Dark Pursuit

Paradise Lost. Always D.’s main characters were in one way or another bent on the dark pursuit of some obsession in their lives—only to discover that their private little empires were all in vain and brought only emptiness.

A truth about Darell Brooke himself that he could not, would not see.

Out of the Blue. Lights Across the Water. River’s Edge.

Margaret stuck a hand in her hair. Why was she here?

On impulse she pulled out All But Dead, not remembering the story. She read the prologue. Oh, yes. Coal miner Ed Bramley and his nightmares, his epileptic daughter.

Margaret replaced the novel and opened a second—one of D.’s earlier works on the top shelf—and scanned the first two pages. This one she barely remembered.

Wind gusted at the windows. Margaret lifted her head to gaze into the night. The lights of Half Moon Bay dimmed, then disappeared. Fog was rolling in.

She checked the clock. Just past nine. Was Kaitlan still at the restaurant? Was she safe?

Margaret’s limbs fairly trembled with tension, anticipating the phone.

A clue.

Her eyebrows raised. Yes, that was it. She was looking for a clue in one of D.’s books. Some plot point that would ignite an idea of what they should do—one he had surely forgotten. His past novels were nothing now but a jumble in his head.

Had he ever written a story about a female protagonist trapped as Kaitlan was—one who couldn’t go to the police and had no evidence to present if she did …

Margaret slid out another novel and read the first chapter until the story surfaced in her memory.

No. Nothing here.

She lowered the book and focused out the window again, seeing only her dulled and anxious reflection. The fog now blocked out all view.

The wind had died down. The house was so very still.

Kaitlan.

This bookcase held thousands upon thousands of pages. Where to begin? It could take weeks to find what Margaret needed—if she found it at all.

She put the book back on the shelf and buffed her upper arms, chilled in the warm room of rich wood and leather.

Frustration balled in her throat. She should be moving, working, doing something. Tearing down the hill to the restaurant—did Margaret even know which one it was?—and rescuing Kaitlan. Just barge in and take her, who cared which people saw?

And what then, Margaret, after tipping your hand to Craig? What then?

She gazed at D.’s novels—the very reason Kaitlan had come to him for help in the first place. Somewhere in one of them must lay a crucial piece to this puzzle. A piece that had slipped into the milky waters below her and Darell’s consciousness.

Random reading wouldn’t do. She needed a systematic approach.

The oldest books first. These were the least familiar.

Margaret reached for D.’s first novel on the far left of the top shelf.

twenty-eight

Kaitlan’s legs felt rubbery as she walked through the kitchen. At each step her brain screamed there must be some way out of this nightmare. Something beyond this world, a rescue swooping out of the clouds …Craig stood in her bedroom doorway, simmering with impatience. “Where’s your vacuum cleaner?”

Vacuum cleaner? Kaitlan stared at him.

Craig gestured with his head toward the sliding glass door behind him. “Your carpet’s dirty.”

The footprint. Kaitlan’s eyes cut toward it.

“We need to clean it up.”

We

The word sank to the depths of her. We—a team. Hiding evidence that could be used against him.

She could go to jail for that.

He nudged her arm. “Go get it.”

Zombie-like, she turned and headed for the closet near her front door. There she pulled out her small portable vacuum. She returned to Craig.

He gave her a smug smile. “Thanks.”

A realization spun through her. He’d planned this moment of entrapment.

The thought sent her back to a scene in her childhood. At the age of eight she’d been playing with a neighborhood boy when he caught a moth. He stuck one of his mother’s sewing needles through the moth’s body and pinned it to cardboard. As it fluttered in a death dance she begged him to let it go. But he’d merely looked on, fascinated.

Now she was the moth.

Craig took the vacuum. “Go sit in the living room.”

Heart scudding, she obeyed.

We.

Kaitlan perched on her couch and waited.

The vacuum surged on. She listened to the rise and fall of its whine as it pushed across the carpet. She imagined the dirt particles it was picking up, the footprint pulled apart. Obliterated.

The noise cut off. Kaitlan heard the sound of a plug pulled from a socket, the whizzing grate of the automatic cord roll-up. Craig’s footsteps in the hall. A thunk of vacuum against floor. The closet door closing.

Kaitlan focused on a magazine upon her coffee table. Filling its cover—the perfect face of a laughing model. An article heading: “Six Secrets to Make Yourself Irresistible.”

Craig approached. She tensed. He laid both hands on her shoulders.

Kaitlan thought she would crack in two. Right down the middle, between those hands. Between those fingers that had strangled three women.

“Thanks for helping,” Craig said.

We.

“Get up, Kaitlan. Come with me into the bedroom.”

She stared at the magazine. A second article—“Budget Now for Christmas.”

A holiday she would never see.

Quiet despair uncoiled in her chest. The way he was doing this. Drawing it out, like he enjoyed every minute.

She stood and turned to face him, the couch as a barrier. “You going to kill me now too?”

His jaw flexed. “Just do as I say.”

Her eyes teared up. “Where did this come from, Craig? Why?”

Silence.

“Does your father know?”

Anger shrank his eyes. “Leave my father out of it.”

“He does, doesn’t he. That’s why he threatened me tonight.”

“I said leave him out of it!” He lunged for her over the couch.

Kaitlan reared out of his reach, hit the coffee table. Almost fell.

Craig cursed. He pulled back, face darkening, and strode toward the end of the sofa.

Kaitlan turned and ran. Around the coffee table, into the kitchen. She flung herself at the door.

Craig caught her left arm at the elbow and yanked her backward.

“No!” Kaitlan writhed from his grip. She pulled toward the door with all her might, her right hand reaching, flailing for the knob, fingers almost touching —