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To save innocent lives, they’ll have to risk their own.
Self-help superstar Rachel de Luca and Detective Mason Brown have finally given in to their overwhelming attraction to each other, but neither of them is ready to let physical passion turn into full-blown romance, so they carefully maintain an emotional distance. Then a judge’s daughter disappears, and Mason has a terrible sense that it’s connected to the most recent case they solved together: the abduction of Rachel’s assistant.
The discovery of a string of missing women—all young, all troubled—seems like a promising lead. But there’s no clear connection between the missing girls and the high-profile young woman Mason is trying to find. He realizes that once again he’ll have to rely on his own well-honed instincts and Rachel’s uncanny capacity to see through people’s lies in order to catch a predator and rescue his captives. But can they do it before Rachel becomes his next victim?
www.MaggieShayne.com
Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne
“A tasty, tension-packed read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water
“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice
“Mystery and danger abound in Darker than Midnight,
a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime….
Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—
no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”
—Romance Reviews Today on Darker than Midnight
[winner of a Perfect 10 award]
“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate.
She satisfies every wicked craving.”
—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster
“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven… A moving mix of
high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller
will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man
“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will
keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on
The Gingerbread Man
“[Kiss of the Shadow Man is] a crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends
just enough to draw fresh blood.”
—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss
“This story will have readers on the edge of their seats
and begging for more.”
—RT Book Reviews on Twilight Fulfilled
Also by Maggie Shayne
Brown and De Luca Novels
WAKE TO DARKNESS
SLEEP WITH THE LIGHTS ON
The Portal
BLOOD OF THE SORCERESS
DAUGHTER OF THE SPELLCASTER
MARK OF THE WITCH
Secrets of Shadow Falls
KISS ME, KILL ME
KILL ME AGAIN
KILLING ME SOFTLY
Bloodline
ANGEL’S PAIN
LOVER’S BITE
DEMON’S KISS
Wings in the Night
BLUE TWILIGHT
BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT
EDGE OF TWILIGHT
RUN FROM TWILIGHT
EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT
TWILIGHT HUNGER
TWILIGHT VOWS
BORN IN TWILIGHT
BEYOND TWILIGHT
TWILIGHT ILLUSIONS
TWILIGHT MEMORIES
TWILIGHT PHANTASIES
DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT
COLDER THAN ICE
THICKER THAN WATER
Look for Maggie Shayne’s next novel
DEADLY OBSESSION
available soon from Harlequin MIRA
Innocent Prey
Maggie Shayne
www.mirabooks.co.uk
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Praise
Booklist
Title Page
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Epilogue
Copyright
Prologue
Near Taos, New Mexico
Halle didn’t think he knew—until he held out the test-kit wand and pointed firmly at the bucket in the corner that had been her only toilet for the past ten months.
Ten months, as near as she could figure. It must be getting close to her nineteenth birthday, and she had no reason to think she wouldn’t still be here for her twentieth. She hadn’t kept track of the days until after the first week or so, when she’d realized he was going to keep her alive, at least for a while. She’d never expected that she might be rescued. There was no one to come and save her, no one even to notice she was gone. The first time she woke up and was almost unable to remember what day it was, she knew she was going to have to start marking time somehow. Now she kept track of the days in the dust way underneath the bed. He couldn’t wriggle under that far even if he wanted to, the fat fucking pig.
It was a nice bed. The nicest thing in the tiny basement dungeon. But that was only because he was so often in it. She wasn’t supposed to sleep in it herself, though. She was only allowed into the bed to service him. Her bed was a dog bed. A circular one, with a single blanket, at the foot of the plush bed. In the other two corners were her bucket toilet and her shower: an ordinary cold water spigot set high in the wall, with a drain in the concrete floor underneath it.
If she slept in the bed, he would know. He always knew. And he would punish her. He would snap her ankles and wrists into the shackles attached to the wall, and he would torture her for a little while. Hot wax. A lit cigarette. Whips and paddles and clothespins. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t a turn-on. It wasn’t about pleasure or surrender or any of that stuff people who consider themselves sexually adventurous fantasize about. It was horrible. It was a nightmare. It was a living hell. Pain wasn’t pleasure. Pain was just pain. And this guy wasn’t Christian Grey. He was a sick, perverted bastard who enjoyed hurting and humiliating women.
And now she was pregnant. And he knew. Somehow he knew.
“I—I don’t have to go, sir.” She always had to address him as “sir.” Or “master.”
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
She kept her eyes lowered, shook her head to answer and took the wand from him. Then she squatted over the disgusting bucket he only emptied when it suited him and peed on the wand, praying it would somehow lie to him. Keep her secret.
He took it from her, and she stood submissively in front of him, head down, resisting the urge to hug her short satin bathrobe around her, because that would be considered insubordination. To cover herself in his presence was a huge offense. There was no sash to the robe. She wasn’t allowed to wear anything else unless he told her to, although there were clothes in a plastic bin under the bed. He bought them for her all the time and sometimes had her dress up in them. But mostly she lived in the short robe.
After a minute he sighed heavily and shoved the wand under her downturned head so she could read the results for herself. She’d already known, but somehow seeing the plus sign made it worse. She couldn’t bear the thought of what he might do with a baby. What was she going to do?
“Well, you’ve been a good girl,” he said. “You hear me? You’ve been a good girl. But I’m gonna have to let you go now.”
She brought her head up fast, eyes widening, then quickly lowered it again.
“Why don’t you pack your things while I make a phone call? Here.” He pulled a plastic trash bag from his pocket. He often had one on him. He liked to smother her until she passed out sometimes. After almost dying once or twice, she’d started faking it. But he wasn’t easy to fool. She had to wait until the black spots started popping into her eyes to make it convincing.
“You... You’re letting me go?” she whispered, daring to meet his eyes again, briefly.
He smiled and nodded, reaching out to stroke her coarse curls. “Yes. Now pack.”
Her heart jumped in her chest, but she took the bag from him. She didn’t want anything he’d given her, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. It would offend him. He might change his mind. Oh, God, it was over. It was finally over.
She knelt and pulled the plastic tub out from beneath the bed, scooped everything out of it in one big armful and then rose and dropped the clothes on the bed. Quickly, she opened the bag and began shoving the clothing into it, while he stood behind her with his cell phone. She could hear the tones when he tapped the keys, and then the ringing.
She heard someone answer, and then a sound that made her heart clench tight as the cold steel of what she knew was a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head.
“I’m gonna need another girl,” he said to the person on the phone.
And that was the last thing she ever heard.
Binghamton, New York
“It’s time for you to face it, Stephanie. You’re never going to see again.”
It had been two months since she’d heard those words from the dire-voiced doctor she imagined looked like an undertaker. And they were still replaying in her mind every time she let herself drift.
Coaching sessions were one of those times.
Stevie had once believed that there was always hope, unless you were talking to a corpse. Well, Dr. Langley had talked to her just as if he were talking to a corpse that day. No hope, he’d said. No way it can happen, he’d said. It was time to begin accepting that this was her new way of life, he’d said. And it was like the light in her heart just blinked out. No hope.
Everything she’d ever believed about the world, about herself, about everything, blinked out with it. No hope. A dark curtain lowered itself across the stage of her life. She felt its weight as if she’d been standing right beneath it. It was heavy and cold and black, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to keep going.
“There are a lot of blind people who live productive, fulfilling lives,” Dr. Undertaker had said. “It’s only one sense out of five. You have four more to fall back on.”
“Look at Rachel de Luca,” her mother had added.
“Fuck Rachel de Luca” had been her reply. It had shocked her to hear herself sound that dark. And it had shocked her mother, too.
That had been two months ago, and now it was May and her days were still as dark as her nights. She spent her mornings in one-on-one therapy with her shrink and group therapy with a bunch of other disabled people. Paraplegics, vets missing limbs, that sort of thing. No other blind people, though. And in the afternoons she had lessons with her coach, Loren Markovich, a mid-forties pain-in-the-ass who was constantly quoting self-help authors to her. Rachel de Luca had been one of her suggestions. The self-help author who’d been blind for twenty-some-odd years. Stevie’s mom and her blindness coach had been shoving de Luca’s self-help audio books down her throat since the accident. And she’d listened to them, eagerly sucking up the notion that she could change her reality. She’d believed it. She’d been sure she could positive-think her way out of this endless night. It had worked for the author, after all.
It made Stevie want to vomit. Anyone who would say she had created her own blindness was an ignorant fuckwit. Who the hell would choose to be blind?
Personally, she hated Rachel de Luca. Partly for the stupid message she’d wanted so badly to believe in, but mostly for getting the miracle Stevie wanted so much for herself. The one her gloom-and-doom doctor said she was never going to have. Rachel de Luca got her eyesight back. Stevie hated her for that.
She also hated her shrink, her therapy group and her blindness coach. Yes, there was a rational part of her mind that figured she ought to be grateful her father could afford to buy her all this help. But she didn’t want it. It was all geared toward learning to live with being blind. Toward accepting it. And she would never do that.
She was twenty years old. Her life stretched out ahead of her like an endless black pit. She didn’t want this. She just didn’t want it. She figured she’d give it a year, if she could stand it that long. It had been eight months already. So four more. Maybe she would even stretch it to five, because a Halloween suicide had a nice sense of flair to it.
But dammit, she wanted to see Jake again before then. See him. That was a joke. She’d never see him again. But she wanted to be with him. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t even answer her calls. Not that she blamed him.
“Stephanie, are you listening at all?” Loren asked.
Stevie turned her head slightly toward her coach. It was pleasantly warm outside, early May sun pouring down and bouncing off the sidewalk. They were practicing walking with the white cane. She felt like a sideshow freak, walking along beside Otsiningo Park, waving the stupid thing and tapping it to keep track of where the sidewalk was, probably weaving like a drunk. God, she hated this.
“I’m listening.”
“You need to stop drifting off into your own world,” Loren said. “You have to start keeping your senses attuned to what’s going on around you.”
“I know. You’ve told me a hundred times. A thousand.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder. What did you say?”
“I know it’s not easy,” Loren said.
“You don’t know anything, Loren. No one can, unless they’re blind, too. I don’t care how many people you coach or how often you walk through the city with your eyes closed, you don’t know. Stop saying you do.”
Loren let her breath out in a rush; then she was quiet for a moment. “You know, eventually, you’re going to have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and start living again.”
“Really? ’Cause I don’t think I have to do anything. I think I can pretty much do what I want. It’s my life.” Deep down inside, Stevie winced at how bitchy she was being. But she squelched the feeling. She had a right to be angry. Her life had been stolen by a drunk driver.
Loren didn’t reply and Stevie figured she’d pissed her off and didn’t care. But she supposed she had to cooperate if she wanted to get home and hide in her room for a while. Maybe try to call Jake again. “Just repeat your last instruction, will you? I want to get this damned session over with.”
She could feel her coach’s anger rise up a little bit. And then she felt it vanish again. That was weird. When she spoke, Loren’s tone was calm, if a little bit cool. “Walk to the end of the block. Find the corner. Don’t step off the sidewalk into the street, and don’t even think about walking around the corner out of sight. Just locate the corner using your senses and your cane. Then turn around and come back here. Count your steps so you know how to find me. There’s a bench to your right. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”
Alone? Loren wanted her to go alone? Panic seeped into Stevie’s veins. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” She said it even though she knew the apology was too little, too late.
“I’m not mad at you, honey,” Loren said softly. “This is not a punishment. It’s time for you to test your wings, just a little bit.”
“I’m not ready.”
“It’s a hundred feet, Stephanie.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to do this.”
Loren moved, and Stephanie heard her, knew she was sitting down on the bench she’d mentioned.
“Go,” Loren said. “I’ll be right here waiting. I’ll watch every step you take.”
“You don’t even care how scared I am, do you?” Stevie accused.
“Of course I care. But that fear isn’t going to go away until you face it and beat it. Stephanie, you can do this. You’re strong. You’re not helpless. Now go.”
Stevie bit her tongue before the words I hate you could emerge. Yes, she was acting like a ten-year-old. She didn’t care. She was furious. And terrified.
“Fine.”
She tapped the sidewalk to get herself lined up, finding where it ended and the grass began on the right, and then she started walking, keeping herself in that area, so others could pass by her, if there were any others. She was so focused on staying aligned and walking straight, and so afraid of walking into something, that she barely noticed people approaching until they walked or jogged past her, and it startled her every single time. But she kept going. She kept going until she felt the sidewalk make a right angle. Then she took a few more steps forward, tapping to make sure. Yes, the sidewalk ended; she could feel the curb. She imagined stepping off that small drop by accident, figured she could easily break an ankle. It would fix Loren’s ass if she did, wouldn’t it? Her father would fire her for sure.
But with Stevie’s luck, her replacement would probably be worse.
Carefully, she turned around, 180 degrees, tapping her way back to the inside edge, where the sidewalk turned. She lifted her head, facing the direction she’d come from, hoping like hell Loren was looking, and flipped her off, then pivoted 45 degrees and walked around the corner, out of Loren’s sight.
Let her panic and come chasing after me, she thought. Let her suffer a few seconds for pushing me so damn hard and making me do what I wasn’t ready to do. She tapped about ten steps, expecting to hear Loren come running after her. Instead she heard a vehicle stop very near her. She heard its door open, and footsteps coming toward her. A chill went up her spine, and she turned all the way around and began tapping back the way she’d come, toward the corner. But a pair of very strong arms snapped around her, and one hand covered her mouth. She fumbled for her cell phone, then dropped it as she was yanked off the sidewalk and thrown into a vehicle. A door slammed closed, and the vehicle lurched into motion as she scrambled from the floor up onto a bench seat, her hands patting the area all around her to get her bearings.
“What’s happening?” she shouted. “What is this? Who are you?”
No answer. She felt her way to the side of the vehicle, running her hands over the seat, then the inside of the door in search of a handle. When she found it and started yanking on it, it wouldn’t budge, but she knew by then that this was bigger than a car. It was a van. She was in the back of a van. It took a corner hard, damn near rocking up on two wheels, and she was slammed into the other side, cracking her head on metal. There didn’t seem to be any glass. No windows. No one could see her.
Holding her head, she sank onto the seat and started screaming at the top of her lungs. “You fucker, you’d better fucking let me go or my father will destroy you! You’d don’t even know—”
The driver braked to a whiplash-inducing stop, and then he was on her, all his weight on her back. He pushed her face down into the seat while she wriggled and thrashed and cried. Her hands were tied behind her with what felt like a plastic band. A zip tie. She couldn’t breathe. He was smothering her.
He jerked her head up by the hair, and she sucked in a desperate breath. Then he wrapped a strip of duct tape all the way around her mouth to the back of her head. Finally he got off her and shoved her to the floor. In seconds the van was moving again.
She dragged herself up onto the seat, sobbing, trembling. She’d thought her life couldn’t get any worse. It was painfully obvious that it could. And had.
God, what had she done?
1
Whitney Point, New York
Okay. Maybe the bullshit I wrote was a little bit true. If you wanted it, you could have it. There was more to it, of course. But that was the basis of every book I’d ever written. And it seemed like my own bullshit was determined to prove itself to me.
I’d wanted my eyesight back, I’d wanted my brother’s murder solved, I’d wanted to survive the holidays—literally, survive the holidays. And I’d wanted Detective Mason Brown.
I pretty much had all of that now. I could still see. No complications, no rejecting of the donor tissue this time—besides on moral grounds, that is. It did come from a serial killer—my brother’s killer—after all. I had survived the holidays, though it had been a damn close call. The case was solved, sort of. Tommy’s killer was dead. Twice now. And his brother, the aforementioned Detective Dreamboat, was in my bed, if only for an hour or two at a time.
I was actually beginning to believe that the messages of my bestselling books (and calendars, coffee mugs, app and upcoming series of imprinted apparel) were valid. I was actually starting to think, as Mason did, that my unoriginal philosophies on positive thinking and deliberate creation were popular because there was some truth to them, that they were more than just regurgitated new age psycho-spiritual babble. And if I were honest with myself, it felt good to believe that. It felt damn good to think I was serving some kind of higher purpose in the world.
I choked on a sarcastic laugh from my inner bitch, and it sounded like a snort. Higher purpose. Right. Still...I was warming up to the notion that there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere. For me, that’s about as close to a spiritual awakening or an “ah-ha moment” as it’s ever gonna get.
So why was I still kinda miserable?
Mason rolled away from me, sat up and bent forward to pull on his jeans. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand—10:00 p.m. “This has to be some kind of a land speed record.”
He stopped with his hands on his button fly and turned to look back at me. He was the sexiest man in the universe. I am not exaggerating. I didn’t know why women didn’t swarm him in the streets like adolescents mobbing a Jonas brother. (Yes, that’s a dated reference. I’m over thirty. You’re lucky I didn’t say Hansen.)
Mason leaned over and kissed me nice and slow. “Sorry,” he said when I let go of his lips. “But the boys will be home from the movies and—”
I held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s just...”
“Just what?” He knelt on the bed, his jeans still undone, as he buttoned up his shirt. I thought he could’ve been on the cover of a steamy novel. Fifty Shades of Brown. Mason Brown, that is.
“I really have to go,” he said.
“So go, then. You remember the way, right?”
“Don’t be mad.”
I sighed, thinking I was acting like a sophomore pouting over her steady, which was stupid, because this was just the way I wanted it. And because I don’t even like sophomores.
“Don’t be dumb. I’m not mad. You’re the world’s greatest uncle, and you’re also all they have. Besides their grandmother, the queen of cold.”
“Easy, woman.”
I grinned at him, pleased with myself. By insulting his mother, I’d diverted his attention from my petulant little burst of emotional ickiness. “Go on. Tell Josh and Jeremy I said hi.”
He looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide whether to say something, or maybe waiting for me to say something more. Then he nodded, kissed me quickly and got up to finish dressing.
“I’ve got that meeting with the chief tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call you right after, tell you what it was about.”
New subject. Nice. I was uncomfortable talking about...relationship stuff. Heavy stuff. Fortunately, so was he. “I already know what it’s about,” I said, crawling halfway out of the bed and pulling the little plastic stairs closer. Myrtle, my bulldog, was still snoring, but now she could join me when she was ready. Moving her doggy stairs away from the bed was essential to having good sex. Otherwise she spent the whole time trying to wriggle her way in between us. It was just wrong, you know?