Dark and Twisted Reads: All the Pretty GirlsA Perfect EvilBone Cold (A Taylor Jackson Novel)

by J. T. Ellison

  “That’s mighty kind of you, Miss Anna,” he murmured. “I’ll do that. By the way, a package came for you today. Around eleven this morning. Just thought you’d want to know.”

  A feeling of déjà vu settled over her. Anna glanced toward her building, then back at her neighbor. “Did the deliveryman toss it over the gate?”

  “Nope. Took it up. Door was propped open again.” He cleared his throat. “You might want to speak to those kids from four about it. Not that it’s any of my business, of course.”

  Anna thanked him, said goodbye and she and Quentin entered the building. They climbed the stairs to the second floor. As her neighbor had warned her she would, she found a package propped against the door.

  Wrapped in brown paper, it was about the size and shape of a videocassette.

  What if it wasn’t over? What if it was never over?

  Quentin looked at her in concern. “Are you okay?”

  She hiked up her chin. “Fine. Absolutely okay.” Anna let out a long breath, marched across the hall and picked it up. The package looked as if it had been run over by a truck; the paper was dirty and torn, the box half crushed.

  It was from Ben.

  She lifted her gaze to Malone’s, her hands beginning to shake. “This can’t be.”

  Quentin bent his head and read the label, then met her eyes. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  She ripped the package open. And found two journals. The one she had seen on Ben’s desk that afternoon all those weeks ago and another, only partially full.

  He had attached a note. She read it aloud:

  Dearest Anna,

  If you are reading this, I will have been successful in my attempt to stop Adam. And I am most probably dead.

  Read and understand.

  Yours,

  Ben

  So she did. Curled up on the corner of her couch, she began. Documented in the one notebook was a story of abuse, rage and despair, a testament not only of the depths to which the human spirit could sink but of its will to survive. The other spiral contained the story of a man’s struggle to understand and come to grips with parts of himself and his past.

  Both stories were told through individual narrations, drawings and conversations between the three personalities, the handwriting and voice of each dramatically different, a physical testament to Adam’s rage, Minnie’s fear and Ben’s desperation.

  Anna learned that Timmy, unable to cope, had essentially ceased to exist and had “gone to sleep” deep inside himself. Adam had emerged first. Then Ben and Minnie. The three had taken over Timmy’s life and consciousness, each performing a specific role, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, past and memories.

  Anna learned how Minnie’s love for Jaye had forced her to overcome her fear and contact Ben through the journal. Faced with the proof of the journal, Ben had been unable to deny what he was, though he had wanted to. Instead, he had set out to wrest control from Adam. To heal them. To integrate them into a whole.

  It had been too late. There hadn’t been enough time.

  Afterward, Quentin held Anna while she cried. “I’ll never forget,” Anna whispered. “Not Timmy. Not Ben or Minnie. I’ll never forget what they did for me.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” he murmured, holding her close. “I’m so sorry.”

  She lifted her face to his, vision blurred with tears. “Children are a gift. They should be cherished. Protected. They—” She bit the words back. “I’m not going to let this go, Malone. I can do…something. Through my writing…I’ve got to do something.”

  For a moment he was silent, then his expression softened. “I love you, Harlow Anastasia Grail.”

  His words moved over her like a healing balm. And in that moment she knew without a shadow of a doubt who she was.

  She would never hide from that person again.

  * * * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I need to thank the following people for their offering of time, expertise and support during the writing of this novel. Without their generosity, Bone Cold would not have become the book it is.

  Lieutenant Marlon A. Defillo, Commander, Public Affairs Division, New Orleans Police Department.

  Evan Marshall, The Evan Marshall Literary Agency.

  Dianne Moggy and the entire amazing MIRA crew.

  And finally, a special acknowledgment to Rebekah Bevins, my youngest fan, whose (perfectly innocent) letters sparked the original idea for this story. Thanks, Bekah!

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7562-5

  BONE COLD

  Copyright © 2001 by Erica Spindler

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario Canada, M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  MIRA and the Star Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  www.MIRABooks.com

  Keep reading for a special peek at

  TEAR ME APART

  the newest thriller from

  New York Times bestselling author

  J.T. Ellison

  Available September 4, 2018, from MIRA Books.

  PROLOGUE

  University Hospital

  Nashville, Tennessee

  1993

  Vivian

  I remember the day she arrived so clearly. What quirk of fate led her to me? I wondered about this for years. If only I had stepped right instead of left at the corner, or taken the stairs instead of the elevator at the hospital, perhaps ordered chicken instead of steak for my last meal with my father before his death, the principles of chaos—the butterfly effect—would have altered the course of my life enough that she wouldn’t have appeared. But I did step right, and I took the elevator, and I had the steak, and she did appear, and I will never recover from her.

  * * *

  It’s my eighth Turkey Tetrazzini Tuesday. I push the food around on my tray, not hungry. The meds they give me make me in turns nauseous and lacking in appetite and dinner is at five, anyway, only a few hours away. If I feel better then, I’ll eat.

  Everyone else is happily communing with the glob of gray matter on their plates. They don’t know any better. Half are drooling in their trays, the other half are tracing the voyage of little green men through the gravy or wadding the tinfoil wrapping from their rolls into bouquets they hang on their bedsteads to keep away the government spies. Suffice it to say we don’t have anything common. I have no exciting diagnosis. I haven’t committed a crime. I’m just depressed. Like, suicidal ideation with three attempts under my belt depressed. Yes, it’s the bad kind.

  I wander back to my room, glancing in the doors of the rest of the ward. Occasionally, the occupants leave out fun things to play with. Magazines. String. Cards. I’m not picky, anything to break the tedium. I’m out of luck today. The rooms are spotless. Beds are made, towels hang straight and even, the whole ward smells of Pine-Sol. The janitors have been through. They will have pocketed anything of worth.

  I bail on the reconnaissance mission and swing by my small hole for my cigarettes. Four times a day, I am allowed to stand in a tiny six-by-six hutch off the back steps and smoke. I can see the sky and the huge brass padlock that, if opened, would give me my freedom, allow me to step into the parking lot and disappear into the world, but nothing else. Sometimes, I wonder if cigarette privileges are worth it. It must be how cows feel, penned in day aft
er day, never able to cross to the other field.

  My room, 8A, is white. White as week-old snow, the kind of white that isn’t crisp and clean, but dirtied, institutional. You won’t see the exact shade anywhere else. White walls, white bedding, white linoleum. White gowns. White long-sleeved jackets with shiny silver buckles if we’re naughty.

  Normally, we’re all double-bunked, but I haven’t shared in a month, not since the last roommate was sent home. As much as I hate her for getting out, I’ve found I enjoy the silence of having my own space. Being alone always frightened me before. I despised the dark and its creeping pulchritude. Now, I crave its simplicity. Its emptiness and solitude. Caring about fear is too hard anymore.

  I stop in the doorway. There is someone in my room.

  Her hair is dark and cascading, freshly washed; she reeks of the squeaky-clean scent of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. The hospital passes it out to all new inductees in their plastic “welcome” bucket.

  She sits on the bed, head cocked to the side, her back to the door, staring out the four-by-two wire mesh screen window, which looks at the parking lot—bleak gray asphalt and a never-ending parade of cars. It’s a strange torture, this taste of freedom they give us. We are fish in the aquarium; we can see the rest of the world passing by, disinterested people living uninteresting lives.

  This intrusion into my private space infuriates me, and I slam back out to the nurses’ station. There is a nurse named Eleanor Snow who runs the ward, but we all call her Ratchet because she is a bitch. No one said we had to be original.

  Ratchet is calmly doing an intake form. Probably for my new roommate. Her serenity infuriates me further. I don’t get serenity. My mind never quiets and allows me to sit, smiling, as I fill in forms.

  I snarl at her, “Who is in my room?”

  “Your new roommate. I suggest you go introduce yourself. And keep your hands to yourself. You don’t want me to cut your nails again.”

  I shudder. I don’t, and she knows it.

  “You didn’t ask my permission to move someone in.”

  “We don’t have to. Now scat. I have work to do. And eat your dinner, or I’ll talk with Dr. Freeman about your lack of eating.”

  “Be sure to tell him the meds he gives me make me puke.”

  I storm off. It’s the only power I have, not eating. They force the drugs in me, tell me when to sleep, shower, and shit; make me sit in a circle with the other drooling idiots to share my story—you’ll feel so much better after you’ve talked it out, dear. No. No!

  To hell with the cigarette break. I head back to 8A, and the girl is still sitting in the same spot, her head cocked the same way. She has long hands. They prop her up, to the sides of her hips, as if they are grounding her to the world.

  I make noise, and she doesn’t turn. I step in front of the window, looming over her so she’ll look at me. I snap my fingers under her nose, and she barely flinches.

  Oh.

  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to diagnose her silence and lack of movement. She’s riding with King Thor. Thorazine for the uninitiated. A strong antipsychotic agent overused in mental facilities to keep rowdy, disturbed, or otherwise uncooperative patients calm.

  I like riding with the King even less than having Ratchet snip my nails, so I cut the stranger some slack. I rifle through her things. Her few clothes are wadded in the bottom of the laundry bag, and she wears the same baggy sweats and sweatshirt I currently model because my civvies are in the laundry. The rest of the bag has small toiletries, a hospital-issued toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb. She isn’t a voluntary.

  Voluntary commitment, when the patient agrees to come in for a certain amount of time to get their head shrunk. Technically, I am a voluntary, which is why I have a few more privileges than most. I’ve also been here for a little over two months, and I am ready as fuck to get out of here. What they don’t like to tell you is when you go in voluntarily, you don’t get the choice to voluntarily leave. No, that’s up to them, to Dr. Freakazoid and Ratchet and the “treatment team.”

  Bastards.

  I quickly search the rest of the room and see she only has the clothes on her back and in her bag. Interesting. A non-voluntary could be a nice diversion. When she comes back from her ride, I might find she’s a mumbling, drooling idiot, or a tinfoil baby, or a suicide, or even a criminal. We’re all mixed in, the permanent residents and the temporary, the clinically insane and the criminally. The latter makes for fascinating conversation. The bandage on her arm tells me the rest of the story. Someone was a bad girl. I like her already.

  I pick up her comb. Mine is missing several teeth. I need a brush—my hair is too thick for this tiny piece of plastic crap—but a fresh comb is better than what I have. I switch them out, then get to work on my hair.

  Without moving, in a voice low and melodious and laden with the sharpness of a thousand razors, she says, “Touch my things again, and I’ll kill you.”

  “Right.”

  I continue with the comb. She turns, and when I look up, I am startled. The hatred in her eyes is so intense it’s like a demon from hell is suddenly perched on the bed. Her hair floats around her head like a dark storm cloud, and I can practically smell the thunder coming off her. I take a step back and toss the comb on her bed.

  At this movement, she smiles and turns back toward the window.

  CHAPTER 1

  Vail, Colorado

  FIS Alpine World Cup

  January 4, 2018

  “Now coming to the gates, last year’s junior Alpine Downhill champion, Mindy Wright.”

  Mindy hears her name called, and her heart pounds in her throat. She knows what they are saying in the booth. They are discussing her leap into the majors. A year ago she was the Junior World Champion in three disciplines and the overall. She is special. Unique. Now, barely one year into her adult career, she is killing it. They are comparing her to her heroes, Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, speculating that with this final run, she can overtake their records and become the new youngest Alpine Downhill champion. They are talking about her parents, their sacrifices, and Mindy’s grueling training, the intense life she’s led, uncomplaining, with a smile on her face all the time. Sunny. They call her the girl with the sunny disposition.

  This sunny girl is going to become the world’s fastest female downhill skier in less than two minutes, and then what will they call her?

  Mindy can feel the energy in the air; the tension is palpable. She has a good chance, she knows it. Her practice run was at a record-breaking pace. She is going to blow this run away. The mountain is hers for the taking.

  Everyone wants her to win this race and take the trophy. Trophy be damned, if she hits her points, she will automatically qualify for the US Olympic team. No pressure or anything.

  She takes the little burst of adrenaline from that thought, lets it get her moving. The snow started falling intensely about ten minutes earlier. She’d heard the officials discussing whether to hold the skiers on the hill until it passed, but now their radios crackle with assurances that the blizzard is only at the very top and the course clears after the first turn.

  Mindy readies herself, visualizes the course, her body bending and weaving as her mind takes her through every turn one last time.

  A buzzer pulls her to the surface. There are no shouts and screams as Mindy slides into place in the starting house; the crowds are at the bottom of the mountain, less than ninety seconds away. It’s snowing hard up top, not gentle whispers of white drifting down, but tiny flakes wedged together in the sky creating a perpetual wall of white. The eerie silence, the loneliness of it, makes her heart pump harder. She often feels like this when she takes her place at the gate. Beat, alone. Beat, alone. Beat, alone. It feels good. It feels right.

  She adjusts her goggles against the blinding white and slaps her skis against the icy snow, digging in her poles, making sure her ankles are seated and her boots tightly clipped. In response, the snow seems to come down even fas
ter; the first section of the course is completely obscured from her vantage point above the gates. She has to have faith that they won’t send her down if it is too dangerous, that the reports saying it clears after the first turn hold true. Anyway, Mindy knows this course like the back of her hand. She has raced here many times. Considering the awful weather, it is a blessing that the championships are being held in Vail. She has the home field advantage.

  Kill it, Mindy!

  It is her mom’s voice, spectral and distant. It happens every race, and it’s strange because she knows her mom and dad are at the bottom of the mountain, waiting for her to slide to a stop in front of them, her skis shuddering on the snow, her fist in the air, pumping hard because she’s won.

  Once, she’d told her mom how cool it was, standing up there alone, hearing her voice cheer her on. It had become the talisman, the good luck charm. Her mom smoothed down her hair with a quizzical smile and said, “I’m always with you, Mindy. No matter what.”

  Not for the first time, Mindy wishes her mom had ridden up the mountain in the gondola with her. She can imagine her perfectly: starkly beautiful, not speaking, her mouth tight, her blond hair mussed and sticking out from under her red snowflake hat, holding her daughter’s gloved hand tightly. It isn’t allowed, but it would be nice. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t. Mindy sometimes wonders if her mom is more nervous than she is when it comes to the final run. She wouldn’t want that negative energy seeping into her psyche.

  Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

  Finally, the official signals. It’s time. She slaps her skis against the ice again. Tight, a little grainy, and she can barely see the track now because the snow is coming down so hard. But she knows it’s there, a long, invisible line flowing out from the tips of her skis downward. Without another thought, she leans forward, into the mountain, feels the hard bar across her shins. Sets her poles again. Takes a deep breath. Her coach’s voice now. Visualize it. Visualize winning.