Bone Music

“So if I had given you a choice, if I’d told you the risks, would you have said yes?”

It’s an impossible question, but she’s closer to an honest answer now than she was just twenty-four hours before. It’s what she wrote in her journal.

She closes her eyes, imagines those twinkling vistas that stretched out before her and Luke as they chased Pemberton across Southern California. She tells herself that somewhere out there in those glittering lights are young women, about her age. They’re settling in for the night or getting ready to head out on a first date or maybe even driving to pick up their kids from the movies. Because of Charley, they will make it to their destinations. They will hear the delighted laughter of their children as they slide into the back seat of the car. Or they will lock eyes with their date across the table and have the privilege of asking themselves if this person is the one. They will have a night full of dreams before the sun rises, and they will wake in their own beds. In their own rooms. Not in Pemberton’s basement. Not in the Bannings’ root cellar. Someday they will die, of course, but until then they will be spared the degradation of dying at the hands of someone who derives sexual satisfaction from their agony.

She answers before these images can leave her mind and be replaced by her current, decaying surroundings.

“Yes,” she says. “I would have said yes.”

It’s like she’s slugged him in the center of his chest.

He blinks, stares at her. He works his jaw suddenly to hide the fact that it just started to quiver. Does he think she’s lying? She isn’t. It’s the truth, as much as she’s capable of telling the truth about a possibility that no longer exists, an opportunity that was stolen from her by a man who’s only just now realizing that his belief in what’s best for others can bring him close to committing the kind of violent acts that destroyed his life. Or one of his lives. A life that will never be, with a mother he never got to know.

So what if he doubts her answer? That’s his burden to bear. He’s the one who stole the choice from her. He’s the one who made sure they’ll never truly know if she would have accepted the risks, the challenge. The opportunity.

For the first time since she’s met him, he looks miserable.

Maybe he regrets it all. The loss of life—the slaughtered bikers, the chaos that followed. Maybe he really does regret stealing the choice from her, putting her through hell in the name of his warped view of scientific research.

Maybe he cares about her as much as he’s capable.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that she has the answer she came here for.

She can’t let him die.

“So,” he finally says, voice shaky. “What will you tell our mutual friend about our meeting?”

“Nothing he probably doesn’t already know,” she answers.

With a smile, he looks to the woods, nods. “Makes sense. You’re one of his most valuable investments now. I’m sure he’ll do anything to protect you.”

“Maybe,” she says. “He took some of my blood after I was triggered. He’ll be able to work with that for a while even if I choose not to do any more tests.”

“And what about me?” he asks.

“What about you, Dylan?” she asks.

“If you decide to go no further with him, what did he say about me?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

“I never do,” he says.

“You played the therapist for me. What did you play for him?”

“I didn’t play anything. I just offered him a release of his tension; that’s all. So that he could focus.”

“A well-timed one, given what you were asking of him.”

“Cole Graydon doesn’t fall in love with people. If he’s threatened me it’s because of the risk I pose to his company. And to his secrets.”

“Or that. But you’re both more alike than you realize.”

“How’s that, Charley?”

“You’re both more human than you’d like to be.”

He nods, tries for bitter laughter, but it gets caught in his throat. “I see,” he says. “So he did give you an out, just not a graceful one. He said you could walk away, but that it would be the end of me.”

Her expression confirms his suspicions. He laughs, looks to the woods outside again.

“It’s genius, when you think about it.” He approaches what remains of the nearby wall, which only comes up to his knees. He steps into the shafts of bright sunlight pouring through where one corner of the roof used to be. “This way, you can agree to go along with him out of a crushing sense of obligation. You almost killed Jason. You almost killed Pemberton. And you may very well lose control and kill someone during a future test. And so even if things do get bloody in the months ahead or the years ahead or however long it takes us to isolate whatever it is about you that makes this drug work, you’ll always be able to console yourself with the fact that you spared my life. It will keep you going. For him. And you think I’m the master manipulator.”

“I think you two were made for each other.”

“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.