, for Eyes of Elisha
Unique and intriguing … filled with more turns than a winding mountain highway.
RT BOOKclub, for Eyes of Elisha
One of the top ten Christian novels of 2001.
christianbook.com, for Eyes of Elisha
Captivating … An imaginative plot, rounded characters, and workmanlikeprose.
Moody magazine, for Eyes of Elisha
For Tony Lamanna,
for all your help
with the law enforcement aspects
in my Kanner Lake novels.
Insightful questions about the story and how it applies
to your life can be found on my website at:
www.brandilyncollins.com
Dear Reader:
In this first book after my Kanner Lake Series I take you on a new and somewhat different rollercoaster ride. In these hills and plunges, rocketing through the blackened tunnels, you will meet new characters upon whose beleaguered heads I’ve wreaked my never-ending havoc.(Poor things—that they should end up in one of my books.)
Those of you familiar with the Peninsula side of the northern California Bay Area will quickly see I’ve wedged a town into rural territory. Gayner lies on the west side of Freeway 280, roughly between Edgewood Road and the town of Woodside. As long as I’m creating people, why not create an entire town as well?
My thanks to Courtney Rants at Zi Spa in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for her information about the workday and training of a hair stylist. Somehow she managed to do my hair and answer my million pesky questions at the same time. All you other stylists out there—be thankful you don’t have me for a client.
And now, here we go again. You know the drill. Strap on that seatbelt, keep your hands inside the car, and —
Beelzebub, addressing the fallen angels
after being thrown out of Heaven:
The King of Heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, …
nor shall we need
… to invade …
What if we find
Some easier enterprise? There is a place …
Of some new race, called Man, …
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
… where their weakness: …
Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, …
… Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires.
Paradise Lost, Book II, John Milton
Part 1
Severed
UNTITLED MS.
one
“Ever hear the dead knocking?”
Leland Hugh watches the psychiatrist ponder his question, no reaction on the man’s lined, learned face. The doctor lists to one side in his chair, a fist under his sagging jowl. The picture of unshakable confidence.
“No, can’t say I have.”
Hugh nods and gazes at the floor. “I do. At night, always at night.”
“Why do they knock?”
His eyes raise to look straight into the doctor’s. “They want my soul.”
No response but a mere inclining of the head. The intentional silence pulses, waiti
ng for an explanation. Psychiatrists are good at that.
“I took theirs, you see. Put them in their graves early.” Deep inside Hugh, the anger and fear begin to swirl. He swallows, voice tightening. “They’re supposed to stay in the grave. Who’d ever think the dead would demand their revenge?”
From outside the door, at the windows, in the closet, in the walls—they used to knock. Now, in his jail cell the noises come from beneath the floor. Harassing, insistent, hate-filled, and bitter sounds that pound his ears and drill his brain until sleep will not, cannot come.
“Do you ever answer?”
Shock twists Hugh’s lips. “Answer?”
The psychiatrist’s face remains placid. The slight, knowing curve to his mouth makes Hugh want to slug him.
“You think they’re not real, don’t you?” Hugh steeples his fingers with mocking erudition. “Yes, esteemed colleagues.” He affects an arrogant highbrow voice. “I have determined the subject suffers from EGS —Extreme Guilt Syndrome, the roots of which run so deep as never to be extirpated, with symptoms aggrandizing into myriad areas of the subject’s life and resulting in perceived paranormal phenomena.”
He drops both hands in his lap, lowering his chin to look derisively at the good doctor.
The man inhales slowly. “Do you feel guilt for the murders?”
“Why should I? They deserved it.”
He pushes to his feet.
He pushes to his feet. He slumps back in his chair.
He slumps back in his chair. He aims a hard look
He aims a hard look
The psychiatrist.
Hugh’s hands fist,
He cannot
He can only
He
“Aaghh!” Novelist Darell Brooke smacked his keyboard and shoved away from the desk. All concentration drained from his mind like water from a leaky pan.
His characters froze.
He lowered his head, raking gnarled fingers into the front of his scalp. For a time there he’d almost had it—that ancient joy of thoughts flowing and fingers typing. In the last two hours he’d managed to write three or four paragraphs. Now—nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
King of Suspense. He laughed, a bitter sound that singed his throat. Ninety-nine novels written in forty-three years. Well over a hundred million copies sold. Twenty-one major motion pictures made from his books. Countless magazine articles about his career, fan letters, invitations to celebrity parties. Now look at him at age seventy-seven. Two years after the auto accident and still only half mobile. And wielding a mere fraction of the brain power he used to have.
What good is an author who can’t hold a plot in his head?
As for his once-diehard fans, they were now happily reading King or Koontz or that upstart Patterson.
Betrayers, all. He made a gagging sound in his throat.
Darell stared at the monitor, reading over his strikeouts, struggling once more to settle into the story. He pictured the psychiatrist, his killer …
No use.
Face it, old man. You’ ll never write that hundredth book. You’ve been put out to pasture for good.
He wrenched his eyes from the screen and reached for his shiny black cane. With effort, he pushed himself out of his leather chair to unsteady feet. The broken bones in his left leg and ankle had long since healed, but the ligament damage had not. Despite painful physical therapy his foot had not regained its full flexibility. Amazing—the constant flexing of a foot to maintain equilibrium. He hadn’t realized the importance of those muscles and tendons until his were torn apart.
Darell shuffled across the hardwood floor of his thirty-foot-long office, repelled by his writing desk and computer. Every day they wooed, then shunned him. At the tall, mullioned window near the far corner he stopped and spread his feet wide. Hunched over, both hands on his cane, he brooded over the green rolling hills of his estate, the untamed and capricious Pacific Ocean in the distance.
He used to go to the beach to write a couple times a week, tapping his laptop keys as the surf pounded in rhythm to his pulse. Now he never left the house except for doctor’s appointments.
Darell Brooke had no use for a world that no longer had use for him.
His mouth puckered with disdain.
Characters’ faces in shadow, snippets of scenes filtered through his mind. Fredda Lee. Now there was a delectable killer. Or Alfred Stone with his black hair and eyebrows, an intimidating figure much as Darell had appeared in his younger days. Black Tie Affair, that was Alfred’s book.
No. Not that one.
Midnight Madness?
Darell shook his head. He used to know. Before the accident, he remembered every story he’d written, every character.
“You knocked your skull pretty badly,” the doctor had said as Darell watched the hospital room spiral from his bed. “The dizziness will pass, but you might find it hard to concentrate …”
Now here Darell stood, a shell of his former self. As the undisputed King of Suspense he’d reveled in playing the part. No longer was there a part to play. His once stern, confident countenance—now blank-faced. His black hair turned an unruly shock of white. The wild gray brows jutting over his deep-set, dark eyes no longer intimidating, merely strawlike. Oh, how he used to love to use those eyebrows! The muscular arms—even into his early seventies—sagging. Straight back now bent.
“Pshhh.” His lips curled.
Slowly, with defiance, Darell raised his chin.
He focused through the glass once more. At least the gnarled trees on his property still looked formidable. And his mansion looked just as severe from afar, with its black shutters and multiple wings and gables. From the outside looking in, people would never guess …
Darell glared at the phone near his computer. On impulse he clomped over to it and picked up the receiver. His gnarled forefinger hovered over the keys.
What was the number? The one he’d dialed countless times, year after year.
He lowered himself to the edge of his chair and flipped through his Rolodex. There.
Malcolm Featherling, agent to the country’s top writers, answered his private line on the third ring. Clipped tone, terse greeting. Malcolm was always pushed for time.
“Hello, Malcolm. Just checking in to give you an update.” Darell pushed the old confidence into his voice. After all, his agent worked for him.
“Well, Darell, nice to hear from you. It has been three days.”
Darell blinked. He’d called three days ago? Surely it was at least a month. Maybe two.
He cleared his throat. It sounded phlegmy, like an old man’s. He hated that. “I wrote some today. Almost a page. And another yesterday. You know what they say—write a page a day and you’ve got a novel in a year.”
He used to write at least two a year. All of them brilliant.
“That’s good, Darell, good …”
“Maybe I can get that contract back. Just think, Malcolm, fifteen percent of ten million is a lot of dough. I’ll make you rich. Again.”
“You do that, man, you do that. Keep up the good work.”
He could hear the disbelief in Malcolm’s response. The agent was patronizing him. Darell’s publisher had waited eight months after the accident, strung along on the promise that he would be able to write his one hundredth bestseller—the assumed milestone that had landed him on the cover of Time magazine. But a worldwide publishing conglomerate couldn’t wait forever, even for Darell Brooke. Not with half the contract—five million dollars—already paid up front, and doctors advising he may never write again. The deal was canceled. Darell had been forced to give the money back. Malcolm had to cough up his fifteen percent.
I’ ll show you, Malcolm. Maybe I’ ll even get a new agent.
“All right. Well, got to get back to my writing. See you, Malcolm.” Darell clicked off the line and stared at the phone in his hand.
Just three days ago he’d called?
With a loud sigh he hu
ng up the receiver. He shifted his legs and focused on the half-empty page on his screen. An emptiness he used to love to fill. Now it mocked him. His killer was still on his feet, frozen. The psychiatrist watched from his chair.
What were they supposed to do next? Where had he been headed with this story?
What was the story?
Oh, to regain half the concentration he’d once had. A fourth. A tenth. The thought of s day after day in this mansion-turned-prison, in this office, unproductive and used up, filled him with an emptiness as deep as staring into the face of eternal hell …
Straightening, Darell dredged up his will.
He placed his fingers on the keyboard, straining to turn the gears of his mind. One more paragraph, just one. He’d give anything to finish this book. To gain back his reputation, his life. Anything.
The gears refused to move.
two
Pregnant. She was pregnant.
And her queasy stomach wouldn’t let her forget it.
Kaitlan Sering stopped her Toyota Corolla at the edge of the driveway she shared with the Jensons and reached out the open window to check her mailbox. The northern California September air was warm, sun heating her skin. She moved like some robot, her mind on her troubles. The infamous stick had turned pink just last night, and she was still trying to wrap her mind around it.
Would Craig be mad? Disappointed? They’d only been dating three months, but they were the best months of her life.
Kaitlan sifted through envelopes. Advertisements and bills. Bills she wouldn’t be able to pay if her customers kept canceling their hair appointments at the last minute. Two of them today, right in a row. One of them an expensive cut and highlight. Altogether, she was out almost two hundred dollars.
And now she needed the money more than ever.
How was she going to pay for having a baby without health insurance? How was she going to raise a child on her own?
Maybe Craig would marry her. He’d certainly shown his dedication to family. His father and sister meant the world to him.
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