Contents
Also by Jeffery Deaver
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Frenzy: Tuesday, April 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Baseline: Wednesday, April 5
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
The Get: Thursday, April 6
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Precautions: Friday, April 7
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Flash Mob: Saturday, April 8
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
The Secrets Club: Sunday, April 9
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
The Blood of All: Monday, April 10
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
The Last Dare: Tuesday, April 11
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Jeffery Deaver
Mistress of Justice
The Lesson of Her Death
Praying for Sleep
Speaking in Tongues
A Maiden’s Grave
The Devil’s Teardrop
The Blue Nowhere
Garden of Beasts
The Bodies Left Behind
Edge
The October List
THE RUNE SERIES
Manhattan is My Beat
Death of a Blue Movie Star
Hard News
THE LOCATION SCOUT SERIES
Shallow Graves
Bloody River Blues
Hell’s Kitchen
THE LINCOLN RHYME THRILLERS
The Bone Collector
The Coffin Dancer
The Empty Chair
The Stone Monkey
The Vanished Man
The Twelfth Card
The Cold Moon
The Broken Window
The Burning Wire
The Kill Room
The Skin Collector
THE KATHRYN DANCE THRILLERS
The Sleeping Doll
Roadside Crosses
XO
A JAMES BOND NOVEL
Carte Blanche
SHORT STORIES
Twisted
More Twisted
Trouble in Mind
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in the United States of America in 2015 by Grand Central Publishing
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
1
Copyright © Gunner Publications, LLC 2015
The right of Jeffery Deaver to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 75739 2
Trade paperback ISBN 9 781 444 75740 8
Ebook ISBN 978 1 444 75741 5
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.hodder.co.uk
To Libraries and Librarians everywhere …
Fear is the mind-killer.
– Frank Herbert, Dune
FRENZY
TUESDAY, APRIL 4
CHAPTER 1
The roadhouse was comfortable, friendly, inexpensive. All good.
Safe, too. Better.
You always thought about that when you took your teenage daughter out for a night of music.
Michelle Cooper did, in any event. Safe when it came to the band and their music, the customers, the wait staff.
The club itself, too, the parking lot – well lit – and the fire doors and sprinklers.
Michelle always checked these. The teenage-daughter part again.
Solitude Creek attracted a varied clientele, young and old, male and female, white and Latino and Asian, a few African Americans, a mirror of the Monterey Bay area. Now, just after seven thirty, she looked around, noting the hundreds of patrons who’d come from this and surrounding counties, all in buoyant mood, looking forward to seeing a band on the rise. If they brought with them any cares, those troubles were tucked tightly away at the prospect of beer, whimsical cocktails, chicken wings and music.
The group had flown in from LA, a garage band turned backup turned roadhouse headliner, thanks to Twitter and YouTube and Vidster. Word of mouth, and talent, sold groups nowadays, and the six boys in Lizard Annie worked as hard on their phones as onstage. They weren’t O.A.R. or Linkin Park but were soon to be, with a bit of luck.
They certainly had Michelle and Trish’s support. In fact, the cute boy band had a pretty solid mom-daughter fan base, judging by a look around the room tonight: other parents and their teenagers – the lyrics were rated PG at the raunchiest. For this evening’s show the ages of those in the audience ranged from sixteen to forty, give or take. Okay, Michelle admitted, maybe mid-forties.
She noted the Samsung in her daughter’s grip and said, ‘Text later. Not now.’
‘Mom.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Cho.’
A nice girl from Trish’s music class.
‘Two minutes.’
The club was filling up. Solitude Creek was a forty-year-old, single-story building featuring a small, rectangular dance floor of scuffed oak, ringed with high-top tables and stools. The stage, three feet high, was at the north end; the bar was opposite. A kitchen, east, served full menus, which eliminated the age barrier of attendance: only liquor-serving venues that offered food were permitted to seat children. Three fire-exit doors were against the west wall.