Литагент HarperCollins - Thriller - Stories To Keep You Up All Night

“Keith, would you get me some brandy and the ammonia from the kitchen?” Beth asked. “We’ll see if we can rouse her. Then we can try to make it to the hospital.” She grimaced. “With the Hummer.”

Keith walked to the kitchen, then stopped, pausing to pick up the frying pan that lay on the floor. He froze in his tracks as he heard a startled scream rise above the pounding of the rain. He turned to race back to the living room, then came to a dead stop.

Their living room had been pitched into absolute darkness.

Terror struck deep into Beth’s heart. She had pulled back the blanket, anxious to be there first, to assure herself that the woman hadn’t died.

A hand snaked out for her from beneath the cover, dragging her down with a ferocity that was astounding. Fingers wound around her throat and she was tossed about as if she weighed nothing.

Egan. Mark Egan. Drugged-out musician. No. Psychotic killer.

She saw his deranged grin right before he doused the lantern, holding her in the vise of his one hand like a rag doll.

“What ya gonna do, big man?” a throaty voice called out in the darkness, next to her ear. “Shoot me—you might kill her. Don’t come after me, or she’s dead.”

Beth tensed every muscle. She didn’t know if the man had a weapon or not, anything more than the hideous strength of his hands.

She could hear nothing other than the wind and rain. Stars began to burst into the darkness as his grip choked her. There was no sound of voice. No sound of movement.

Not even Cocoa let out a whine.

Then there was a muffled groan. Not Keith, the sound had not come from Keith! It was Peterson who had groaned. So…where was Keith?

“That’s right,” Egan—or whoever he was—said. “You stay right where you are. The missus and I are going to take the car. Your car. We’ll go for a little ride. Will she be all right? Who knows? But try to stop me now, and you’ll probably kill her yourself.”

He began to drag her toward the door. He chuckled softly. “I don’t see too badly in the dark. I like the dark.”

They were nearly there; she could sense it. He threw open the door. Her heart was thundering so that she didn’t hear the whoosh of motion at first.

She gasped, the air knocked from her as the whoosh became an impetus of muscle and movement. Keith. He flew into them from the porch side, taking both her and Egan by storm and surprise. She twisted. Egan’s grip had been loosened by the fall. She bit into his wrist. The man howled, then went rolling away as he and Keith became engaged in a fierce physical battle.

Cocoa began to bark excitedly. She felt the little dog run over her hand and begin to growl. Egan cried out in pain again. She could hear Cocoa wrenching and tearing at something—Egan. In pain or not, Egan was still wrestling on the floor with vehemence. Rain washed in from the open doorway. The faintest light showed through, glittering on something…

The frying pan.

She picked it up, and in the darkness, desperately tried to ascertain her husband’s form from that of the killer. She saw a head rise—

She nearly struck.

Keith!

The other head was on the ground. There was a hand around Keith’s throat, fingers tightening…

Blindly, she slammed the frying pan down toward the floor. A scream was emitted…

She struck again. And again.

And then arms reached out for her.

“It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

The lantern was lit. Good old Cocoa was in the bedroom, standing guard over Mrs. Peterson who—despite having been dumped unceremoniously on the floor—was still alive and breathing. Her nephew, Joe Peterson, was tending to her.

Keith hadn’t moved the form on the floor yet. Beth didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but he wouldn’t be blithely getting up this time.

She’d seen his face. Before Keith had covered it with the throw.

“Is it…him? The serial killer?” she said.

“I think so,” Keith murmured, slipping an arm tightly around her shoulders.

“But you knew it wasn’t Peterson when I did.”

He turned to her, a pained and rueful smile just curving his lips. “Because anyone who spends any time in Key West knows that Ultra C is an all-girl band,” he said softly.

“I told him you knew music,” she said.

They both jumped, hearing the sudden loud blare of a horn. A second later there was a pounding on the door.

Keith, still gripping his gun, strode to it, pulling it open. Andy Fairmont, from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, was there.

“Jesus!” Andy shouted. “There’s a serial killer on the loose! Have you heard?”

Keith looked at Beth. She shrugged, and turned to Andy. “Never pull out a frying pan unless you intend to use it,” she said gravely.

“What?”

“You’d better come in, Andy,” Keith said, and he set his arm around his wife’s shoulders again, pulling her close.

James Siegel says the most common question he’s asked by readers is, Where do you get your ideas? His standard answer is, I don’t know—do you have any? The real answer, of course, is, Everywhere . Siegel tends to write about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Being a self-described “ordinary person,” Siegel doesn’t find it hard to place himself in the protagonist’s shoes. Riding the Long Island railroad for instance—where attractive women would sometimes occupy the seat beside him—sent Siegel into reveries of what if? That ended up as Derailed —the story of an ordinary ad guy whose life goes awry when he meets a woman on the train. Adopting kids in Colombia gave him the notion for Detour, where an adoption goes terribly, murderously wrong. And then there was the day he was lying in a massage room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The masseuse touched his neck and said, What’s bothering you? Siegel’s response: How do you know something’s bothering me? And she said, Because I’m an empath .

Siegel was puzzled.

An empath? What’s that?

I sit in a dark motel room.

It’s pitch-black outside, but I’ve pulled the shades down tight anyway, so she won’t see me when she walks in. So she’ll be sure to turn away from me to switch on the light.

I don’t like the dark.

I live on Scotch and Ambien so I never have to stare at it, because sooner or later it becomes the dark of the confessional and I’m eight years old again. I can smell the garlic on his breath and hear the rustle of his clothing. For a moment, I’m a shy, sweet-natured, baseball-crazy boy again, and I physically shrink away from what’s coming.

Then everything turns red and the world’s on fire.

I look back in anger, because anger is what I’ve become—a fist of a man.

Anger is what cost me my home, and anger is what put me into court-ordered therapy, and anger is what finally kicked me off the LAPD and into hotel security, where I can be angry without killing anyone.

Not yet.

You’ve heard of the hotel I work in. It’s considered top-shelf and is patronized by various Hollywood wannabes and occasional bona fide celebrities. As downward spirals go, mine hasn’t sucked me to the bottom yet, only to Beverly and Doheny.

I get to wear a suit and earpiece, something like a Secret Service man. I get to stand around and look semi-important and even give orders to the hotel employees who don’t get to wear suits.

She was a masseuse in the hotel spa.

Kelly.

She was known for her deep-tissue and hot stone. I first talked to her in the basement alcove where I went to be alone—but I’d noticed her before that. I’d heard the music seeping out of her room on my way to the back elevators, and when she entered the basement to grab a smoke, I complimented her on her taste. Most of the hotel masseuses were partial to Enya, to Eastern sitar or the monotonous sound of waves lapping sand. Not her. She played the Joneses—Rickie Lee and Nora and Quincy, too, on occasion.