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PROLOGUE
Trapped in the musty dark stone cell, Deputy Poppy Anderson sat on the mattress and stared at her only form of entertainment. It came in the form of a constant drip, drip, drip of water hitting the granite floor, and slithering in a winding rivulet to join the growing puddle surrounding the drain. Despondent, after three months of being confined in hell, she flicked a cockroach from her blanket into the water. It landed on its back, legs flailing and trying to walk on air, as it rushed toward the drain and then spun around and around in the whirlpool before slipping between the metal slots. She lifted her head and stared at the shaft of light coming through the cracks surrounding the door to her prison. It was always the same steady light. There was no way to tell if it was day or night. In fact, time had ceased to exist in her nightmare.
Reality came in the form of terror. Poppy’s hands hadn’t stopped trembling since the first time she’d pressed her eye to the crack in the door and seen a woman beaten to death. Blood had seeped under her door in a ribbon of horror and the smell of death had lingered for so long she’d gotten used to it. He’d been there, the man she’d first met on a flight to Black Rock Falls, Montana—the nice man who’d lured her into the woods at the pretense of finding a lost child. He wasn’t nice at all. On the flight they’d talked about baseball and how he loved to swing a bat. She swallowed bile. Oh, he liked to swing a bat—but not at a ball.
She’d become a number, and as number twenty-five, she’d been placed on death row. There were others in the jail, but no one said a word. No one dared after he’d made an example out of one who’d called out, cried and demanded to be set free. Poppy had watched her die, one eye fixed in morbid fascination to the slither of light. Her captor had caught her looking at him and smiled with the innocence of a choirboy as he took the life of an innocent woman. She wasn’t his first.
Many more followed, and each time, Poppy rolled into a ball, too scared to move or make a sound. Would she be next? There could be no reasoning with this brutal man. The stark reality of being trapped in his storeroom just waiting to die had become her future. Or was he keeping her just to watch him kill? Her thoughts moved from one possibility to another in rapid succession. It was all she could think about because no one would be searching for her. He’d made sure of that by forcing her to email the office with her resignation and intention to head for Colorado. She had wanted to work with Dave Kane and could have convinced Jenna to make her a member of the team, but her one day as deputy at Black Rock Falls had ended in a violent kidnapping. The hope that anyone would come to rescue her had faded long ago and now her imagination centered on him. He was unpredictable and his mood swings chilled her to the bone. Did knowing she watched him kill make it more thrilling for him? Her mind was spinning with the implications, and the next time the screams started, she turned her back to the door and tried to block out the noise. After each murder, she couldn’t eat for days, vomiting bile and sitting staring into empty corners. She understood her mental health was suffering but could no longer fight. Her vomiting caught his attention and, as her door opened, fear grasped her by the throat.
“If you make a sound. I’ll know. I can see you every second of the day. I watch everything you do. I own each breath you take.” The man stared at her, his face passive. “The next time I see or hear you, the others will pay the price of your disobedience.”
Days blended into each other, and small sounds gained her attention. The odd cough, the running of a faucet or flushing of a toilet. The scrape of a tray as it was pushed in front of the delivery slot no doubt laden with discarded wrappers just like hers. It had been days without hearing or seeing their captor but none of the others tried to communicate. All followed the rules until they died. When his footsteps came again, without thinking, Poppy went to peer through the crack. The jailer brought supplies in the form of survival rations and pushed them through the slot in the door once a week, but this time he carried an unconscious woman and dumped her into the cell opposite. Like her, the woman wore a skimpy nightie. The cell door clanged shut and the man turned slowly to look along the row of cells. Fear gripped Poppy and she froze on the spot.
“I can see you, looking at me, Twenty-Five.” Her captor’s mouth curled into a wide grin. “You’ve been so self-centered all your life, haven’t you? How many times have I told you that if you break the rules, everyone suffers?” He opened a cell door and dragged out a bedraggled woman and pushed her hard against the wall. “Lift up your arms.”
The woman complied like an automaton, and he secured her to metal loops in the wall. Poppy’s stomach lurched. Would he kill her just to prove a point? When he took a horsewhip from a hook on the wall, horrified, Poppy slid to the floor. Over the next terrifying hour, the extent of the prisoners came to light. Apart from her, and the unconscious woman, three others were dragged from the cells. All went without a struggle to receive their punishment for her wrongdoing, but as their screams echoed through the walls, Poppy rocked back and forth, humming, with her hands pressed hard over her ears. Make it stop.
The door to her cell opened slowly and a figure blocked the light. She could see the sheen of sweat on his bare shoulders as his rancid stink poured into her space like a thick fog. Terrified, Poppy flattened against the wall, her heart pounding in her ears. Had he come to punish her or kill her?
“See what you did, Twenty-Five? You destroy people’s lives without a second thought. Women like you, who flirt and break up people’s relationships are all the same. You don’t care who suffers because of you, do you? Or what happens to the kids from broken marriages?” He indicated behind him to the woman hanging from her wrists. “She is the same as you. They all are. Did you hear how loud they screamed? Don’t worry, I don’t intend to kill them just yet, but their time will come.”
Refusing to cower to him, Poppy lifted her chin. “You know nothing about me. I’m not like the others. You’re mistaken.”
“Nah, I can see right through your lies. Can’t you see? I’m just putting the world right. It’s an experiment in social justice. All of you are nothing more than a bunch of narcissistic parasites.” He narrowed his gaze and took a step toward her. “I’ll give you something to think about while I’m away. You can’t hide from me. I’m in your dreams, hiding in the shadows.” His tongue slid over his bottom lip. “You’re close to the top of my list, and I’m gonna so enjoy taking my time with you. Won’t that be fun?”
