White - In the Dark

PRAISE FOR LORETH ANNE WHITE

A masterfully written, gritty, suspenseful thriller with a tough, resourceful protagonist that hooked me and kept me guessing until the very end. Think CJ Box and Craig Johnson. Loreth Anne Whites The Dark Bones is that good.

Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Eighth Sister

Secrets, lies, and betrayal converge in this heart-pounding thriller that features a love story as fascinating as the mystery itself.

Iris Johansen, New York Times bestselling author of Smokescreen

A riveting, atmospheric suspense novel about the cost of betrayal and the power of redemption, The Dark Bones grips the reader from the first page to the pulse-pounding conclusion.

Kylie Brant, Amazon bestselling author of Pretty Girls Dancing

Loreth Anne White has set the gold standard for the genre.

Debra Webb, USA Today bestselling author of The Secrets We Bury

Loreth Anne White has a talent for setting and mood. The Dark Bones hooked me from the start. A chilling and emotional read.

T.R. Ragan, New York Times bestselling author of Her Last Day

A must read, A Dark Lure is gritty, dark romantic suspense at its best. A damaged yet resilient heroine, a deeply conflicted cop, and a truly terrifying villain collide in a stunning conclusion that will leave you breathless.

Melinda Leigh, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Secrets Never Die

OTHER MONTLAKE TITLES BY LORETH ANNE WHITE

The Dark Bones

A Dark Lure

In the Barren Ground

In the Waning Light

The Slow Burn of Silence

Angie Pallorino Novels

The Drowned Girls

The Lullaby Girl

The Girl in the Moss

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright 2019 by Cheakamus House Publishing

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542003834

ISBN-10: 1542003830

Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson

For my Mom and my Man, and all the doctors and nurses who cared for them over the time it took to start, write, and finish this book. And for my dear siblings and daughters from near and far who helped keep the home fires burning. I love you all. More than words can ever say.

CONTENTS

NOW

Sometimes the only thing to fear... is yourself.

Sunday, November 8.

Before the waitress delivers my breakfast, I take the sugar packets out of the container on the diner table and quickly sneak them into my pocket. I wolf down the Kluhane Bay loggers three-egg special she brings, then call her back to ask for more toast. I break the toast into bits, use them to mop up bacon fat and yellow smears of egg residue on my plate. I gulp down the rest of my coffee, then shoot a glance around the diner.

Its empty.

The server has gone into the back.

I drink the contents of the cream pitcher. My belly is now bursting. Even so, I take a white napkin and wrap it carefully around a leftover piece of crust that I simply cant fit in. I slip the crust into the pocket of my loaned down jacket where the sugar packets are hidden.

The diner is warm, yet I keep the jacket on because a deep-seated cold still lingers at the very marrow of my bones. The doctors said Im fine. They said I was lucky. They all said the same thingthe cops and paramedics, the search and rescue people. I believe it. I am incredibly lucky, and I thank the stars that aligned in order for me to survive.

And here I am, with only a bandage around my skull plus a headache and a few cuts and bruises. Im the one who made it.

For in the end, there can only be one.

And to make it to the end is to reach a beginning, is it not? Wasnt it T. S. Eliot who wrote words in that vein? That the end is where one starts, and only those who have risked going out too far can possibly learn just how far one can actually go?

Perhaps I will feel warm again tomorrow. Perhaps then my feral need to eat will subside.

A movement outside the window attracts my eye. Its the female police officer, Constable Birken Hubble, coming up the sidewalk from the lake. Hubb, the others call her. Hers was the first face I saw when I came round at the tiny facility that serves as a hospital in this remote northern town. Shes one of the three cops stationed in Kluhane Bay, this place I found myself in after being plucked by helicopter from the raw jaws of the wilderness.

I watch her walk. Hubb is short, blonde, and substantial, with a gun-belt swagger more akin to a waddle. She has a pink-cheeked, happy resting face that peeps out from under a muskrat hat with furry earflaps. Behind that deceptively congenial countenance, shes still all cop, though. I know something about wearing a Janus mask. Perhaps thats why theyve sent her to fetch methey think I might slip and tell her something. They believe I am hiding something.

The Kluhane Bay Mounties want to interview me again, formally, they said, at the tiny clapboard Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment down the road from the lake. They already asked me countless questions at the hospital after I was evacuated, and after Id been stabilized by the doctor and nurses. Ive told them everything I can.

The diner door swings open. Hubb enters with a blast of cold air. She wipes her nose with the back of her big black glove and nods at me. Im the sole patron in the establishmenthard to miss. The diner occupies the ground floor of the only motel in town. Ive been put up here by the cops.

I rise from my chair, pull on the gloves Ive been loaned, and ask the waitress to put my meal on the hotel tab. I follow Constable Hubble out into a biting wind that blows from the lake.

As I walk alongside Hubb, hunched into my borrowed jacket, the wind makes my eyes water and my nose run. With my gloved hand I dig into my pocket for a tissue I put there earlier. As I pull out the tissue, the wrapped toast crust comes out with it and tumbles to the frozen sidewalk. I stop in a flare of panic, then quickly snatch it up from the ground. I tuck it safely back into my pocket, and joy suddenly fills my soul. I laugh. I have saved the toast. I will not go hungry later. And its beautiful outthe misty swirls and tatters of clouds, the soaring, snowcapped peaks all around, the lovely quietness and isolation of this remote northern British Columbian town.

I am struck by the poignant, incredibly sharp, almost unabsorbable exquisiteness of the world, of just being. Its a feeling incommensurate with the direness of my situation. But fifteen days ago I was dropped into a fathomless pit, right into the black wilderness of my very own soul. And down there I saw the Monster, and the Monster looked back into my eyes, and I saw that the Monster was me.

But I turned away from those accusing eyes. I climbed and clawed my way back out. And I left the Monster down there. Far, far away.