advice as I wrote A Cold Dark Place. Naturally, none of it is possible without the support and love of my family- Claudia, Morgan, and Marta.
Thanks also to the best thriller editor and the best thriller agent in the business: Michaela Hamilton, executive editor of Kensington, and Susan Raihofer of David Black Literary. What a team you two make!
I'd like to acknowledge the writers that have been so helpful to me recently. All of the Killer Year members and friends have been great, but I especially want to spotlight JT Ellison, Bill Cameron, and Sandra Ruttan for their wonderful support and partnership over the past year. My Killer Year mentor, Allison Brennan, has no peer when it comes to writing pulse-pounding suspense and encouraging new (even old!) authors.
Thanks to Kathrine Beck, Tina Marie Brewer, Charles Turner, Bunny Kuhlman, and Matt Phelps for their muchappreciated guidance along the way.
There are many behind-the-scenes people who help shape the final product that you now hold in your hand. I want to publicly thank Lou Malcangi for his terrific cover design and Diane Burke for her thoughtful copyediting. If I wore a hat, I'd take it off to you!
Finally, to my readers. Thanks so much for following me from true crime to fiction. Your c-mails, letters, and posts on Crime Rant mean the world to me.
Prologue
4 PM, nineteen years ago
Women with transparent vinyl purses that exposed the shredded remainders of coin wrappers stood in line. They took deep breaths as the uniformed prison matron with icy hands prepared to probe their bodies. Talc-dipped rubber gloves snapped. It was humiliating in every sense of the word. The matron, a woman with ashen skin, pencil-thin lips, and with glasses on a cheap silver chain around her neck, knew those waiting to leave the institution felt her power, her supreme authority, and it made her smile. The women had lined up to leave after a long day of tears and excuses in the high school cafeteria milieu of the visiting room-a cavernous space of bolted- to-the-floor tables and fixed-position chairs. The matron's husky voice intoned them to 'cool their jets' and 'wait your turn or I'll have something to say about it.'
And so the women lingered, each feeling violated and angry. Having a husband, boyfriend, or brother inside the razor-wire-trimmed walls of Bonneville Maximum Security was bad enough. Being told with unfettered contempt by someone to wait your turn in the processing line was ptomaine gravy over a bad slab of beef. And they had to eat it. Every goddamned bite.
'Are you going to be a problem for me?' the matron asked, her gray eyes as sharp as awls pitched firmly at the distressed gaze of a young woman. The younger woman let out a measured sigh. She'd spent all day trying to tell her wannabedrug-lord husband that she was thinking of moving back east to Indiana. She wanted to be free. All of them did.
'Uh? Me?' the younger woman answered. She was barely twenty and still wore her chestnut hair in a ponytail, but she held a kind of weariness on her face that indicated she'd seen it all. She faked a smile of recognition at the matron. She knew when someone had it in for her. It had been her life since she left home. Ran away. Met the wrong man. Trashed her future. She could hear her mother's words echo at that moment. You've thrown away everything your father and I had hoped for you. You screwed up, Donita. You really botched it.
'Yes, you, Ponytail,' the matron said, nodding in her direction. The rest of the women felt relief wash over them. Good, the bitch found someone else to bother. She motioned for her to step forward. 'I need you to spread your legs. You've done it before, I'm sure. Wider.'
The young woman silently seethed, but she acquiesced. She had no choice.
'You know, if I can't get my mitts between your thighs, either you're gonna have to go on a diet or you're gonna have to practice your splits in the back room. I don't like you, I don't trust you, and I think you're carrying some contraband on your person. I just feel it.'
The back room was a dimly lit hospital-style space where women were forced to endure indignities based on their physiology. Flat on their backs, legs apart, feet stuck in metal stirrups.
'I'll do better,' she said, all the while wondering what it would be like if she'd been an actual prisoner there, not a lowly visitor?
The altercation caught the attention of a chubby-faced woman in the back of the line. Her strawberry-blond shag had matted unflatteringly to her forehead. Her pulse quickened, but she kept her affect blank. She didn't want to stand out and she didn't want a trip to the back room for any kind of exam. She carried something so precious, so vital, that its discovery would ruin everything.
Be cool, Ponytail's taking the heat. Thank you, Jesus.
She concealed her prize in a place she hoped no one would dare probe. Inside. Personal. Private. Besides she knew the matron only groped because she got off on it. No one was looking for someone to take much of anything out of here ... they mostly watched for contraband coming in to the visiting room.
The matron fixed her eyes on the strawberry blonde with the secret. Her eyes held her with unyielding grip. She waited a beat.
'You can go,' she said.
The woman with the secret acknowledged the command and started walking in the direction of the lockers in which she had stored her coat and car keys before going under the arbor of razor wire, through the gate, to the visiting room.
'Wait a minute,' the matron said.
It felt like her heart stopped beating. She was going to die. Going to be caught. Adrenaline kicked her ticker back into play. She's going to take me in the back room. She going to ruin everything.
'Did you hear me?'
She slowly turned.
'Are you speaking to me?'
'No, I'm talking to the man in the moon'
She stared. Her heart bounced. Thump. Thump. Thump.
'Get over here'
She stepped back toward the matron.
'You forgot your purse'
Her hands were sweating now, so much so, she thought the vinyl zippered purse would slip from her fingers. She reached for it and acknowledged the gesture with a quick smile.
'Oh, thanks'
Like others who had been around the matron, she faked a smile.
The woman smiled, hers strangely genuine. 'No problem. And you have a nice day.'
With that, the strawberry blonde hurried to the lockers. Soon she'd be home, and in time destiny would come to pass.
BOOK ONE
The Eye of the Storm
Chapter One
Monday, 5:36 EM., Cherrystone, Washington
Emily Kenyon was thrashed and she looked it. She pulled herself from her gold Honda Accord, picked up her purse, and walked toward the front door. She turned to view the end of Orchard Avenue. The neighborhood of vintage homes was safe. Unscathed. Not a single fish-scale shingle from the threestory painted lady across the street had been harmed. Not so much as a splinter. Emily could even hear kids playing a couple of doors down.
