Fear the Dark (43 page)

When Coop emerged a few minutes later, he went over to Darby and said, ‘She’s out back, in the garden.’

An orderly escorted them through a maze of rooms
fragrant with coffee and the cellophane-baked smell of reheated eggs and potatoes, and everywhere Darby looked she saw elderly people hunched at tables playing cards or doing puzzles; gnarled limbs planted in wheelchairs and dull eyes staring blankly at TVs playing
Good Morning America
.

Then she was standing outside, breathing in fresh air and feeling the morning sun warm against her face. Darby put on her sunglasses as the orderly left.

Coop turned to her and said, ‘She’s straight ahead.’

A path was carved through the overflowing gardens. Darby was making her way across it when she noticed that Coop wasn’t beside her. She stopped, turned and saw him standing near the door leading back to the activity room.

‘You coming?’ she asked.

‘I want you to do it.’

‘She’s going to have questions about her daughter and –’

‘I’ll be right here.’ He smiled. ‘You’ve earned it. Go.’

Darby carried on across the path, slowing when she saw a small, fair-skinned woman kneeling in the dirt and pressing the earth with a trowel. She wore jeans, a long-sleeved grey T-shirt, a big floppy straw hat that tied underneath her chin and gardening gloves that went up past her wrists.

Aside from the cacti, Darby didn’t recognize any of the flowers. Gardening had been her mother’s thing, Darby never having had any interest in it, unable to understand the point of all that hard work when winter and animals would come along and destroy everything you had spent
so much time and money on. And yet her mother kept doing it year after year, right up until the day she died.

Just as I keep doing what I do
, Darby thought. And, in her own way, wasn’t she a gardener too? A gardener for lost souls?

The whole flight here, Darby had rehearsed what she would say to Nicky’s mother. When Joan Hubbard looked up from her work, smiling warmly, Darby was struck by how frail the woman was, and the words died in her throat.

But there was nothing frail about the woman’s voice. It was strong, like a fist: ‘Can I help you?’

‘My name is Darby McCormick.’

Joan Hubbard’s gaze narrowed, alarmed at the bruising and cuts on Darby’s face.

Darby licked her lips nervously. ‘I’d like to speak to you about your daughter.’

Joan Hubbard held up a hand and said, ‘Stop right there.’

‘I’m not a reporter. I’m working with –’

‘Stop. Please, just stop.’ Nicky’s mother got to her feet. She dropped her trowel and looked at Darby, a hard-scrabble, no-nonsense woman who knew how to fight with her fists and her mouth. ‘I don’t care who you are, and I don’t know how you got in here. But I want you to leave, now.’

‘Nicky’s alive. I –’

‘Whatever service you’re trying to sell me, I’m not interested. I’ve had the top private investigators and even a few retired policemen who believed they could find my daughter. They couldn’t, and neither can you. My
daughter is dead, God rest her soul. Now, please, leave me in peace.’

‘I found her,’ Darby said. ‘She’s alive.’

Joan Hubbard made her hands into fists by her sides. Her mouth worked but no sound came out. Birds chirped from a nearby tree.

‘I’m working with the FBI,’ Darby said. ‘They’re here. Nicky is waiting for you in Colorado. She’s –’

‘How
dare
you sneak in here and say such a thing to me, you sick –’

‘Nicky is alive,’ Darby said again. ‘Your daughter is alive, and I’m here to take you to her.’

Joan Hubbard looked over her shoulder, at the hard Texas sun beating down on her and on the flat, sprawling land, the heat already so strong it could melt bones. She looked up at the trees and then at the flowers, as though they were going to confirm what she had hoped for, prayed for and dreamed about every night for decades.

‘My daughter is dead. She’s been missing for more than thirty years. There must be some mistake.’

‘There’s no mistake,’ Darby said gently. ‘We found her.’

Joan Hubbard glared at her, wanting more. Darby wondered where to start, how much to tell her.
Your daughter wasn’t harmed, at least not physically. The teenager spotted with your daughter that day in the store? His name was Ray Williams. He was a teenager when he abducted your daughter because his mother had always wanted a girl. They cared for her in their own way, and he loved her in his own way. He abducted women from other states for many, many years. Your daughter is doing her best to provide us with their names and, hopefully, the places where he buried them – but she’s mourning his death. I know it sounds odd, almost incomprehensible, but victims in these sorts of situations are often bound up with their abusers. It’s going to take a long, long time for your daughter to heal – and she may never heal psychologically. But the important thing right now is that Nicky is alive and she’s safe. Your daughter is alive and safe and you two will have time together. You have time
.

‘You’re lying,’ Joan Hubbard said, her voice catching on her tears.

‘There’s an FBI agent here with me. His name is Jackson Cooper. He has a phone with him. You can call and talk to her.’

The woman stared at the ground as if she’d dropped something precious.

‘After you speak to Nicky,’ Darby said, ‘we’ll take you to see her. The Bureau has a private plane, they’ve already made preparations –’

Joan’s legs buckled. Darby ran to her.

‘She’s alive,’ Darby said, holding Nicky’s mother in her arms. Joan Hubbard felt as light and frail as a bird. ‘Your daughter is alive.’

And as Joan Hubbard wailed tears of joy and relief and sadness and heartbreak and loss, Darby thought,
This is why you do this. This is why you travel through the dark and put yourself at risk. You do it for these moments: to bring lost souls home
.

PRAISE FOR
CHRIS MOONEY:

‘One of the best thriller writers working today’

LEE CHILD

‘If you want a thriller that will chill your blood, break your heart and make your pulse race, Chris Mooney is your man’

MARK BILLINGHAM

‘It will keep you up past your bedtime’

KARIN SLAUGHTER

‘A scary, breakneck ride’

TESS GERRITSEN

‘Harrowing, gripping, haunting, gut-wrenching and beautifully written’

HARLAN COBEN

‘Chris Mooney is a wonderful writer’

MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘This season’s most unrelenting thriller… will keep readers enthralled’

GEORGE PELECANOS

‘A masterful thriller, dark and disturbing, with a tearing pace’

LINDA FAIRSTEIN

A mother and her son have been executed in their home and fingerprint matches show their attacker died twenty years ago.

But how can dead serial killers return to haunt the present?

The answers lie in the darkest shadows of
The Dead Room
.

When CSI Darby McCormick is called to the crime scene, it’s one of the most gruesome she’s ever seen. But the forensic evidence is even more disturbing: someone watched the murder unfold from the woodland behind the house – and the killer died in a shoot-out two decades earlier.

The deeper Darby digs, the more horrors come to light. Her prime suspect is revealed as a serial killer on an enormous scale, with a past that’s even more shocking than his crimes, thanks to a long-held secret that could rock Boston’s law enforcement to its core.

Is it possible to steal an identity? Or are dead men walking in Darby’s footsteps? The line between the living and the dead has never been finer.

RULE #1: DON’T SCREAM

Four years ago, Theresa Herrera’s ten-year-old son Rico was abducted. The police found little evidence and the case went cold. Theresa’s husband has told her to move on, but she won’t give up hope.

RULE #2: DON’T CALL THE POLICE

A mysterious woman invades Theresa’s home and tells her that Rico is alive. Theresa talks on the phone to a young man who is, without question, her son.

RULE #3: DON’T RUN. DON’T FIGHT

The woman promises to reunite Theresa with Rico only if she will follow the rules. But it is the last rule that fills Theresa with horror …

RULE #4: KILL YOUR HUSBAND AND YOUR SON WILL LIVE

Malcolm Fletcher – a former FBI profiler and now the nation’s Most Wanted fugitive – arrives in Colorado to help Theresa and her husband find their son. But his arrival coincides with a dangerous and shocking twist in the case.

Barely surviving his first encounter with a suspect, Fletcher embarks on his own secret investigation, with the police just behind him every step of the way.

Ten years ago CSI Darby McCormick investigated a sinister child abduction case.

Today, the missing child is back from the dead and holding his family hostage.

He makes only one demand. Bring me Darby McCormick …

Charlie Rizzo has his family at gunpoint and when Darby arrives to defuse the scene, she finds him horrifically mutilated, with a mask of human skin sewn in place over his own face. Within minutes, a group of men disguised as SWAT officers bursts in and releases deadly Sarin gas, killing the Rizzo family outright and leaving Darby herself barely alive.

Where has Charlie Rizzo been held all these years? Who are The Twelve who have been executing this gruesome torture? And why are the FBI running scared in the face of this particular, chilling episode? Darby is facing the toughest case of her career … and, as the body count rises, one that will bring her into great personal danger and leave her in fear of losing her mind, if not her soul.

For the Soul Collectors are the monsters from your worst nightmares.

Two dead girls in the water.

Two tiny statues of the Virgin Mary concealed in their clothing.

One CSI on the hunt for their killer.

When Judith Chen is found floating in Boston’s harbour, links are made with the murder of Emma Hale, a student who vanished without trace, only for her body to wash up months later.