“Well, he’s wrong,” Dylan says, turning on her now. “You’re not going to do it to spare my life.” When he digs into his pocket, Luke steps forward. “Easy, Cowboy. It’s just this.” Dylan rattles a small pillbox in one hand and stops. He’s several feet away from her, back turned to all the shadowy hiding places in the landscape outside. He extends the box to her. It’s shaking. It’s shaking because his hand is shaking. “You’re going to do it for everybody who was buried on this farm. You’re going to do it for my mother, and you’re going to do it for yours.”
When she reaches for the pillbox, she feels a firm pressure in her shoulder, so sudden and strong she wonders if Luke just grabbed her. But when she looks over her shoulder, he’s still several paces away. Studying her. Ready to react, to what he’s not sure, but he’s ready. Ready and watching.
Now she can see the tears in Dylan’s eyes. But he doesn’t blink them away, and he doesn’t stop staring into hers.
“Don’t do it for me,” he whispers. “I don’t need you to spare my life, Charlotte Rowe. Make the choice for yourself and for the other women you can keep alive. Do that for me, if you can find it in your heart to do anything for me at all.”
Pam, she thinks. Jessica, Sara. Maybe they have ordinary names. Maybe they have ordinary lives. Or maybe they’re currently living lives that seem ordinary on the surface but will ultimately unveil some extraordinary purpose. Maybe they will invent something or one day become a senator or a president. What matters is that they are alive. A mass of dreams and potential, vulnerable to fate but protected from Frederick Pemberton. But she’s not just thinking of them, of the women whose lives she’s saved. She’s thinking of ordinary-looking human monsters. Men like Pemberton, women like Abigail. She’s thinking of other basements and closets keeping untold horrors just out of view until they are revealed by a gate left open or a cop responding to a noise disturbance or the accidental sighting of a girl who went missing years before.
She extends her hand toward Dylan’s, allows him to drop the pillbox into her open palm. They’re in full view of whoever might be watching from the woods, but she hasn’t closed her fingers around the box yet. She’s studying it, as if unsure whether or not to pocket it and the responsibility it contains. But all she sees are the faces of these bland-looking killers, with placid half smiles and faraway expressions. They’re inventions of her mind, of course, but they’re born from the mug shots of dozens of depraved human monsters, of which the Bannings were only two. People who spent most of their midnight hours on the sadistic manufacture of fear and agony so that one day the mere mention of their names would send a shiver through anyone who hears them.
It’s these monsters she’s thinking of as she closes her fingers around the pillbox and slides it into her pocket. It’s these monsters to whom she silently says, I know you’re out there. And I’m coming for you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like most of my novels, this title had several editors, and I owe a big debt of gratitude to each of them, beginning with Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, who helped bring Charlotte into existence, and continuing on through Caitlin Alexander and Thomas & Mercer’s Liz Pearsons. A big shout-out to the rest of the Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publishing team, specifically Grace Doyle, who showed great faith in this book from the beginning.
A big thank-you to my good friend Dr. Peter Scheer, who provided priceless research guidance in the areas of plastination and facial surgery. He’s a brilliant doctor and a wonderful man who bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of the multiple mad doctors in this book. The same can be said for Geoff Symon, who provided invaluable insight into law enforcement technique, particularly at the federal level, and who bears absolutely no resemblance to certain shady government agents referenced within these pages.
Thanks as well to Paul Shreve, who provided insight into computer hacking and keeping online communications as private as possible, and additional gratitude to his insanely talented wife, novelist Meg Gardiner, for being willing to loan out his brains to another writer. Bone Music is a novel that walks the line between thriller and science fiction, and any creative license within should be seen as just that, and not the result of misinformation offered by the very smart and skilled individuals mentioned above.
Invaluable early reads of the manuscript were provided by Jillian Stein, Eric Shaw Quinn, and Becket Ghiotto. And, as always, thanks to my own team that makes it possible to write early and often; my agents, Lynn Nesbit at Janklow & Nesbit and Elizabeth Newman at CAA; my attorney, Christine Cuddy; my mother, Anne Rice; and again, because he likes it when I mention him a lot, my best friend and partner over at www.TheDinnerPartyShow.com, Eric Shaw Quinn.
Scarlet’s a made-up town, so don’t go looking for it on a map. So’s Altamira, along with many of the locations I describe as being nearby, including State Mountain Road 293, Bayard Rock, and the Copper Pot, which stinks because I hear they have good pie.