Every Pretty Thing Read online

  Chris Mooney

  * * *

  EVERY PRETTY THING

  Contents

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  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

  23RD OF FEBRUARY TUESDAY

  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

  24TH OF FEBRUARY WEDNESDAY

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  FEBRUARY DAY UNKNOWN

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  29TH OF FEBRUARY MONDAY, LEAP DAY

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  FOLLOW PENGUIN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  EVERY PRETTY THING

  Chris Mooney is the internationally bestselling author of the Darby McCormick thrillers. His third novel, Remembering Sarah, was nominated for an Edgar for Best Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He teaches writing courses at Harvard and the Harvard Extension School, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife and son.

  By the same author

  The Missing

  The Secret Friend

  The Dead Room

  The Killing House

  The Soul Collectors

  Fear the Dark

  Every Three Hours

  For Jen and Jack

  Not enough time for all my love

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  * * *

  1

  Whenever Karen woke up – night or day, violently or peacefully, or simply kicked awake by her constant nemesis, insomnia – she reached under her pillow for the handgun she had affectionately nicknamed Baby G: a subcompact 9-millimetre Glock 43 sold to her by a smug, twenty-something gun-store owner in Ohio who had called it ‘the perfect little sidearm for ladies in your age group’. She’d been fifty at the time – not exactly old, as far as she was concerned, but not exactly young either.

  The punk kid had been correct in calling the G43 the perfect little sidearm. It was little, just over six inches long, and surprisingly light and easy to shoot. Grabbing the handgun whenever she woke up was as much a habit as it was a ritual: she needed to hold it long enough to calm herself down, to remind herself that she was safe, that the man who had killed her family and tried to kill her hadn’t found her.

  Only that wasn’t strictly true any more. She had finally found him.

  Karen sat up, the nightmare she’d just had already on its way to a fast exit. A dull square of moonlight splashed against the end of her patchwork quilt, and she saw the neon-blue numbers glowing from her alarm clock: 1.32 a.m. She was alone in the bedroom because she lived here alone and, most importantly, her bedroom door was shut and locked, the deadbolt she’d installed the day she moved in firmly in place. The windows were cracked open to let in the cold air; she loved sleeping with the windows open, even during the winter – especially when, like tonight, she felt hot, like she was coming down with a fever. Had she caught that virus that was going around? Or had the stress from the past few days taken its toll, screwing up the hormone levels in her body and placing her in what her doctors called adrenal fatigue?

  Get up, her mind screamed. Grab your keys and leave.

  But there wasn’t any reason to leave – not now. Not yet. The house was locked up, secured. She was safe, and she was armed.

  She eased herself into a sitting position and her heart rate, which was already spiked, seemed to crank itself up to an alarming level, leaving her feeling lightheaded. There was a brief moment where she thought she was going to pass out. That had been happening a lot these past three days, her heart jackhammering so hard against her breastbone that it reminded her of the old Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry cartoons she had watched in hospitals and psychiatric wards. She pictured her heart exploding out of her chest, grabbing the car keys and getting in her truck and driving off, leaving her here.

  Running away was the smart thing to do – the right thing to do. But the governing principle these last seven or so years had had nothing to do with what was right or smart but rather what was needed. And she needed to stay here in this oddball town in northern Montana, because now, after thirty-eight years of searching and praying, she had found him. The man who had killed her family and had almost killed her was living right here in Fort Jefferson. The Red Ryder.

  Karen ran a forearm across her eyes, feeling the damp and greasy slickness of her skin. She grabbed the bottle of water she kept on the nightstand and polished it off.

  Going back to sleep was off the table; she felt wired from head to toe. She was afraid, yes (okay, terrified), but there was some excitement too. The culmination of her life’s work – her life’s purpose, mission, whatever you wanted to call it – wasn’t coming to an end, but she was finally going to get some closure. Finally, she would be accepted back into mainstream society. Finally, she would no longer need to hide or sleep with a gun under her pillow and a deadbolt installed on her bedroom door – that is, if she played her cards right. If she could remain vigilant and patient.

  Holding Baby G was delivering the jolt of comfort she needed. Karen pulled back the warm but damp flannel sheets and got to her feet, groaning. The surgeon had removed all the slugs except for the one still lodged near her spine, the man afraid of paralysing her if he removed it. And, despite the multiple surgeries to repair her muscles, all the years of physical rehabilitation, she still walked with a slight limp. During the winter and before a thunderstorm, she experienced a dull but debilitating pain throughout her body, as though it were trapped inside a vice and slowly being squeezed.

  When she reached the other side of the bed, Karen lifted up the mattress and removed a Colt .45 that had belonged to her father. She carried it back with her to bed, where she gathered up the pillows and propped them against the headboard. Then she got comfortable and, tucked back under the warm covers, held the Colt against her stomach. Its reassuring weight, the feel of the cold steel seeping past her T-shirt and touching her skin, always did the trick on nights like this.

  She closed her eyes.

  Thought, I want to be thirteen again.

  Thirteen had been a magical year for her. Not Disney fairytale magical with unicorns that crapped rainbows, but something close to it. The year she turned thirteen she became a straight-A student for the first time. She ran for class president – and won. She became one of the top five long-distance runners in New England and, at the school’s winter social the week before Christmas, she kissed the cutest boy in her class, Duncan Monroe, a tall, comic-book-loving nerd from Australia all the girls called Duncan the Delicious and then simply Mr Delicious, a nickname that was fully justified later in high school, when that great purveyor of youth culture and taste, Abercrombie & Fitch, selected him as a model the summer before his senior year, his perfectly chiselled chest and ripped stomach not only featuring on a big black-and-white poster at the local store but also on all the A & F shopping bags.

  The best part about the year she turned thirteen, though, was her father, who had returned home – again, miraculously, in one piece – from yet another overseas secret mission he couldn’t discuss. This time, he came back with some great news: he had officially retired from the Navy. His new job? Full-time dad. That year, he shuttled her back and forth to school, to her field hockey and soccer games, and at least once a week the two of them went to Bluey’s Diner for lunch or an early dinner, where she talked to him about the music, movies, books and TV shows she liked – they even talked about Delicious Duncan and ‘the kiss’. The year she turned thirteen she learned she could talk to her father about anything, no subject off limits.

  She wished she could talk to him now.

  In a weird way, she still could. After he died, the calm but extremely cautious voice within her, the one reminding her to look both ways before crossing the street, to be a good and kind person who said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – the voice s he assumed was her conscience – that inner voice had taken on the blunt, no-BS tone of Lieutenant-Commander Samuel Decker, a SEAL Team Six sniper awarded two Purple Hearts. That voice spoke to her now:

  Pick up the phone and make the call.

  She couldn’t. She had a solid and well-documented history as the girl who’d cried wolf. The FBI wouldn’t take her seriously unless she had concrete proof – which she believed she finally did, now that she was sober. She wouldn’t know for sure until the Bureau’s lab geeks tested the evidence she’d mailed out yesterday.

  Now came the hard part: waiting. The Federal lab was backlogged, always. Even with her connections, she was looking at at least a couple of weeks. No more than a month. She didn’t want to wait that long – no one in their right mind would – but she could because she had been careful. The Red Ryder didn’t know she was here.

  If the Red Ryder really is here, Karen, he may come after you.

  Prudent advice. Sage advice. She might have said those exact same words to her own child if the roles had been reversed. But she didn’t have any kids, thank God, because she’d had her tubes tied. She had never married or gotten anywhere close to it, because she had never been in a serious relationship. She was alone by choice but not lonely – an important distinction.

  The Red Ryder had no idea who she was. She wasn’t using her real name, and she looked nothing like the thirteen-year-old he’d seen that night or anything like the photos of her as a teenager posted all over the Internet, on the Red Ryder fan sites and, at last count, in the eighteen crime books published on America’s favourite unknown psycho. Leaving Fort Jefferson was not an option. Do that now and everything she had worked and suffered for – had literally bled for – could and would vanish. At fifty-one, she didn’t have another thirty-eight years to devote to her cause. She didn’t have –

  The bedroom exploded with light.

  2

  Shit, Karen thought, slamming her eyes shut against the sudden light. She had forgotten to draw the light-blocking shades before turning in, and now her bedroom glowed like a searchlight, courtesy of the insanely bright halogen bulbs the rangers from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had installed in the backyard’s motion-sensor lights to help scare off the black bears and grizzlies. Animals had started making their way down here, to a lower elevation, looking for food. It was a big problem this time of year, she’d been told, from mid-September all the way to December, thanks to global warming; and yet locals like Gina Miller, the Bible-thumping old bird who lived up at the top of the road, kept feeding bears from her back porch despite several warnings from the rangers. The only saving grace was that Miss Miller hadn’t had any children to carry on her stupidity.

  Karen was way too comfortable and way too warm and cosy to get up and draw the bedroom shades – and she should, because if some animal were moving around out there, the backyard lights would continue to shine on, preventing her from getting a good night’s sleep. She thought about getting up as she stared out the window, at the trees lining her little stretch of backyard and beyond them, the seemingly never-ending stretch of forest packed with massive pines and other trees (the names of which she did not know, having lived in cities most of her life) that blocked out the sun on even the brightest of days, casting the hiking and, in the winter, snowmobile trails in perpetual gloom.

  Her father said, You’re in danger.

  No, Karen told her father. I played it nice and cool yesterday. He didn’t notice a thing. No one noticed a thing.

  You don’t know that.

  I do. I’m in the clear.

  Then explain to me why you’re sitting in bed with not one but two loaded handguns.

  You’re forgetting about the Mossberg in my bedroom closet and the other shotgun stored inside the closet by the front door. I’ve got handguns hidden in just about every room inside this house, Pops. I’ve been living this way for years.

  Because you’re scared.

  After what happened to us that night? You’re goddamn right I’m scared.

  Then, as if to prove her point, her mind replayed the nightmare that had just woken her up – only it wasn’t a nightmare but a home movie, and it always began with her, at thirteen, sitting in the back seat of the family station wagon, with its plastic blue seats and fake panelling along the sides. They were parked in a dirt lot in Vallejo, California – the site of a campground. Her father, an avid outdoorsman, had decided to take them hiking and camping along the California coast. They were eating burgers and drinking milkshakes and sharing thick steak fries from a white bag splotched with grease when a car driving fast across the dark and quiet road suddenly pulled into the dirt lot and came to a sharp stop behind them – an unmarked cop car, she guessed, like the one she’d seen on her favourite TV show, ChiPs, because a searchlight exploded through the station wagon’s rear window. The piercingly bright, white light began to move and come closer, and she thought it was the portable kind the police used to check vehicles for alcohol and drugs, just like on TV. Her suspicion was confirmed moments later, when her father told everyone to relax, that it was just a cop checking to make sure they weren’t riffraff up to no good. It was the start of the long Fourth of July weekend.

  Karen did relax, because she’d seen the driver’s licence and registration pinched between her father’s fingers. She turned to her two-year-old brother, Paul, with his gap-toothed grin, and was about to feed him a French fry when the shooting started.

  The first shot hit her father – it was like a cherry pie had exploded inside the car – and, by the time the man who would later become known to the world as the Red Ryder turned his silenced 9-millimetre Luger on her mother, she had already draped her body over her brother’s, her shaking and red-slicked hand covered with her parents’ blood reaching for the car door.

  Now she was sitting in a bed in another state thirty-eight years later. Was she scared? No. She was terrified. But on the subject of terror, what people generally forgot about was how it could sharpen the mind. How it cleared away the bullshit and focused your attention so you could zero in on the heart of the matter, which was this: no matter how scared she felt, no matter how much she wanted to leave (and there was certainly a part of her that did), she had to stay here and keep an eye on him until the evidence came back. Once it did, then she could decide what to do, and only then.

  The outside lights clicked off, plunging the bedroom back into its gloom, and she thought she heard the snap of dry branches from the backyard – an animal moving through the woods, searching for food, maybe. It alarmed her for a reason she couldn’t explain, and for a moment she felt as though someone – or something – was sitting on her chest.

  Make the call, her father said. At least do that.

  No. Not until I have some more information. Besides, talking isn’t going to change anything, and you know it.

  Do you want to end up like the others?

  That wasn’t going to happen. She’d been living here for four months as Melissa French. Before coming to Fort Jefferson, Montana, she was Cindy Otto, living in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Before Cindy she was Sandra Jane Healey, and before Sandra she had been someone else – the list of names went on and on, every one of them with bland back stories. And, while all roads led back to Karen Lee Decker, that life – her first life, as she called it – had been successfully erased. Karen Lee Decker was, for all intents and purposes, dead and buried. She had hired trained professionals – erasers, as they were called in the businesses – who could turn you into a ghost as long as you followed the rules, the first of which was you were never to contact anyone from your former life, for any reason. No problem there. She had followed the rules, so no one, not even the FBI, could find her. She had made certain of it.

  You can never be certain of anything, Karen. That’s why you –

  I’m not asking for your advice, she told her father. But, since we’re on the subject of putting one’s life in danger, let’s not forget that you willingly signed over your life, not once but several times – and left your family, not once but several times – all to help the good ole US of A. I love you, but you don’t get a say in this one. Sorry.

  It was then Karen noticed she had traded the comfort of her dad’s handgun for the comfort of the second and last item from her first life: the St Christopher medal that hung from a gold chain as thin as a piece of thread. The oval, gold-plated medal, not the chain, had belonged to her father, a gift from his parents for his first Communion. Lieutenant-Commander Samuel Decker, he of great religious faith, had carried it with him during his secret missions, believing it would protect him. And it had.