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First Thrills E-Book

Lee Child

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Herausgeber: Corvus
Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
Sprache: Englisch
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Brand-new stories from world-class crime and thriller legends including Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver and Stephen Coonts, handpicked by number one bestseller Lee Child. 12 LITERARY LEGENDS 13 RISING STARS ONE MUST-HAVE COLLECTION OF First Thrills Con men and killers, aliens and zombies, priests and soldiers, just some of the characters that thrill and kill in this compelling collection of gun-toting, double-crossing, back-stabbing, pulse-pounding stories. Jeffery Deaver investigates the suspicious death of a crime-writer in "The Plot"; Karin Slaughter's grieving widow takes revenge on her dying ex-husband in "Cold Heart", Stephen Coonts discovers a flying saucer in the depths of the ocean in "Savage Planet" and John Lescroart's secret field agent finds himself caught up in a complex game of cat-and-mouse in "The Gato Conundrum". Handpicked by world number one Lee Child, celebrity authors and stars of the future are brought together, writing brand-new stories, especially commissioned for this must-have collection. Whether you're reading today's bestseller or tomorrow's phenomenon, grisly horror or paranoia thriller, historical suspense or supernatural crime, one thing is for certain. You'll be thrilled to the core.

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Leseprobe

12 LITERARY LEGENDS

13 RISING STARS

1 MUST-HAVE COLLECTION OF FIRST THRILLS

Con men and killers, aliens and zombies, priests and soldiers - just some of the characters that thrill and kill in this compelling collection of gun-toting, double-crossing, back-stabbing, pulse-pounding stories.

Jeffery Deaver investigates the suspicious death of a crime-writer in 'The Plot'; Karin Slaughter's grieving widow takes revenge on her dying ex-husband in 'Cold, Cold Heart'; Stephen Coonts discovers a flying saucer in the depths of the ocean in 'Savage Planet' and John Lescroart's secret field agent finds himself caught up in a complex game of cat-and-mouse in 'The Gato Conundrum'.

Handpicked by world number one Lee Child, celebrity authors and stars of the future are brought together, writing brand-new stories, especially commissioned for this must-have collection. Whether you're reading today's bestseller or tomorrow's phenomenon, grisly horror or paranoia thriller, historical suspense or supernatural crime, one thing's for certain. You'll be thrilled to the core.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Lee Child is the internationally bestselling author of fourteen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers The Enemy, One Shot, The Hard Way, and the #1 bestselling Bad Luck and Trouble and Nothing to Lose. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Novel, and The Enemy won both the Barry and the Nero awards. Child, a native of England and a former television director, lives in New York City.

FIRST THRILLS

High-Octane Stories from

FIRST THRILLS

HIGH-OCTANE STORIES FROM THE HOTTEST THRILLER AUTHORS

EDITED BY AND WITH A BRAND NEW STORY FROM

First published in the United States of America in 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

The moral right of Lee Child to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84887-692-7 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-84887-693-4 (trade paperback) eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-264-5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

We dedicate this collection to

our friends and families for their unending support

and to our readers: you are the reason we do what we do.

Because of all of you, we can write what we love.

Contents

INTRODUCTION * Lee Child

THE THIEF * Gregg Hurwitz

SCUTWORK * CJ Lyons

THE BODYGUARD * Lee Child

LAST SUPPER * Rip Gerber

AFTER DARK * Alex Kava and Deb Carlin

WEDNESDAY’S CHILD * Ken Bruen

EDDY MAY * Theo Gangi

THE PLOT * Jeffery Deaver

EYE OF THE STORM * John Lutz and Lise S. Baker

THE DEAD CLUB * Michael Palmer and Daniel James Palmer

UNDERBELLY * Grant McKenzie

THE GATO CONUNDRUM * John Lescroart

THE PRINCESS OF FELONY FLATS * Bill Cameron

SAVAGE PLANET * Stephen Coonts

SUSPENDED * Ryan Brown

INVISIBLE * Sean Michael Bailey

WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME * Heather Graham

ON THE TRAIN * Rebecca Cantrell

CHILDREN’S DAY * Kelli Stanley

MY FATHER’S EYES * Wendy Corsi Staub

PROGRAM WITH A HAPPY ENDING * Cynthia Robinson

KILLING CAROL ANN* J. T. Ellison

CHLOE * Marc Paoletti

COLD, COLD HEART * Karin Slaughter

CALLING THE SHOTS * Karen Dionne

AFTERWORD

Acknowledgments

A lot of people work very hard behind the scenes to bring a book to life. A collection like this involves even more work because of the number of authors involved. We would like to thank these unsung heroes:

Scott Miller and everyone at Trident Media Group, for their unending enthusiasm and hard work in bringing this project to life.

Our editor, Eric Raab, his assistant, Whitney Ross, and everyone at Tor/Forge, for taking our words and giving them a home.

International Thriller Writers’ board of directors, for their inspiration and guidance. The ITW staff who work tirelessly to keep everything in working order. ITW’s Debut Author Program, which provides new authors with support, encouragement, and camaraderie.

And, finally, our guardian angels: Lee Child, Steve Berry, Liz Berry, Jon Land, Kim Howe, and Eileen Hutton.

Thanks, guys! We couldn’t have done any of this without you!

LEE CHILD

As of this writing, the International Thriller Writers, Inc. organization—ITW—is a little more than five years old. It grew quickly and strongly and in short order became very good at what such organizations are supposed to be good at, but what was fascinating was the way it ebbed and flowed and tested uncharted areas and developed skills and interests that were new. Its annual conventions—ThrillerFests—were immediately distinctive. Its internal disciplines were immediately professional. But I believe its support of new members will be most remembered.

New authors face a tough challenge. Publishing was never an easy field to break into, and it gets harder all the time. Sometimes lightning strikes, but for most of us, a career is built slowly and painstakingly, year on year. The first couple of years are crucial. Early buzz means survival. Established ITW members know that—indeed, how could they not? By definition, they all survived that test, and they all remember it well. So, early and organically, the organization felt its way into a situation where sending the elevator back down became a major priority.

Not that it wasn’t a two-way street. Our first debut generation organized itself into Killer Year 2007, and ITW recognized a great idea and ran with it. Some members of that class are now three or four books into stellar careers and are well on their way to becoming household names. The obvious quality of their emerging talent reinforced ITW’s commitment, and the organization stepped up its efforts and developed a solid program of support. Inside the organization, debut authors get access to advice and mentoring, and they mix with the biggest names on an equal footing.

And outside the organization, they get exposure, in the kind of volume you’re holding right now. This is a short-story anthology, and it’s intended to function as a sampler, as a shop window. Read these stories, and you’ll sense the talent the same way we did, and you’ll be excited to pick up the participants’ full-length novels, and buzz will build, and the participants will survive the crucial first year or two, and careers will be started, and the next generation of household names will be forged.

But publishing is a tough business, especially right now, and we were realistic enough to know that readers would be a little reluctant to buy a book by people they had—by definition—never heard of. So the call went out for big names to help. The idea was to sprinkle some major attractions in the shop window, to draw your eye. And the response was overwhelming. Eleven big bestsellers immediately offered to join in. Alphabetically, Ken Bruen, Stephen Coonts, Jeffery Deaver, Heather Graham, Gregg Hurwitz, Alex Kava, John Lescroart, John Lutz, Michael and Daniel Palmer, Karin Slaughter, and Wendy Corsi Staub all contributed stories—free, gratis, and for nothing, simply because they remembered their debut years and didn’t want to stand by idle. Among them they sell many millions of books a year, and we think they brighten up the shop window enormously. Their enthusiasm was so infectious, even I was moved to contribute a story.

But don’t let the established names’ glitter and glamour distract from the thirteen new names here. Again alphabetically, we are proud to present Sean Michael Bailey, Ryan Brown, Bill Cameron, Rebecca Cantrell, Karen Dionne, J. T. Ellison, Theo Gangi, Rip Gerber, CJ Lyons, Grant McKenzie, Marc Paoletti, Cynthia Robinson, and Kelli Stanley. Read them, and I think you’ll agree that the only real difference between the big names and the new names is chronology. Fifteen years from now the new names will be the big names. Their talent is amazing.

Which actually explains why the eleven big names—plus me—agreed to help. Of course there’s an element of altruism involved—unsurprisingly, since thriller writers are the nicest people you could hope to meet—but there’s a little self-interest, too, because writers are first and foremost readers, and like any other readers, we want a constant stream of great new stuff to consume. This is our way of making sure we get it. So join us—you won’t regret it.

FIRST THRILLS

High-Octane Stories from

GREGG HURWITZ

Momma came into the living room and asked where I got the Power Rangers pencil case and I didn’t say anything. I just scrunched my eyes shut tight and pretended I’d gone away.

She said, “Tommy, you’re a teenager. You can’t keep stealing stuff from the kindergarten kids. If I call Mrs. Connelly and she says something went missing, you’ll be in big trouble and you’ll skip dinner.”

The last part about skipping dinner floated in through my scrunched eyes and settled in my stomach and made it hurt. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She sighed and pressed her hands to her curly brown hair. “I can’t trust you, Tommy. And that’s an awful thing.”

When her mouth got like that it meant I should get out of her way for a while, so I went back to my room and sat on my bed. My dad left after I was born. I don’t have a picture of him in my head. Just the picture on my bookshelf next to my comics. My favorite is Wolverine. No one knows how strong he is inside. He’s got a skeleton made of adamantium. You never see it, really, just bits and parts, except one time he got in this plane crash and he burned down to his skeleton and I didn’t like that at all. He looks like a normal guy, but I like that he’s stronger than he looks, way stronger, beneath his soft skin. I’m fat. Momma says the proper term is “heavy,” but I know what it’s really called from the kids outside Mrs. Connelly’s classroom at school. They aren’t special, those kids, but I’d trade not being fat for not being special.

I could smell the pot roast from the kitchen and it made my stomach hurt some more thinking about not getting any because of a tin pencil case that you can see your reflection in even if it’s wavery.

Momma says she can’t trust me when it comes to stealing things. But that’s not true, at least not always. Like I know that she keeps a shoebox full of money in her closet and I’ve never stolen that. And she has this pearl necklace and a CD of Frank Sinatra and I don’t want those either. It’s just some things I have to have. Like the long, shiny shoehorn I took from the Foot Locker. Or glowy green bubble gum people leave on sidewalks. We have a problem with the salt and pepper shakers from Momma’s work, and she searches me before we leave just like the cops do black people on TV. And the cook at the diner just laughs and says, “Let him take ’em,” and she says, “You have no idea what I put up with, Frank.”

There was a knock at my door and she came in and sat next to me on the bed and I closed my eyes again, tight. She said, “It’s okay. I forgive you.”

So I said, “Can I keep the Power Rangers pencil case?”

Momma said, “No.”

I opened my eyes. I said, “I thought you forgive me.”

She sighed again and said, “Help me, Jesus.”

So I said, “Okay. You can give back the pencil case,” because I don’t like when she brings Jesus into it.

The doorbell rang, and she said, “Oh, that’ll be Janice.”

Ms. P works with Momma at the diner and they go to movies sometimes and do each other’s hair and drink pink wine out of the skinny glasses. I followed Momma out to the front door. Ms. P said, “Who’s that handsome fellow there?” like she always does even though she knows it’s just me. Ms. P wears pretty magenta lipstick like in the sunset I drew in Mrs. Connelly’s class. I like sunsets.

I didn’t say anything about not eating pot roast and Momma must’ve forgotten because I took two servings and even had grape juice. I liked the sound of Ms. P’s voice in our kitchen. We don’t have people come over to our house much. Usually, Momma goes out and leaves a TV dinner in the micro wave and the numbers already put in so I just have to push the green button. I watched Ms. P’s magenta lips all through dinner. They crinkled and smiled. Magenta is my favorite color.

After, Momma said, “Why don’t you go read your comic books?”

And I said, “I don’t read them. I look at the pictures.”

And Momma said, “Well, what ever, same difference.”

I never know what she means by “same difference” since the two words don’t really go together and they sort of cancel each other out if you ask me, but no one ever asks me. So I went to my room. But I didn’t really go to my room. I opened and closed my door and then I tippy-toed down the hall again so I could listen to Momma and Ms. P. That wasn’t very nice of me, but I’m home alone most nights so when I can hear other people talking in the house, it’s a treat.

I hid behind the little half table at the end of the hall. Ms. P’s purse was there, right by my head, and her keys, which had more key chains than keys, which made no sense.

Momma kept saying, “It’s so hard, Janice.”

And Janice kept saying, “I know, honey. I know. But he’s a sweet kid.”

And Momma said, “I feel so alone,” which made me feel weird because Momma’s not alone, since I live with her.

Momma said, “Sometimes I just miss grown-up company, you know?”

And Ms. P said, in a different kind of voice, “I know.” Then she said, “There was that salesman I fixed you up with last year.”

Momma said, “He was nice and owned a house, unlike the jerks I used to date. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. He wasn’t enough of a loser to interest me.”

They laughed about that. Then Ms. P said, “I heard he met someone, moved to Cleveland.”

“Maybe I blew it,” Momma said. “He was very nice. Plus he wasn’t hard on the eyes.”

Then Ms. P said something in a low voice and they both laughed.

My shin itched so I reached to scratch it and I hit the table and Ms. P’s keys jangled and I said, “Oops.”

Momma said, real pointy-like, “Tommy!”

And I said, “Uh-oh.”

And Momma said, “Come out here, Tommy.”

And I didn’t say anything. I just hugged my knees and squeezed my eyes shut but then I heard some rustling and opened my eyes and Momma was standing right there.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

She said, “Remember the guest rule when I’m in the living room?”

And I said, “Oh yeah,” like I’d just remembered it, but I don’t think she believed me.

As I went down the hall, I heard Ms. P say, “You’re too buttoned up in all this. You deserve something for you. A warm little something on the side.”

But Momma just gave a giggle and said, “I can barely remember.”

I went into my room and closed the door, which made me sad because I couldn’t have their voices keep me company, but a closed door was part of the guest rule. So I played for a while and then read Batman until I got to the Joker, who always scares me too much because he smiles all the time but he’s not happy. And someone like that you can’t trust. And that’s an awful thing.

After a while, I heard the front door close and then I heard Ms. P’s car drive off and then Momma came in my room and stared at me and said, “You look ridiculous. Where’d you get that lipstick?”

The next night I walked home after school alone. The fourth graders followed a few blocks like they sometimes do and threw rocks, but they didn’t mean anything because they threw little pebbles not like the real bullies. The fourth graders were just jealous because they weren’t in the special class. At least that’s what Mrs. Connelly says. And they never throw real rocks because they know if they do I’ll sit on them and they don’t like that very much at all.

I got home and ran into the kitchen and checked the micro wave, like I always do first thing. But it was bad news. There were numbers punched in already, which meant that Momma was working a night shift and she wouldn’t be home until after dinner. That made my stomach go all achy, but not big achy like when I ate all those hot dogs and threw up in the back of Ms. P’s Mustang named Coop.

The doorbell rang and I ran over, excited, and opened the front door even though Momma always tells me not to. A guy stood there. He wore overalls with stains on them and he had big shiny arms and black tangly hair down over his eyes. A silver pen stuck up out of the bibby part of his overalls. In front of our house was a beat-up brown truck.

He said, “Is your dad home?”

And I said, “I don’t have a dad. I live with Momma.”

And he smiled a real toothy smile like in the soap operas and said, “I fix driveway cracks. I finished the house up the street a bit early today and I noticed you had some in your driveway. Cracks.”

I said, “I didn’t do it.”

He stared at me sort of funny, then said, “Is your mom home?”

I said, “No.”

He ducked his head a little to look past me into the house and said, “It’s just you and your mom living here?”

I said, “Can I have your pen?”

He pulled the shiny silver pen from his overalls and turned it so it caught the light. It sparkled a bit. He said, “This pen?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “This one right here?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “You won’t tell your momma I gave you this pen?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No sir.”

He handed me the pen and walked back to his truck. After a few tries, his truck started and he drove off.

I went into Momma’s room and played in her closet. She’s got this one shirt that I like to pet that’s all shimmery like snakeskin. I took it a few times but she always notices right away so I don’t take it anymore. I wasn’t supposed to touch it neither but Momma wasn’t home and what was I supposed to do? Next I took the lid off the shoebox and looked at the rows of green bills. Momma gets paid a lot in cash—her tips, she calls it, but the tips of what?—and if she keeps it in the shoebox instead of a bank then she gets to keep more of it instead of the damn government stealing it, which is weird because I thought it was harder to steal from a bank. It’s the only time Momma says “damn” except when she’s talking about her damn life insurance which she has so she’ll know I’ll be taken care of if something ever happens to her. The damn life insurance costs her an arm and a leg and I don’t even know where to start with how many ways that doesn’t make sense. If something happened to Momma she’d go to heaven and I’d go to the home where some of the other kids in Mrs. Connelly’s class live and they get movie nights and chocolate ice cream if they earn points by behaving well. If I behave well I don’t get any points. But every Wednesday Momma buys me a comic book so I guess that’s something.

A couple nights later, Momma came in my room. She was wearing her shimmery snake shirt, and makeup, which was weird since it was her day off work.

She said, “Tommy, listen. I have someone coming over for dinner, and I’d really like it if you could behave.”

“Is she a waitress, too?”

“It’s a he, actually.”

“I don’t want him to touch my comics.”

“He won’t touch your comics.”

“Can we have pizza?”

“Sure. We can have pizza.” She stopped in the doorway and her eyes looked a bit tired, even with the makeup. She said, “This is important to me, Tommy,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant so I didn’t say anything.

I read Batman again, but still couldn’t get past page eleven where the Joker comes in smiling that smile. So then I read one of my Wolverines and that calmed me down so much I didn’t even notice Momma was at my door until she said, in a stiff voice, “Tommy, I’d like you to come meet someone.”

So I got up and followed her down the hall. Who do you think was there but the guy in the overalls who’d given me the pen! Except he wasn’t in overalls now. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a leather jacket and he smelled like cologne.

Momma said, “Tommy, I’d like you to meet Bo.”

I remembered about the pen and about how Momma wasn’t supposed to know, so I said, “Nice to meet you, Bo.”

And he shook my hand and said, “Good to meet you, Tommy.”

He came in and was all nice to me, slapping my knee and asking if I like football (no) or baseball (no) and saying he betted the girls were just crazy about me at school (no). Momma watched and smiled except when I said, “no,” then she stood behind him and gave me that angry scowl, which was weird because Momma always taught me not to lie. But she also taught me not to talk to strangers and now here she was wanting me to lie to a stranger. It was very confusing.

The doorbell finally rang and Momma said, “Oh, that must be the pizza,” and got up.

Bo said, “No, please, let me,” and he pulled a cool wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. The wallet was leather with pretty Indian-looking stitching on the back that showed a sunset, the sun all yellow and wobbly going down into the ocean. Bo took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Momma and she bit her lip and smiled at him then went in the other room.

I said, “I can eat eight slices.”

Bo said, “I bet you can, chief,” and then Momma came back in with the pizza.

Momma put the pizza on the kitchen table and said, “Thank you.” Then she looked at me and said, “Say ‘thank you.’ ”

I said, “Say thank you.”

Momma hates when I do that but I pretend I don’t know any better. She smiled at him and said, “He doesn’t know any better.”

He said, “I completely understand.”

We ate. I ate a lot. Momma excused herself to the bathroom. Bo got up and looked around a little, peering through the door to the garage and into the closet door and the little den, checking out the rooms like he was gonna buy the place. When the toilet flushed, he sat back down in a hurry.

Momma came back in. She said, “I just need to clean up and read Tommy his story before bed. Unless . . .”

And Bo said, “What?”

Momma said, “Unless you want to read him his story. Then we could be done quicker and, you know, alone.”

Bo smiled extra-wide and said, “I’d love to.”

I went back and got in my jammies and he watched me while I changed, and smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was like the Joker’s smile.

The water was running down the hall in the kitchen and Momma was humming to herself.

I climbed into bed and I said, “I want The Hardy Boys. The one about the missing gold. Momma and I are on chapter three.”

Bo said, “Tough luck, retard. I’ll read you Goodnight Moon.”

I think he picked that one because it’s the skinniest.

I said, “Goodnight Moon? You think I’m a baby?”

And he said, “No, I think you’re a retard.”

I told him he was jealous, but he just laughed.

He read it real fast, not even turning it so I could see the pictures. Then he put the book down on his knee. I could hear Momma putting the dishes away in the cupboards. He said, “This is a nice house. A real nice house.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

He said, “I could get used to living in a house like this.”

Then Momma walked down the hall and leaned against the door and said, “How sweet.”

And he said, “It was nothing at all.”

He walked out and she stayed behind and whispered, “Remember the guest rule.” And then she closed my door.

But I didn’t want to sneak down the hall and listen to them. I didn’t like listening to him the way I liked listening to Ms. P.

The next day at breakfast, Momma said, “Do you like Bo?”

I said, “He’s mean.”

She said, “He’s not mean. He read you a story, didn’t he?”

And I said, “He’s mean.”

She said, “You’re just jealous.”

I said, “He’s jealous.”

She looked at her coffee cup for a while, maybe checking for cracks. Then she said, “Sometimes grown-ups keep company for different reasons.”

“Than if someone’s nice?”

“Yeah. You know when you get lonely?”

“No.”

“How lovely,” she said, and got up to go to work.

That night when I walked home from school I saw Bo’s truck outside. But when I went in, the numbers were punched into the microwave anyway, so that meant they were going out to dinner. They were sitting on the couch together and Momma’s hair was wet, which was weird since she only showers in the morning. They were all smiley and their faces were red. Bo pretended to be nice to me but I went back to my room to read comics.

I heard Momma say, “Let him go.”

They went out. Momma came in to give me a kiss first and she held my head and said, “You know I love you, right?”

And I said, “Me, too.”

I ate alone. They got home late. I was watching TV. Momma opened a bottle of her pink wine so I hid in my room because when Momma drinks her pink wine she gets louder and her voice sounds different. She never gets mean, but I don’t like her voice getting different. It’s sort of like this one time when Wolverine was in the plane crash and it burned away all his skin and, well, you get the idea. I went to bed and got up later to pee and I heard them kind of grunting in Momma’s room and I thought they were moving the bed because Momma likes to redecorate sometimes.

At Mrs. Connelly’s the next day I drew a big pumpkin head with a mean, fake smile like the Joker’s. Or like Bo’s.

Momma was supposed to work because it was Tuesday, but there weren’t any numbers on the micro wave when I got home. I stood there for a long time, staring at the blank micro wave, getting that hurt feeling in my stomach when I think there’s no food. A toilet flushed. And then Bo came out.

He held out his arms like a scarecrow. “I’m your babysitter to -night,” he said. “Your mom’s working the night shift. Ain’t I a nice guy?” And then he laughed but it wasn’t like he thought something was funny. It was a Joker-smile kind of laugh.

I stayed in my room until I got too hungry and then I came out and said, “Will you make me a sandwich?”

He was watching a football game and he didn’t look over at me. He just said, “No.”

So I got the Salisbury steak TV dinner from the freezer and said, “Will you punch the numbers into the micro wave?”

He said, “What numbers?”

And I said, “I don’t know.”

He said, “Retard,” then he got up with a groan and shoved the box in the micro wave and hit some buttons and after the ding went off the steak was all rubbery. I ate it anyways.

I didn’t see Momma that night, but I saw her the next morning, dressed for work again. Bo was there, too. I think they had a sleepover. Momma’s mouth got the way it did when I was supposed to leave the room, but I think Bo got it that way, not me, and besides, I wasn’t done with my Corn Flakes.

They kept talking in quiet voices like I couldn’t hear but I was sitting right there.

Momma would say, “It’s too soon.”

And then he’d say, “It could save you some money, too, having me help out.”

And she’d say, “Not in front of him.” Or, “He doesn’t do well with change.” When she said, “Plus, we’re still getting to know each other,” he frowned and Momma looked like her stomach hurt.

Then he said, “Maybe that’s how you feel.”

She said, “I’m off at two. He doesn’t get home until three. We’ll discuss it then.” And she went to put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

When I got home from school, the lamp by the couch was knocked over and that made me stop inside the door and scrunch my eyes shut. I was pretty sure I didn’t do it, but you never know when you’re gonna get blamed. In the dark, I said, “Momma?” but she didn’t answer me.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that Bo’s leather jacket was hung on the back of the kitchen chair. I went over and looked at it. It felt smooth and had lots of neat hidden pockets and stuff.

I said, “Momma?” again, but no one answered me. That almost made me forget how hungry I was.

I walked down the hall past my room and checked the bathroom. No Momma. I went in her room.

Momma lay on the floor with her mouth open. I thought she might be dead.

I said, “I want a sandwich.”

But she didn’t say anything back. Then I held out my toe and shoved her shoulder and she moved a little, but stiff, all at once. It was like the hamster babies in Mrs. Connelly’s class, who also went to heaven.

When I turned around, Bo was standing in the doorway behind me. He looked at Momma, then at me. He said, “What’d you do?”

And I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what I did.

He shook his head and made a tut-tutting sound. He had a book in his hand. He said, “You like stories, right?”

I nodded.

He said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. Away from what you’ve done.”

And we went in my room. He pushed me onto the bed and sat in the chair like he did last time when he read me Goodnight Moon. He took out this skinny book and said, “Here’s a book about a guy like you, retard. He’s a stone-cold killer.”

He read some then skipped a bunch of sections because there were no pictures and he probably got bored, too. There were these two guys who talked funny and one was tall and then there was a huge imaginary talking rabbit and someone died in a barn. That’s all I figured out. I would have rather watched Pokémon.

He closed the book when he was done. “Did you get it?” he asked.

And I nodded because people get mad at me when I don’t get it. And he said, “Every story has a moral. And the moral of this story is that people like you can’t be trusted.”

He walked out into the other room. After a while, I followed. He was wiping off doorknobs and the glasses in the sink with a rag.

He said, “People tell you you think different, right?”

I nodded.

Now he was wiping off the kitchen chairs. “I’m not really here, retard. I’m in your imagination, you hear? You ever seen Pinocchio?”

I said, “I want to be a real boy.”

“That’s right. I’m like Jiminy Cricket. Or like that big rabbit in that book. I don’t exist. I’m a voice in your head. Got it?” He put on his leather jacket and walked out, using the rag to open the front door and close it behind him.

I stood there for a while. I went back into Momma’s room and looked at Momma. There was blue around her eye. Then I went in my room and read Batman again, up to page eleven. I checked the microwave but there were no numbers and I wasn’t sure how I would eat so I called 911.

The cops came in and looked in Momma’s room. Then they patted me down like Momma does at the diner after her shift when she’s looking for salt and pepper shakers. They sat me down on Momma’s bed and asked me some stupid questions. Then another guy showed up who I knew was a cop from the shiny badge on his belt even though he was too lazy to wear a uniform.

He came into Momma’s room, looked up, and said, “Holy Christ.”

I said, “You’d better not say that in front of Mrs. Connelly.”

He said, “Who’s Mrs. Connelly?”

And I said, “She’s Irish.”

He said, “Let’s get him out of here, Eddie.”

Eddie said, “Okay, detective.”

He and Eddie took me into the living room and I sat on the couch. Other cops were putting dust all over the glasses and the doorknobs and using makeup brushes to wipe it off, which didn’t make sense because why put it there in the first place? They kept shaking their heads. I didn’t blame them.

Eddie said, “Why’d you kill her?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

And the detective said, “What were you feeling?”

I said, “I wanted a sandwich.”

Eddie said, “There’s our headline.”

I said, “I don’t know why I would’ve killed Momma because I love her and she makes me sandwiches and I’m real hungry.”

The detective said, “Aren’t you sad?”

I said, “She’s in heaven now.”

And he said, “Well, there’s that.”

Eddie said, “You’re gonna go away. To a different place.”

I said, “I’m in a different place now. I ride a van to school and sit in a different classroom.”

Eddie frowned and said, “Not like that, exactly.”

One of the other cops stopped in my doorway and said, “You never know with these types.”

The detective said, “I guess not.”

The other cop said, “Hit her pretty good first. The black eye. Maybe it was accidental.”

Eddie said, “Naw, the bruising needed some time to come up before he twisted her neck.”

The other cop said, “He’s got the weight for it,” and then he walked off.

I said, “I must be stronger than I think. Like Wolverine.”

The detective said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “He heals fast.” I held up my hand. “No owies.”

The detective took my hand in his, then my other, and looked at my fingers. His hands were warm and they felt nice.

I said, “I punched Sammy White once when he tried to put Jenny Little’s head in the toilet and it hurt my knuckles and the skin came up and Mrs. Connelly had to tape up my hands and put orange stuff on it that smelled funny and I cried. But not as loud as Sammy White.”

The detective said, “I’ll bet.”

He let go of my hands and said, “Not a mark, Eddie.”

I said, “Momma said she couldn’t trust me. But she could trust me. I never took her Frank Sinatra CD or the shimmery snake shirt or the shoebox in the closet.”

The detective said, “Shoebox? What’s in the shoebox?”

“Momma’s tips.”

“How many tips?”

I held up my hands, like showing how big the fish was I caught. “About that many.”

Eddie walked out. He came back a few minutes later and shook his head.

“There’s no shoebox,” the detective said.

“I guess I took that, too,” I said. “I can’t be trusted.”

“Is that true?” the detective asked. “That you can’t be trusted?”

“I think so. That’s what the voice in my head told me.”

“A voice in your head told you to do this?”

“Yeah. He’s like Jiminy Cricket. He doesn’t exist.”

They looked at each other like when people say, “There you go.”

I said, “But know what’s weird about it?”

The detective was watching me closely now, with wrinkles in his forehead and his mouth a little open like I sometimes keep mine before Momma reminds me to close it. “What?” he said.

“I have a picture of him, even though he’s just in my head.”

The detective said, “You do?”

“Uh-huh.” I stood up and they followed me down the hall. I went into my room and dug beneath my pillow and took out the wallet with the pretty Indian stitching on it and opened it up and there was a little driving card with Bo’s picture on it.

I said, “I stole it from his jacket and I’m sorry.”

The detective smiled and said, “That’s okay. You did just fine.”

I said, “Can I have a sandwich?”

GREGG HURWITZ is the critically acclaimed, internationally best-selling author of ten thrillers, most recently They’re Watching. His books have been short-listed for best novel of the year by International Thriller Writers, nominated for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, chosen as feature selections for all four major literary book clubs, honored as Book Sense Picks, and translated into seventeen languages.

He has written screenplays for Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Paramount Studios, MGM, and ESPN, developed TV series for Warner Bros. and Lakeshore, acted as consulting producer on ABC’s V, written issues of the Wolverine, Punisher, and Foolkiller series for Marvel, and published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare. He has taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and for Harvard in the United States and around the world. In the course of researching his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swam with sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults. For more information, visit www.gregghurwitz.net.

CJ LYONS

The dead guy was a skinny old fart who didn’t have the good sense to have a Do Not Resuscitate on file. He’d spend his last few years at a nursing home, decaying from a plethora of old-timers diseases. Diabetes, hypertension, strokes, kidney disease, cataracts, pneumonia, broken hip. After surviving all that, Mr. “I’ll live to be a hundred and don’t need a DNR” finally succumbed to food poisoning from the nursing home’s egg salad.

What a way to go—covered in shit and no family left to give a damn. But the dead guy’s bad luck was just the break Andy needed.

As an emergency medicine intern, Andy was usually assigned the most boring cases: peri-rectal abscesses, drunks who needed to detox, screaming babies with earaches. He was expected to perform all those piddling tasks that the nurses and techs were too busy for, like art gases and IV sticks and blood draws—scutwork.

Andy was destined for greater things. Scutwork was for fools, not future chief residents.

Yet, here he was, performing the ultimate in degrading scutwork: pushing a “death box”—the gurney equipped with a sealed steel box containing the fresh remains of a deceased patient—down to the morgue. And loving it.

Andy had been waiting for this opportunity all night long. Thanks to the kinky Goth chick he’d met last night at Diggers, the bar across from Angels of Mercy’s cemetery.

Syrene was her name. “Think gy-rene,” she’d told him while bending forward to rack the pool balls, giving him a glimpse of come-to-papa cleavage. “But instead of gy, you sigh.”

Yeah, no points for intellect, but when she tilted her head to give him a full wattage glimpse of her baby blues highlighted with contact lenses to an impossibly brilliant shade, he’d found himself sighing.

Her hair was dyed jet black except for one sapphire streak that matched her eyes. Her eyebrows, ears, nose, and tongue were pierced. Celtic knots and intertwined flowers were tattooed on her lower back, a glimpse of one thorny rose peeked up from the black lace edge of her camisole, and an intricate Hindu pattern extended from her left ring finger across the back of her hand and up under the black leather biker jacket she wore over the peek-a-boo lace camisole. Completing her outfit were a pair of skinny jeans form fitted to her curves along with some heavy-duty shit-kicking Doc Martens.

And she was all his for the asking. Only he hadn’t had to ask—all he had to do was hint at his profession and suddenly her tongue was in his ear, her hand down his pants, and she was whispering things he’d only dreamed of.

The rest of the night was spent at her place, time fractured by sweaty groans and moans and shrieks. He hadn’t slept at all; she’d kept at him all night and most of the day until he reported for his shift at seven P.M.

Now at three A.M., he was wrecked, barely functioning. But it was worth it. The heavy gurney squeaked to a stop as he paused, sighing so hard it emerged as a whistle echoing from the steam pipes overhead. Man oh man, was it worth it.

He couldn’t wait to see what she’d do for him after tonight. After he brought her the corpse.

All she’d asked for last night, her black lipsticked mouth pursing into the cutest pout this side of Hollywood, was a glimpse at a “real live dead guy.”

She’d do anything for that, she’d said, rubbing her body along his. “Anything you want, baby.”

Andy pushed the gurney faster, its squeaky wheel emitting a soprano wail.

Oh yeah, this was going to be soooo damn good.

He turned the final corner leading to the morgue. He’d seen no one the entire journey through the tunnels—no surprise, at three A.M., security would be busy in the ER with the after-hours bar crowd. Besides, there was nothing of value to bring anyone down here.

He punched in the code to unlock the main door to the morgue and the lights came on. Behind him, Syrene stepped forward from the shadows, wrapping her arms around his waist, her fingers greedily kneading the flesh below his bellybutton. He’d called her before he left the ER and told her how to get to the morgue. She’d made good time.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, her breath hot against his neck.

He shoved the flat-topped gurney into the cavernous room with a single push that sent it ricocheting off an empty autopsy table. Then he turned to Syrene.

She was all in black again, except for white eye shadow that made her look more like a corpse than the dead guy. Before he could say anything, she wrapped one leg around him and snagged his hair in her black-taloned fingers, pulling him into a kiss. The smooth roundness of her tongue stud danced along the inside of his mouth, in and out, mimicking the motion of her hips pulsing against his.

Syrene rocked back and forth, pushing him into the room and spinning him until he had his back against the wall behind the open door. She released his hair, her fingernails biting into his flesh as they scraped down his body, until she finally untied his scrub pants and slipped her hand inside to tease him.

She tightened her grip. Andy closed his eyes, his head banging against the door as he arched back. Just as he was about to come, right there in her palm, he smelled a curious mix of stale beer and cigars. Cold steel nudged the side of his neck.

“Time to get to work, bi-itch,” a man’s voice sang out, accompanied by a cackle of laughter from Syrene.

“Who the hell are you?” Andy grabbed his pants, fumbling them closed. “You can’t be down here.”

“Oh no?” The stranger smiled, revealing gold-capped teeth with skulls chiseled into the metal. “You gonna tell me what I can and can’t do?”

He stood a head taller than Andy’s five-ten, with muscles that screamed steroids, and was either a light-skinned black man or a dark-skinned Hispanic, Andy wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was the big, black gun in the man’s hand. Pointed at him.

Syrene stood on her tiptoes and gave the man a languorous kiss. The man locked eyes with Andy over her head, one hand caressing her butt, his aim never wavering. Andy was trapped in the corner behind the door, nowhere to go, no choice but to watch.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded, using the sharp tone that usually worked on nurses in the ER. “I have to get back to work.”

Syrene broke away from the man, melding her body into his side and watching with a Cheshire grin, one black-taloned finger tapping her lips. The man shoved the gun under Andy’s chin, leveraging his head up, the gun barrel pressing against his larynx with bruising force.

“You ain’t going nowhere, honeybear.” The man’s dark eyes dilated as he watched Andy squirm, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat.

“Don’t hurt him, Dutch,” Syrene crooned. “We need him.”

Dutch? The guy sure as hell didn’t look Dutch, but who was Andy to argue. Hell, Andy could only hope it wasn’t the guy’s real name—he didn’t want anyone worried about him remembering little details like that. Worrying about the gun jabbed into his throat was more than enough.

Dutch released the pressure a microfraction. Enough for Andy to breathe and find his voice. “What do you want?”

“Nothing you’ll miss. Just a body.”

Andy yanked the drawstring on his scrub pants tighter and tied it into a knot. Christ, he was going to get killed by a couple of freaks who wanted to screw a corpse. “So take one, what do I care? I’m going back to work.”

He stepped forward, trying to brush Dutch’s hand aside. No go. The arm was as rigid as a steel I-beam, not going anywhere. Just like Andy.

“Did you bring my stuff?” Syrene asked, ignoring the standoff between the men. Ignoring Andy like he wasn’t even there, like they hadn’t spent the night and most of the day together. Guess since he wasn’t cold and dead, he hadn’t really turned her on.

Dutch shrugged his shoulder, releasing a black messenger bag. Syrene hauled it to an autopsy table and dumped the contents. Large colorful dart shaped objects spilled out. Then she removed something shiny and dangerous looking with ribbons of steel glistening in the overhead fluorescent lights. She slid it onto her hand. It looked like a medieval gauntlet turned into a torture device.

“I’ll need juice.” She dangled an electrical cord from her fingers.

“Let’s get the body first.” Dutch grabbed onto Andy’s lab coat lapels and dragged him out of the corner. Andy didn’t even try to resist; it was obvious the other man could easily out-muscle him. Better to wait for an opening to escape. “Check the one he brought us.”

Syrene laid her steel torture implement onto the table and trotted over to the gurney Andy had transported down from the ER. She seemed giddy. Probably high on something. Like this was a fricking party. Whisking the sheet off as if she was Vanna White, she tried to unlatch the body box. “I can’t open it.”

Dutch shoved Andy forward. “You do it, Goldilocks.”

Andy straightened and turned to face Dutch. “Stop calling me those names.”

“I’ll call you what ever I damn well please, bitch.” Dutch didn’t bother to use the gun to bolster his menacing tone. The scowl on his face and gleam of the gold skulls flashing from his teeth were enough. That and the ripples of muscle extending down from his hunched shoulders.

Andy didn’t answer, but instead moved to the gurney housing the corpse, wheeled it alongside an autopsy table, and undid the latch that held the top shut. Opening the lid, he swung the side of the metal box against the tabletop, where it acted as a ramp.

Before he could reach for the body, Syrene leaned over the table and yanked the old man wrapped in sheets across to her. As she eagerly tore at the swaddled corpse, Andy swung the side of the box back into place, leaving the top of the gurney open, the large hollow box waiting its next occupant.

Which would be him if he wasn’t careful. He glanced around the room. All the instruments that could help him, like scalpels and shears and the like, were neatly tucked away in glass-fronted cabinets on the other side of the room. The only thing useful near him was the walk in refrigerator that held the bodies awaiting examination. Maybe he could lock them inside?

“Damn, it’s just an old fart,” Syrene said. “The cops would never buy him as you, even after we torch him.”

“Where are the others?” Dutch asked. “Don’t you have those metal drawers like in the movies?”

“No.” Andy walked over to the refrigerator and swung the heavy door open. A light came on automatically. “We keep them in here.”

Dutch and Syrene joined him. Inside the refrigerator were several gurneys, each containing a body wrapped in clear plastic.

Dutch held back, obviously not happy about being surrounded by so many dead people. But Syrene practically danced into the cooler, rummaging through the corpses like she was selecting the perfect side of beef. The expression on her face resembled the expression she’d had last night in bed with Andy, supposedly in the throes of passion.

God, how could he have been so stupid?

“Look, man,” he tried to reason with Dutch. “You don’t need me. Do what you want, I won’t tell. It’d mean my job if I did.”

Dutch slanted his eyes at Andy. He thought he might have a chance, began to edge toward the exit, taking a deep breath, ready to run.

“Found one!” Syrene chimed out, her voice bouncing off the steel walls like a rock skidding across an icy pond. “He’s a big one. I need a hand.”

Dutch jerked his chin at Andy. Shivering not only from the cold but also from the gun muzzle at his back, Andy entered the refrigerator and helped Syrene steer a gurney out the door. The corpse was large, over six feet, and dark skinned. Dutch glanced down. “Yeah, he’ll do.” He nodded. “Strip him, sugarloo.”

Andy scowled at the name, but began to unravel the plastic enshrouding the dead man. To his surprise, as he worked, Dutch shrugged free of his jacket and stripped his shirt off, revealing a cobra tattoo encircling his waist and chest, the snake’s head coming to rest over his left shoulder, staring back at Andy with glistening emerald green eyes. Syrene skittered around, humming an eerie cadence, plugging in her steel torture device and inserting one of the colorful darts into it.

“It needs to look old,” Dutch said. “Can’t look fresh.”

Syrene frowned at him, rolling her eyes. “I know what I’m doing.”

She plunged the needle end of the machine into the corpse.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out the scam. Syrene was meticulously copying Dutch’s tattoo onto the corpse. Andy was certain that dismemberment of the hands and head were soon to follow. Add a fire and the easiest way to identify the corpse would be through the ink trapped beneath the skin—ink soon to look identical to Dutch’s.

What he wasn’t certain of was why they kept him alive—or how long that would last.

“Why here?” he asked. “Just take him with you, do what you have to.”

“Cops looking for me will never look here. Besides, if she messes up, we’ll need to get another—the cops have pictures of my art.”

“I won’t mess up,” Syrene grumbled, now wearing a pair of magnifying glasses as the machine on her hand hummed.

Cops looking for Dutch—Andy didn’t dare ask what he was wanted for. What ever it was, the man was desperate enough to add tonight’s fun and games to his list of felonies. Hopefully homicide wasn’t soon to follow.

“You don’t need me,” Andy tried again. “And someone will come looking for me soon.”

“That’s what’s keeping you alive. Anyone comes looking, you’re our fall guy—giving kinky sex tours of the morgue.”

Andy didn’t care for the chuckle Syrene and Dutch shared at that. Or the fact that as soon as Syrene was done, so was he. He considered his options. The refrigerator was his best bet—he could lock them inside. There was an alarm button, but they wouldn’t use it—wouldn’t want security to come get them out. The day shift would find them in the morning, cold but no worse for the wear—they might even talk their way past the day shift. As long as it wasn’t his job on the line, he couldn’t care less.

Okay, he had a plan. Now how to put it in motion?

Dutch did half the work for him. Syrene had him turn away and lift his arm over his head. That put him directly in line with the empty body box on the gurney.

“Stand up on that stool so I can see better,” she ordered, peering over the tops of her glasses, wielding the tattoo gun like it was Michelangelo’s brush. Dutch complied. Andy saw his chance.

“Need more light?” He reached up to adjust the overhead operating light that was extended on a swivel.

Dutch had his back to them and never saw the blow coming. Andy smashed the heavy, metal-rimmed light into the back of Dutch’s head. He followed through with a tackle to the waist, toppling the larger man facedown into the gaping steel box. The gun flew free, sliding across the floor and under a cabinet.

Dutch shouted a curse, but it was muffled as Andy slammed the lid shut and latched it.

“You bastard!” Syrene lunged at Andy with her tattoo gun. She brought it overhead and plunged it down, aiming at Andy’s face. Andy raised his arm and was instead impaled in the meaty part of his forearm. The machine whipped free of the outlet, its cord snapping through the air.

Syrene was on him, their weight hurtling against the gurney with Dutch inside, banging on the lid and shouting. They skidded across the room, crashing against the wall. She landed a knee on Andy’s inner thigh, missing vital organs but still painful, and scratched his neck and arm. Andy tried to grab her but it was like wrestling a rabid squirrel, all claws and writhing limbs.

Finally, he grabbed the electric cord and wrapped it around her neck—not tight enough to strangle her but it got her attention. He doubled over, heaving in a breath, then yanked the tattoo gun out of his arm.

“Let him out,” she whimpered, trying to lunge past him to reach the latch on the box. He hauled her back. “He’s afraid of the dark.”

“And I’m afraid of dying. You can let him out yourself—once you two are in the meat locker.” He twisted the cord in his good hand, making her yelp but not cutting off her air. He shoved his weight against the gurney and rolled it into the refrigerator, then pushed her inside as well, flinging the tattoo gun in after her.

As soon as the door was secured, he collapsed against its cold steel and slid to the floor.

“Hey, man, where you’ve been all night?” Blake Crider, one of Andy’s fellow interns, asked him when seven A.M. finally rolled around. “You hear about the popsicle people they found in the morgue?”

Andy had kept himself busy in the suture room—once he’d finished cleaning and dressing his own wounds. Wounds he hid under a long-sleeved T-shirt and his lab coat.

“What happened?” A sense of dread roiled in his gut. Had the day shift let them out? Were Syrene and Dutch going to come after him now?

“Some chick and dude were messing around, got themselves locked in the meat locker,” Blake said. “The dude suffocated—couldn’t get out of a death box.”

Dead? No one was supposed to die. Andy swallowed hard, his arm throbbing in time with his pounding pulse, and tried to ignore the trickle of guilt that chilled him from the inside out. He had no doubt Dutch would have killed him, but still, he should have called the police, should have confessed everything, should have . . .

“What about the girl?” Had Syrene told the cops he was the one who let her in? If so, he could kiss his future good-bye.

“That’s where it gets even freakier,” Blake continued. “The chick must have been locked in there for hours—long enough that she tattooed a note on herself.”

Andy could barely swallow past the fist-sized lump in his throat. “A note?”

“A confession. Don’t know what it said, but apparently the cops are pretty interested.”

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