Killman Creek

by Rachel Caine

  19 GWEN I feel naked without my phone, small comfort though it is. The motel room feels cold and empty and generic, and Sam's gone too long. Way too long. I try watching TV, but everything irritates me. People treat life and death as entertainment, serial killers as a delicious Halloween joke, and it disgusts me. I watch part of a horror movie and feel dirty, and finally I end up staring blankly at the news, watching the slow disintegration of the world I used to know. Sam finally calls me on the hotel phone. It's near midnight. I'm aching with exhaustion but too tense to sleep; I feel breathless as I grab the heavy receiver and lift it to my ear. It's old-style, tethered to the phone by the coiled cord, and I almost immediately pull the whole assembly off the table and onto the floor with a clang. "Hello? Shit! Sorry. Hello?" There's static for a second, and I think that I've broken the damned thing, but then I hear Sam's voice. "Hey. I thought I'd better call." He sounds odd. Maybe t

  20 SAM "Steady," Mike says to me. "Stay focused." I'm watching from the cold interior of his black Jeep. We're in a far corner of the lot, parked under a security spotlight that doesn't illuminate us, but blinds anyone looking that direction. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to find that Mike had come back to Knoxville; he'd known where we were heading when we left Wichita, and I thought he was tracking Gwen, waiting for the FBI evidence to come in that would let him get a federal warrant to arrest her. But instead he's sitting with me in the freezing, icy night, watching as Gwen is abducted. He's right to warn me, because it takes everything I have not to draw my gun and go shoot this man wearing a Melvin Royal rubber mask in the head, and then kick the guts out of him. My sick anger is pulsing in my head, ready to blow the top of it off. It isn't just because he's beaten Gwen down enough to have her hanging limply on his shoulder, but because he wore that disguise to do it. It's fucking v

  21 CONNOR I hear Lanny go into the bathroom. She likes to take a shower at night, and I wait until I hear the water running before I shut and lock my door, pull out the Brady phone, and turn it on. It takes a full minute to come up and search for a signal, and I get a barely audible chime when it's ready. The sound of running water will cover my voice, as long as I keep it quiet. I go in my closet and shut the door. The clothes and blankets in here will muffle things more. I don't want anybody hearing me. The dark feels comforting, and when I put in the battery and turn on the phone, the TV-blue glow of its screen throws everything into sharp shadows around me. I sit down, cross-legged, and lean against folded blankets in the corner. The closet's made of cedar, and the warm, sharp smell of it makes me want to sneeze. I can't do this, I think, but the bad thing is, I know I can. I know I have to. I have questions, and I want to hear his voice when he answers them. Lying in texts is easy

  22 GWEN Pain comes in a slow, thick wave. It's just a red wall at first, an announcement by my entire body that things are not okay, and then it recedes a little, and I begin to identify specifics: my right ankle, throbbing in hot pulses. My left wrist. My right knee. My jaw, and I don't remember being hit there, but you don't in a real fight; it all becomes a blur. My shoulders ache horribly. There's something in my mouth, tied tightly enough that it's forced between my teeth. Cloth. A gag. That's why my jaw hurts. I remember . . . what do I remember? The motel room. The man in the Melvin mask. Taser. Van. It all feels distant and smeared, but I know it's real, because it terrifies me. Nightmares aren't frightening once you wake up. Memories are. I remember being in the van. Tied up with . . . something. I remember the rattle of chains. We drove, and then we stopped. The van went up a sharp incline, and then it was all very, very dark, and we started to move again. I remember a flashl

  23 LANNY I'm in the dark, and for a second when I wake up, I think I'm back in that cramped little cell in the basement of Officer Graham's mountain cabin. I reach out for my brother. Connor isn't here. My head is pounding, a sick, purple-red pulse that makes my stomach twist. I don't remember what happened. I remember seeing Brady fighting with a man, and running to save him, and then . . . Then what? I can't grab the thought. It slips away. I remember the man shocking me, finally. And then hitting me because I kept trying to get up. Brady! Is he okay? No, I remember, I can't call him that. His name is Connor. Did I call him Brady when I was yelling for him? I think I remember that. Someone else was there . . . Kezia. I do remember that, all in a rush. The car jerking to a stop, me flinging open the door and running for my brother. Kezia--Kezia had her gun out. I ran in front of Kezia's gun. Mom's going to kill me; she's always taught me not to do something stupid like that. I realize

  24 SAM Mike Lustig and I sit in the coffee shop where I'd retrieved the tablet, and a few customers trickle in as the leaden sun rises. Some of the cloud cover begins to thin. Ice will melt off by noon, the news is promising, but commuting will still be a mess. Flights are starting in an hour out of the airport, which is now packed with stranded travelers. Gwen is gone. There's no tracking her now. We lost any chance at it the second that van went over the hill and disappeared into thin air. There's nowhere for me to put my grief and fear and anger except to bottle it up inside. That pressure cooker will only hold for so long, but it has to hold for now. We have to find a way to get to Melvin Royal that they can't foresee. Mike and I ignore the slow resumption of normal life and sit in the corner watching the video as we try to find something, anything, that we've missed. The tablet has a provision for two sets of earphones, and he has his own. When we get to the end of the video the f

  25 GWEN When I wake up this time, I wake up in bed. The nausea hits me immediately in a violent rush, and I curl in on myself to try to hold it back. My head pounds so hard I think my skull will crack, and I can feel myself trembling--not cold now, but shaking from the aftereffects of the drug. Once that begins to recede a little, and the burning bile calms in my stomach, I feel other things. The same pains from before, but with more added. My back feels raw. I think the rough wood of the crate left a small forest of splinters. When I open my eyes, I try to make my foggy mind tell me where I am. The room's dim, but I can make out white sheets over me. They feel damp and smell like someone else's skin. A stench gradually creeps over me: mold, an old smell: bodies in the ground. The reek of age and decay. The fear creeps back sluggishly, too tired to continue . . . but it brings clarity with it. Purpose. I shift to relieve a torturous cramp in my hip, and I feel the bed shift in a way tha

  26 SAM It costs Rivard three broken fingers, but he finally agrees to call the airfield and has them ready his private plane for us. That gets around the impossible tangle of canceled flights out of the commercial lines, but it throws us another curve: it takes time to get the plane fueled and ready, and when we board, we find that the pilot's not there yet. He's going to be another hour coming in. I tell the flight attendant to take the day off with pay. We aren't going to need drinks and dinner. She seems surprised, but nobody ever argues against an unexpected bonus, and her quick departure leaves us on the aircraft, alone. Mike's watching me as I check the time. It's already eight o'clock central time. Flight time to Baton Rouge is about an hour and a half, but the weather between us means diverting around it, and that adds at least another half an hour. If we're not wheels up until nine, that's eleven on the ground, and no time to get to where Gwen's being held. We should have trie

  27 GWEN The despair lasts until a ratty-looking, thin woman, arms pocked by a junkie's scars, brings me water. The second I see it, I realize how desperately thirsty I am, and I take the bottle and guzzle it thirstily. It's a mistake, and I know that as soon as the drugs hit my system. In just a few minutes, I feel the chemical wave of them rushing through my veins, and though I try to pull my broken hand the rest of the way through the cuffs, I can't seem to stay focused. The pain keeps holding me back, and no matter how much I try to concentrate, it's like sand through a screen. By the time the drugs take a real hold, I'm panting, sweating, moaning, and everything is smeared and blurred around me. Spiders in the sheets. Eyes on the ceiling. The terror is like something alive inside me, fighting to get out.
I imagine it clawing through my skin, bursting through in thick, black streaks that choke and blind me. When I finally pass out, it's a mercy. I don't know how many hours go by. Wh

  28 GWEN One month later To most people, I look like I've recovered. I try hard, for my kids. If I still feel fragile as glass inside, I think only Sam can see it now. Sam, who sees everything. That might have bothered me once, but now I'm glad. I talk to Sam. I even see a psychologist who specializes in trauma recovery. I'm getting better. So are the kids. I made sure they got their own therapy, whether they admitted to needing it or not. I don't check the Sicko Patrol anymore, but when I ask, Sam quietly tells me that it's continuing to roll on with more fire and energy than before. Despite my wishes, I'm the subject of a lot of articles and blogs again. Some think I'm a hero. Many think I got away with murder. One thing I have to accept: now there's no hiding from it anymore. The symbol of that is this house on Stillhouse Lake that we're reclaiming as our own. It's not just the four of us; our friends have been here helping. Javier and Kezia. Kezia's dad, Easy Claremont. Detective Pr

  SOUNDTRACK I choose music for each book I write, because it helps me find the right tone and tempo of the story. Since it helped inspire me, I thought you'd enjoy seeing the music that goes along with Gwen's journey in Killman Creek. I hope you enjoy the musical experience as much as I did, and please remember: piracy hurts musicians, and music aggregation services don't provide a living. Buying the song or album direct is still the best way to show your love, and help them create new work. "Eminence Front," The Who "Sledgehammer," Peter Gabriel "Poker Face," Lady Gaga "Staring at the Sun," TV on the Radio "Games Without Frontiers," Peter Gabriel "Hate the Taste," Black Rebel Motorcycle Club "Box Full o' Honey," Duran Duran "Red Rain," Peter Gabriel "Time of the Season," The Ben Taylor Band "Mama," Genesis "Welcome to the Circus," Skittish "Beneath Mt. Sinai," The Stone Foxes "Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get," The Dramatics "Human," Rag'n'Bone Man "Believer," Imagine Dragons "Jockey Full of

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my friend Steve Huff, most especially, and my coconspirator Ann Aguirre. Special thanks to the mighty Liz Pearsons and the great T&M team, who just plain rock.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR Photo (c) 2014 Robert Hart Rachel Caine is the New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the Stillhouse Lake series, the New York Times bestselling Morganville Vampires series, and The Great Library young adult series. She has written suspense, mystery, paranormal suspense, urban fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal young adult fiction. Rachel lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband, artist/actor/comic historian R. Cat Conrad, in a gently creepy house full of books.

  OTHER TITLES BY RACHEL CAINE

  Stillhouse Lake Series

  Stillhouse Lake The Great Library

  Paper and Fire Ink and Bone

  Ash and Quill Weather Warden

  Ill Wind

  Heat Stroke

  Chill Factor

  Windfall

  Firestorm

  Thin Air

  Gale Force

  Cape Storm

  Total Eclipse Outcast Season

  Undone

  Unknown

  Unseen

  Unbroken

  Revivalist Working Stiff Two Weeks' Notice Terminated

  Red Letter Days

  Devil's Bargain Devil's Due

  Morganville Vampires

  Glass Houses

  The Dead Girls' Dance Midnight Alley Feast of Fools Lord of Misrule Carpe Corpus

  Fade Out

  Kiss of Death Ghost Town

  Bite Club

  Last Breath

  Black Dawn

  Bitter Blood

  Fall of Night Daylighters

  Stand-Alone Titles

  Prince of Shadows

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright (c) 2017 by Rachel Caine, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542046411

  ISBN-10: 1542046416

  Cover design by Shasti O'Leary Soudant

  CONTENTS

  1 GWEN

  2 LANNY

  3 SAM

  4 GWEN

  5 GWEN

  6 CONNOR

  7 GWEN

  8 SAM

  9 GWEN

  10 CONNOR

  11 GWEN

  12 SAM

  13 LANNY

  14 GWEN

  15 LANNY

  16 GWEN

  17 SAM

  18 CONNOR

  19 GWEN

  20 SAM

  21 CONNOR

  22 GWEN

  23 LANNY

  24 SAM

  25 GWEN

  26 SAM

  27 GWEN

  28 GWEN

  SOUNDTRACK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  GWEN

  On the twelfth night since my ex-husband escaped prison, I am in bed. Not sleeping. Watching the play of light and shadow on the curtains. I'm lying on a narrow foldout cot and feeling every twinge of spring poking through the thin mattress. My kids, Lanny and Connor, occupy the two full-size beds in this midpriced motel room. Midpriced is the best I can afford right now.

  The phone is a new one. Another disposable, with a brand-new number. Only five people have the number, and two of them are asleep in the room with me.

  I can't trust anyone outside that vanishingly small circle. All I can think of is the shadow of a man walking through the night--walking, not running, because I don't believe Melvin Royal is on the run, though half the police in the country are hunting him--and the fact that he is coming for me. For us.

  My ex-husband is a monster, and I thought he was safely contained and caged, awaiting execution . . . but even from behind bars he ran a campaign of terror against me and our kids. Oh, he had help, some of it from inside the prison, some outside; how wide and deep it went is still in question, but he also had a plan. He maneuvered me, through targeted fear and threats, into the place he'd wanted me: a trap we'd survived, but only just.

  Melvin Royal stalks me in the brief darkness when I close my eyes. Blink, and he's on the street. Blink, and he's walking up the stairs of the motel to the second floor's open walkway. Blink, and he's outside the door. Listening.

  The buzz of a text arriving on my phone makes me flinch so hard it hurts. I grab for the device as the room's heater rattles on; it's loud, but it's efficient, and warmth glides through the room in a slow, welcome wave. I'm grateful. The blankets on this cot aren't up to much.

  I blink my tired eyes and bring the phone's screen into focus. The message says Number Blocked. I turn it off, and put it under my pillow, and try to convince myself that it's safe to sleep.

  But I know it isn't. I know who's texting me. And the double locks on the motel room door don't seem nearly enough.

  I am twelve days out from rescuing my children from a murderer. I am exhausted, sore, and plagued with headaches. I am heartsick and tired and anxious and most of all--most of all--I am angry. I need to be angry. Being angry will keep us all alive.

  How dare you, I think at the phone beneath my pillow. How fucking dare you.

  When I've stoked my anger to a boiling, almost painful, temperature, I reach beneath my pillow and pull out the phone again. My anger is a shield. My anger is a weapon. I click the message firmly, expecting what it will
hold.

  But I am wrong. The text message is not from my ex-husband. It reads, YOU'RE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE NOW, and it is followed with a symbol I recognize: A.

  Absalom.

  Shock diffuses my anger, sends it flowing in hot, electric waves through my chest and arms, as if the phone itself lashed out. My husband had help--help manipulating us, help abducting my children--and Absalom was that help . . . a master hacker who manipulated me into the trap Melvin had planned for him. I'd dared hope that maybe with the end of that plot, Absalom wouldn't have more to threaten us with.

  I should have known better.

  For a moment I feel a wave of sheer, visceral terror, like all the childhood fears of ghosts have been proven real, and then I take in a deep, slow breath and try to think through the impossibility of dealing with this . . . again. I am guilty of nothing more than defending myself from a man who wanted to kill me, who gained my trust over the course of years, and gradually led me to the place meant for my execution.

  But that doesn't make the message on the screen go away.

  Absalom has someone else coming for us. The thought runs through me like a lightning bolt, dries my mouth, makes all my nerves fire at once, because it feels right. Something has been bothering me all these long days while we've been in hiding and moving for our safety . . . the feeling that we're being watched, still. I'd put it down to paranoia.

  What if it isn't?

  I try to get up quietly, but the cot creaks, and I hear Lanny, my daughter, whisper, "Mom?"

  "It's okay," I whisper back. I stand and slip my feet into shoes. I'm fully dressed in comfortable pants and a loose sweater and heavy socks, and I put on my shoulder holster and parka before I unlock all the security measures and step out into the chill.

  It's overcast and cold here in Knoxville. I'm not used to the city lights, but just now they comfort me a little. I don't feel quite as isolated. There are people here. Screams will be heard.