Run (27 page)

I sniff a little, but not too much.

“I won’t, sir,” I say. I give him the license number of the van from the truck stop. He provides a name and an address in St. Maries, Idaho. He hands me a pen and some paper to write it down, but I don’t need to. I’ll remember it just fine.

I turn around and the crowd is with me.

“Thank you,” I say loud enough for everyone to hear. “Our government really does care about us.”

It was a lie, but the guy in the sweaty blue shirt deserves some kind of praise.

I play that address over in my head.

I know the little girl is not named Selma, but in my mind I still call her that. From the business center at the Best Western, I printed out an article about her from the internet. I know her name is Angie Starr and that she’d last been seen in a park in Missoula, Montana. Her hair is different in the photograph to what it had been through the window of the van that early morning when I saw her draw that sad face, but I know how easy it is to change a girl’s appearance.

I’ve done it all my life.

Caleb, who is nearly speechless by my performance, and I walk out into the bright light of the parking lot with a new sense of purpose.

I know that I will find the girl.

I will find
him
.

Kill him.

My name is Alexandra. I was named for my biological father, a serial killer who tortured and murdered at least three teenagers and raped my mother sixteen years ago. He’s dead now. I know for a fact that I’m stronger than he ever thought I could be. The people who understand where I come from are the people who matter.

The ones Caleb and I can help.

Q & A with Gregg Olsen

You have written both fiction and non-fiction, including True Crime. When writing RUN, did you feel that the knowledge you have of real-life crime helped or hindered your plotting?

Definitely helps. Over my years I’ve had the privilege (and I do consider it so) to tell the true stories of people who have survived the unthinkable. That fuels all of my fiction.
RUN
was no exception. There’s always a nugget of truth in all of my fiction. Early in my career, I wrote about a woman who’d been poisoned and family members were all but certain that her husband – the stepfather to a fifteen-year-old girl – was guilty. Ultimately, he was proven not to be the killer, but as I wrote
RUN
I thought of that girl and all of the emotions she had that came with thinking that someone close to you was a killer. Of course,
RUN
is complete fiction, but the heart of any good story is the conflict and emotion that comes with the action. The plotting is organic, just like real life. I let my characters take me where they need to go. Sometimes, I’m not the boss. 

When writing crime fiction, inevitably you will lose characters you grow attached to. Do you feel an emotional attachment to any of the characters in RUN?

Yes. Rylee. I love her tortured spirit and her ability to be clever, kind, and yes, ruthless. For the right reasons, I think. As I wrote the book I was rooting for her all the way. She seemed more real to me than any character I’ve ever created. I like her and I want her to find happiness and strength in life in a very real way. I know where she wants to go  …  and I want to help her get there.

Rylee has to make some tough decisions on her journey to find her mother’s captor, including leaving her brother behind. Will we see more of Hayden in the next book?

I’m plotting
HUNT
right now and I will have some Hayden in it. As tough as Rylee is, she’s come to know different kinds of love. She knows that her brother and her connection to him is a mixed blessing for sure. She protects him in real ways, but most importantly in making sure her mother doesn’t tell him the truth.

Rylee’s discovery of who her real father is fills her with rage, and it is this anger that gives her the courage to track down her mom’s captor. Is there power in rage, or is it purely dangerous?

That’s a tricky question. Personally, I believe strong emotions, passions, are good if channeled in the right way. Who wants to live his or her life feeling nothing? Isn’t it better to take that emotional energy into something positive?

If you were going on the run and could only take one thing with you, what would that be?

A book. Kidding. An untraceable credit card. A sack of money. Actually, if I was on the run I’d take my dog Suri. She’s a mini dachshund – so she’s completely portable. She’s great company. And she is as fierce as they come. I wouldn’t need a knife, a gun, or any kind of weapon. Suri would take on even the most formidable foes. Maybe even a serial killer.

What inspires you to write?

My readers do. It’s really that simple. I write to reach people. There can be no other reason.

Do you have any tips for budding writers?

My advice is always the same. If you think you are a writer, then you are. To be a
good
writer you need to practice. When I say practice, I mean EVERY DAY. I tell new writers that whatever project they are working on must be tended to daily. Even if only a few lines. A paragraph. Whatever. Writing can be difficult and almost all writers look for ways to get out of doing the hard work of the job. If you make it a routine, a promise, a commitment, you’ll have something. I promise. I’m not saying it will be easy, but nothing worth doing really is.

Gregg Olsen

A
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author, Gregg has written nine non-fiction books, nine novels, a novella, and contributed a short story to a collection edited by Lee Child. He is one of only a few authors to have appeared on both the fiction and non-fiction
New York Times
bestseller lists.

In addition to US and international television and radio appearances, he has been featured in
Redbook, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, People, Salon, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times
and the
New York Post.
His young adult novel, ENVY, was the official selection of Washington State for the National Book Festival.

A Seattle native, Gregg lives in Olalla, Washington with his wife, twin daughters, three chickens, Milo (an obedience school-dropout cocker spaniel) and Suri (a miniature dachshund so spoiled she wears a sweater).

Follow Gregg at:

www.greggolsen.com

Twitter: @Gregg_Olsen

Instagram: greggolsen

Read on for an extract from Salla Simukka’s

AS RED AS BLOOD – coming soon …

All around lay glittering white. Over the old snow, a new, clean layer of soft flakes had fallen fifteen minutes earlier. Fifteen minutes earlier everything had still been possible. The world had looked beautiful, the future flickering somewhere in the distance ahead, brighter, more peaceful, more free. That was worth betting everything on one last card. Trying to make a clean break was a terrible risk but the only way forward.

Fifteen minutes earlier a light, downy snowfall had spread a thin feather blanket over the old snow. Then it had ceased, as suddenly as it had begun, followed by rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds. Hardly any days all winter had been this beautiful.

Now each moment saw more red intermingling with the white, spreading, gaining ground, creeping forward along the crystals, staining them as it went. Some of the red had flown further, a shrieking bright crimson spattering the snow.

Natalia Smirnova stared with brown eyes at the red-flecked snow, seeing nothing. Thinking nothing. Hoping nothing. Fearing nothing.

Ten minutes earlier Natalia had hoped and feared more than ever before in her life. With trembling hands she had stuffed banknotes into her genuine Louis Vuitton handbag, all the while listening for even the tiniest rustling from outside. She had tried to steady her nerves, assuring herself that everything was fine. She had a plan. But at the same time she had known that no plan was ever perfect. An intricate edifice carefully constructed over months can collapse at the barest nudge.

The handbag had also contained a passport and plane ticket to Moscow. She wasn’t taking anything else. At Moscow airport, her brother would be waiting with a rental car, ready to drive her hundreds of kilometres to a
dacha
only a few people knew about. There her mother would be waiting with three-year-old Olga, the daughter she hadn’t seen in more than a year. Would her little girl even remember her? But no matter. A month or two hiding out in the countryside would give them time to get to know each other again. While they waited until she believed they were safe. While they waited until the world forgot about Natalia Smirnova.

Natalia had stifled the nagging voice in her head that insisted no one would forget her at all. That they would not allow her to disappear. She had assured herself that she was not so important that they couldn’t simply replace her when the need arose. And going to the effort of tracking her down would be too much bother anyway.

In this line of work, people disappeared now and then. Usually taking some money along with them. That was just one of the risks of doing business, an unavoidable loss like the spoiled fruit a supermarket had to toss out.

Natalia hadn’t counted the money. She simply stuffed as much of it as she could in her bag. Some of the bills had crumpled, but that didn’t matter. A crumpled five-hundred-euro note was worth just as much as an unwrinkled one. You could still buy three months’ of food with it, maybe four if you were really careful. You could still use it to buy one person’s silence for long enough. For many people, five hundred euros was the price of a secret.

Natalia Smirnova, age twenty, lay face down, her cheek in the cold snow. Not feeling the prickling of the ice against her skin. Not feeling the frigid chill of twenty-five degrees below on her bare earlobes.

The land is strange, and cold is its spring

Natalia, you are freezing

The man had sung that to her in a gruff voice, off-key. Natalia hadn’t liked the song. The Natalia in it was from Ukraine, but she was from Russia. She had liked the man singing and stroking her hair though. She had just tried not to listen to the words. Fortunately that had been easy. She had known some Finnish, understanding much more than she could speak herself, but when she stopped struggling and let her mind relax, the foreign words ran together, losing their meaning and becoming nothing more than combinations of sounds falling out of the man’s mouth as he hummed against Natalia’s neck.

Five minutes earlier Natalia had been thinking about that man and his slightly clumsy hands. Would he miss her? Maybe a bit. Maybe just a little bit. But not enough, because he had never loved her, not really. If he had loved her, really loved her, he would have solved Natalia’s problems for her, as he had promised so many times. Now Natalia had to solve her problems for herself.

Two minutes earlier Natalia had snapped shut her handbag, bulging with cash. Quickly she had tidied up and then glanced at herself in the front hall mirror. Bleached blonde hair, brown eyes, thin eyebrows, and shining red lips. She had been pale, with dark circles under her eyes from staying up too late. She had just been leaving. In her mouth she had tasted freedom and fear, both of which had a metallic tang.