PROLOGUE
‘No! Please no! I can’t …’
The old man’s eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that bound him. He imagined the spiral metal bit grinding into his flesh, splintering his bones like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden beam.
As they crucified him.
Surely they knew he was good for the money? He would give them what they wanted – everything they wanted! He was no good to them dead.
How long had he been in the warehouse now? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he’d lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screaming burns on his skin, thin and creased with age like crepe paper. The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips. The tiny razor cuts to his genitals. They had tortured and humiliated him in every sadistic way imaginable, while the young woman stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone. Hateful bitch. He despised her most of all, more even than his tormentors.
They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, some sort of grand finale with the drill. Or at least he did. Their boss. The ringmaster at this circus of terror.
The man with the brown eyes.
The devil incarnate.
‘Please!’
The old man’s sobs turned to screams as his torturers switched on the drill, passing it laughingly between them as they revved it louder and louder.
‘I’ll do anything! Oh God, no!’ A warm river of liquid excrement exploded out of his bowels and streamed down his shaking legs.
The man with the brown eyes smiled.
‘What’s that you say?’ he taunted, cupping a manicured hand to his ear. ‘I’m sorry, my friend, with the sound of that drill I can’t hear you.’
He looked on as his men did his bidding, aroused as always by the pleading and the shrieks and the blood, and finally by the silence, once the show was over. Aroused too by the young woman dutifully filming it all for his pleasure, as he’d commanded her to do. He preferred killing women. But ending a life, any life, was a high like no other. The ultimate expression of power.
Once, the battered old man hanging lifelessly from the beam in front of him had been rich and powerful. More powerful than him. Or so he’d thought.
But look at him now. Like a carcass in an abattoir.
‘Should we cut him down, boss?’ one of the goons asked his master.
‘No.’ The man with the brown eyes stepped forward. ‘Leave him there.’ Pulling a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket, he stuffed them violently into the corpse’s mouth.
The stupid old man had never understood.
It was never about the money …
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
DR NIKKI ROBERTS
Brentwood, Los Angeles.
May 12, 11 p.m.
It never rains in Los Angeles in May, so the light mist falling on my bare arms is a surprise. The last surprise I will have on this earth. But that’s OK. I’ve come to hate surprises.
Our yard looks beautiful, lush and green. I am standing under the magnolia tree Doug planted in the spring, just a month before his accident. Accident. I have to stop using that word. I know now that my husband’s death was no random act of fate. The night that Doug crashed on the 405, burned alive in his beloved Tesla: that was the beginning.
Not that I knew it at the time. I didn’t know anything back then.
The gun in my hand, a 9mm Luger, feels small and harmless, like a toy. The man who sold it to me called it ‘a lovely gun for a woman’, as if I were buying earrings or a silk scarf. I tried to take my own life once before, right after Doug’s … after he died. I took pills, more than enough, but I was unlucky. My housekeeper, Rita, found me and called 911. Not this time. This time my little toy gun will get the job done.
I’m not afraid of death. Never have been, although as a psychologist I’ve treated countless patients who are. It’s a control thing, ultimately. Fear of the unknown. The way I see it, what I’m about to do is the ultimate act of control. Leaving the world on your own terms is a luxury.
Not everybody gets that chance.
Too many people have died because of me. Tonight another kind, decent man lost his life. A man I cared about. A man who cared about me.
This can’t go on. I have to end it.
The rai
n is getting heavier. I wipe my hand on my jeans to dry it and make my grip less slippery. No mistakes this time. I raise the gun to my temple and turn around, looking back at the house that Doug and I built together. A white clapboard, East Coast ‘estate’, beautifully lit, with a romantic balcony off the master suite that has views all the way to the ocean. Our dream home. Back when we still had dreams. Before there were nothing but nightmares.
I close my eyes and see their faces, one by one, like patterns on a kaleidoscope.
The ones I loved: Doug. Anne.
The ones I could have loved. Lou. We’ll never know what might have been.
The ones I let down: Lisa. Trey. Derek. I’m so very sorry.
My last thought is for the ones I hated.
You know who you are. May you rot in hell.
I start to cry. I know this is wrong. I wish there were another way.
But wishing never fixed anything.
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLOTTE
Ten years earlier …