Find You First

by Linwood Barclay

  LINWOOD BARCLAY is an international bestselling crime and thriller author with over twenty critically acclaimed novels to his name, including the phenomenal number one bestseller No Time For Goodbye. Every Linwood Barclay book is a masterclass in characterisation, plot and the killer twist, and with sales of over 7 million copies globally, his books have been sold in more than 39 countries around the world and he can count Stephen King, Shari Lapena and Peter James among his many fans.

  Many of his books have been optioned for film and TV, and Linwood wrote the screenplay for the film based on his bestselling novel Never Saw It Coming. Born in the US, his parents moved to Canada just as he was turning four, and he’s lived there ever since. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Neetha. They have two grown children. Visit Linwood Barclay at www.linwoodbarclay.com or find him on Twitter at @linwood_barclay.

  Also by Linwood Barclay

  Elevator Pitch

  A Noise Downstairs

  Parting Shot

  The Twenty-Three

  Far from True

  Broken Promise

  No Safe House

  A Tap on the Window

  Never Saw It Coming

  Trust Your Eyes

  The Accident

  Never Look Away

  Fear the Worst

  Too Close to Home

  No Time for Goodbye

  Bad Luck

  Bad News

  Bad Guys

  Bad Move

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

  Copyright © NJSB Entertainment Inc, 2021

  Linwood Barclay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © February 2021 ISBN: 9780008332068

  Version 2021-01-18

  Note to Readers

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008332044

  Dedication

  For Neetha

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Three Weeks Earlier

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  One Week Later

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Extract

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Outside Springfield, MA

  Todd listened to the phone ring, waited for a pickup. Two rings, three. You had to give these old folks time to get to the phone. Maybe they had to use a walker, or were in a wheelchair. Even if they had a cordless next to them, half the time it was tucked down into the BarcaLounger and when it started ringing they didn’t know where the hell it was.

  “Hello?”

  Good, okay. A woman, and she definitely sounded elderly. You had to be careful. Sometimes their grown kids would be visiting the home when Todd made his calls, and if they answered, the best thing to do was just hang up. They’d know something was up from the get-go.

  Todd said, “Grandma?”

  It was always a shot in the dark. Did she even have grandkids? And if she did, were any of them boys?

  The old lady said, “Eddy?”

  Bingo.

  “Yes, yes, it’s Eddy,” Todd said. “Oh Grandma, I’m so glad I got hold of you.”

  “How are you?” she said. “Hang on, hang on, let me turn down Jeopardy! I haven’t heard from you in so long. Your father, he was going to come by the other day and I waited and waited but—”

  “Grandma, I’m in trouble.”

  “What?”

  “I’m in trouble and you’re the only one that can help me.”

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice filled with grandmotherly alarm. “What’s happened?”

  “I got arrested.”

  The old lady gasped. “Oh no, Eddy, where are you?”

  “At the police station,” he said. Which, of course, was not true. Todd was sitting at the kitchen table in his mobile home. In front of him, a laptop flanked by a can of Bud Light and a half-eaten slice of pizza.

  “What did you do?” the old lady asked.

  “It’s not my fault. The other person cut me off, and I swerved. I didn’t want to hit this lady, she was pushing a stroller? You know? With a baby in it?”

  “Oh my, oh dear—”

  “And I hit the tree, but the cops found some stuff in the car, that was definitely not mine, it was something one of my friends left in there, and it was only an ounce, you know? But because it was in my car … so they’re holding me unless I put up this bail thing. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

/>   “Well, you have to call your father. He’ll—”

  “No, I—I just can’t. He’s just going to kill me. I’ll need time to explain what happened, and you know what he’s like. He might even leave me in here, try to teach me a lesson, which isn’t fair, because, honest to God, it wasn’t my fault, and in the meantime, I have to pay this bail and—”

  “How much is it?” she asked.

  Todd smiled to himself. The hook was set. Now all he had to do was reel her in and get her in the boat.

  “It’s twenty-five hundred,” he said. “I just don’t have that kind of money. I was wondering … I hate to ask …”

  “If you don’t pay how long will they keep you in jail?” Her voice sounded increasingly concerned.

  “I don’t know. A few days, I guess. They’ll throw me in with the general population, you know? Some of those guys in there, I just … some of them are big, and really mean, and probably … I just hope no one tries to … I mean, you know what can happen to a kid in jail.”

  Was he laying it on too thick? You could overdo it. Todd believed that the first few times he ran this game, he went a little too far, made it sound as though he was about to be gangbanged by the Aryan Brotherhood. Best to let the mark use her imagination some.

  The good thing was, most oldsters still used landlines. You got the address of a seniors’ residence through some online trolling, used a reverse directory to get the names of everyone who lived there, and you had a long list of potential marks. If they’d all owned cells, this would be a hell of a lot harder. Todd, of course, used cells. Always used disposable burners when he was doing this. Switched to a new one every week. Didn’t want these calls getting traced back because, eventually, Grandma would discreetly ask a family member if poor little Eddy or Timmy or Walter sorted out his troubles with the police, at which point someone would say, “Oh no, how much money did you send?”

  Todd always asked for $2,500. A nice round, believable number, he figured. You didn’t want to go so high that the oldster was scared off, but not so low as to make it not worth your while.

  He’d been thinking, maybe this would be his last one. He was making okay money at the computer store. Just part-time, but it looked like they were going to up him from three shifts a week to four. And ever since he’d met Chloe—talk about having your mind blown, connecting with a half sister you never knew you had—he’d been feeling kind of ashamed about how he’d been supplementing his income. So, yeah, maybe this was it. Last time.

  Maybe.

  It’d be nice to tell her when she came for her next visit, driving up from Providence in that ancient Pacer of hers, that he wasn’t going to do this anymore. Of course, that would mean confessing to it in the first place. It was funny how he felt a need to unburden himself to her. She’d had that effect on him. He believed she suspected he was up to something illegal. She spent a lot of time around old people—her grandfather was in some kind of home and she visited him often—and wouldn’t think much of him taking advantage of them.

  “I … I could give you the money,” the old lady on the other end of the line said.

  Todd’s mouth was getting dry. He had a sip of beer.

  “Grandma, if you did that, you’d like, you’d be saving my life.”

  “Do I bring it to the police station? I could get one of the staff here to take me. I could ask Sylvia. She’s really nice and—”

  “No, no!” Todd said quickly. “No need to do that. The police said all you have to do is call Western Union. You can do it over the phone. Soon as they have the money, they give it to the police and they’ll let me out of here. Have you got a pen and paper? I can give you all the information.”

  “Hang on.”

  Todd heard her set down the receiver, some paper shuffling. Her voice, distant: “I think the pen slipped down between the cushions. Oh, wait, I think …”

  God, they could be so pitiful. Todd comforted himself with the thought that these people didn’t have that much longer, anyway. They got swindled out of a few bucks, was it really going to make all that much difference? If they ran a bit short one month, they could always ask their own kids for—

  Someone banged on the door of his trailer, so hard that it made him jump. Three times. BANG BANG BANG.

  “Mr. Cox! Todd Cox!”

  A man, shouting. What the hell was this? Especially at this hour. It was after nine at night. Todd didn’t get a lot of visitors here. His mobile home sat just off the road but was shielded by a line of trees. It was pretty quiet, except for the occasional blast of sirens from the fire station on the other side of the property line.

  Todd glanced out the window, squinted. There were two people on the steps he’d fashioned from several cinder blocks, lit dimly by the outside light. A man and a woman, late thirties, early forties. What was that clipped to the belts of their jeans? Badges? Fucking badges?

  “Todd Cox, are you in there?” the man shouted.

  “Who is it?” he yelled back, like he didn’t already know.

  “Police.”

  Shit shit shit shit shit.

  “I’ve got pen and paper!” Grandma said, her voice now clear as a bell.

  Todd flipped shut the burner he’d bought online for twenty bucks. Next to the laptop were printouts of old folks homes across the country, as well as an overdue Visa bill and a recent Verizon statement for his personal iPhone. He grabbed the printouts and stuffed them into the utensil drawer as he headed for the door.

  How’d they find out? How’d they get on to him? He’d been so careful. New phones all the time, different Western Union accounts, always covering his tracks. Todd figured, given that they weren’t in uniform, they were detectives. Not good. Not good at all.

  “Mr. Cox, open the door, please.” The woman cop this time. She sounded like a ballbuster. Deep voice, commanding.

  Where the hell could he go? The trailer’s back door was on the same side as the front door, so he couldn’t sneak away. So he went to the door, took a breath, tried to look like he didn’t give a fuck about anything in the world, and opened it. When he did, he was able to see a dark panel van parked next to his ten-year-old Hyundai.

  They flashed their badges.

  “Detective Kendra Collins,” the woman said.

  The man said, “Detective Rhys Mills.”

  “So, like, what’s up?” Todd said.

  “We’d like to come in and talk to you,” Mills said.

  “What about?”

  “We can talk about that when we get inside.”

  Todd nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “You got a warrant?” he asked.

  Kendra Collins frowned. “Why would we need a warrant, Mr. Cox? Have you been doing something you shouldn’t?”

  “No, shit, no, nothing like that,” he said hurriedly, forcing a grin. “I just thought that’s what you’re supposed to say when the cops want to come into your house.”

  Todd backed away from the door, allowing them room to step in. They each gave the trailer a disapproving look as they crossed the threshold and found themselves standing in the kitchen area. There was a small living room, if you could call it that, to one side, and a narrow hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom on the other. The sink was filled with dishes, and the counter was buried in beer cans and empty takeout containers.

  Todd said, “Look, I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m clean, like, if you’re looking for drugs or anything, I haven’t been doing anything. I don’t do that stuff. Seriously.”

  Rhys Mills surveyed the mess in the sink. “You’re Todd Cox? Twenty-one years old? Born in New Haven, September tenth, 2001?”

  “Yeah, one day before all the shit went down.”

  Kendra, standing behind him, asked, “Your mother is Madeline Cox?”

  “That’s right,” he said, turning to look at her, his back to Detective Mills. “This got something to do with her?”

  Kendra took out her phone, ope
ned up the photo app, and said, “There’s something I’d like you to have a look at.”

  She extended her arm, holding the phone low so Todd had to bend over to look at it.

  “I can’t really see—”

  “Look closer,” she said.

  Todd tried to focus, leaned in. That was when Rhys came up behind him and jammed the needle into his neck.

  “What the—” Todd turned abruptly, slapping his neck as though he’d just been stung by a bee. But Rhys was quick, and had not only completed the injection but withdrawn the syringe before Todd could swat him.

  Almost immediately, Todd became unsteady on his feet. “Jeshush … wha the fu was …”

  He looked quizzically at Rhys, who stood there, smiling grimly. “Sorry about this, Mr. Cox.”

  Kendra, “Back in a sec, Rhys.”

  She exited the trailer.

  “Where’s your pardner go …” Todd said, throwing a hand up against the wall to steady himself.

  “It shouldn’t take long, and you shouldn’t feel any pain,” Rhys said, a hint of sympathy in his voice. “It’ll all be over soon.” He’d taken some rubber gloves from his pocket and was pulling them on, snapping them when he had them up to his wrist.

  Todd began a slow slide down the wall. When his butt touched the trailer floor he rested his head against the wall, watching the room spin.

  The trailer door opened and Kendra, who had also donned gloves, came in with two large canvas bags. She dropped them to the floor, unzipped the first one, and took out something shiny and black that had been folded several times. She unzipped it and opened it wide.

  A body bag.

  “Best to get him stuffed in here before he shits his pants,” she said. “I don’t want to have to clean up any more than necessary.”

  Rhys nodded in agreement.

  Todd wasn’t dead yet, but he didn’t have enough life left in him to be at all cooperative when it came to getting into the bag. Rhys got his hands under Todd’s arms and dragged him on top of the bag, worked the sides up and around him, and then started to zip it up, starting at the dying man’s feet.

  He paused before closing the bag over Todd’s face and looked into the dying man’s unfocused eyes, his dazed expression.

  “This is always the interesting part,” he said. “The moment of passing.”