Praise for the Blake Sanders Series:
Night Drop
“Looking for an adrenaline rush? You'll find that and more in Night Drop. Blake Sanders is back, and that means the action is nonstop!”
—Alan Russell, author of Multiple Wounds and Burning Man
“I LOVED this story. Night Drop is a fast-paced, tension-filled thriller that will grab you by the throat until the very last page. Blake Sanders is one of the most intriguing characters I’ve read in years. This is definitely Sherer at his best.”
—KT Bryan, author of Team EDGE
Night Tide
“A great, great read! Even better than Night Blind, and that’s not easy.”
—Timothy Hallinan, author of The Fame Thief
“A cracking good story and a first-rate thriller.”
—J. Carson Black, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Survivors Club
“A tight, well-constructed story and characters that leap from the page. I’ll definitely be back for more.”
—Robert Gregory Browne, author of Trial Junkies 2: Negligence
Night Blind
“An appealing, empathetic lead.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“This is an exciting, well-crafted thriller and most certainly a satisfying one.”
—Mysterious Reviews
“Thriller writer Sherer renders a sympathetic lead character and an engaging . . . story line in his latest.”
—Allison Block, Booklist
“Loved every page of it.”
—Brett Battles
“A tightly paced page-turner that's impossible to put down. Terrific!"
—Allison Brennan
“Pay attention. You won’t want to miss a word."
—J.T. Ellison
“Rich, complex, and deeply satisfying.”
—Bill Cameron
Also by Michael W. Sherer
Blake Sanders Series
Night Strike
Night Drop
Night Tide
Night Blind
Emerson Ward Mysteries
Death on a Budget
Death Is No Bargain
A Forever Death
Death Came Dressed in White
Little Use for Death
An Option on Death
Suspense
Island Life
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016
A Kindle Scout selection
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
For girls everywhere, young and old, especially mine— Anne, Megan, and Valarie. Girls rule.
Contents
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
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
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Dreams might fade in the light of day, but reality doesn’t disappear behind closed eyes. Tess felt a familiar sense of foreboding wash over her. As hard as she tried to push it away, it seeped into her subconscious, numbing her with fear. If she’d known then what she knew now, she would have changed everything about that day. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, but still saw the same thing.
She leaned over and swiped at her snowboard bindings with her mittens. Normally, they would have popped loose right away, but not this time. She seemed to be all thumbs and she was tired, cold, and wet. Her frustration mounted as her goggles fogged; the tears she’d been holding back spilled unbidden down her cheeks. She yanked the goggles off her face and pulled them back over her head. The gesture was savage enough to take her hat off with the goggles—and along with enough hair to give her a second reason for tears.
Clenching the end of one mitten in her teeth, she pulled out her hand, bent down again, and dug her fingers into the catch of the binding. Wet, slushy spring snow had covered her boots and packed her bindings in ice—Cascade Concrete. Her fingers turned blue as she worked them in far enough to get the leverage she needed. With a mighty pull, she sprang the catch loose and stepped out of the binding. She blew on her cold hand before sticking it back into the mitten, then stamped her boots on the packed slope. Her mother swooped down next to her and skidded on her heel edge to slow. Tess turned her head and swiped at her face with her parka sleeve.
“Gosh, you’re fast,” her mother said, sliding gently to a stop a few feet away. “No way I could keep up.” She looked back up the slope for a moment. “What a great last run.”
Tess picked up her hat and stuffed it in a pocket, sneaking a glance at her mother from under a sheaf of hair the color of a raven’s wing. Her mother had the same hair, the same exotically shaped face and features. But somehow, against all odds, Tess had gotten her father’s blue eyes and a little bit of his nose. The cold had turned her mother into Rudolph, the speed of the run turning her nose cherry red and making her eyes water. Maybe she wouldn’t notice that Tess had been crying.
“So,” her mother said, “any thoughts about where you’d like to eat?”
Tess had a choice of where to go for a celebratory dinner.
Some celebration.
Eating was the last thing she felt like. The day had started out all right. Her parents had offered to take her up to the pass to go boarding after school and then out to a late dinner as a treat for scoring so well on her SATs.
“Not as a reward,” her mother had said, “just an acknowledgement.” Her parents—especially her “Tiger Mother” mom, but even her laid-back skater dad—expected her to get good grades, to get into the best schools, without the promise of any sort of reward. Tess didn’t have a problem with that. She felt naturally driven to do well. Maybe it was the competition at school. After all, Tess was younger than most of her classmates, so had more to prove. Especially since this was spring of her junior year. Her combined 2240 on the college boards would help. So would her 3.98 cumulative grade average. And she could always take
the SAT again in the fall and try to raise her scores.
That was all good, but the day had somehow devolved into a mess.
She looked up the lighted slope past her mother without answering. She spotted her father’s plaid parka with the Olympic insignia on the front, the one he said Shaun White had given to him after the 2010 Winter Games. He flew down the slope, carving elegant curves, caught some air going over a small mogul, did a cab 360, then swooped toward them. Gnarly. It came naturally to him—he’d been almost as good a skater as Tony Hawk or Rob Dyrdek. Better than both, some said, even though Hawk was vert and Dyrdek was street. But Tess’s dad had never been interested in going pro. At least that’s what he’d told her. She sometimes wondered. He stopped quickly, showering them with wet snow, his grin stretching from ear to ear. He looked from one to the other, his smile fading like shadows do when a cloud passes in front of the sun.
“What’s going on?” he said lightly.
“Nothing,” said her mom. “Tess is deciding where we’re going to dinner.”
“Really?” her father said. “I could’ve sworn something’s up.”
Her mother flashed a quick smile and said gently, “She’s miffed because I told her she couldn’t invite Toby. I thought it should be just us tonight. I’m being selfish.”
Her father shrugged. “I don’t think that’s selfish.” He turned to Tess. “Your mom’s right. We hardly ever get you to ourselves anymore, kitten.”
Tess looked at her mother with daggers in her eyes, then turned an imploring look on her father.
It just blurted out of her. “She told me I can’t go to prom, Dad!”
Her mother shook her head. “No, I said I didn’t want you to go alone with Toby. I don’t mind if you go with a group of your friends, but you’re not getting into a car alone with someone when you don’t even have your own driver’s license yet.”
“But that’s not fair!”
She blinked back tears and turned to her father for help again. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t have a license. Not entirely. Between the pressure to keep her grades up and her extracurricular activities, she hadn’t been able to find time to take driver’s ed.
He wiped air with his hands. “Don’t look at me, kitten. Not getting in the middle of this.”
She’d always loved the idea of being his snuggly little kitten. Suddenly she hated the nickname.
“What do you mean, you’re not getting involved?” she said, pouting. “You’re a parent, too.”
“I meant that I’m not about to countermand your mother,” he said gently. “We have each other’s back, especially when it comes to parenting. And it so happens that I agree with her.”
“But why?” It sounded whiny, but Tess couldn’t help it. She really wanted to go with Toby.
“For the same reasons your mother mentioned,” he said. “I used to be in high school. I used to be just like Toby Cavanaugh. Heck, I was him. I know exactly what’s on his mind.”
Her mother positively beamed. Tess couldn’t stand it. Her father and Toby were nothing alike. And she felt like she was losing her touch. She’d always been able to sway her father before.
“You don’t trust me—is that it?” she said.
“Oh, we trust you,” her mother said. “It’s Toby we don’t trust. Don’t get me wrong. I think he’s a nice boy, Tess. I just don’t think it’s appropriate for you two to be without some sort of chaperone.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Maybe so,” her father said, “but for now, think about going with your friends instead.”
“It’s just not fair!” she wailed.
Tess grabbed her board and stomped off toward the parking lot. She stood next to the big SUV under the lights and fumed, pacing, while she waited for her parents to slowly catch up.
They are so infuriating. She watched them surreptitiously, head bowed, as they approached holding hands. Eewww. She didn’t know anyone else whose parents acted so sickeningly romantic in public. She glanced around the parking lot to see if anyone was looking. If I did that with Toby in front of them, they’d just lecture me.
Engrossed in conversation, they acted as if nothing was wrong when they came up to the SUV. Her father opened the tailgate and put his board inside, then took her mother’s and laid it in on top. Almost absentmindedly, he reached over and grabbed Tess’s board and stowed it along with the others, talking to her mother the whole time. He walked around to the passenger door and opened it for her mother, then circled around to the driver’s side. Tess got in the back and flounced onto the seat. Her father climbed in, started the engine, and plugged his iPod into the stereo system. Soft jazz filled the interior.
“Dad, could you get some decent music on your playlist?” Tess said.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’ll get I.T. on it right away.”
From the way his eyes crinkled, she knew he was smiling. She turned away and sighed. At least it wasn’t the headbanger eighties punk rock he sometimes listened to when he wanted to pump himself up. “Reliving my ill-spent youth,” he’d say, recalling his days skateboarding around the Cal Poly campus. She shook her head.
Parents are such a pain.
Five minutes later, they got onto the highway heading west toward the city. Tess stared out the window and watched the dark terrain zip by in a blur. A mix of light snow and rain had started falling, and the sparkling, lacy veil of flakes and drops mesmerized her. The season had run late that year. Normally, the ski areas closed by early or mid-April, but the cold, wet winter had provided plenty of snowpack. They might even get in another day of boarding in early May. It wasn’t unheard of.
Tess’s head nodded as drowsiness overtook her, and she jerked awake. She leaned against the door, wrapped her mittens in her hat, and put it between her cheek and the window as a pillow. Her mother craned her neck to look at her.
“Put your seatbelt on, Tess.”
“Yes, mother.”
Her mother smiled. “I love you.”
Tess folded her arms over her chest and closed her eyes without responding. She must have dozed off. When her eyes opened, she immediately sensed something wrong. Her parents had stopped talking, but Tess felt rather than heard the unspoken communication between them. In the dim light from the instrument panel, she saw her mother’s hand grip her father’s arm. She felt the tension in it and slowly became aware of a sound other than the steady hum of the engine—a low rumble and loud hiss that almost sounded like a waterfall or a huge wave breaking on shore.
Tess swung her gaze out the window, eyes straining to see in the darkness. She suddenly realized with growing horror that a moving wall of snow was descending the mountainside ahead of them. They were driving right into it. Her father tensed and the SUV momentarily slowed, then spurted ahead again.
“James?” her mother said, a note of fear in her voice.
“No brakes, Sally,” her father growled.
He gunned the engine, but there was no way the SUV could outrun the avalanche. As the lip of the rolling wave of snow and debris reached the edge of the highway next to them, Tess clutched the door handle, her heart leaping into her throat.
“Hang on!” her father yelled.
The roaring avalanche tumbled over the vehicle, blotting out the taillights of the few vehicles ahead of them. Tess heard screaming and realized the sounds came from her as the tsunami of snow flipped the SUV like a toy, rolling it over and over, burying it in an icy tomb.
Tess screamed again, the awful sound of her terror and pain lifting her from the depths of the nightmare into consciousness. It was the same dream she’d had for the past year, one that had recurred nightly at first. Lately, it haunted her with decreasing frequency, but with no less terror than when it had begun. She lay still, letting the tendrils of the nightmare dissipate like morning mist, willing herself to think of sunnier things. It wasn’t easy.
When she came fully awake and the dream was no more than a fading memory, she
slowly opened her eyes. And, like every other day for the past year, she saw nothing. Not darkness, or light. Not shapes or colors.
Nothing.
CHAPTER 2
One year earlier. . .
Captain Travis Barrett, US Army Special Forces, took slow, deep breaths to decrease his rapid heartbeat and focus his nervous energy. Sweat trickled down his side under his qmis, the traditional loose-fitting shirt that Pashtun men wore with full trousers called shalwar. He ignored it and opened his eyes wider to see more clearly in the dim light. He was acutely aware of the smallest sounds—the high, squeaky chirrup of a bat in the night, the faintest whisper of moving air, and somewhere up ahead, the low murmur of voices.
Travis kept up the deliberate, steady breathing, trying to keep his excitement in check. It appeared that they’d finally gotten some HUMINT that might pay off. He and his team relied heavily on two forms of information—HUMINT, or human intelligence that came from informers, eyes and ears on the ground, and COMINT, or communications intelligence that came from intercepted phone calls, text messages, and e-mails. And information was the currency Travis and his team traded.
He eased farther into the cave.
In a sense, Captain Travis Barrett didn’t exist. An avowed adrenaline junkie, he’d felt rudderless in college, like there was no point to studying. Realizing he couldn’t afford passions like skydiving and motorcycle racing on the wages of a burger-flipper, he’d joined the army. He figured Uncle Sam might as well pay for his adrenaline fixes. The army had definitely delivered. After 9/11, he’d immediately signed up for Special Forces, and the thrills, along with the opportunities to serve his country, had gotten bigger. His skills and fearlessness—along with a previously untapped facility for languages—had earned him notice from the top brass.
Less than six months after terrorists had brought down the Twin Towers by hijacking and flying jet aircraft into them, Travis had been recruited for a special detachment called the Strategic Intelligence Collection & Containment Unit. The army, like most government agencies involved in the war on terror, didn’t want to rely on any other agency for help. That’s why the Navy had its own air force, the Army had its own navy, and the Air Force, well . . . So the Army created a little version of the CIA within its ranks. And Travis was one of the unit’s best spies.
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