Whiteout

A Taylor Jackson Novella (7.5)

J.T. Ellison

Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Also by J.T. Ellison

About the Author

Copyright

J.T. Ellison speaks!

An Interview with J.T. Ellison

An Essay by J.T. Ellison

Sneak Peeks

FIELD OF GRAVES Exclusive Excerpt

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

NO ONE KNOWS Exclusive Excerpt

Part I

Chapter 1

CHARLOTTE’S STORY by Laura Benedict

1957: The End of Time

“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

1

October 9, 1987

Annecy, France

1900 Hours

My father’s screams echo in the small car.

“Monte, vite, vite. Angelie, baisse-toi! Baisse-toi!”

My head hits the floor just as the window shatters. Blood, thick and hot, sprays my bare legs. I wedge myself under my mother’s skirts, her thighs heavy against my shoulders. Somehow I know she is already dead. We are all dead.

Flashes of black.

Their voices, two distinctly male, one female. Another, a stranger’s call, silenced abruptly with a short fusillade of bullets. The would-be savior’s bicycle smashes into the side of our aging Peugeot. His body catapults across the hood onto the pavement beyond and his head hits the ground; the crack sounds like the opening of a cantaloupe, ripe and hard.

My father, his life leaving him, slides down in the seat like a puppet cut from its strings. He’s whispering words over and over, faintly, and with the cacophony in the background I can barely hear him. I risk a glance, wishing I’d not. The image shall never leave me. Red, pulpy and viscous. He is missing half his face, but his full lips are moving.

“Si toi survivre, cherchér ton Oncle Pierre. Je t’aime de tout mon cœur.”

I hear nothing but the first words. Panic fills me. Though I recognize what is happening, the reality has just crept in.

Si toi survivre. If you survive.

I want to take his hand, to comfort him, to tell him I am there, that I, too, love him with all my heart. I reach for him as he dies. He shakes his head, trying to implore me to stay hidden, not to move. He isn’t even speaking now, but I can hear his words in my head, like he has transferred his soul to my body for these last fluttering moments, has given himself up early to crowd into my body and try to save me.

Undeterred, my hand steals across the gearshift. I touch the cold skin of his thumb.

A roaring in my ears. There is pain beyond anything I’ve ever felt, and I go blank.

2

October 8, 2013

Nashville, Tennessee

0415 Hours

Homicide never sleeps. At least that’s what Taylor Jackson told herself when the phone rousted her from a moderately deep slumber, the first decent shut-eye she’d had in a week. She’d finally crashed at 3:00 a.m., succumbing to the two-to-three hours she normally managed on a good night. The sheets were tangled around her legs, so she rolled to Baldwin’s side of the bed, used a long arm to snake the phone off the hook.

“Who, what, where, when, and, most importantly, why?”

Homicide detective Lincoln Ross didn’t miss a beat.

“Me. Your wake up call. Your phone. 4:15 a.m. Because you told me to get you up so you didn’t miss your flight.”

“You’re fired.”

“Excellent. I’ll charter a plane to the Bahamas right now. See ya.”

She yawned. “Okay, okay. I’m up. You downstairs?”

A faint horn sounded.

“On my way.”

At least no one was dead. Not yet, anyway.

Jeans, boots, black cashmere T-shirt, leather jacket, ponytail, Carmex. Three minutes flat. Take that, Heidi Klum.

Two hours and three Diet Cokes later, her somewhat caffeinated body in an exit row window seat, the 737 rushed into the sky. She watched the ground fall away and asked herself again why she’d agreed to do this. The invitation had been the fault—now, Taylor, be nice—the inspiration of her fiancé, John Baldwin, whose place she was taking at the Freedom Conference, a small foreign intelligence initiative that met annually to hear about the latest tools for cyber intelligence and information gathering. The professional makeup of the conference was specific to clandestine services, but some civilian law enforcement officials attended as well. Baldwin had been set to speak about using behavioral profiling as a predictive analysis for terrorist attacks against the United States, and was featuring the case of the Pretender, a nasty serial killer who’d killed dozens in his bid to ruin all of their lives.

To ruin her life, as well.

Two years in the past, the moniker conjured chills and made her throat tighten.

Dead. He’s dead. Stop it.

Baldwin had been called off at the last minute to deal with a skinner in Montana—what was it about these freaks who liked to remove their victims’ skin?—and Taylor had agreed to take his place at the conference. She had his notes, his slideshow, though she was thinking of skipping that—there were crime scene photos from Nashville that showed her own bloodstains, and pools of her best friend’s blood. She didn’t know if she was quite ready to see them at all, not to mention plastered, bigger than life, on a presentation screen for an entire audience to see.

It had been interesting to see his analytical write-up about the case. It was so cut and dried. Like there were no other options. In Baldwin’s world, everything that transpired was a foregone conclusion based on several psychological metrics. His evaluation made her feel better about what had happened. Taylor had lost her head. She’d hunted the man down, gone off grid in order to kill him, nearly lost her own life in the process, but in the end, it was Baldwin’s finger that pulled the trigger.

He’d done that for her.

A foregone conclusion.

She settled deeper into the seat, shut her eyes. The least she could do was give his speech for him.

3

October 7, 2013

London, England

0000 Hours

The phone in my flat bleats to life as I am leaving for the airport.

My phone never rings, and this is purposeful. It is there for emergencies: fires, break-ins, unanticipated scenarios that could lead to my death. It is not for casual conversations, and it never rings, because only one person has my number.

My heart speeds up, just a little. Why is he calling? Why now?

I pick up the receiver. “Oui?”

“Angelie. What have you done?”

“Je ne sais pas de quoi tu parles.”

“In English, Angelie. How many times have I told you?”

“Alors, Pierre. Fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Angelie, you know exactly what I’m talking about. A couple of gendârmes just pulled Gregoire Campion’s body out of a duffel bag that was stashed in his bathtub. He was in pieces.”

This news is both good and bad. Good, because the smug bastard is dead, at last. Bad, because if my Uncle Pierre is telling the truth and the body has been found so soon, the borders will be under extra scrutiny. Pierre has given me a gift without even knowing.

“That means nothing to me. I must go, Oncle. À bientôt.”

I hear his cry of protest as I drop the receiver. I must hurry.

From my closet I pull the necessary gear. A quick change of undergarments gives my thin body curves; tinted contacts turn my eyes blue; a beautifully made wig transforms me into an elegant blonde. I trade my jeans and trainers for a cashmere dress that clings perfectly to every inch of my altered body. A pair of knee-high leather Frye boots with specially made lifts adds a good three inches to my five-foot-four frame.

My name is now Alana Terbraak. I have been this woman before. Alana is fearless, a predator disguised as a Dutch-Canadian travel agent. She is the perfect cover for crossing borders; it is her job to scope out areas she sends her clients to. No one questions Alana’s travel. She is one of my better identities.

I place several remaining identities in the bag, under a secure flap that is impossible to see with the naked eye, and pull the worn Canadian dollars from my safe. I mix them in with my Euros and pound notes, wipe down the small flat, lock everything up, and leave.

My plane departs in two hours, and I will not miss it.

4

October 8, 2013

Washington, D.C.

1400 Hours

An early snow greeted Taylor when she landed in D.C. As promised, a man was waiting for her by Baggage, holding an iPad; the screen spelled out her name. He took her bag silently and led her to a black sedan. Flakes danced around her, floating generously from an icy sky. She was glad for the warmth of the car.

When they were on the road, he offered her a drink. “There’s bottled water, Scotch, and vodka in that cooler by your feet.”

“Thank you.” Taylor took a water. It was too early to drink, even though it might warm her from the inside out.

The snow continued to cascade down as they drove to the west, getting heavier the closer they got to the Chesapeake Bay. Charles, the driver, slowed, taking it easy; the roads were getting slick.

Taylor gave up, turned up the heat in the backseat. “Too bad you don’t have hot chocolate in here. I didn’t know snow was in the forecast.”

“It wasn’t. We’ve got an Alberta Clipper that snuck up on us, same storm that’s wreaking havoc back in the Midwest and down in Florida. It’s a good thing you flew in today. Tomorrow you’d be stuck at the airport, shivering your skinny self off. Gonna get bad, that’s what they’re saying. Big blizzard, storm surge up the bay, power lines down from the ice. Hope you brought a sweater.”

“I did. My friend Maggie O’Dell—she’s an FBI agent—called last night and warned me that the storm was going to be bad. When Maggie speaks, I listen.”

Forty minutes and several white-knuckled slips and slides later, Charles deposited her at the front steps of the Old Maryland Resort and Spa. “I’ll bring up your bag. You’re to meet the conference folk at the desk.”

“Thanks, Charles. And thanks for getting me here in one piece.” Taylor tried to hand him a tip, but he brushed it off with a shy smile. She shivered in her leather jacket and mounted the stairs to the resort’s reception area. A woman waved at her the moment she walked in the door. She was small to the point of being elfin, gray hair cut into a chic chin-length bob, cornflower blue eyes, and a friendly smile. Taylor felt a bit like a linebacker on her approach.

“Welcome to Maryland, Lieutenant Jackson. I’m Cherry Gregg, the chair of the Freedom Conference. We are so glad to have you here. Was the ride from the airport okay?”

“It was great, thank you. I appreciate you sending a car for me.” That was a lie; Taylor had wanted to rent a car, not liking the idea of being stuck an hour out of D.C. on the Chesapeake Bay without her own transportation, but it was all part of the speaker gig—getting coddled and treated like royalty. Samantha Owens, her best friend, lived in Georgetown, and was planning to come down at the end of the weekend and ferry Taylor back to D.C. for a night of catch-up. She could live for two days without a car, especially because the conference was being held at a lavish spa resort that seemed to have every amenity she might need.

“If you’re anything like me, you hate not having your own car, but we are at your service this weekend. Anyplace you’d like to go, just call down to the desk, and your driver will ferry you about like a queen.”

Taylor didn’t even bother trying to hide her surprise. “You read my mind. How did you know?”

Gregg answered with a slight laugh. “Lieutenant, I was a CIA field agent for twenty years, and COS—sorry, Chief of Station—in four different countries. Reliable transportation was always my number-one priority. If you get completely desperate, there’s an Enterprise car rental four blocks south.”

Taylor laughed, liking Gregg immediately. “I’ll remember that. Is the weather going to hold up?”

“It’s not. Thankfully, you’re the last one to arrive. We’ve got everyone else safely here already. We’re told they have back up generators and enough fuel to hold us for at least a week, should we be so unlucky as to lose power, and the kitchens are fully stocked. There are fireplaces in many of the rooms with plenty of wood, too. One of the treats of this place, and it’s going to work in our favor this weekend.”

“Sounds like they thought of everything.”

“Oh, they did, I assure you. Most importantly, the bar is prepped and ready, too. They laid in an extra ration of grog for us all.”

“Priorities. I like it.”

“You bet. I’m so happy you could join us, Lieutenant. You’re very kind to take over Dr. Baldwin’s spot. Would you like to settle into your room, then meet me back here in two hours? We’ve got a cocktail reception we’d like you to attend—it’s business dress. We’ll get you introduced to the other panelists, and there’s a fair amount of people who’d like to meet you. Your story, your history . . . well, let’s just say folks are interested.”

Folks were always interested. Taylor attracted trouble like dust on black furniture. Inevitable.

“I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but you’re too kind. Thank you.”

“Here’s your key—you’re up on the fifth floor, in the Maryland Suite. I’ve been told they used to call it the Crab Cake Suite, but people complained.”

They shared another laugh, and Taylor set off for the elevators. The room was at the end of a long, narrow hallway. She held her pass to the door, and it unlocked.

Her first impression was a blizzard of white—white walls, white furniture, white bedding, white carpeting. The cleaning bills must be astronomical. There was a fireplace at the far end of the suite, and the bathroom walls were clear glass, with a hot tub that had a perfect view of the fire.

She started to giggle, took a picture and texted it, then dialed Baldwin’s cell. He answered on the first ring.

“I would suggest you plan to drink champagne instead of red wine.”

“I know, right? The picture doesn’t do it justice.” She went to the windows, pulled back the heavy curtains. “Baldwin, you should see this place. The view of the Chesapeake Bay is spectacular, or would be in the summer—right now it’s just snowing. But you saw that hot tub and fireplace. It’s like the sex bomb suite or something.”

“Sounds more like a honeymoon suite. I’m sorry I have to miss it.” There was a note in his voice that made her stomach hitch.

“I’m sorry too. Though I am wondering why, exactly, they reserved this particular room for you.”

“I’d told them you were coming,” he replied.

She started to laugh then, and he joined her.

“You’re naughty. Everything moving along with your skinner?”

“Don’t tell anyone, but we’re serving a warrant in an hour. I think we’ve nailed the psycho.”

“That’s my guy. Always gets his man. Good job.”

“Thanks, hon. Just glad to get another monster off the streets. Listen, there’s a really bad storm heading your way. So stay inside, stay warm and dry, and if you get stuck there, I’ll come and rescue you. And we can see what the real view is from that hot tub. Okay?”

“Sounds wonderful. Love you. Bye.”

She unpacked her suitcase. Business casual for the cocktail party—she guessed jeans wouldn’t work. She pulled a black wool skirt from the bag, and switched her motorcycle boots for knee-high cognac leather. A black cashmere sweater set and her grandmother’s pearls completed the outfit. She glanced in the mirror.

“You look entirely too respectable.” She took her hair down, let it hang loose around her shoulders.

“Better. Much less uptight.”

And the woman in the mirror grinned back.

5

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

1700 Hours

Taylor allowed herself a second glass of wine. The cocktail party was in full swing, the stories flying fast and furious. After the initial round of introductions, and a few awkward questions answered blithely, she’d stuck to listening, watching. There was a beautiful brunette built like a brick shithouse across the way who’d garnered the attention of practically every man in the place. She had a wonderfully exotic accent, a loud voice, and was telling stories about Sudan’s second civil war in the ‘80s. Something about Gaddafi switching sides to support Mengistu, and a microfiche that she’d planted to thwart a southern attack.

“ . . . But he never thought to look in the lid of the teapot, and believe you me, I’ve never looked at cinnamon tea the same way again,” and the crowd roared with appreciative laughter.

Taylor smiled to herself and crossed the room to watch the storm. Snow on water fascinated her. Nashville wasn’t a bastion of winter weather; it just got cold, and rarely snowed more than an inch or two. This was a full-fledged blizzard, and it was monstrously beautiful.

“Intelligence officers. We’re like bees: we can only speak in one language, and if you don’t know it, there’s no manual for translation.”

Taylor turned to see the man who’d spoken. He was in his late fifties, small and dapper, with short gray hair and a sad smile, and the barest hint of an accent. French, she thought, though it was very refined.

“Oh, we cops are the same way. Our stories are usually bloodier, though.”

“Give them time. A few more pops, and they’ll be into Afghanistan. Plenty of bloody stories there. I’m Thierry Florian. I know your fiancé. He’s a good man. We worked together in Argentina last year.”

“Ah, Argentina. So that’s where he was. I knew it was South America, but Baldwin is always very careful not to disclose too much of his . . . private work.”

“Nature of the beast. Helps to have a spouse in the business. No awkward questions at two in the morning.”

“We’re not married. Yet.”

“There’s time.” His head was cocked to the side like a spaniel. “Your photos don’t do you justice. Your eyes are different colors. Your right is darker than your left. I’ve never seen heterochromia with gray like that. C’est trés jolie. Very pretty.”

He wasn’t hitting on her, just noticing. It still felt weird, so she changed the subject. “Are you still clandestine service then, Thierry?”

“I retired from the DGSE in November after thirty years in. I run the Macallan Group now. Do you know who we are?”

“I know you’re not a bunch of Scotch enthusiasts.”

He laughed. “That’s right. We grew out of the Futures Working Group, but we are a privately held company. Very dedicated, and very much off book.” He winked.

“Baldwin’s told me about your work. You’ve assembled an interesting gang of people.”

“We have people from every section, multiple countries. From CIA to Mossad and military to police. We even have a couple of novelists, brilliant men and women whose sole purpose is to dream up the most unfathomable situations for us to scrutinize, because real life always imitates art.”

“Doesn’t it though.”

His shoulders shrugged, a perfectly Gallic gesture Taylor had never seen an American man master. “Oui. It is strange, life. Any time you want to join us, say the word. You have just the right temperament to fit in. I was hoping to discuss it with you this weekend.”

Taylor raised her eyebrows. “What, you want me to come to a meeting or something?”

She envisioned pipes and dark smoky rooms, green computer screens and cables spitting out from teletype machines. Romantic thoughts of spies long past—which was silly, because she’d seen Baldwin at work, and it wasn’t cool and dreamy. It was brutal, and watching him in that element always gave her a chill down the spine. When he shut down his compassion, his became another person entirely.

Florian gave a small laugh. “So to speak. The meeting in question would be of a more permanent nature.”

“Oh. Are you offering me a job?”

“I am. I would like to hook Baldwin, too. He understands our mission, that our work is vital to the safety of all of our countries. Like the intelligence services, we collect and analyze data, only act when necessary. We share with many of them if we see they are behind the curve ball.”

Act when necessary. Again, she was getting into a shadow world she didn’t like to think of. Some would see it as breaking the law, something she was vehemently opposed to. But for the greater good, as Baldwin always liked to point out—for the greater good, rules were sometimes meant to be bent and broken. And if it saved lives? Absolutely.

“I think you mean behind the eight ball.”

“Alors, my English. Yes. The eight ball. But more importantly, we use the information we collect to anticipate. Anticipate, and avoid. The problem with the FBI, with your police forces, with law enforcement, in general, is the very nature of the work. React, react, react. The CIA is better, but even they are stymied by their political ties. Black ops hardly exist anymore. There is no funding for special programs, and no balls on your politicians.

“Our work is entirely independent and very proactive. We want to prevent the attacks before they start, rather than hunt down the perpetrators after the fact. You talk John Baldwin into coming along, and you can name your price. You are both worth it.”

“That’s very kind, but it’s not about the money—”

“Of course not. You are, I believe the right word is, an idealist. You fight for justice, because ever fiber of your being screams that it is the right thing to do. Just think, Taylor Jackson, what power there would be in preventing the attacks you investigate, before they occur. That is our job. And your unique abilities are worth a great deal to me.

“You both come from money; you have also earned enough to retire comfortably. So think of this salary as a cushion. You can buy his-and-hers Ferraris, or give it away to starving African children, I do not care. I need your minds. You are instinctive, and smart, and you could do a lot of good for your country. Think about it. Santé.”

He clinked her glass and walked away.

She took a sip of wine to cover her discomfiture. Well. That was interesting.

She dismissed the conversation. She was perfectly happy working homicide for Metro Nashville. She didn’t like change. She especially didn’t like the idea of abandoning her team.

And preventing murder? Preventing attacks? No one could do that, not effectively. Someone evil would always slip through the cracks.

The snow was heavier than ever, coming down so hard she could barely see the lights of the cars passing by on the street below. She checked her phone; the forecast was now calling for twenty inches. A small bloom of panic started in her chest. The last time she’d been snowed in, a blizzard of epic proportions in Scotland, not-so-great things had happened.

Florian caught her eye from across the room and smiled politely. He was clearly watching her, and she resented it, though she didn’t know why. He’d made an offer. She’d gotten them before. It was what it was.

But. . . .

She’d be forty in a few years, and as far as her career was concerned, she would need to make a decision about her role going forward. It was already being whispered that she’d make Captain soon, would be in charge of Nashville’s entire Criminal Investigative Division, and that meant she’d be off the streets and on to the paperwork and political glad-handing. Captain Jackson. A few more years, then further up the brass ladder. Maybe even Chief in ten years. More bureaucratic nonsense. And then what? Run for office? No, thank you. She had too many opinions and not enough reserve to stop her from sharing them freely.

Baldwin wanted her to join the FBI, which would be a logical step. And though she admired everything he did, she knew she wouldn’t fit in. The culture was too restrictive. She had enough bossing around at Metro that drove her mad. Having to follow the kind of dictates that the federal government imposed on law enforcement was a recipe for disaster.

The Macallan Group. Proactive rather than reactive. Huh.

She looked around the room again for Thierry Florian, but didn’t see him. She sent him a mental thanks a lot. There would be no sleep for her tonight.

6

October 9

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

0000 Hours

The cameras are on for my safety. I made sure before we began. They will catch everything. Just in case.

The kisses are going a mile a minute. Our clothes are gone, my slip is rucked up over my hips. I skipped panties, hopeful for this moment. It makes things so much easier. His hands rush over my body, grasping my skin, kneading my buttocks, hands hurrying to my thighs and then my back, up and down and around, and I whisper, “Too fast, too fast.”

He slows, smiling, his right palm lingering along the curve of my hip, then sliding to my breast, his mouth featherweight, following his touch.

Better.

It has been too long. I should stop him before it goes much further, but it feels so good to be touched, to be loved.

His hand slips down between my thighs, and a moan escapes my lips. Stay in control, stay in control, but I am losing it. He is too good, too skilled, and I hit the point where I don’t care anymore. I am just an animal, needing, wanting. His finger is deep inside me, and we are still standing, skin-to-skin, glued together. And it feels so good.

Fuck it. I inch up, and he catches the movement, effortlessly lifts me, and my legs wrap around his waist. He is breathing hard, ready to go. Pushing against me. Waves of pleasure shudder through me. I think I might faint, take a deep breath to clear my head.

He catches my lips, kissing, sucking, staring into my eyes. He moves his hand, and I can’t help but respond.

Recognizing it is time, he lays me down on the bed and slows his movement further, stroking, caressing, gentling when I want it rough, the mistake of a new lover. “Now,” I urge, and he smiles and spreads my legs wide, one palm on the inside of each thigh, and thrusts into me, hard. I cry out, go right over the edge into the bliss, and he comes with me.

I lose time; I always do after sex. Hazardous, but inescapable. Hence the cameras. An old habit, hard to break.

When our breathing slows, he rolls off me, to the side, and I rise from the bed.

“Don’t get up,” he says, leaning on an elbow, beckoning me back.

Too late. I am already at my purse, the bag open, the cold steel in my hand. My favorite companion, the only one I truly trust. I turn to him, a brief smile playing on my lips.

“Thank you,” I say, and fire. The suppressed round sounds like a sigh in the darkened room. It takes him between the eyes, and he collapses back onto the bed.

Another means to an end.

I replace the weapon, dress, brush my hair, enjoy the flush of color on my cheeks. I wipe down the room, grab my cell phone, turn off the video camera. Face the connecting door to the room next to my newly dead lover.

A moment twenty-five years in the making. Finally here.

I jimmy the lock, silent as possible. The door opens, and there he is. Asleep, quiet. Far from innocent. He looks older in his sleep.

Older, and soon to be very, very dead.

7

0110 Hours

Taylor showered and changed, then stalked around her suite, wishing for something to do. No pool table, as the bar was closed for the night. Baldwin was getting some well-earned sleep, having made a successful arrest. She’d forgotten to pack a book, though there was probably a library on the hotel grounds.

Truth be told, nothing would distract her enough. She was worried about the storm. The gathering winds were howling past her window; a small piece of siding had come loose and was rattling. She could just make out people moving around outside—workers, most likely, sent out into the storm to batten down the hatches. They worked in twos, probably tied together so they wouldn’t get lost.

A scene from a Laura Ingalls Wilder book pranced into her head, something she’d not thought about since she was a child. The rope between the shed and the house, followed to feed the animals, so Pa wouldn’t get lost. Or Laura. She couldn’t remember exactly who was meant to be saved by the slender thread, but it had worked, and all ended well.

She had no tether to keep her safe, and it worried her.

The television gave no succor, either. The whole country seemed to be in the grip of this massive and mercurial storm. The Weather Channel was covering the huge, multi-state event causing chaos across the country. The mega-storm had swooped down from Canada, slicing through Illinois, where Rockford had received record-breaking snow totals, and people were still lost, stuck on highways and in houses inaccessible to rescue crews. She sent her friend Mary Catherine Riggio a text, checking on her, knowing the Rockford P.D. homicide detective would be out helping the emergency prep folks, but didn’t hear back. And poor Maggie was down in Pensacola, Florida, which was flooded out after twenty inches of rain, and still experiencing thunderstorms and high winds. Major damage. The radar clearly showed the catastrophic storm heading right toward the Washington, D.C., area, which meant Taylor was now directly in its path.

The Weather Channel’s anchor warned everyone to hunker down, because it was going to get worse before it got better. The snow totals were going to break records all up the Eastern seaboard, the storm surges would cause widespread flooding up and down the Chesapeake Bay.

Great.

As a first responder herself, Taylor wasn’t used to sitting in a hotel room waiting for a storm to hit. If this were Nashville, she’d be in the command center at Metro, giving instructions, helping the city cover all the quadrants to minimize the danger to its citizens. She gave a moment’s thought to calling the Calvert County Sheriff, offering her services, but realized she’d be as wanted as a wart.

She lit the fire, grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge, snuggled into the bed, and watched the flames dance while she listened to the warnings. When she could take no more, she flipped off The Weather Channel, found The Princess Bride on one of the movie channels, and turned down the lights. She knew the words practically by heart, but it was better than nothing.

The R.O.U.S., Rodents of Unusual Size, were beginning to lurk when the power went off.

The fireplace was down to coals as well. She’d burned through more logs than she’d realized, and the stash was getting low.

Taylor picked up the room phone, heard nothing. She pressed a few buttons, but no dial tone started. Thankfully, she’d thought to charge her cell phone. She called down to the front desk. Nothing. The lines were dead.

She knew the hotel had generators, she just needed them to kick in. It would get cold in the room quickly—the fireplace didn’t put off that much heat—so she grabbed the extra blanket from the armoire and tossed it on the end of the bed.

Nothing to do but wait, and try to sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, she managed to drift, her rest disturbed by terrible dreams. She was cold, so cold, hiking through the snow, with no one in sight, just the expanse of white spreading in all directions. She knew it was the end; she wouldn’t survive. And the voice of the Pretender whispered in her ear.

8

0200 Hours

It was two in the morning when the fire alarms went off. She scrambled from the bed, shaking off the chill, not sure if it was the temperature or the dreams, and threw on her jeans. It was cold in the room, her fingers fumbled with the buttons. After shrugging into her jacket, she pocketed her cell and wallet, and opened the door to the hallway with care. She could smell smoke.

Other guests were streaming from their rooms. Her hand went absently to her waist, reaching for the comfort of her Glock. Nothing there. She hesitated for a fraction of a second. Better safe than sorry.

She went back into her room, made sure the door was latched, then retrieved her Glock 27 from its case in the interior of her suitcase. The key to the lock shook in her hands—damn, it was cold. She had only brought the small backup gun, certainly hadn’t planned to get it from its case. She hadn’t expected to need it, not at a conference in a swanky hotel.

She slapped a magazine in place, put two more in her jacket pocket, and stowed the weapon in a small belt-clipped holster. She felt sure she wouldn’t be the only one armed out of this crew—cops and counterintelligence officers weren’t that different.

More comfortable with the familiar weight on her hip, she left the room, followed the remaining stragglers to the stairwell.

“What’s the matter?” she called out to the nearest man.

“Dunno,” he replied. “Guess it’s a fire. Wish they’d turn that bloody alarm off though, it’s breaking my eardrums.”

“No kidding. It’s deafening.”

Down the five flights, carefully picking their way, with cell phones giving the only decent light. There was emergency lighting on the walls, but the lights were dim, as if they weren’t getting proper connections.

The stairwell exited into the lobby. A crowd of people had gathered in the dark. They weren’t being evacuated, just left to mingle in the cavernous space.

Taylor didn’t like this at all. She bumbled around in the dark a bit, saw Cherry, her face underlit by a flashlight, making her seem like a ghoul. She was pale and carrying a clipboard. Just as Taylor reached her, the alarm stopped, leaving her ears ringing.

Cherry gave her a wan smile. “Oh, good, Lieutenant Jackson. I can mark you off the list.”

“What’s going on? Is there a fire?”

“When the power went out, the generators to the rooms failed. A small fire started on the roof, and they’re trying to contain it. There’s a skeleton staff on the night shift, plus several people couldn’t—or wouldn’t—make the drive in, and the roads are blocked now, so the fire trucks can’t get here. They’re doing the best they can.”

“Should we be evacuating people?”

“No, not yet. Thankfully, the lobby is on a separate generator, and the heat will stay on in here for a while. As soon as they give the word, we can send people back to their rooms. Might as well settle in until they give the all clear.”

“You need to put me to work, I’m going bonkers. What can I do to help?”

Cherry flashed the light on her list. “We’re still missing a few people. Would you be willing to take a flashlight and hike back upstairs, knock on doors? Be very careful, we wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”

“Absolutely. Who are we missing?”

“Let’s see . . . Ellis Stamper—he’s in 4880. And Thierry Florian, right next door in 4900. Hildy Rochelle, as well, the brunette woman who was charming everyone tonight. She’s on the fifth floor, 5380.”

The man nearest them said, “Cherry, I saw her earlier. She’s down here somewhere.”

“Oh, good. Thanks for letting me know, Ron.” She turned back to Taylor. “Just the two gentlemen, then.”

“Got it. On my way.”

“Thank you, Taylor. I appreciate it.”

Cherry handed Taylor an extra flashlight. She headed back to the stairwell.

Now that it was silent and empty, Taylor had to admit it was a little creepy. She climbed the stairs, enjoying the burn in her thighs that started on the third floor. It warmed her up. The faint scent of smoke was stronger up here, but no worse than when she’d exited her room.

The fourth floor was deserted. Taylor turned on the flashlight—it was amazing how dark the hallway had become. She heard nothing but the whistling wind.

Room 4880 was halfway down the hall. She knocked on the door.

“Excuse me, Mr. Stamper? You’re needed downstairs.”

Nothing.

She banged a few more times. He must have passed her in the night. She walked down to the room next door. “Mr. Florian, it’s Taylor Jackson. The generators are out to the rooms, and there’s a fire on the roof. They want everyone downstairs. Cherry sent me up to find you.”

Silence again.

They must have already made their way down. A wasted trip.

She’d just started back toward the stairwell when she heard the noise.

She stopped dead in her tracks, listened for it. Yes, there it was again. It sounded like crying. She pulled open the stairwell door and let it slam closed, then stepped lightly back to the two men’s rooms.

Stamper’s room was still dead quiet, but she could swear there were hushed voices coming from Florian’s.

She knocked again. “Mr. Florian? Are you in there?”

Nothing. The silence was pervasive, complete. False alarm?

She shook it off. Must have been the wind. Or, better yet, this old place was probably haunted, and she’d just been tricked by a ghost.

Not that she believed in ghosts.

Not really.

She went for the stairwell, made her way back down to the lobby. She found Cherry in the spot she’d left her.

“Nobody home. They must already be down here, and you just missed them.”

Cherry’s brow creased.

“They’re not here, Taylor. I’ve talked to everyone, they are all in the room behind the lobby’s entrance. There’s a giant wood-burning fireplace in there, and plenty of logs. They’ve opened the bar, there’s some water boiling for tea and hot chocolate. But everyone who went in passed by me, and I didn’t see them.”

“Well, that is weird. Let’s go do a lap, see if they came late.”

It took five minutes of flashing lights in strangers’ eyes to see that there was no trace of either man.

9

0230 Hours

Too close. Surely the woman won’t come back, she will assume the bastard has already vacated his room.

I remember seeing her at the cocktail party, tall, blond, aloof. Looked frigid as hell. Pretty, if you liked the ice princess type. She gave off a whiff of danger, her eyes watching every move in the room. A cop, for sure. I’ve seen too many in my day not to be able to pick them from the crowd.

Florian is whimpering again. I kick him in the ribs. “Shut up, old man. We are not finished.”

He is missing part of a finger, a play I wasn’t planning to have to employ so early in our friendly chat. But he was not taking me seriously, so I had to make a point. It was the tip of his pinky, just a quick snip of the shears, but bloody, for all that.

I flash the light in his eyes, his pupils hurriedly shrink. He moans again.

“I will take the gag out if you promise to cooperate. To tell me what I want to know.”

A nod.

“If you don’t cooperate, there will be more fingers. Then toes, and hands, followed by your feet. Tu comprends? Do you understand?”

Another nod. I swear his skin pales—perhaps I’ve finally made my point.

I remove the gag, dragging it down over his chin. He gulps for air. “They will come back. You can’t get away with this.”

“How disappointing. Crétin. Maudite vache. Do you not know who I am?”

He looks, uncomprehending. He does not know me in the darkness, in his confusion. Granted, I’m still in the brown wig from earlier, the dark contacts. A small adjustment to my nose.

I pull the wig from my head, and he gasps.

But it is not in recognition, it is in pain. He has passed out. I forget his age. He will not last the night at this rate. I must slow down.

His words penetrate. They will come back.

They will. I should move him. But where?

My finger taps against my thigh, and I hear his intake of breath. He is awake, and recognizes that small movement. Finally, he knows who he is dealing with.

“Mon dieu. Angelie. Angelie Delacroix. Is that you?”

“Oui, Thierry. C’est moi. Je suis vivant, et tu êtes mort.”

The knife slides into his ribs with ease, just above the kidneys. Not deep enough to be fatal. Not yet.

I whisper in his ear, the words harsh, metallic on my tongue. The question I’ve been waiting two and a half decades to ask.

“Why did you kill my father?”

10

0400 Hours

Unintended consequences. The fire was contained, and everyone was given the okay to go back to their rooms. But without power, the electronic key cards wouldn’t work. The generator that powered the rooms was damaged in the fire. Until the power was restored, they were stuck. The hotel staff was forced to gather everyone back in the lobby near the fireplace.

The generator to the first floor lobby ran out of fuel just after 4:00 a.m.

The depth of the snow was overwhelming. In just eight hours, there were at least four feet pushing up against the hotel’s front door, and it was still coming down. Ice crackled along the windows, the moaning wind fighting to gain entry into the hotel. Cracks sounded in the distance, tree limbs collapsing under the sudden weight.

There was talk of evacuation, but Taylor knew that was a pipe dream—what were they going to do, bring a bus in? And where would they go? The entire eastern seaboard was caught in the grip of the storm. Nothing was moving. They were stuck here.

Cherry was waiting for a maintenance man to arrive with an override master key that would allow them access to rooms 4880 and 4900. She paced the lobby, staring out into the snow. Taylor figured she knew deep down there was no help coming.

Everyone knew something was wrong, that Thierry Florian and Ellis Stamper were missing. Whether they were in their rooms, or had left the premises and weren’t able to return, no one knew. The idea of the two men caught out in that blizzard was unthinkable.

Stamper, it turned out, was also a member of the Macallan Group. He was Thierry’s assistant, though that term was a misnomer. Right-hand would be more appropriate. Bodyguard might even come into play.

Their relationship had even been speculated about once or twice, though Florian put those vulgar rumors to rest quite openly, taking a beautiful young lover who’d ended up as his wife three years earlier. Stamper had married a year later as well.

It was their habit to get two-bedroom suites at hotels, ostensibly so Stamper could watch out over his boss. But for this event, the suites were booked, and they’d been forced into adjoining rooms instead. The front desk clerk remembered their conversation clearly, and the manager had sent a fruit basket to Mr. Florian to apologize for the mix-up.

There was no way to call either wife, to ask if she’d heard from her husband. No power, no cell service, no landlines. They were an island, in the dark and cold.

Taylor was chomping at the bit to get into the rooms. She wasn’t in her jurisdiction, or she’d be ordering people around. Instead, the hotel staff was waiting for a representative from the Sheriff’s office to show up before they opened the doors.

Precious moments ticking away. Modern technology was fantastic until the world was plunged into the dark, and then the Middle Ages again reigned supreme.

Taylor watched the minutes pass on her TAG Heuer watch, catching Cherry’s eye every once in a while.

It took people who’d become accustomed to death to sense that this situation was very, very bad.

11

0500 Hours

“Angelie. You must know, I did everything in my power to stop the murder. Your father, he would not listen. We begged him to stay put in Paris, that we had him covered, but he loaded up your mother and sister and you into the caravan and drove south. He thought he could protect you better than I. He was wrong.”

“He was not wrong. He died protecting us. It was your job to keep him safe, to keep us all safe. He stole secrets for you, and you let him be gunned down. They killed my sister first, did you know that? Beatrice was six. Six, Florian—dead in my mother’s lap. Her blood dripping into my hair.”

“Is that what you’re doing, Angelie? Systematically murdering all of the people involved in your father’s case? Yes, I heard tonight about poor Gregoire Campion. I didn’t realize you were capable of such an atrocity. You cut him into pieces and stowed his body in a duffel in his bathtub. The man was your friend, Angelie. How could you do that to him?”

I laugh. “A friend? Campion was never my friend. He used me, for years. Like all of you. His death is not on my conscience, Thierry. I did simply what I must to gain the truth, at last.”

“Alors, Angelie, this is a pointless exercise. Murdering the minders will not bring your father back. It will not bring your family back. We did everything we could to protect them. In the end, the cause was simple. Your father trusted the wrong people.”

Fury crowds into my chest. This is the lie Campion spewed when he was at the end. I slap Florian’s face, hard.

“Lies. Don’t even try to justify yourself. Oncle Pierre has shared the file with me, Thierry. I know exactly what happened. I know how you sold my father out to the Iraqis. He was the only one who had the capability to help them build their bloody bombs, and you told them where he would be that day.”

His voice is soft in the darkness. “No, Angelie. That is wrong. We would never give your father to them. Never.”

Florian goes silent. Something is not right here, I can feel it. I take a lap around the dark room, trying and failing to gather my temper. The cover-up is secure; all involved have the same story. How to get the truth? What will I have to do to this master of spies to find the answers I seek?

“Angelie. You’ve served your country admirably for fifteen years. You’re one of the best assets we’ve ever had. Your future is bright. Why are you doing this? Why now, after all these years?”

I pull the crumbled paper from my purse. So many lives, so many sacrifices, all to procure this single sheet of paper.

I put it in front of his face, play a flashlight over the words.

He reads, then chews on his lip before he calmly sits back on the floor.

“Don’t do this,” he says, and there is no pleading in his voice, not like the others, who begged for their lives. Florian won’t beg. He will find a way to go down swinging. He taught me that, at least.

I can’t keep the tears from my voice. “I know, Thierry. I know it all.”

12

0600 Hours

The skies outside were dark gray. No power yet, but it wasn’t the dead-of-night blackness from earlier. The mood in the room lightened, especially when the staff began handing out apples and bananas and granola bars, and stoked up the fire. If they just had some marshmallows, this would be more like a damn camping trip.

Taylor looked at her watch for the millionth time. “It’s nearly six, Cherry. There’s no more time to waste. It’s been too long.”

Cherry had dark circles below her eyes. She was clearly exhausted. But she came to life at Taylor’s words, almost in relief. “I agree. I’m worried sick. Let’s get the manager on duty, find out what the hell is happening.”

At her wave, the hotel’s manager on duty, a burly man named Fred, approached.

“Ma’am? Bad news. Our mechanic isn’t going to make it. The Sheriff’s office is responding to a huge wreck—buncha cars on the highway crashed, they can’t spare anyone for at least an hour. We’re stuck, I’m afraid.”

“Fred, I’m sorry, but we need in those rooms. The Freedom Conference will pay for the damages we’re about to incur.”

“What?”

Taylor chimed in. “Can you let us into your maintenance room? We’re going to need some tools. A wrench and a screwdriver, for starters. A crowbar, if you have it.”

Fred’s brown creased. “Um, ma’am, just what are you planning to do?”

Taylor smiled. “Easy. Bust the locks off the doors.”

“I can’t let you do that. Those locks cost—”

“It doesn’t matter. There could be two lives at stake in there, and we’re not going to wait any longer.”

“I gotta talk to the main hotel property managers, they’re in Denver. They own the resort. I can’t let you—”

Taylor got in his face, her voice stern. “Fred, we aren’t going to wait. We will take responsibility. I’m a cop. You place the blame squarely on my head, and I’ll cover your back. The tools, now.”

People always backed down when she used that tone. Fred grabbed a flashlight, and, without a word, headed toward the back stairs.

“I’ve got this, Cherry. I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

It took five minutes to gather the tools she thought she’d need. Fred wasn’t talking, just shined the big industrial flashlight where Taylor asked. She’d scared him enough that he was keeping his mouth shut; she assumed he probably had a record he hadn’t disclosed, something minor, and didn’t want his bosses getting wind of his issues. She met guys like him in her investigations all the time. DUIs, late on their child support, warrants for traffic violations, gambling debts. Stupid stuff that should just be handled. Instead, they furtively tried to hide their misdeeds.

“Let’s go up. I might need your muscle,” she said, and Fred sullenly shined the light on the stairs for her. When they reached the first floor lobby, he stopped cold.

“You know what? You’re on your own from here. I ain’t going up there. I’m not going to be held responsible for this.”

Of course not.

“A noble speech, Fred. Thanks for doing the right thing.”

She left him gaping after her and found Cherry warming her hands near the fireplace. “I’ve got everything. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said simply, and fell in line behind Taylor. The whispers started as they left the room.

As they climbed the stairs, the wind shrieked harder around the building, and its violent passage heightened the echoes of their footfalls in the darkened stairwell. It was even creepier than last night—Taylor sensed the storm was peaking. Hopefully, this would be the worst of it.

The fourth floor was eerily quiet. Once the stairwell door was shut, the wind’s fury was muffled a bit.

The two women walked quickly down the hall. They stopped at Stamper’s room first.

Taylor didn’t move for a moment, just breathed deeply. All the hair stood up on the back of her neck. Something was different. Something was wrong.

“Do you smell that?”

Cherry nodded. She’d been around enough destruction, enough death, to recognize the scent.

“Blood,” she whispered.

Taylor nodded. This wasn’t going to end well, she could just feel it.

She took the crowbar to the door, not caring about the damage she was inflicting. With a great wrenching groan, the lock pulled free of the door. The metal warped, and Taylor used the screwdriver to wedge the tongue out of the bolt. It still didn’t free, so she gave it a strong kick, and the door latch popped free.

She drew her weapon, took a flashlight from Cherry, and cross-armed the light under her shooting hand, the outside corners of each wrist meeting in a kiss.

The room was dark, the curtains pulled closed. Taylor swung the light around the room until she saw the body. The coppery tang of blood, a scent Taylor was much too familiar with, grew stronger the nearer she got to the bed.

Their worst fears, confirmed.

Cherry gasped aloud when she saw the neat hole in Ellis Stamper’s forehead. The greatest damage was to the back of his skull, which had a massive hole in it where the bullet exited.

“Jesus. He’s been executed.”

Taylor said nothing, just moved the flashlight around the room, taking in the scene. He was naked on the bed, the sheets twisted. Underlying the blood was the scent of musk. Taylor approached the body, shined her flashlight up and down the length of him. There was a spent condom in the trashcan next to the bed.

“He had company.”

Cherry joined her. “Conference sex. Happens all the time. We should make sure this doesn’t get back to his wife.” She reached for the condom; Taylor stopped her.

“What are you doing? We don’t touch anything. If you persist I’ll escort you from the room. Do you understand?”

Cherry gave Taylor a sad little smile. “I was COS for twenty years. My first responsibility is to my people.”

“Not to the law, not to justice? You’re willing to cover this up? Whoever he screwed most likely killed him.”

“This will ruin him. His family, his honor—”

“Cherry, the man’s dead. I daresay he’s already ruined. Let’s worry about soothing hurt feelings if the time comes. There’s DNA on that condom, a piece of the puzzle we can’t pretend doesn’t exist. Get it?”

“Cops. Always afraid to do the right thing.” There was a note of exasperated humor in Cherry’s voice, which was a good thing, but Taylor gave her a baleful eye anyway, and she moved away from the bed.

The flashlight pummeled the darkness once more, and Taylor spied the connecting door to the next room. She thought about the room set up, realized it went to 4900.

“Cherry, look. This goes into Florian’s room. Easier to get through this than tearing the electronic lock off the other door.”

“I agree. But Taylor, be careful.”

“Careful is my middle name.”

Taylor eased the door open with her shoulder; it wasn’t locked, or fully closed. Unlocked she could understand; if Stamper was Florian’s bodyguard, he would need access to the room. And if the rumors were true, and they were lovers? That logic was sound; the used condom spoke volumes. Could Florian have shot his lover in a fit of rage, then left the hotel?

On the surface, that felt plausible, though not exactly right. Taylor hadn’t gotten the violent vibe from Florian; he seemed more like an earnest schoolteacher than a bully.

She shone the flashlight closer on the lock. There were scratches, like an impatient thief had jimmied it open. So much for that theory.

She took a deep breath and called his name quietly.

“Mr. Florian?”

Silence.

“Shine the light around, Taylor.”

She did, and wasn’t surprised to find the room empty.

13

0615 Hours

Florian has fainted, again. Before he succumbed to the pain, he was talking, but not saying the things I needed to hear. There are answers here, I know it. My father was not a traitor. My family did not have to die.

Many years of espionage has taught me well; eventually, everyone breaks. Watching Florian bleed and cry and lie isn’t enough. I will speed up the process.

I go to the bathroom, gather a handful of water from the sink. The stream sputters and runs out as I watch. The room is cold; my hands are clumsy in the dark. Without the power, this is more difficult than I planned. The leads tied to Florian’s chest and testicles will not work without electricity, and the fear of pain will not suffice. There has to be actual stimulus to coerce statements. Which means I’m back to the knife.

I splash the meager handful of water in his face, but it is enough. He sputters and his eyes open. I stand with my arms crossed, waiting for him to again register who I am, and why we are here.

“Angelie,” he moans.

I drop to my knees, cajoling now, friendly.

“Talk to me, Thierry. Tell me what I need to know.”

I wrap his wounds, binding them against the bleeding. It will feel better that way. He head lolls against me. I smell his fear. The infamous Thierry Florian, helpless and scared.

“That is all I have, Angelie. I know nothing else.”

Kneeling back on my heels, I watch him. The letter tells me he is still lying.

“Thierry, they’ll come for you soon. You must tell me the rest. Tell me, and this pain will stop.” I tug on a lead attached between his legs, and he gulps a breath. His head bobs side to side, a metronome of hurt.

He whispers, “I would tell you you’re wrong, but you will not believe me. “

“No, I won’t believe anything less than the truth. You’ve been lying to me this entire time. For fifteen years, you’ve looked me in the face, knowing you killed my father. How could you? I thought you were my friend. I thought you were my father’s friend.”

He sighs, a great, dragging breath. “Dear Angelie, I am not lying. Your father panicked. We had a safe house prepared, guards to keep him safe, but someone got to him. Convinced him he was being double-crossed. Angelie, I do not know who this person was.”

“Whoever it was, he told the truth. You double-crossed my father. You left him out in the cold to die.” I toy with the knife at the edge of his groin. A lesser man would beg, plead, promise me anything, just to get the sharp edge away from their skin. Florian merely shakes his head.

“No, no, Angelie. I would never do that to him. He was my friend, yes, but I will be honest. He was too valuable. He was the greatest asset I’d ever trained. But the others, they had no compunction about lying to him to get what they wanted. And he chose to believe their faint words of promise, rather than follow my protocols. I wanted you all in the safe house in Annecy, he chose to buy the caravan and stay in the campgrounds. There was no way to protect him, he was too exposed. He exposed you all, and panicked when they came for him.”

“More lies. This letter is dated three days before his death. He says he knew you were working for the Soviets. That you were a double agent. That’s why he didn’t trust you.” I catch my tone, a petulant child. I add a sneer. “You dishonored your vows, Thierry, and their blood is on your hands.”

14

0630 Hours

Taylor’s theory about Florian being the shooter changed when she saw the blood by the window.

“Cherry, over here.”

“Oh, no. This goes from bad to worse.”

“It does, but don’t lose hope just yet. There’s not enough blood to assume the worst, not by a long shot. This is just a thimbleful, really.” Taylor stared at the blood drops. They were drying around the edges, though the centers were still wet. Not fresh, but not old, either.

“The storm kicked into high gear at midnight. A time of death on Mr. Stamper would go a long way toward telling us whether Florian is still on site or was taken from the hotel.”

Cherry shook her head. “You’re not making me feel better. I have one man down, and one missing. Where the hell could he be?”

Taylor tucked her weapon back into its holster.

“I don’t know. Anywhere—this campus is huge. But if he’s still here, you’re missing the bigger picture.”

“The bigger picture?”

“It’s entirely possible we’re locked in this hotel with a cold-blooded murderer.”

Cherry sat down hard on Florian’s bed. “Oh, Lieutenant, trust me, I am well aware of this.”

There was something in her tone, in the self-defeated flop on the bed.

Taylor squatted on the floor in front of the woman. “You sound like a woman who needs to get a load off her chest.”

“I’ve screwed up. I didn’t protect him. It’s my fault.”

“What do you mean, you’ve screwed up? Cherry, talk to me. What’s really going on here?”

“You know who Thierry Florian is, I suspect?”

“He’s worked with my fiancé, but I don’t know him. I just met him tonight. He told me he’s the head of the Macallan Group, and former clandestine services. The French, right, DGSE?”

“Always shy with his accomplishments, Thierry. That’s what makes him such an excellent spy. His father was a leader in the French Résistance during World War II. When the French needed information about the Germans, François Florian would put himself in the worst possible situations, get arrested, then find ways to keep himself alive while he gathered information. When he had what he needed, he would escape and bring the information back to the resistance.”

“An impressive man.”

“Yes. Thierry was his youngest child, born well after the end of the war, but the tales his family told were intoxicating. While the rest of his siblings went into safe positions as doctors and lawyers, Thierry followed in his father’s footsteps and joined what was then known as the DGSE—the Directorate-General for External Security.”

“The French version of our CIA.”

“Correct. He had an illustrious career. When he retired, he was the equivalent of our Director of Counterintelligence. But it was an especially covert side job that put him on his current path. Before he left he worked with the Alliance Base—do you know what that is?”

“An international cooperative of intelligence agencies, right? Working against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations?”

“Yes.” She smiled, a little sadly. “Thierry has always ruffled feathers in the intelligence community with his theories. He feels cooperative intelligence is vital to deter more terrorist attacks on the Western world. But putting a bunch of spies together—well, friction was inevitable. He saw the ways the organization worked, and the ways it didn’t. He was determined to perfect the mix. Hence, The Macallan Group.”

“Why are you telling me this, Cherry? The man’s CV isn’t necessary for me to want to help.”

“Bear with me a few moments more, Taylor. Thierry has made many enemies, and he is a target. It is entirely possible we have been infiltrated by someone he pissed off back in the day, and they’re taking their chance at retribution.”

“You handpicked the conference members, though, didn’t you? Surely you wouldn’t be so careless as to let a known combatant in.”

She gave a little moan. “Spies, Taylor, we’re all spies. Everyone working at cross-purposes. It’s why I don’t work with Thierry at Macallan. I have a clearer head than he when it comes to the simple fact that for centuries, we’ve been working against each other. It’s all well and good to hope for cooperation, but ultimately, someone will want to get payback for some perceived grievance, and it all collapses.”

“So who here had a vendetta against Thierry?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cherry, think. If you truly believe the killer is a part of the conference, think!”

Cherry went quiet, then, in a small voice, said, “There’s one other person unaccounted for. Not from the conference, from our lives. I’ve known her for years. She is a friend, of sorts. Used to be a protégé of Thierry’s before she went out on her own. We’ve worked in some pretty hairy places together. She went off grid a year ago, just when Thierry formed The Macallan Group. He wanted to recruit her, came looking, but I hadn’t heard from her in several months. We put out some feelers, to see if anyone knew where she was. She was for hire, you see, a black market baby, very hush-hush.”

Taylor knew what for hire meant. “She’s an assassin.”

Cherry leapt from the bed at the word, shaking her head. “I was silly to bring it up. There’s no way she could be involved in this. She fights against evil. That’s what drives her.”

“I take it the feelers came up empty?”

“Yes. Nothing. She’s gone gray.”

“Gray?”

“Blending in. Hiding in plain sight. She’s most likely setting up for a major job.”

Taylor’s voice rose. “A major job? Come on Cherry, talk to me. What kind of major job would this woman have to disappear for a year to prepare for?”

Cherry just shook her head. “I don’t know. Before she left, she’d been . . . reckless. Taking on jobs that were out of character.”

A sense of foreboding crept into Taylor’s stomach. International assassins on the loose made her very uncomfortable—she’d come face to face with one herself a year earlier and hadn’t enjoyed it a lick. A different tact was necessary; she could see Cherry was shutting down.

“Tell me this. Something about this set-up makes you think of this woman. What is it?”

Cherry pursed her lips. “Thierry alluded once, only once, that there was history between them. She still worked for DGSE then, was being groomed to move up the ladder. Something set her off and she went freelance, and I’ve never known what it was. But Thierry did. He must have. That’s what he meant when he told me she’d become a black widow.”

Ah. Interesting. “She’d get physically close to her prey, then kill them.”

“Exactly. And she’s one of the best at what she does. She’s a legend, Taylor.”

A legendary assassin. A wicked snowstorm. No power. One dead, one missing. This was just getting better and better.

“I take it the scene in Stamper’s room looks familiar?”

“Very.”

Taylor took the flashlight, went to the door, unlocked the bolt. Opened it into the dark hallway, then shined the light back into the room. There was no more time to lose.

“I need a name, Cherry.”

The harsh light caught Cherry’s face. She looked frightened and old, defeated, a pale specter in the darkness. She sat back down on the bed as if exhausted.

“She goes by many names, Taylor. But I believe her given name is Angelie Delacroix.”

“That’s a start. Let’s go. We need to—”

Cherry shook her head, clearly the truth of the matter was finally sinking in. “No, Lieutenant, we have a bigger problem.”

“Worse than one dead and one missing? Seriously?”

“Angelie’s uncle is active MI-6. And he’s downstairs.”

15

0640 Hours

I sit down on the floor near Florian. “Oncle Pierre told me the whole story last year. You were on the scene. You were the one who saved me, who took me to the hospital. But first you smashed me on the head so I wouldn’t recognize you. Why did you kill my father, Thierry? My family? Why would you kill them and save me? Pourquoi? Pourquoi?”

I am shouting, losing control. I resist the urge to hit him again.

“Angelie. Angelie, it wasn’t me. You have the story wrong.”

I am beginning to believe Thierry Florian may be telling the truth. He is a proud man, one I’ve watched interrogate a hundred men. He is brave. And as he sits here bleeding, exposed, I must believe I know him well enough to recognize when he is telling the truth.

“Then what is the story, Thierry?”

“Don’t make me tell you. Please.”

This last word is spoken as softly as a lover’s kiss. Finally, after hours of pain and fury, the great man is begging.

I tuck the muzzle of my Sig Sauer against his chin, and I raise his head so he is forced to meet my eyes.

“Tell me, and I will end your suffering.”

He leans into the gun, his voice the harshest I’ve ever heard. “Kill me, and you will never get justice.”

I stand and whirl away. Florian breathes out a sigh.

“You will not stop, will you? Ah, Angelie. I trained you well.”

I run back to him, wrench his head back. Spit the words. “The truth, now. I am sick of playing this game.”

“Pierre,” he says, speaking out loud a terrible reality I’ve never fathomed. “It was Pierre. Your uncle killed your father.”

Nausea overwhelms me. I drop my hand. “You’re lying.”

Florian shakes his head. He is disheveled, bloody, has absolutely nothing left to lose.

“I have never lied to you, Angelie. I have protected you, all along. I did not want you to suffer the pain of this knowledge. Indeed, I sheltered you from it since you were a child. Yes, it was I who rescued you. I got wind of your uncle’s plan the day before the attack, though at the time I did not know he was behind it. I was in Germany. I drove all night to reach you, to take you all to safety.

“Your father ignored our attempts to get him into the safe house in Annecy. He was fleeing back to Paris on Pierre’s orders. He believed Pierre was trying to help. He listened to him, and drove directly into the trap.”

I stagger against the wall, tripping on something in the darkness. A pain I have not felt in twenty-five years rises in me, tears through my body, my brain, leaving me breathless.

“This cannot be the truth.”

“It is the truth. I arrived on the scene moments after the shooting. Gregoire Campion was riding his bicycle down from the safe house, he met me on the westbound street. We were too late to save them, Angelie, too late by five minutes. But you were still alive, clinging to your mother’s skirts, covered in your parents’ blood. I couldn’t leave you there, and I could not let you see our faces. I did the only thing I could, which was rescue you and get you to a hospital. And I spent the next twenty years trying to determine what happened that day.”

I try to digest this information.

“Why did you not tell me the moment you determined Pierre was behind the execution?”

“Ah. Angelie. And cause you that much more pain? Your uncle raised you, taught you well. He knew where your heart lay, knew you would try to avenge your parents some day. He is the reason you were hired into the DGSE. Gregoire Campion was worried about you from the first because he suspected Pierre’s involvement, kept an eye on you, eased your path in the service. And you killed him. The man who watched over you, dead by your hand. Angelie, you disgrace yourself.”

Campion, on the side of the angels?

I harden myself against Florian’s words. “Pierre told me Campion was the one who let my parents’ path slip, that he told the Iraqis where my father was going to be that day.”

“That was Pierre, mon cherie. Pierre was receiving money, so much money, that he was willing to sacrifice his brother and his family. He has lied to you, Angelie, about many things. I am not a double agent. And I did not kill your father.”

There is great finality to his words. I know he is telling the truth.

I slide down the wall, the pistol dangling between my legs.

Mon dieu. What have I done?

16

0645 Hours

Taylor hustled down the four flights of stairs, Cherry on her heels. The minute they reached the bottom floor, Taylor asked, “What does he look like?”

“Mid-sixties, silver hair, six feet or so. He was wearing a blue suit last night, no tie, but I don’t remember what he was wearing this morning. It was dark, and I was too concerned for Thierry and Ellis.”

They burst into the lobby, raced to the room where everyone was staged. The room was still shrouded in darkness, and there was no more time to waste.

“Stay here. I’ll find him.”

“But you don’t know what he looks like.”

Taylor flashed the light on the ceiling a few times, creating a strobe effect that caught people’s attention.

“Pierre Matthews. Are you in here?” she called.

Murmurs from the crowd, then one man stood, Taylor could see the outline of his bulk against the window.

“I’m here. Whatever is the matter?”

Taylor crossed the room, weaving between people, and took him by the arm. “Come with me, please, sir. There’s a problem. We need your help.”

The lobby was filled with natural light, the darkness finally easing in the early morning sun. The snow, she noticed, had stopped. Taylor turned off the flashlight, tucked it into her back pocket.

“What is this about?” Matthews asked.

“Sir, I’m Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, and you know Cherry Gregg. We have reason to believe you may be in danger. Would you please come with us?”

Matthews was nonplussed, but nodded. Taylor took the lead, Cherry flanked. They got him across into the bar, and Taylor got him into a corner where she felt he would be safest.

“You two have been scurrying in and out all night. What’s happened? Where are Thierry and Ellis?”

Cherry spoke plainly. “Ellis is dead, and Thierry is missing.”

“Bloody hell. Are you sure?”

“Do you know a woman named Angelie Delacroix?” Taylor asked.

Matthews sucked in a breath, and Taylor raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She saw him debating with the answer. Finally, he replied, “She’s my niece. Why are you asking about her? Is she all right?”

Cherry grabbed the man’s forearm. “Pierre, she killed Ellis. She’s taken Thierry.”

Pierre froze. “Angelie is here? Are you sure?”

“Yes. She knows.”

Taylor gave Cherry a sharp look. “She knows what?”

Cherry and Pierre were locked in a staring contest, no words needed. Taylor recognized there was a bigger issue, something major they were keeping from her.

“Tell me right now what’s happening, or I’m out. I’ll go warm my hands by the fire and let Fred shoot me dirty looks.”

Cherry nodded to Pierre. “You tell her.”

“Ah, bugger me.” He rubbed his hands over his face, the whiskers on his chin rasping loudly against his palm. “Angelie started acting up about two years ago. She didn’t like the politics within the DGSE anymore, didn’t want to play by the rules. We were all working together at the time, on the Allied project. The greater good. CIA, MI-6, DGSE, Freedom Forum, Futures Working Group—hell, even Pakistan’s ISI was along for the ride. In the middle of the fuck-up in Benghazi, she got a bug up her bum about some old case, took off for parts unknown. All we’ve heard from her since has been at the end of a gun—she’s left a trail of bodies all over Europe, the last one found just two days ago in London.”

“Gone rogue?” Taylor couldn’t help the skepticism that slipped into her tone.

“That’s right. You must understand, Lieutenant, Angelie is marked by tragedy. Her parents were killed in an ambush outside Annecy, France, twenty-five years ago. She was the only survivor, and she spent her whole life searching for the killers.”

Taylor heard the past tense. “Spent her whole life? She’s found her parents’ murderers?”

He cut his eyes at Cherry, who nodded imperceptibly. “She found him at last. Gregoire Campion, her latest victim, the body from two days ago. She found a letter with the details. He sold out her parents, my own brother, and for what? Money? Security? Who can know the true heart of a man like that, Lieutenant? I am sure his death assuaged many of Angelie’s troubles.”

Taylor processed that for a moment. “If she found the man who did it, then why would she come here and kill Ellis Stamper? Why kidnap Thierry Florian?”

“Stamper was most likely collateral damage. Florian worked with Campion back then. He was the DGSE equivalent of a station chief in Geneva, Switzerland, just north of Annecy. She must think he was a part of the plot.”

“Was he?” Taylor asked, trying to reconcile this information against her brief meeting with Florian and Cherry’s praise-filled backgrounder. He didn’t seem capable of that level of treachery. Taylor prided herself on being able to read people; she hadn’t caught a whiff of evil from Florian.

“I don’t know. He denied it, said he was there trying to protect them, but I never got the whole story. My brother’s death was a terrible time for us all. I took Angelie in, raised her as my own daughter. She had a massive memory block on what happened that day—after the head injury, it was all gone. She took a hard blow, probably pistol-whipped. It was a miracle that she survived. Florian had his eye on her from the very beginning. You know what they say: keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.”

Taylor didn’t like Pierre Matthews. He was slick; the answers were too pat, too prepared, and something in her gut told her he was lying. Granted, a situation like this, about family, so personal, there was no reason to tell her the whole truth. Yes, he was lying. She’d bet her life on it. About what, she didn’t know, and that made him very dangerous to her in this situation. And she realized Cherry knew more than she was letting on, too.

“Are you armed, Pierre?”

“My weapon is in my room. Why?”

Thank God for small favors.

“Well, your friend, or your enemy, is missing, and Cherry believes it’s likely your niece is prowling around this hotel with her own loaded weapon. We need to figure out where Thierry Florian is, and take your niece into custody while we assess what happened last night.”

Cherry came back to life, finally. “Without lights for those dark hallways, or the ability to open multiple doors without tearing this place apart, how do we search?”

Taylor shrugged. “We need to find a way to get the lights turned on.”

17

0650 Hours

I unbind Florian’s ties, my fingers working quickly. It would have been so easy to simply kick his chair, let him fall into the pool. He would have been gone, his storied life a sudden footnote, the weight of the chair keeping him under.

There will be no more deaths, save one.

Florian stands cautiously, rubbing his wrists.

“Clothes?”

I gesture to the right, by the hot tub, where his clothes are folded in a neat pile. He says nothing, simply turns his back on me and dresses. I walk slowly, carefully, around the edges of the pool. It would be so easy to fling myself into the dark water. It is salt water; I can smell the brine. Like floating in an ocean, sinking deep beneath the waves. My parents used to take us to the sea, to Le Lavendou, and we’d stay at the Beau Rivage and prune ourselves in the azure water from sunup to sundown.

I did not know these holidays were paid for by secrets. Blueprints and plans for rapidly-developed forms of kinetic energy, stolen by my father from his employer, and sold to the Iraqis. Or the Russians. Syrians and Pakistanis. Whoever was paying at that particular moment.

My father was a mole. An asset. Turned for the DGSE’s use, a puppet on a string, only useful while he could help in the race to nuclear proliferation supremacy.

And me? I became the very person my father hated. The nameless, faceless people he put his trust in, the mechanics of his dead drops and microfiche holders and tradecraft.

I could not help it. Mon oncle, he showed me how valuable this work was. How I could change the world, one turned asset at a time.

If my father lived, would that have changed? Would I have been so heavily recruited? So well-trained? Honed into a weapon of immeasurable worth?

I think not.

Florian is watching me. “Angelie. You must leave.”

My toe yanks back from the water. I stare into Florian’s eyes, unable to see clearly for the lack of light.

“Go. I will handle this situation. Get away from this place.”

“Why would you have me save myself, Thierry Florian? Why should I not turn myself in? Suffer the consequences of my actions? I have killed this night. Taken your friend from you. You should want my head.”

He smiles, the tiniest lift of the corners of his mouth. And I know what he will say next.

“What a curious turn of phrase. Oui, cherie, I very much want your head. And I shall have it. You work for me now, Angelie. Again. Again and forever. Now, go.”

I am defeated. For a moment I think to kill him anyway. Then I can be free. But I listen.

I stash the gun in my waistband, gather my tools, and without a word, head for the door. There is a storm. I know this; I see the piles of snow against the door. How I will get away isn’t clear. I had no plans for escape. This was intended to be my last hurrah. A suicide mission. But now that I know the truth? As they say, the show must go on.

The hallways are still dark and quiet. The blueprint of the hotel plays through my head. I need to turn left at the gym, it will lead me to the basement, which has an exit onto a back expanse of land. There is a shelter one hundred yards from the hotel, a place I can regroup until I can reach my exit.

A voice from the other side of the pool. “Hey. Hey, stop!”

My weapon is pointed at the voice before I can form a coherent thought.

18

0700 Hours

A fuel truck, riding slowly behind a snowplow, arrived at seven in the morning to everyone’s cheers. The fuel was pumped into the basement generators, the lights flickered to life, and a semblance of normality restored. People scattered back to their rooms to get some sleep and check in with loved ones.

Taylor was glad of it; now they could do a proper search, and run a crime scene unit through Stamper and Florian’s rooms.

Cherry and Pierre had been huddled together in a corner of the bar for the past fifteen minutes, backs to the wall, eyes darting to the entrance every few moments, and Taylor wondered what sort of story they were concocting. Self-preservation, preparation, a cover-up, she didn’t know, only that they were both acting like Angelie Delacroix was going to burst through the wall yelling yippie ki-yay and shoot up the place.

Taylor left them alone, paced the bar. Florian’s disappearance was gnawing at her. She wanted to strike off and look for him, but knew how foolish that was, especially if the über-assassin was still on site. They needed manpower, backup, K9 units, the works. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, the Calvert County Sheriff, a decent-looking man named Evans, arrived, summoned by the report of a murder.

Taylor and Cherry explained the situation. To his credit, he took down their stories with a raised eyebrow and only a few head shakes. He went upstairs, came down with a grim expression, asked Taylor several probing questions, then said, “Lieutenant, glad you were here. Situation might have gotten further out of control. There are more people coming, State Police, FBI, K9. Storm’s holding everyone up. We’re going to need you to give your official statement, so get comfy.”

“Can’t I help? I don’t want to sit around doing nothing.”

“It’s going to take more than two of us to search this place.” He smiled, kindly enough. “You’ve done your part. Why don’t you head to your room and get some rest? I’d lock my door, though my guess is Florian and this Delacroix woman are long gone. Timing wise, the streets were still passable until after midnight. The hotel lobby’s videotape wasn’t recording, so that’s useless. Just need to bring in the troops and get this place searched and processed. You know how it goes.”

Taylor did, and knew her role in the situation was finished. With the jurisdictional cops on scene, she was relegated back to conference attendee and witness. Which was weird.

But Evans had a point. A little sleep wouldn’t go amiss.

She interrupted another confab between Pierre and Cherry.

“Cherry, I’m going to go up to my room. Call me if they find Florian, okay?”

19

0730 Hours

Taylor had to detour to her room—though the power was back on, the elevators were still off-limits. She pulled a site map off the concierge desk and glanced at it. The back staircase would be closer to her room. She took the hallway toward the gym, the scent leading her toward the pool and the hot tub. Ah, a hot bath in that giant tub upstairs would be lovely, though she doubted the water heaters were going to get suitable power from the generators to pump water hot enough for her taste.

She pushed through the pool doors and immediately knew something was wrong. Instinct, coupled with the chair at the edge of the pool, ropes coiled neatly by its legs. She drew her weapon and went into a defensive stance. The glass windows in the place were wavy, giving weak light that shimmered against the pool water. She went slowly, searching, until she saw the open door to the lifeguard office. And inside was Thierry Florian, eyes closed, leaning back on a longue chair. Blood soaked his shirt, and he was pale as a ghost. Asleep, or dead?

She rushed to him, put her fingers against his carotid. A steady beat, and her breath whooshed out. He started, eyes opening. “Angelie, I told you—”

He cut himself off when he saw Taylor.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Florian, please. Ellis Stamper is dead. You’ve obviously been tortured. I know all about Angelie Delacroix. Cherry and Pierre Matthews filled me in. Where is she?”

He licked his lips, which were cracked and bloody. “Gone,” he whispered.

She helped him sit up.

“Why aren’t you dead? It looks like she gave you quite a working over.”

He smiled, though the action obviously caused him pain. “You are blunt, aren’t you, Lieutenant? Angelie didn’t want me dead. She just wanted information.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe that is the whole story. The Sheriff is here, and there’s about to be a whole wad of law enforcement on his tail. Is she still here, Thierry? Tell me the truth.”

“She left ten minutes ago. You won’t catch her.”

Taylor met his eyes. “Watch me.”

20

0735 Hours

Taylor called Cherry, told her to share what was happening with the Sheriff, and to send backup immediately. She shoved her cell phone in her pocket and press checked her Glock. It was habit, a cop’s unconscious movement.

Florian tried to stop her. “You’re wasting your time.”

He tried to rise, but the blood loss had taken its toll.

“You stay here and guard the pool. When the Sheriff’s people come, show them the way.”

“On your head be it,” Florian said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Taylor gave him a smile and started off.

One thing Taylor had gathered about Angelie Delacroix, there would be signs of her passage. Morbid signs. Since Taylor hadn’t seen any on her way in, she exited opposite the door she’d originally come through, toward the north end of the pool, right out into the hallway that led to the back entrance of the hotel. The light was startling here, she had to blink to adjust.

She took in the whiteness outside, knew there was no way anyone could get out of there without leaving a mess.

It didn’t take long to find the trail. Footprints led toward a small outbuilding about fifty yards away. Backup was moments behind, so Taylor stepped out into the freezing cold.

Her hands went numb almost immediately, but she kept the weapon up and ready. The going was slow, the snow drifting to her waist in places. The chill wind was rising again, Taylor recognized the feeling. This was a temporary reprieve; there was more snow on the way.

Her feet were snug in her boots, but snow was sliding down the calf and into the leather. A fine shiver started, and with it, her common sense.

You’re an idiot, Taylor. Go back inside and let the locals freeze their asses off.

She could hear them now, closing in. She started edging backwards. As she turned, there was a woman, standing in her path.

Taylor froze. The woman was small—Taylor had a good six inches on her—but her weapon was pointed right at Taylor’s head.

“And who might you be?” the woman asked, her accent clearly French.

“Police. Put the gun down, Angelie. You can’t rack up any more bodies today, you’re already going away for a very long time.”

The woman cocked her head to the side. The gun didn’t waver.

“I think you are the one who needs to disarm yourself, Lieutenant Jackson. Yes, I know your name. It’s next to that smiling photograph on the program in Thierry’s room. A profiler, are you?”

“Homicide. You’re under arrest. Put the damn gun down, now.”

“I think not,” Angelie said, then before Taylor could blink, she took off, through the snow, toward a stone wall that barely peeked out under its white blanket.

“Shit!”

Taylor took off after her, amazed at Angelie’s prowess in the snow. Taylor was too tall, too ungainly, to make quick progress. There was only one thing to do.

Taylor stopped and fired, and the bullet found its target. Angelie spun to the side, and Taylor heard her cry out.

“Drop the weapon, Angelie, and I won’t do that again.”

Shouts rang out from the building to her left, the Sheriff’s deputies were coming. Angelie heard them as well, didn’t hesitate. She fired off several rounds, spraying them wildly behind her, forcing Taylor face down in the snow.

Taylor rolled to her right, flipped over and up onto her knees and aimed again.

Angelie’s left arm was dragging by her side, but she kept running, a dead sprint through the heavy snow. She reached the stone wall before Taylor could get off a second round, and disappeared behind it.

It took Taylor a full minute to scramble to her feet and reach the spot.

“She’s here,” she called to the deputies, who were wading through the snow well behind her.

Carefully, slowly, weapon first, Taylor looked over the edge of the wall. Beyond it was a steep slope. It was terraced, a vineyard in the summertime, staggered levels that ran down the hill, demarcated by stone barriers. One section dropped off into the beach below. Taylor figured it must be a forty-foot drop.

Angelie Delacroix was crouched against the stone barrier above the beach, back to the ocean, watching Taylor. She was trapped, and bleeding. Their eyes met.

Taylor edged closer. Take the shot, Taylor, take the shot. You can end this, right here.

She took a breath to steady her hands, shaking in the cold. Her finger rested on the trigger. Just a fraction of movement, and the bullet would take Angelie Delacroix in the forehead.

And in that moment, Angelie raised her weapon toward Taylor in a sort of salute and smiled, crooked, knowing, then jumped off the ledge, toward the sea.

Taylor gritted her teeth and scrambled over the wall. Damn it. Damn it all. She’d had a clear shot. She shouldn’t have hesitated. But she recognized something in the woman’s eyes. Something dark, and unimaginable to those who hadn’t been faced with taking a life. And Taylor had chosen that route, too many times.

The first bullet had hit Angelie in the shoulder. Taylor had shot to maim, not kill. She made a choice, right or wrong, and now her prey was gone.

She pointed the weapon at the barrier, just where the woman had disappeared. Listened, but heard nothing.

“Police!” she shouted. “Show me your hands.”

Silence. The waves crashed below, a seagull cried. Silence amplified by the dizzying expanse of white before her, her voice echoed slightly. To her right, disturbed by the deputies making their way closer, a bird took wing, startled by the noise, sent her heart right to her throat.

Taylor ducked her head, took a deep breath in through her nose, and leading with her Glock, looked over the edge. She was prepared for what she found.

Nothing.

There was no sign of Angelie Delacroix.

All that was left of her was a spattering of blood drops on the snow, like a shower of rubies dashed onto white velvet.

When Taylor had hesitated, that split second when she decided she couldn’t kill, not again, something like realization had dawned in Angelie’s eyes. She had recognized that Taylor would not fire again.

That knowing smile would haunt Taylor’s dreams.

A choice. Right or wrong, Taylor had let her get away.

She slumped against the stone. The deputies finally reached her, Sheriff Evans at their head.

“Where is she, where is she?”

“She jumped.”

Evans looked slightly relieved, holstered his weapon.

“Then she’s dead. That’s a fifty-foot fall. We’ll find her body on the beach.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, and he looked at her queerly.

“Of course we will. What the hell were you doing, out here chasing her down alone? I thought I told you to stand down.”

Taylor turned to face him, the wind whipping her hair around her face.

“I was doing my job.”

And the sun broke through the clouds.

Epilogue

January 15, 2014

London, England

0300 Hours

I stand over his bed. He sleeps with one arm tossed over his head. I recognize the position; my father, his brother, also slept in this way—careless, with abandon.

He is quiet. No snoring, just deep, rhythmic breaths.

I want him to see. I want him to know. I rub my shoulder, warding off the pain from the ghost of a bullet that lodged against my scapula, courtesy of the blonde ice queen. I’ll never forget, and she knew that would be the case. But I will leave her alone. I have learned a hard truth in the past few months.

Not all scores are meant to be settled.

But some . . . some beg for closure.

I slide his covers down with the end of my weapon, and lean close, so I can whisper in his ear.

“Oncle Pierre. Time to wake up.”

Author’s Note

I’ve always looked at short stories as a way to have a bit of fun with my writing. In my day job, I write psychological thrillers. I’d written three novels before I ever tried my hand at short fiction. But when I did, I discovered an entirely new world.

I spent a great deal of time telling my peers I couldn’t write short stories. They kept pushing me, and pushing me, until I finally gave it a shot.

That story was “Prodigal Me.” I submitted it to Writer’s Digest and promptly forgot about it. You can imagine my surprise when I received an email from Chuck Sambuchino saying I’d won an honorable mention in their annual short fiction contest.

Perhaps I could write shorts after all.

Soon after, I attended my first writer’s conference, where I met a fabulous writer named Duane Swierczynski. I asked Duane about some short fiction markets, and he suggested I send a story to his friend Bryon Quertermous, who ran an e-zine called Demolition. I quickly wrote another story and submitted it. Bryon loved everything but the title, which we agreed to change to “X.” It was my first published piece.

My love of the short form grew from there. I began placing stories, writing for anthologies, the works. I grew to love the freedom and limitations of the form, and I still use it as a playground of sorts, a way to stretch my wings and explore genres I wouldn’t normally write in.

My short stories are little slices, vignettes. Crimes of the heart, the mind and the soul. The bits and pieces that fell from my mind while I was writing long-form novels, the ideas that didn’t have a place in my current work. Some are quite short, others bloomed into novellas.

With the advent of independent publishing, I decided to start my own house, Two Tales Press, in order to share these sweet little lies with you. I do hope you’ll enjoy them.

—J.T. Ellison

Nashville, 2015

Also by J.T. Ellison

NO ONE KNOWS – a standalone thriller

Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Series

FIELD OF GRAVES (6.14.16)

WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE

SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH

THE IMMORTALS

THE COLD ROOM

JUDAS KISS

14

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS

Taylor Jackson Digital Box Sets

5 – 7: THE IMMORTALS, SO CLOSE TO THE HAND OF DEATH, WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE

1 – 4: ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, 14, JUDAS KISS, THE COLD ROOM

Taylor Jackson novellas

(in anthologies with Erica Spindler and Alex Kava)

STORM SEASON (“Whiteout”)

SLICES OF NIGHT (“Blood Sugar Baby”)

Dr. Samantha Owens Series

WHAT LIES BEHIND

WHEN SHADOWS FALL

EDGE OF BLACK

A DEEPER DARKNESS

A Brit in the FBI Series co-written with Catherine Coulter

THE END GAME

THE LOST KEY

THE FINAL CUT

Short Stories

“Blood Sugar Baby” (a Taylor Jackson novella)

“Chimera”

“Gray Lady, Lady Gray”

“Killing Carol Ann”

“The Number of Man”

“The Omen Days”

“Prodigal Me”

“X”

“Where’d You Get That Red Dress?”

“Whiteout” (a Taylor Jackson novella)

Short Story Bundles

2 NOVELLAS FROM THE TAYLOR JACKSON SERIES

MAD LOVE: 3 CRIMES OF PASSION

THREE TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison writes dark psychological thrillers starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens, and pens the Nicholas Drummond series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. Cohost of the premier literary television show, A Word on Words, Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.

- @Thrillerchick

- JTEllison14

www.jtellison.com

Whiteout

©2015 by J.T. Ellison

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

For more stories by J.T. Ellison, visit TwoTalesPress.com.

Bonus Material I

J.T. Ellison speaks!

on writing, crime fiction, and her hero complex

An Interview with J.T. Ellison

Nashville Examiner’s Paige Crutcher

January 21, 2011

A great thriller is equal parts suspense and mystery. Author J.T. Ellison’s stories go one step further, adding a tether of romance and using the keys to swirl imagery to life. Her Taylor Jackson series has traveled through varying realms of evolution. Consistently spellbinding, there is no pause or upset, no hint of the series growing stagnant or stale. Each novel stands on its own and draws in readers with the artful flick of the turning page.

Ellison is able to expand and reinvent Taylor while comfortably courting the edge, repeatedly bringing her audience a variety of psychological and well-trained killers, and effortlessly walking them through the chambers of a true villain’s mind.

Authentic and haunting, Ellison brings to life stories that scare the things that go bump in the night, while hooking readers for more. She shares her passion for storytelling, how important originality is in the voice of a story and who inspires her.

PC: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

JTE: The first female firefighter in Denver. Someone else beat me to it. I was crushed. Crushed. When that dream was taken away, I learned to never, ever plan for the future. I made my first five-year plan last year.

PC: Writing is a serious, occasionally exhausting, business. Did you know what you were getting into when you set out to become an author?

JTE: No. Though I’ve written my whole life, I never thought of writing for actual publication. But things changed when I finished my first novel. I showed it to a couple of people who suggested I try to get an agent and an editor. I got very lucky, very quickly. My second full-length novel was the one that sold. They asked for three books, and suddenly, I had a series on my hands. I never in a million years dreamed it would go as far as it has. Which makes each book ten times harder than the previous. It’s geometric, like an earthquake. Writing for readers is very different than writing for yourself. And maintaining a series over numerous books, plus doing it at a two-book-a-year pace, is a challenge. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It may be hard, but everything that’s worth having in this life is hard. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t want it so much, right?

PC: Your Taylor Jackson series is a delicious, nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat ride. Is it any different for the creator—do you ever scare yourself, or is writing an easy, laid-back process?

JTE: You are too kind. I totally scare myself. All the time. But I figure if it scares me, it will scare the reader. I’m very, very careful to make sure there isn’t anything gratuitous in my work. But when I look at what people are capable of, how they hurt one another, I can’t help myself. I want to find out why. I want to dig into their minds. And doing that leads me to some very frightening places. The irony is, I hate to be scared. Hate it. I won’t watch scary movies or read scary books. The last horror novel I read was Peter Straub’s GHOST STORY, and that was when I was 10. I knew then and there I could never read another book like that again.

PC: Who inspired Taylor? Is she a little J.T., or mostly imaginary?

JTE: Taylor was definitely a figment of my imagination. She embodies my own hero complex. She’s everything I would be if I was full of valor. Courage and honor, that’s my girl. Well, I have the honor part, but the valor? Not so much. She and I share biographical details, simply because that was easier, but we part ways when it comes to the hero stuff. I see her as Athena, the warrior goddess of Nashville. She’s a female Lucas Davenport, half cop, half rock star.

PC: How much research goes into your novels? Do you write about what you know, or are you constantly learning?

JTE: I’m constantly learning. Research is incredibly fun for me. I can lose myself in the most incredible minutiae; spend hours, weeks on learning; read ten books on the subject, but when it comes to the actual writing, only one line will pertain to the story. I have to be careful not to info dump, but to weave the knowledge into the narrative so it’s seamless to the reader, educating them without being preachy or pedantic. I also mine emotions pretty easily—I can read people better now that I’m older, see what’s in their make up. My imagination goes to town with those little nuggets, and characters are born. It happens a lot at the grocery store—especially in the meat aisle. For some bizarre reason, I can’t buy chicken breasts without coming away with the bones of a new character.

PC: As a reader, what elements draw you into a story? What are your must-haves?

JTE: Originality, voice, story, character. Brilliant openings that grab me by the throat, meaty characters I care about instantly, great writing and superb vocabulary. I’m getting picky and crotchety in my old age; finding great books gets harder. It’s one of the drawbacks to being a writer—we tend to autopsy books rather than read them. I want a story that makes me gnash my teeth that I didn’t think of it. I want to be swept away. I want to forget I’m reading a book, forget the language and sentence structure, and live it. If I’m reading and saying to myself, “Oh, I’d have phrased that differently,” I know I’m in trouble.

PC: You don’t write fluff mystery (not that I don’t love my beachy fluff). But your works are hard-hitting novels that have a variety of messages sewn throughout. How do you choose what topics to tackle in each novel?

JTE: I like to think that the books are character studies, and the plot is driven by the characters’ reactions to their situations. I don’t think I’ve ever set out to tackle anything other than an examination of how cruel we can be to one another. I’m fascinated by it, and it drives every story. The MO of a killer certainly sets the tone, but at heart, I’m just trying to understand why we do bad things to each other. The stories grow from there.

PC: Do you think you will continue to expand the Taylor Jackson series, or strike out into a new genre, or new character arc?

JTE: God willing and the creeks don’t rise, all of the above. I have three series now: Samantha Owens, Taylor Jackson, and, co-writing with the esteemed Catherine Coulter, the Nicholas Drummond Brit in the FBI international thriller series. I’m also writing standalones, and more short stories. As you can tell, I love to write!

PC: Will you share some of the authors and books that inspired you?

JTE: John Sandford, who inspired the Taylor Jackson series. John Connolly, who inspired my ever-evolving writing style. Lee Child, whose friendship and guidance has been invaluable. The thriller chicks: Catherine Coulter, Tess Gerritsen, Erica Spindler, Alex Kava, Karin Slaughter and Allison Brennan, for showing me how not to compromise my subject matter just because I’m a woman. Diana Gabaldon, for teaching me how to create worlds. J.K. Rowling, for teaching me to follow my heart. Sharon Penman, Karleen Koen, Danielle Steele and Mary Stewart, for helping me move from children’s books to adult books (i.e. : teaching me the differences between love, romance and sex. I guess I better include Judy Blume’s FOREVER in there too, for that very reason.) Ayn Rand’s ANTHEM changed my life, Book VII of Plato’s REPUBLIC got me into graduate school, and my all-time favorite, LOLITA, by Vladimir Nabokov, showed me it’s possible to have lovable monsters.

PC: How important is the writing community for authors? As a Bestseller, has the need for the community dimmed, or is it still just as vital?

JTE: That’s a hard question. I certainly haven’t seen my needs for the community diminish, though I’ve had to reallocate my time to accommodate my schedule. Some authors get into this writing world and withdraw, and I have my moments that I want to do that. I’m completely socially awkward, and that carries right on over to the Internet. I posit that the community has changed a bit as well—it was very tightly knit when I started out, and now sprawls over multiple networks, websites, organizations and blogs, with new ones cropping up every day. I think authors need to pick and choose what works for them, where they feel they have the greatest impact and where they receive the greatest support, and focus on those areas. You can’t be an insider at every cocktail party.

PC: What advice would you share for aspiring writers?

JTE: I have a big section on my website that drills down into the specifics, along with a slew of writing books to read (check my FAQs), but the best advice I can give is read. Read everything, and write every day, so you create good habits. Discipline is the key to being a solid working writer. And leave yourself open to possibility. Sometimes, in this brave new Internet world, I think we forget to stop and look at our physical world for inspiration, instead relying on the electronic nipple to feed us the muse. And boy, am I the first one to put up my hand and exclaim guilty. It’s part of my goals for the year, to shut off the computer and get outside my own self-created microcosm.

An Essay by J.T. Ellison

Why Crime Fiction Matters to Me

I know that sounds a bit like “What I Did On My Summer Vacation,” but bear with me.

I have always loved crime stories—real or imagined. I don’t think I’m alone, either. Some of the most successful series on television now are crime oriented. My favorites are the original CSI, Criminal Minds, and the gloriously creepy Dexter. I watch Forensic Files, all the true crime shows, eat up the drama and fear and terrible truths that exist in our world. So what is the fascination? Why am I drawn to murder and mayhem?

In a word: heroes. But let me come back to that.

I’ve tried to pinpoint the reason I decided to write crime fiction, and honestly can’t put my finger on a single impetus. Was it because of my childhood friend, who was being abused and committed suicide when we were in our late teens? Was it the disappearance of a friend from college—Dail Dinwidde—who went missing in 1992, quite literally without a trace? Was it an influence from the books I gobbled up—Patterson, at the beginning, Tami Hoag, Patricia Cornwell?

Or did I always have a mysterious bent? I’ve always been a writer—especially the terrible, should-be-burned pieces I did in college. I went back and looked at some of them, and was surprised to see a note from my thesis advisor. I’d written what I thought was a masterpiece of a story, and her comment was, “Reads too much like B-grade detective fiction.” Hmm. And what, exactly, is wrong with B-grade detective fiction?

But a budding writer who is writing for academia needs to be literary. You must plan your world around where you’ll be getting your MFA, and fifteen years ago, when I graduated, crime fiction was most certainly not on the menu for a writer hoping for a distinguished career in literature.

I’ve always found that amusing, because all of the best literary stories swirl around the commission of a crime. Crimes of the heart, crimes against nature, crimes against a woman or child, a brother or sister, a mother or father, a neighbor. Look at Alice Sebold’s THE LOVELY BONES. It’s a perfect example of a literary novel that centers around a crime.

I think the big difference between literary and crime fiction lies in the treatment. In literary books, you don’t have the pulsing pace, a race against the clock to save humanity, a killer to get off the streets. Lit fic has a more sedate pace. It’s often an examination of how a crime affects the characters rather than how to stop the crime from happening, or happening again. And sometimes, there is no conclusion. And that’s just fine.

But in crime fiction, the battles of good and evil play themselves out on the page, ripe for the

reader’s imagination to overflow. There is an innate understanding that the white hats will stop the black hats. You know what you’re getting—a breathless journey with a cast of characters who would lay down their lives to save the innocent. The story drives the characters’ actions, and we see every foible, every flaw, and we cheer when the character stands up for what’s right.

In other words, crime fiction gives you a hero: a man or a woman who won’t stop fighting until the bad guys are taken out. There’s an element of justice meted out—the criminals are caught, the hero triumphs, the innocents are protected. It’s heady stuff, I tell you.

Whatever my original influences, this is the real reason I choose to write crime fiction: I want to right the wrongs, give closure to a grieving family, make sure the victims are not forgotten. In my little make-believe world, I can make sure justice is well and truly served. We don’t always have that luxury in real life. Too often, trials are lost on technicalities, juries are forced to follow arcane laws, plea bargains are made, and criminals go free. In crime fiction, the hero gets to save the day, and the criminals get punished.

Taylor Jackson is a hero to me. She is a strong woman who commands the respect of her peers through her actions. She’d lay down her life to protect those she loves, and those she doesn’t even know. She is the best of all of us: the one who runs into the burning building to save a child, who never asks for thanks, who protects and defends the city of Nashville even when it doesn’t protect or defend her.

That’s what a hero should be, and that’s why crime fiction is such a joy for me to write.

Bonus Material II

Sneak Peeks

(you lucky reader!)

For your enjoyment, I’ve included three excerpts for you. The first is from my newest Taylor Jackson novel, FIELD OF GRAVES, which is actually a prequel to the series. The next is a peek at my first standalone thriller, NO ONE KNOWS, which came out earlier this year. Last but not least is an excerpt from one of my favorite writers, Laura Benedict, who is writing a brilliant Southern Gothic series called Bliss House. The excerpt is from her latest novel, CHARLOTTE’S STORY, out now. I hope you love them all!

FIELD OF GRAVES Exclusive Excerpt

© 2016 by J.T. Ellison

MIRA Books

a division of Harlequin

225 Duncan Mill Road

Toronto, Ontario M3B 3K9

Canada

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Prologue

Taylor picked up her portable phone for the tenth time in ten minutes. She hit Redial, heard the call connect and start ringing, then clicked the Off button and returned the phone to her lap. Once she made this call, there was no going back. Being right wouldn’t make her the golden girl. If she were wrong—well, she didn’t want to think about what could happen. Losing her job would be the least of her worries.

Damned if she did. Damned if she didn’t.

She set the phone on the pool table and went down the stairs of her small two-story cabin. In the kitchen, she opened the door to the refrigerator and pulled out a Diet Coke. She laughed to herself. As if more caffeine would give her the courage to make the call. She should try a shot of whiskey. That always worked in the movies.

She snapped open the tab and stood staring out of her kitchen window. It had been dark for hours—the moon gone and the inky blackness outside her window impenetrable—but in an hour the skies would lighten. She would have to make a decision by then.

She turned away from the window and heard a loud crack. The lights went out. She jumped a mile, then giggled nervously, a hand to her chest to stop the sudden pounding.

Silly girl, she thought. The lights go out all the time. There was a Nashville Electric Service crew on the corner when you drove in earlier; they must have messed up the line and a power surge caused the lights to blow. It happens every time NES works on the lines. Now stop it. You’re a grown woman. You’re not afraid of the dark.

She reached into her junk drawer and groped for a flashlight. Thumbing the switch, she cursed softly when the light didn’t shine. Batteries, where were the batteries?

She froze when she heard the noise and immediately went on alert, all of her senses going into overdrive. She strained her ears, trying to hear it again. Yes, there it was. A soft scrape off the back porch. She took a deep breath and sidled out of the kitchen, keeping close to the wall, moving lightly toward the back door. She brought her hand to her side and found nothing. Damn it. She’d left her gun upstairs.

The tinkling of breaking glass brought her up short.

The French doors leading into the backyard had been breached. It was too late to head upstairs and get the gun. She would have to walk right through the living room to get to the stairs. Whoever had just broken through her back door was not going to let her stroll on by. She started edging back toward the kitchen, holding her breath, as if that would help her not make any noise.

She didn’t see the fist, only felt it crack against her jaw. Her eyes swelled with tears, and before she could react, the fist connected again. She spun and hit the wall face-first. The impact knocked her breath out. Her lips cut on the edge of her teeth; she tasted blood. The intruder grabbed her as she started to slide down the wall. Yanked her to her feet and put his hands around her throat, squeezing hard.

Now she knew exactly where her attacker was, and she fought back with everything she had. She struggled against him, quickly realizing she was in trouble. He was stronger than her, bigger than her. And he was there to kill.

She went limp, lolled bonelessly against him, surprising him with the sudden weight. He released one arm in response, and she took that moment to whirl around and shove with all her might. It created some space between them, enabling her to slip out of his grasp. She turned quickly but crashed into the slate end table. He was all over her. They struggled their way into the living room. She began to plan. Kicked away again.

Her attacker lunged after her. She used the sturdy side table to brace herself and whipped out her left arm in a perfect jab, aiming lower than where she suspected his chin would be. She connected perfectly and heard him grunt in pain. Spitting blood out of her mouth in satisfaction, she followed the punch with a kick to his stomach, heard the whoosh of his breath as it left his body. He fell hard against the wall. She spun away and leapt to the stairs. He jumped up to pursue her, but she was quicker. She pounded up the stairs as fast as she could, rounding the corner into the hall just as her attacker reached the landing. Her weapon was in its holster, on the bookshelf next to the pool table, right where she had left it when she’d gone downstairs for the soda. She was getting careless. She should never have taken it off her hip. With everything that was happening, she shouldn’t have taken for granted that she was safe in her own home.

Her hand closed around the handle of the weapon. She pulled the Glock from its holster, whipped around to face the door as the man came tearing through it. She didn’t stop to think about the repercussions, simply reacted. Her hand rose by instinct, and she put a bullet right between his eyes. His momentum carried him forward a few paces. He was only five feet from her, eyes black in death, when he dropped with a thud.

She heard her own ragged breathing. She tasted blood and raised a bruised hand to her jaw, feeling her lips and her teeth gingerly. Son of a bitch had caught her right in the jaw and loosened two molars. The adrenaline rush left her. She collapsed on the floor next to the lifeless body. She might have even slept for a moment.

The throbbing in her jaw brought her back. Morning was beginning to break, enough to see the horrible mess in front of her. The cat was sitting on the pool table, watching her curiously.

Rising, she took in the scene. The man was collapsed on her game room floor, slowly leaking blood on her Berber carpet. She peered at the stain.

That’s going to be a bitch to get out.

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. What an inane thing to say. Shock, she must be going into shock. How long had they fought? Had it been only five minutes? Half an hour? She felt as though she had struggled against him for days; her body was tired and sore. Never mind the blood caked around her mouth. She put her hand up to her face. Make that her nose too.

She eyed the man again. He was facedown and angled slightly to one side. She slipped her toes under his right arm and flipped him over with her foot. The shot was true; she could see a clean entry wound in his forehead. Reaching down out of habit, she felt for his carotid pulse, but there was nothing. He was definitely dead.

“Oh, David,” she said. “You absolute idiot. Look what you’ve made me do.”

Now the shit was absolutely going to hit the fan. It was time to make the call.

Chapter 1

Three months later

Nashville, Tennessee

Bodies, everywhere bodies, a field of graves, limbs and torsos and heads, all left above ground. The feeling of dirt in her mouth, grimy and thick; the whispers from the dead, long arms reaching for her as she passed through the carnage. Ghostly voices, soft and sibilant. “Help us. Why won’t you help us?”

Taylor jerked awake, sweating, eyes wild and blind in the darkness. The sheets twisted around her body in a claustrophobic shroud, and she struggled to get them untangled. She squeezed her eyes shut, willed her breathing back to normal, trying to relax, to let the grisly images go. When she opened her eyes, the room was still dark but no longer menacing. Her screams had faded away into the silence. The cat jumped off the bed with a disgruntled meow in response to her thrashing.

She laid her head back on the pillow, swallowed hard, still unable to get a full breath.

Every damn night. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever sleep well again.

She wiped a hand across her face and looked at the clock: 6:10 a.m. The alarm was set for seven, but she wasn’t going to get any more rest. She might as well get up and get ready for work. Go in a little early, see what horrors had captured the city overnight.

She rolled off the bed, trying hard to forget the dream. Showered, dressed, dragged on jeans and a black cashmere T-shirt under a black motorcycle jacket, stepped into her favorite boots. Put her creds in her pocket and her gun on her hip. Pulled her wet hair off her face and into a ponytail.

Time to face another day.

She was in her car when the call came. “Morning, Fitz. What’s up?”

“Morning, LT. We have us a body at the Parthenon.”

“I’ll be right there.”

* * *

It might have become a perfect late-autumn morning. The sky was busy, turning from white to blue as dawn rudely forced its way into day. Birds were returning from their mysterious nocturnal errands, greeting and chattering about the night’s affairs. The air was clear and heavy, still muggy from the overnight heat but holding a hint of coolness, like an ice cube dropped into a steaming mug of coffee. The sky would soon shift to sapphire the way only autumn skies do, as clear and heavy as the precious stone itself.

The beauty of the morning was lost on Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, Criminal Investigation Division, Nashville Metro Police. She snapped her long body under the yellow crime scene tape and looked around for a moment. Sensed the looks from the officers around her. Straightened her shoulders and marched toward them.

Metro officers had been traipsing around the crime scene control area like it was a cocktail party, drinking coffee and chatting each other up as though they’d been apart for weeks, not hours. The grass was already littered with cups, cigarette butts, crumpled notebook paper, and at least one copy of the morning’s sports section from The Tennessean. Taylor cursed silently; they knew better than this. One of these yahoos was going to inadvertently contaminate a crime scene one of these days, sending her team off on a wild-goose chase. Guess whose ass would be in the proverbial sling then?

She stooped to grab the sports page, surreptitiously glanced at the headline regaling the Tennessee Titans’ latest win, then crumpled it into a firm ball in her hands.

Taylor didn’t know what information about the murder had leaked out over the air, but the curiosity factor had obviously kicked into high gear. An officer she recognized from another sector was cruising by to check things out, not wanting to miss out on all the fun. Media vans lined the street. Joggers pretending not to notice anything was happening nearly tripped trying to see what all the fuss was about. Exactly what she needed on no sleep: everyone willing to help, to get in and screw up her crime scene.

Striding toward the melee, she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t their fault she’d been up all night. At least she’d had a shower and downed two Diet Cokes, or she would have arrested them all.

She reached the command post and pasted on a smile. “Mornin’, kids. How many of you have dragged this crap through my crime scene?” She tossed the balled-up paper at the closest officer.

She tried to keep her tone light, as if she were amused by their shenanigans, but she didn’t fool anyone, and the levity disappeared from the gathering. The brass was on the scene, so all the fun had come to a screeching halt. Uniforms who didn’t belong started to drift away, one or two giving Taylor a sideways glance. She ignored them, the way she ignored most things these days.

As a patrol officer, she’d kept her head down, worked her cases, and developed a reputation for being a straight shooter. Her dedication and clean work had been rewarded with promotion after promotion; she was in plainclothes at twenty-eight. She’d caught a nasty first case in Homicide—the kidnapping and murder of a young girl. She’d nailed the bastard who’d done it; Richard Curtis was on death row now. The case made the national news and sent her career into overdrive. She quickly became known for being a hard-hitting investigator and moved up the ranks from detective to lead to sergeant, until she’d been given the plum job she had now—homicide lieutenant.

If her promotion to lieutenant at the tender age of thirty-four had rankled some of the more traditional officers on the force, the death of David Martin—one of their own—made it ten times worse. There were always going to be cops who tried to make her life difficult; it was part of being a chick on the force, part of having a reputation. Taylor was tough, smart, and liked to do things her own way to get the job done. The majority of the men she worked with had great respect for her abilities. There were always going to be detractors, cops who whispered behind her back, but in Taylor’s mind, success trumped rumor every time.

Then Martin had decided to ruin her life and nearly derailed her career in the process. She was still clawing her way back.

Taylor’s second in command, Detective Pete Fitzgerald, lumbered toward her, the ever-present unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He’d quit a couple of years before, after a minor heart attack, but kept one around to light in case of an emergency. Fitz had an impressive paunch; his belly reached Taylor before the rest of his body.

“Hey, LT. Sorry I had to drag you away from your beauty sleep.” He looked her over, concern dawning in his eyes. “I was just kidding. What’s up with you? You look like shit warmed over.”

Taylor waved a hand in dismissal. “Didn’t sleep. Aren’t we supposed to have some sort of eclipse this morning? I think it’s got me all out of whack.”

Fitz took the hint and backed down. “Yeah, we are.” He looked up quickly, shielding his eyes with his hand. “See, it’s already started.”

He was right. The moon was moving quickly across the sun, the crime scene darkening by the minute. “Eerie,” she said.

He looked back at her, blinking hard. “No kidding. Remind me not to stare into the sun again.”

“Will do. Celestial phenomenon aside, what do we have here?”

“Okay, darlin’, here we go. We have a couple of lovebirds who decided to take an early morning stroll—found themselves a deceased Caucasian female on the Parthenon’s steps. She’s sitting up there pretty as you please, just leaning against the gate in front of the Parthenon doors like she sat down for a rest. Naked as a jaybird too, and very, very dead.”

Taylor turned her gaze to the Parthenon. One of her favorite sites in Nashville, smack-dab in the middle of Centennial Park, the full-size replica was a huge draw for tourists and classicists alike. The statue of Athena inside was awe-inspiring. She couldn’t count how many school field trips she’d been on here over the years. Leaving a body on the steps was one hell of a statement.

“Where are the witnesses?”

“Got the lovebirds separated, but the woman’s having fits—we haven’t been able to get a full statement. The scene’s taped off. Traffic on West End has been blocked off, and we’ve closed all roads into and around Centennial Park. ME and her team have been here about fifteen minutes. Oh, and our killer was here at some point too.” He grinned at her lopsidedly. “He dumped her sometime overnight, only the duckies and geese in the lake saw him. This is gonna be a bitch to canvass. Do you think we can admit ‘AFLAC’ as a statement in court?”

Taylor gave him a quick look and a perfunctory laugh, more amused at imagining Fitz waddling about like the duck from the insurance ads quacking than at his irreverent attitude. She knew better, but it did seem as if he was having a good time. Taylor understood that sometimes inappropriate attempts at humor were the only way a cop could make it through the day, so she chastised him gently. “You’ve got a sick sense of humor, Fitz.” She sighed, turning off all personal thoughts, becoming a cop again. All business, all the time. That’s what they needed to see from her.

“We’ll probably have to go public and ask who was here last night and when, but I’m not holding my breath that we’ll get anything helpful, so let’s put it off for now.”

He nodded in agreement. “Do you want to put up the chopper? Probably useless—whoever dumped her is long gone.”

“I think you’re right.” She jerked her head toward the Parthenon steps. “What’s he trying to tell us?”

Fitz looked toward the doors of the Parthenon, where the medical examiner was crouched over the naked body. His voice dropped, and he suddenly became serious. “I don’t know, but this is going to get ugly, Taylor. I got a bad feeling.”

Taylor held a hand up to cut him off. “C’mon, man, they’re all ugly. It’s too early to start spinning. Let’s just get through the morning. Keep the frickin’ media out of here—put ‘em down in the duck shit if you have to. You can let them know which roads are closed so they can get the word out to their traffic helicopters, but that’s it. Make sure the uniforms keep everyone off the tape. I don’t want another soul in here until I have a chance to be fully briefed by all involved. Has the Park Police captain shown up yet?”

Fitz shook his head. “Nah. They’ve called him, but I haven’t seen him.”

“Well, find him, too. Make sure they know which end is up. Let’s get the perimeter of this park searched, grid by grid, see if we find something. Get K-9 out here, let them do an article search. Since the roads are already shut off, tell them to expand the perimeter one thousand outside the borders of the park. I want to see them crawling around like ants at a picnic. I see any of them hanging in McDonald’s before this is done, I’m kicking some butt.”

Fitz gave her a mock salute. “I’m on it. When Sam determined she was dumped, I went ahead and called K-9, and pulled all the officers coming off duty. We may have an overtime situation, but I figured with your, um, finesse . . . ” He snorted out the last word, and Taylor eyed him coolly.

“I’ll handle it.” She pushed her hair back from her face and reestablished her hurried ponytail. “Get them ready for all hell to break loose. I’m gonna go talk to Sam.”

“Glad to serve, love. Now go see Sam, and let the rest of us grunts do our jobs. If you decide you want the whirlybird, give me a thumbs-up.” He blew her a kiss and marched toward the command post, snapping his fingers at the officers to get their attention.

Turning toward the building, she caught a stare from one of the older patrols. His gaze was hostile, lip curled in a sneer. She gave him her most brilliant smile, making his scowl deepen. She broke off the look, shaking her head. She didn’t have time to worry about politics right now.

Chapter 2

Taylor approached Sam cautiously, making sure she followed the ME’s path to the body. They wouldn’t be able to blame any loss of evidence on her. Pulling on her latex gloves, she tapped Sam lightly on the shoulder. Sam looked up. Anticipating Taylor’s first question, she shook her head.

“There’s no obvious cause of death—no stab wounds, no gunshot wounds. Evidence of rape. There’s some bruising and tearing, a little bit of blood. He got her pretty good. There’s some dirt on her, too. Wind probably blew some stuff around last night. I’ll get a better idea when I get her open.”

She rocked back on her heels and saw Taylor’s face for the first time. “Girl, you look like crap. When’s the last time you slept?”

“Been a while.” The sleepless nights were catching up with her. She was almost thankful when a new case popped like this; the past slid away briefly when she could focus her attention elsewhere.

Sam gave her one last appraising glance. “Hmmph.”

Dr. Samantha Owens had shoulder-length brown hair she always wore back in a ponytail, feminine wisps she couldn’t control framing her face. She often joked that she’d rather look like a girl than a ghoul when she met someone new so the first impression wasn’t one of horror. Taylor was always amused to see people scatter like rats when they found out the beautiful and composed woman was a professional pathologist. Most run-of-the-mill people didn’t want to hang out with a woman who cut up dead bodies for a living.

Unlike many of the women she and Taylor had grown up with, Sam didn’t join the Junior League, have beautiful babies, and lunch at Bread & Company. Instead, she spent her time perched over Nashville’s endless supply of dead bodies, a position she was in much too often. She was also Taylor’s best friend and was allowed liberties where others weren’t.

“I’ve been telling you, you need to get some help.”

“Hush up, Sam, I don’t want to hear it. Tell me about our girl.” Taylor let the knot in her stomach and the ache in her temples take complete hold. She had warmed up in the early-morning heat, but looking at the dead girl was giving her the chills. “Fitz said she was dumped?”

Sam traced an invisible line around the body with her finger. “Definitely. She wasn’t killed here. See the livor pattern? The bottom of her legs, thighs and calves, her butt, the inside of her arms, and her back. The blood pooled in those areas. But she’s sitting up, right? The lividity wouldn’t present this way unless she had been chilling out on her back for a while. She was definitely dead for a few hours before she was dumped.”

Taylor looked closely at the purplish-red blotches. In contrast, the front of the girl’s body looked as pale and grimy as a dead jellyfish.

“No blood, either. Maybe he’s a vampire.” Sam leered briefly at Taylor, made fangs out of her fingers, hissed. Her morbid sense of humor always popped up at the most inappropriate times.

“You’re insane.”

“I know. No, he did her someplace else, then dumped her here.” She looked around and said quietly, “Seriously, this feels very staged. She was put here for a reason, posed, everything. He wanted her found right away. The question is, why?”

Taylor didn’t comment, but tucked Sam’s remark into the back of her mind to be brought out and chewed on later. She knew it was worth thinking about; Sam had sound instincts. She turned back toward the command center. Seeing Fitz, she peeled the glove off her right hand, put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled sharply. He turned, and she shook her head. The helicopter definitely wasn’t going to be needed.

Taylor looked back at the girl’s face. So young. Another, so young. “Give me something to work with. Do you have a time of death?”

Sam thought for a moment. “Looking at her temp, she died sometime before midnight. Let’s say ten to twelve hours ago, give or take. Rigor’s still in, though she’s starting to break up.”

“Gives him time to kill her and get her here. Okay. Semen?”

“Oh yeah. It’s all over the place. This guy really doesn’t care about trying to be subtle. Not terribly bright. It shouldn’t be too hard to match him up if he’s in CODIS. He’s certainly not holding anything back.” She laughed at her pun, and Taylor couldn’t help a brief smile.

“How about under her nails? Did she fight back?”

Sam lifted the dead girl’s right hand. “I looked pretty closely, but I didn’t see anything resembling skin or blood. I’ll have them bag her hands and do scrapings back at the shop, but it doesn’t look like she got hold of anything. We didn’t find any ID with the body, so we’ll print her and send them over to see if you can find a match. They’ll be clear enough to run through AFIS.”

Taylor was hardly listening. She stared at the girl’s face. So young, she thought again. Man, there was going to be major fallout when they held this press conference. The statement started percolating in her head. At six o’clock this morning, the body of a Caucasian female was discovered on the steps of the Parthenon . . .

She looked back to Sam. “So no idea what killed her, huh?”

Sam relaxed, sitting back on her haunches. She stripped off her gloves and watched Taylor leaning in on the body.

“Hell if I know. Nothing’s really jumping out at me. Give me a break, T, you know the drill.”

“You’ll get me all the pics yesterday, right? And do the post right now. I mean—”she attempted a more conciliatory tone, “—will you do the post right now?”

“I’ll bump her to the top of the guest list. There’s something else . . . Do you smell anything?”

“Just your perfume. Is it new?”

“See, that’s the weird thing. I’m not wearing any. I think the smell is coming from the body. And I’ll tell you, Taylor, this would be my first sweet-smelling corpse, you know?”

Taylor had noticed the scent. She inhaled sharply through her nose. Yes, there were all the usual stinks that came with a dead body: the unmistakable smell of decay, the stink of fear, the tang of stale urine and excrement. But overlaying all these olfactory wonders was a tangy sweetness. She thought hard for a moment, searching for the memory the smell triggered. The scent was somehow familiar, almost like—That was it!

“Sam, you know what this smells like? The spa across the way, Essential Therapy. Remember, I gave you a gift certificate for a massage there for your birthday? They have all those lotions and soaps and essential oil candles . . . ”

“Wait a minute. You’re right. She smells like incense.” She stared at the body. “What if . . . Okay, give me a second here.” Sam reached into her kit and extracted a small pair of tweezers. She bent over and started picking through the dirt on the body.

“What are you doing?” Taylor watched Sam put a few pieces of leaves and sticks into a small white paper bag. Somewhat disgusted, she watched Sam shove her nose into the bag and breathe in deeply. “Ugh, Sam.”

“No, here.” Sam’s eyes lit up, and Taylor was tempted to back away. But Sam grabbed her hand and shoved the bag toward her face. “Really, smell.”

Taylor wrinkled her nose, swallowing hard. It was one thing seeing the body and smelling it from a few feet away, but sticking her nose into the detritus that came from the body itself was totally gross. Grimacing, she took the bag and inhaled. The scent was smoky and floral, not at all unpleasant.

Sam’s eyes were shining in excitement. “This isn’t dirt, Taylor. These are herbs. She has herbs scattered all over her body. Now what the hell is that all about?”

Taylor shook her head slowly, trying to absorb the new discovery. “I don’t know. Can you isolate which herb it is?”

“Yeah, I can let a buddy of mine at UT in Knoxville take a look. He’s head of the university’s botany department and totally into all this stuff. I don’t think it’s just one herb, though. The leaves are all different sizes and shapes. Oh man, this is too cool.”

“Sam, you’re awful.” Taylor couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “You like this job too much.”

“That’s why I’m good at it. Tim’s our lead ‘gator today. I’m going to get him set up here to bag all this stuff, and I’ll have a runner take it up to UT ASAP. You know, it would be a lot simpler if that idiot mayor would help us get our own lab capable of handling this kind of stuff. Hell, it’d be nice if we could even do tox screens in-house.”

Sam continued grumbling under her breath and stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. She waved to her team, calling them over. The body was ready to be moved.

“Wait, Sam. Did Crime Scene pick up anything else? Clothes, jewelry?”

“Not yet, but you’re in their way. She’s got enough of this crap on her that it’s gonna take them a while to collect it all. Why don’t you go back and try to find out who this girl is for me, okay? Y’all need to catch this guy, ‘cause once the press gets a hold of this, they’re gonna freak the whole city. It’s not every day I have to come to the middle of Centennial Park to collect a body, much less for a staged crime scene. Look at the vultures hovering already.”

She swept her hand toward the media trucks. Their level of activity had picked up, excitement palpable in the air. Techs were setting up lights and running around on the street by the duck pond, with cameras and portable microphones in tow. The news vans were lined up around the corner. Taylor watched Fitz and the patrol officers struggle to keep the reporters from rushing the tape to gather their precious scoops. Nothing like murder in the morning to start a feeding frenzy.

“Seriously, Taylor, you know how they are. They’ll find some way to spin this into a grand conspiracy and warn all the parents to keep their girls at home until you catch whoever did this.” She started grumbling. “It should be frickin’ illegal for the chief to have given them their own radios. Now every newsie in Nashville hovers over my shoulder while I scope a body.”

Taylor lowered her eyelids for a second and gave her best friend a half smile. “Well, honey, if it makes you feel any better, all the talking heads and their cameramen are squishing through goose poo trying to get their stories. Guess Lake Watauga has its purposes after all. Call me as soon as you have anything.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Split. You’re making me nervous.”

* * *

Like what you’ve read so far?

Click here to keep reading FIELD OF GRAVES, coming from MIRA Books June 14, 2016!

NO ONE KNOWS Exclusive Excerpt

© 2016 by J.T. Ellison

Gallery Books

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Part I

As contraries are known by contraries,

so is the delight of presence

best known by the torments of absence.

—Alcibiades

1

Aubrey

Nashville

Today

One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days after Joshua Hamilton went missing, the State of Tennessee declared him legally dead.

Aubrey, his wife (or former wife, or ex-wife, or widow—she had no idea how to refer to herself anymore), received the certified letter on a Friday. It came to the Montessori school where she taught, the very one she and Josh had attended as children. Came to her door in the middle of reading time, borne on the hands of Linda Pierce, the school’s long-standing principal, who looked as if someone had died.

Which, in a way, they had.

He had.

Or so the State of Tennessee had officially declared.

Aubrey had been against the declaration-of-death petition from the beginning. She didn’t want Josh’s estate settled. Didn’t want a date engraved on that stupid family stone obelisk that loomed over the graves of his ancestors at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Didn’t want to say good-bye forever.

But Josh’s mother had insisted. She wanted closure. She wanted to move on with her life. She wanted Aubrey to move on with hers, too. She’d petitioned the court for the early ruling, and clearly the courts agreed.

Everyone was ready to move on. Everyone but Aubrey.

She’d felt poorly this morning when she woke, almost a portent of the day to come, but today was the last day of school before spring break, so she had to show, and be cheery, and help the kids with their party, and give them their extra-credit reading assignments.

From the second they arrived, her students buzzed around her. It didn’t take long for Aubrey to catch the children’s enthusiasm and drop her previous malaise. It was a beautiful day: the sun glowed in the sky, dropping beams through the windows, creating slats of light on the multihued carpet. The kids spun through the light, whirling dervishes against a yellow backdrop. She didn’t even try to contain them; watching them, she felt exactly the same way. Breaks signaled many things to her, freedom most of all. Freedom to go her own way for a bit, to explore, to read, to gather herself.

But when her classroom door opened unexpectedly, and Principal Pierce came into the room, the nausea returned with a vengeance, and her head started to pound. Aubrey watched her coming closer and closer. Her old friend’s face was strained, the furrows carved into her upper lip collapsed in on each other, her yellowed forefinger tapping against the pristine white-and-blue envelope. She needed to file her nails.

What was it about moments, the ones that start with a capital M, that made you notice each and every detail?

Aubrey reminded herself of her situation. The children were watching. Trying to ignore the stares of the more precocious ones scattered about the classroom, gifted youngsters whose sensitivity to the emotions of others was finely honed, Aubrey took the letter from Linda, handed off the class into the woman’s very capable, nicotine-stained hands, and went to the ladies’ room in the staff lounge to read the contents.

The letter was from her mother-in-law. Aubrey knew exactly what it contained.

She tried to pretend her hands weren’t shaking.

She flipped the lid down on the toilet, locked the door, then sat and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper folded into thirds, topped with a handwritten note on a cheery yellow, daisy-covered Post-it. Aubrey felt that added just the right touch. Her mother-in-law always had been wildly incapable of any form of tact.

There was no denying it now; her hands trembled violently as she unfolded the page. She looked to the handwritten note first. The words were carefully formed, a schoolgirl’s roundness to the old-fashioned cursive.

Aubrey,

For your records.

Daisy Hamilton

Scribbled in print beneath the painstakingly properly written note were the words:

Joshua’s Mother

Well, no kidding, Daisy. Like I could forget.

The sticky note was attached to a printout of an email. It was from Daisy’s lawyer, the one who’d helped put this vehicle in motion last year, when Daisy decided to petition the courts to have Josh declared legally dead.

Aubrey fingered the scar on her lip as she read.

Dear Daisy,

Per our earlier conversation, attached please find a copy of the Order entered from the civil court today by Judge Robinson. As I explained to you on the phone, this Order directs the Department of Vital Statistics to issue a death certificate for your son, Joshua David Hamilton, as of April 19 of this year.

Now that this Order has been officially entered, we should take another look at the estate plan. Josh’s life insurance policy will be fulfilled as soon as the declaration is received, and I’d like you to be fully prepared if you plan to contest the contents. I will be forwarding you a final bill for my services on this matter in the next couple of days.

Best personal regards,

Rick Saeger

And now it was official.

In the eyes of the law, Joshua David Hamilton was no longer of this earth. No longer Aubrey’s husband. No longer Daisy’s son.

No longer.

Aubrey was suddenly unable to breathe. Even though she’d been expecting it, seeing the words in black-and-white, adorned by Daisy’s snippy little missive, killed her. Tears slid down her face, and she crumpled the letter against her thigh.

Daisy was a bitch, always had been, and Aubrey got the message loud and clear.

Get over it. Get on with your life. And watch out, kid, because I’m coming for that life insurance money.

But just how do you move on when you can’t bury your husband? Five years later, there were still no good answers to the puzzle of Josh’s evaporation. One minute there, the next gone. Poof. Disappeared. Missing. Kidnapped, hit over the head, and suffering from severe amnesia, or—worse than the idea of his heart no longer beating—he’d chosen to leave her. Dead, but not dead. Without a body, how could they know for sure?

Damn you, Josh.

He was dead. Even Aubrey had to admit that to herself. It had taken a year to formulate that conclusion, a year of the worst possible days imaginable. As much as she hated to believe he was really gone, she knew he was.

Because if he wasn’t, he would have let her know. He was the other half of her. The better half. The responsible half. The serious half.

For him to be taken, or to have run away—no. He would never leave her of his own volition.

Which meant he must be dead.

The circle that was her life, a snake forever eating its tail.

Aubrey didn’t know the answers to the riddle. Only knew that one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days ago, Josh had been nagging at her to hurry up and get in the car because they were late for one of his closest friend’s joint bachelor/bachelorette party. That they’d had a serious fender bender on the way to the party, which resulted in the small white scar that intersected Aubrey’s top lip in a way that didn’t detract from her heart-shaped face. That they’d arrived at the hotel over an hour late, and Aubrey had offered to get them checked in while Josh went to find the groom and join the party. That he’d kissed her deeply before he went, making the cut on her lip throb in time with her heart. That he’d glanced back over his shoulder and given her that devastating half smile that had been melting her insides since she was seven and he was nine and he’d pushed her down on the hard playground asphalt and made her cry.

That she’d repeated the words of this story so many times it had become a mantra. To the police. To the lawyers. To the media. To Daisy. To herself.

Her world was broken into thirds.

Seven and seventeen and five.

Seven years before he came into her life.

Seventeen in-between years when she’d seen Josh almost every day. Seventeen years of joy and fury and love and sex and marriage and heartache and happiness. Of prepubescent mating rituals, teenage angst, young-adult dawning realization, the inescapable knowledge that they couldn’t live without each other, culminating in a small wedding and three years of marital bliss.

Five years of After. Five years of wondering.

She thought they were happy. Late at night, in the After time, Aubrey would lie in their bed, still on her side, wearing one of his white oxford shirts she pretended held the lingering bits of his scent, and wonder: Weren’t we? Weren’t we happy?

What was happiness? Where did it come from? How did you measure it? She’d always looked at the little things he did—from a sweet note in whatever book she was reading, to bringing her freshly-cut apples when she was vacuuming, or having a travel mug of hot Earl Grey tea waiting for her in the morning as she rushed out the door—as signs that he loved her. That he was happy, too.

But then he was gone, and she had to pick up the pieces of their once life, shattered like the reflective glass of a broken mirror on the floor.

Seven, and seventeen, and then five. Five years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness.

The State of Tennessee didn’t care about any of that.

All the state cared about were the cold hard facts: one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days ago, Joshua David Hamilton disappeared from the face of the earth, and now enough time had passed that a stranger had declared him legally dead.

* * *

Click here to get your copy of NO ONE KNOWS,

coming from Gallery Books on March 22, 2016!

And now, I hope you enjoy an excerpt from the second Bliss House novel, Charlotte’s Story, by Laura Benedict!

Murder, sexual obsession, and misogyny explode in the final scenes, bringing all the simmering evil to the surface in a shocking finale, that, like all good horror stories, is probably not the end. You just can’t look away from this bombsite—nor forget it. Dripping with southern gothic atmosphere.”

—Booklist, starred review

Set in 1957 in southern Virginia, Benedict’s suspenseful, atmospheric follow-up to 2014’s Bliss House finds housewife Charlotte Bliss devastated by the death of her four-year-old daughter…A satisfyingly creepy tale for a rainy night.

—Publisher’s Weekly

An evocative, frightening and flawless gothic, CHARLOTTE’S STORY is guaranteed to send a delicious chill down your spine. Nobody does more for the modern southern gothic than Laura Benedict.

—J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author of WHAT LIES BEHIND

Benedict writes with passion and authority. CHARLOTTE’S STORY is not to be missed.

—Carolyn Haines, author of the Sarah Booth Delaney Bones Mysteries, including BONE TO BE WILD

1957: The End of Time

We came to the end of time on a bright October afternoon. I had finished a second glass of champagne, even though I thought three o’clock in the afternoon was a ridiculous time to be drinking wine. But that’s what we were doing because Press said we’d been too sad for too long and needed cheering. We were the only adults in the house for the first time in two months since his mother, Olivia, had died. The wine was the color of hay bathed in sunshine, sparkling in the filtered afternoon light of the salon. All the furnishings in the substantial room—the ornate European furniture, the gilt-edged mirrors and antique carpets—spoke of my mother-in-law’s preference for stateliness over comfort, and I had never dared to even slip my shoes off inside it. Now Bliss House and its orchards and woods were ours, and the birthright of our two children, Eva and Michael. I was mistress of Bliss House, but I didn’t quite feel it yet, and wondered if I ever would.

Press took the bottle of Perrier-Jouet—his favorite, and what his mother had served at our wedding party—from the ice bucket to pour me a third glass.

“We shouldn’t, Press. Really, we shouldn’t.” Secretly, I wanted more, but I protested because I thought I should. It was in my nature. Or, more rightly, in my bourgeois upbringing. (Bourgeois as in NOCD—Not our class, darling, as the thoughtlessly-raised Yankee girls at Burton Hall, my college, used to say.) I was taught that people who drank in the afternoons were useless, and probably drunks.

In answer, Press bent to touch his lips to my neck, tickling the tender skin beneath my right ear, and I felt the roughness of the late-day growth of his beard. With an agonizing slowness that I knew was intentional, his lips found my mouth, and he kissed me deeply in a way that implied both hunger and possession.

Had Bliss House still belonged to his mother, he certainly never would have kissed me with such passion outside the privacy of our bedroom.

When he stood again, he was smiling and I was self-conscious of the flush that consumed my torso, neck, and face. Even my ears felt hot. The glass refilled, I drank as deeply as I dared, given the frantic bubbles. Press knew me well enough to know that my we-shouldn’t-drink-any-more protest had held self-censure but not conviction. I was exhausted from caring for the children, and the wine was tempting.

There is a haze around that afternoon that I’ll never be able to dispel, and I still can’t remember if I truly could smell the scent of the roses just outside the room. The screens were still in the French doors that opened onto the gardens: a boxwood maze with a tall statue of the goddess Hera with her peacock at its center, and geometric rows of cultivated rose bushes. It was only early October and, because the climate in central Virginia is not overly harsh, the roses would continue to bloom through the earliest days of November. Their scent is strongest around four or five o’clock, when the hum of the bees finishing their day’s work is most hypnotic. But I choose to believe that I did smell the roses. Some small recompense for the hell that was about to be unleashed on us.

Press sat down on the hassock in front of the tufted slipper chair into which I had sunk and lifted my feet onto his lap.

I laughed and tried to pull away, but he held my heels firmly.

“Preston Bliss, what are you doing?” I’d teased him in the past about not liking to touch my feet. In fact, he didn’t much like anyone’s feet—not even the baby’s, which I was kissing and playing with all the time. But now he was sliding off one of my shoes, and then the other, so that my feet were bare in his hands. Some women wore stockings daily throughout the 1950s, but that day they seemed unnecessary, given that the staff had the day off and we weren’t planning to leave the house. He massaged my feet for a few moments, making me giggle as he stroked the arch of my foot with his smooth, uncallused fingers (he was a gentleman, a lawyer, and had never become as interested in working the estate’s orchards as his mother had imagined he should be). The house was so quiet that my laughter filled the room, and I quickly covered my mouth as though someone might hear. Olivia hadn’t minded laughter, but the room spoke so much of her that she might have been with us, watching from one of the enormous wing chairs stationed near the fireplace like guardians at the entrance to an ashen cave, instead of in the graveyard of St. Anselm’s Episcopal church buried beside her husband.

With a quick, gentle squeeze of each foot, Press tucked my feet beside him on the hassock.

“Did you know that you’re a queen, my love?” Leaning forward, he touched my hair.

I shook my head, already a bit silly with champagne. He’d greeted me with the first glass after I’d finished putting the children’s toys away. “I’m just the. . . .” I considered for a moment. My mother-in-law had been the queen of Bliss House, and Eva Grace, napping in her trundle bed in the nursery a few feet from one-year-old Michael’s crib, was certainly the princess. Where did that leave me? My pedigree was respectable, as Virginia pedigrees went. My father was a Carter, even though he owned an office-supply store, and my mother’s family had moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia before the Revolutionary War. But I was just plain Charlotte Frances Carter, daughter of a merchant from Clareston, Virginia, and hadn’t come from money as Preston had. There were people—people in my own family, in fact—who weighted pedigree far more significantly than money, and believed that Olivia had encouraged our marriage because pedigree was something that she and the Bliss family lacked. But my aunts hadn’t really understood Olivia. She hadn’t cared at all about such things.

I felt languorous, even a little sleepy, and I suspected that I was about to make a fool of myself, but I didn’t care. Press hadn’t been himself, but more opinionated, tense, and somehow bolder since Olivia’s death, and I’d been so occupied with the children that I was happy to have this playful, attentive Press to myself.

“I’m more like the daughter of a baronet. I don’t know what that would be. A baronetess?”

“No. You’re a queen. My mother adored you, and she always told me that I didn’t treat you nearly as well as you should be treated.”

His words made me happy. That day I was still such a girl, and the wine—at first surprisingly bitter, yet still pleasing on my tongue—had given me the feeling of being on a honeymoon again. His watchful brown eyes still regarded me with a proprietary sense of both pride and indulgence that I identified as true love. At thirty-one, he was four years older than I and, when the weather was fine, kept himself trim with early-morning rowing on the James. I’ve described him as compact, and while his shoulders were square and facial features quite blunt, he was not a small man. He was only an inch shorter than my unladylike height of five feet, nine inches. His “golden goddess,” he called me, as though I were Kim Novak or a blond Bergman.

He kissed me again, his hand covering the back of my bare neck, his fingers sliding up into my hair. (I’d had my hair cropped stylishly short to keep Michael from constantly pulling on it.) Tired as I was, I couldn’t help but respond. I had been a virgin when we married, and my attraction to Press showed no signs of abating. He was deeply sensual. I saw his effect on other women, too, though I never questioned his faithfulness. Later you may wonder at my naïveté, but try not to judge me too harshly.

I almost stopped him as he unbuttoned the cotton blouse so beautifully ironed by Marlene, our housekeeper, and slipped his hand inside. But I remembered that we were alone. The house was ours, and our children were asleep, and the birds were noisy outside the open window, and the champagne was pleasing on our twining tongues.

Finally he pulled back and stood to help me from the chair. When I tried to stifle an unexpected yawn, he smiled. I giggled like a teenager. I was as in love with him at that moment as I ever had been. His faintly olive skin was also flushed, and I only felt a tiny amount of the embarrassment that I would have felt a few weeks before at being half-undressed in such a public room, the doors open to both the garden and Bliss House’s enormous central hall. I felt brave and desirable and voraciously needful of what we were about to do there. As he led me to the largest sofa (brocade chrysanthemums in varying shades of blue—I’ve long since gotten rid of it), I tripped, dizzy with heat and wine, but he caught and steadied me.

I had a fleeting thought, wondering if it would always be like this, but I knew the children would soon wake, and the staff and Nonie, the woman who had raised me and was our children’s nanny, would return, and our lovemaking would be again be confined to my bedroom or his. But then the thought was gone, and I asked for more to drink. Press laughed and said there was no more for me, but that he had something else I’d like, and I thought him terribly wicked.

He lay down on the sofa, which was beneath a far window, and I remember looking at his mouth as he pulled me onto him, and there was something strange about the set of his lips—something hard and unfamiliar that made me think of the bitterness of the champagne. Then he parted them and kissed me again, and I closed my eyes and molded my body against his. But there is no trace of the next few hours left in my memory. It was as though we had reached the farthest border of some island of time and could not go on.

When I opened my eyes again, it was dusk, and the light of a single lamp groped pitifully in the overwhelming dark of the big room. My best friend Rachel knelt beside me, and Press stood in the shadows beyond her, his face solemn. He was holding Michael, who was sucking his thumb as he rested his head against his father’s shoulder.

Rachel’s face was wet with tears.

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Are you hooked yet? Click here to devour the rest of CHARLOTTE’S STORY!

Laura Benedict is the author of the Bliss House series of dark suspense novels, CHARLOTTE'S STORY and BLISS HOUSE (Pegasus Crime), as well as DEVIL'S OVEN, a modern Frankenstein tale, ISABELLA MOON, and CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS (Ballantine). Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, PANK, and numerous anthologies like THRILLERS: 100 MUST-READS (Oceanview), and SLICES OF FLESH (Dark Moon Books). She originated and edited the Surreal South Anthology of Short Fiction Series with her husband, Pinckney Benedict, and edited FEEDING KATE, a charity anthology, for their press, Gallowstree Press. A Cincinnati, Ohio native, Laura grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and claims both as hometowns. She currently lives with her family in the southern wilds of a Midwestern state, surrounded by bobcats, coyotes, and other less picturesque predators. Find out more, enter her monthly contests, and follow her blog at laurabenedict.com.