Blake Crouch - Locked doors

It was very late and dark and quiet.

Moonlight came through the windows and bleached the floorboards.

Violet had calmed down.

They lay awake, Max between them, the infant snoring delicately.

“Is it hard for you?” Violet whispered.

“What?”

“You know. Lying here with me…doing nothing.”

Andrew smiled.

“Go to sleep.”

He almost said go to sleep angel.

Her head rested in the crook of his arm.

She rubbed her cheek against his.

“What are you doing?”

“Max never had a beard. I like yours. I like how it smells.”

“You gonna keep me up all night?”

“I just might.”

Haines Junction, Yukon

Spent last night at the Raven Hotel. Pricey. Look for something more reasonable this evening. Breakfast at Bill’s Diner. Coffee. Two delicious bearclaws. C$11.56. AT came to the village again in that old CJ-5. (he went to the library) I drove out to his cabin. 5.9 miles down Borealis Road. A one-laner. Rough. Beautiful weather. Cold. Saw his driveway but didn’t turn in. Too nervous. (don’t be such a chickenshit) Think I’ll return on foot tonight and approach through woods under the cover of

The intercom broke in: “At this time, we would like to begin boarding Flight 6346 with nonstop service to Whitehorse, Yukon.”

The tattered purple notebook closed.

On its cover, “H. BOONE” had been neatly printed in black magic marker:

The passenger of seat 14C slipped the notebook into a leather satchel, slung it over his shoulder, and strolled toward the gate.

His hair is blond and short now, but if you look closely, the roots are still black.

Read on for an excerpt from DESERT PLACES, the prequel to LOCKED DOORS, also available on Kindle, but first…

Author’s Afterward

So what's up with this ending? And will there ever be a conclusion to the Andrew Thomas/Luther Kite saga?

I'm good friends with thriller author J.A. Konrath, and our writing has covered many of the same themes of good and evil. I love Joe’s Det. Jack Daniels Series, which showcase his own unique, disturbing take on the serial killer genre.

In 2010, we wrote a novella together called SERIAL UNCUT (available on Amazon), combining some of the characters from his work and my work, including Jack Daniels, Taylor (from AFRAID and TRAPPED, written under Joe’s pen name, Jack Kilborn), and Mr. K. It also features Orson Thomas and Luther Kite from DESERT PLACES and LOCKED

Joe approached me with a simple, yet unique, idea: Wouldn't it be fun to have Jack and Luther square off in a full length novel? I was all for it. That novel is STIRRED, which we're currently writing.

If you're new to my books, or Joe's books, and want to get caught up on the entire history of these characters before reading STIRRED, here is the order they go in, along with the characters they spotlight:

SHOT OF TEQUILA by JA Konrath (1991, Jack Daniels)

DESERT PLACES by Blake Crouch (1996, Luther Kite)

LOCKED DOORS by Blake Crouch (2003, Luther Kite)

WHISKEY SOUR by JA Konrath (2004, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

BLOODY MARY by JA Konrath (2005, Jack Daniels)

RUSTY NAIL by JA Konrath (2006, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

DIRTY MARTINI by JA Konrath (2007, Jack Daniels)

SERIAL UNCUT by Black Crouch, Jack Kilborn, and JA Konrath (1978-2010, Jack Daniels, Luther Kite, Taylor, Mr. K)

AFRAID by Jack Kilborn (2008, Taylor)

JACK DANIELS STORIES by JA Konrath (2004-2010, Jack Daniels)

FUZZY NAVEL by JA Konrath (2008, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

CHERRY BOMB by JA Konrath (2009, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

TRAPPED by Jack Kilborn (2010, Taylor)

SHAKEN by JA Konrath (2010, Jack Daniels, Mr. K, Luther Kite)

STIRRED by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (2011, Jack Daniels, Luther Kite)

This may seem like a devious effort by us to get you to buy everything we've written. I swear it isn't. If it was, I would have mentioned Joe’s novels ORIGIN, DISTURB, THE LIST, and ENDURANCE, and my novels ABANDON and SNOWBOUND.

Seriously, though. It really isn't necessary for you to read any of these previous novels to enjoy STIRRED.

But we'd love you even more if you did.:)

Blake Crouch, 10/2/10

Durango, CO

Published in January 2004 by Thomas Dunne Books

DESCRIPTION: Andrew Z. Thomas is a successful writer of suspense thrillers, living the dream at his lake house in the piedmont of North Carolina. One afternoon in late spring, he receives a bizarre letter that eventually threatens his career, his sanity, and the lives of everyone he loves. A murderer is designing his future, and for the life of him, Andrew can’t get away.

Harrowing…terrific…a whacked out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.

[C]arried by rich, image-filled prose. Crouch will handcuff you, blindfold you, throw you in the trunk of a car, and drag you kicking and screaming through a story so intense, so emotionally packed, that you will walk away stunned.

Excerpt from Desert Places…

On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00 a.m. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.

I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.

I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I’d been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He’d be cursingthe drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.

For once, my mailbox wasn’t overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.

Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel’s and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water’s edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.