The Dead Room by Heather Graham
For ITW,
CJ Lyons, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell
and M. Diane Vogt, who worked so very hard—
and pulled off the incredible. And for our fearless
leader Bob Levinson and the Killer Thriller Band—
F. Paul Wilson, John Lescroart, Michael Palmer
(the lyrics man!), Daniel Palmer, Nathan Walpow,
Blake Crouch, Dave Simms, Scott Nicholson,
David Morrell (again) and Gayle Lynds (amazing
triangle!). And for my truly beautiful fellow
Killerettes—Harley Jane Kozak and Alex Sokoloff.
Deepest thanks to all.
PROLOGUE
The light was blinding.
For a moment it seemed as if nothing had existed before it, as if nothing could be greater than rising to meet it. It seemed to reach out with a sweet, alluring warmth. At the source there seemed to be beckoning shadows, but though Leslie MacIntyre could see nothing clearly, they seemed to offer comfort, as well, as if they were waiting to welcome her, to enfold her into their loving arms.
“Hey, you!”
The voice was husky, affectionate, yet strangely jarring. She looked up. It was Matt. She didn’t know where they were, but so long as she and Matt Connolly were together, everything was all right.
They’d met when she’d been the new kid on the block. Though he was a few years older, he’d pulled her along in his wake and made her one of his crowd. He’d called her Rebel, but he’d done it in such a teasing tone that no one had ever been able to use it against her. He’d mocked her Southern accent, then announced that it was the most charming thing he’d ever heard. She’d practically worshipped him over the years, then—yes, she could admit it—lusted after him as they’d grown older. Strangely, it was a tragedy that had made her hopes and dreams come true, that had suddenly made him realize the girl he had befriended had grown up. And since then…
The years hadn’t all been perfect. They’d been quite a thing once she’d graduated from high school, but their pride had sometimes gotten the best of them. One tempestuous blowup had led to a breakup, sending him to college in another state far to the south to play football, while she, still his Rebel, had stayed behind in Yankee territory, opting for NYU. Despite a year in the pros post-college, he’d gone on to journalism, while she had chosen urban archaeology, specializing in her own adopted home of New York. He had started in sports but gone on to world affairs, then come home to write a column about life and issues in New York City.
Back in New York, he had found her again—digging in the dirt, he joked. For months, they had both been cautious, dying to see each other, afraid of the intensity of the emotion that still roiled between them. One night he had simply shown up at her door at 3:00 a.m. and sanity flew to the wind. They’d immediately gotten engaged, and now they were planning a wedding.
Oddly enough, their lives together had added to both their careers. He’d done some of his very best pieces for the paper—a man’s take on the modern wedding. Through Matt, Leslie had been drawn into conversation with a detective about an elderly man who had gone missing. She knew the area in Brooklyn where he had disappeared, which was filled with old subway tunnels. Asking the detective to humor her, she had led him to the place where the man had ended his days.
She’d felt almost as if she’d been beckoned to the site, though she argued with herself that knowledge and logic had brought her to the place. But now many detectives found her very interesting, and Matt had warned her that they were thinking about asking her to use her extraordinary knowledge of the city and its infrastructure to help with a new spate of disappearances. Matt himself was taking the matter very seriously and writing about it for the paper. People constantly disappeared in New York, of course. But these disappearances seemed to be linked. The missing were all women who lived on the streets. And they were all prostitutes.
Matt had pointed out that, throughout history, neither the police nor the populace had seemed to care about the fate of those who lived in the underbelly of society.
The moral majority never worried too much until it was threatened itself.
She could tell that Matt wanted her to get involved, though she seriously doubted she could be of any help. She wished she could, but she couldn’t suddenly claim to be some kind of clairvoyant.
And she had her real work, which she believed was important, and which she loved.