Maggie Shayne - Sleep with the Lights On

Through the eyes of a killer…

Rachel de Luca has found incredible success writing self-help books. But her own blindness and the fact that her troubled brother has gone missing have convinced her that positive thinking is nothing but bull.

Her cynicism wavers when a cornea transplant restores her sight. The new eyes seem to give her new life, until they prove too good to be true and she starts seeing terrifying visions of brutal murders—crimes she soon learns are all too real.

Detective Mason Brown’s own brother recently died, leaving behind a horrific secret. In atonement, Mason donated his brother’s organs, though he’s kept the fact quiet. Now he wants to help Rachel find her brother, but when he discovers the shocking connection between her visions and his own brother, he suddenly has to do everything in his power to save her from a predator who is somehow still hunting from beyond the grave.

Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne

“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends just enough to draw fresh blood.”

—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss

“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

Sleep with the Lights On

Maggie Shayne

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This novel would not have been the book it is without the insight and skill of my editor, Leslie Wainger. Her enthusiasm, support and sheer brilliance make me look good, and I can’t imagine doing this job without her.

Contents

Prologue

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

Wake to Darkness

Prologue

He watched the body sink in slow motion through the murky green water. Tears blurred his eyes, obstructing his view, but he wiped them away. He liked to watch. It was peaceful, the way the long tendrils of dark seaweed seemed to reach up for the bodies. Like they were waiting, eager to welcome them home. They parted, those tendrils, as the body sank deeper and then closed up again as its descent continued. Like the fingers of a loving hand, embracing them, wrapping them in the liquid softness of death. He liked to think of them resting at the bottom, sinking into the deep, soft mud. Peaceful. Easy. When the seaweed fingers returned to their former positions, reaching toward the surface, waving gently in the currents, it was as if they’d never even been there.

As if he’d never killed them.

When the last ripple faded and the water returned to green stillness, Eric backhanded the new tears from his face and snuffled hard. It was done. Again. But this was it, it was over. This would be the last time.

You say that every time. But you know better.

Yeah, it was true, he’d said it before. Every time, with every lanky, brown-eyed young man he bludgeoned to death with his favorite framing hammer. It wasn’t that he took any pleasure in killing them. It was just that he couldn’t help himself. When he saw them, he got this persistent itch in the back of his brain. And it would get worse and worse. You couldn’t scratch that itch from the outside. It was inside. It scratched and it scratched, a rat on a wall, working until it broke clean through.

That other one inside him. He was the killer. And once he got his rocks off beating them to death, he crawled back into his rat hole, leaving Eric to clean up the mess, to plaster over the hole and cover up the crime, and pretend there were no rats in his house at all.

What rats? I don’t hear any rats. Look at me, I’m just a normal guy. And yeah, my eyes are red, but not because I’ve been sobbing over the poor fucking bastard I just dumped into the lake. It’s probably allergies. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine. Normal.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Nothing could make the scratching stop except killing. And it was getting so the rat demanded to be fed more and more often. It was growing, that rat. It was almost too big to stay behind the wall at all anymore.

But he told himself, as he always did, that was not the case. He was in charge, not the rat. He was patching that hole for the last time. He wouldn’t let the rodent chew through it again. Not again. He was done with this. He was not going to kill any more pretty, lanky young men with brown hair that hung a little too long. He could beat this. He knew he could.

Nodding hard, Eric dipped his oars into the green-brown water and pushed the boat into motion. The sun was rising now over the pine-forested eastern shoreline. It warmed the surface, drawing misty spirals and pillars upward from the water. They twisted higher, heading for the light like the spirits of Eric’s beloved dead. He watched them rising, growing thinner, vanishing altogether, while he rowed in the opposite direction, west, toward the dock, the cabin.

A loon sang its heartbroken song. Tall black trees rose up out of the water without a leaf or a limb. Weak and rotting. Lily pads clustered thicker the closer he got to the shore, until it was as if he was rowing through a lake made of the waxy green leaves. There were lotus blossoms, too, mostly white, a few bright pink ones, just starting to open up as the sunbeams reached them. Bullfrogs croaked, and the birds in the forests surrounding the lake chorused louder and louder. Their morning choir. All around him, as the sun climbed higher, the Adirondack Mountains changed their character entirely. By night they were a dark world that seemed perfect for someone like him. A place where death and decay were just a normal part of the whole process, and where killing was everywhere. It was accepted. It was normal.

But when the sun took over, the mountains changed. The lake water that had been murky and green, sparkled and danced in the morning light. The forest came to life, no longer deep and foreboding, but green and lush, the ground beneath the trees, dappled in light and shadow.

He no longer fit, he with his rat-infested walls. And by the light of day it was always clear that he never really had.

He rowed the boat up to the long wooden dock. Today he hadn’t even taken a life preserver or any fishing gear, the way he usually did, figuring that would make him look normal if he were noticed by some fish-and-game officer. Not that he ever had been. The lake was isolated. He’d never seen anyone when he’d been out doing his grim work. This time he hadn’t even bothered to take those precautions. He’d just been eager to get it over with. To be done with it. That was how determined he was to stop killing. That was how sure he was that this would be the last time he would row out across Stillwater Lake in the predawn chill to lay a young man to rest at the bottom.