The Killing House
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CHRIS MOONEY
The Killing House
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
I: The Resurrection Men
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
II: The Living and the Dead
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
III: The Wages of Fear
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
IV: The Killing House
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE KILLING HOUSE
Chris Mooney is the internationally bestselling author of the Darby McCormick series and the stand-alone thriller
Remembering Sarah
, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Darby McCormick series have sold in over twenty territories.
The Killing House
is the first book featuring former profiler and now the nation's Most Wanted fugitive, Malcolm Fletcher. Mooney lives in Boston, where he is at work on the next Darby McCormick thriller. For more information, visit
chrismooneybooks.com
and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
For Darley Anderson
and
Maggie Griffin
He ne'er is crown'd with immortality
Who fears to follow where
Airy voices lead.
- John Keats
You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
- Psalm 88
I
The Resurrection Men
1
Theresa Herrera stumbled out of her bedroom, fighting to keep the scream caged in her throat. Screaming wasn't allowed; that was one of the rules. The first rule she'd been told. The most important one.
Oh my God, dear Jesus in heaven, this isn't happening
.
A phone rang. Not the familiar ring of the house phone or the chiming bells of her cell but a new and completely different ringtone - a constant, high-pitched chirp bordering on a screech. She forced her attention away from the bedroom, away from what had happened to her husband, and started running down the long, brightly lit hall, heading for the bedroom off the top of the stairs - her son's bedroom.
Ring
.
The bedroom door was open, always, and everything inside was just the way Rico had left it - the posters of Batman and a futuristic soldier called Master Chief hanging on the walls, the shelves crammed with assembled Lego
Star Wars
ships, books and thick encyclopedias containing the histories of superheroes and popular sci-fi characters from movies and video games. The hamper was still full of his dirty clothes, his desk was still crammed with his drawings, and his bureau was still packed with his scruffy and broken toys. Not a single
thing had been moved. Missing did not mean dead. There was always a chance. Always.
Ring
.
Theresa raced into the bedroom, her attention locked on the red Spiderman quilt. There it was, just as she'd been told: the disposable cell phone. She picked it up, nearly dropping it in her shaking hands. In the strong light coming from the hall she found the TALK button. She punched it with her thumb and brought the phone up, her mind and body swimming with a dizzying mix of excitement and pure terror.
'Rico? Rico, baby, is that you?'
There was no answer. Could he really be alive, or was this some sort of cruel trick? Four years ago, Rico had been asleep right here in this bed while she attended an awards dinner with her husband. As Barry was being showered with praise for providing free psychiatric care to troubled children and teens, someone had used the aluminium ladder he'd left outside to paint the porch, climbed up to the first-floor window, cut the window screen and abducted her sleeping ten-year-old son from his bed. The babysitter, downstairs watching TV and talking to her boyfriend on her brand new iPhone, hadn't seen or heard a thing.
'Rico, it's me. It's Mom.'
No answer. Theresa pressed the TALK button again. Spoke his name again. Then she realized there was no one on the other end of the line. It was dead.
He'll call back
, she told herself. Beads of sweat rolled
down her face and the small of her back, her heart was beating fast - much too fast. She was terrified, short of breath and on the verge of throwing up her Big Mac combo dinner. The only thing keeping the food down was hope.
Before Rico's abduction, Theresa had developed a love of true-crime programmes. The Discovery Channel played them around the clock, the cases narrated by veteran detectives and FBI experts. When it came to child abductions, they all gave the same frightening statistic: if a child wasn't found within the first forty-eight hours, the chance of their being found alive dropped to zero.
Hope came from the real-life case of Elizabeth Smart, a fourteen-year-old girl from Salt Lake City, who, like Rico, had been abducted from her bedroom. The Utah teenager was found nine months later - alive. Theresa's nasty, pragmatic side liked to remind her, too much and too often, that nine months wasn't the same as four years. Still, nine months was an incredibly long time to hold out hope, and Elizabeth Smart's parents had never given up. Theresa had drawn courage and strength from their example, and now, after all these long and painful years, her faith was finally about to be rewarded ... maybe. Possibly.
