Mira. - The Shimmer

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How do you hunt a killer who can go back in time and make sure youre never born?

A police pursuit kicks Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol and his trainee, Julie Karras, into a shoot-out that ends with one girl dead and another in cuffs, and the driver of the SUV fleeing into the Intracoastal Waterway. Redding stays on the hunt, driven by the trace memory that he knows that running womanand he does, because his grandfather, a cop in Jacksonville, was hunting the same woman in 1957.

Redding and his partner, Pandora Jansson, chase a seductive serial killer who can ride The Shimmer across decades. The pursuit cuts from modern-day Jacksonville to Mafia-ruled St. Augustine in 1957, then to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1914. The stakes turn brutal when Jack, whose wife and child died in a crash the previous Christmas Eve, faces a terrible choice: help his grandfather catch the killer, or change time itself and try to save his wife and child.

The Shimmer is a unique time-shifting thriller that will stay with you long after its utterly unforeseen and yet perfectly diabolical ending.

THE SHIMMER

Carsten Stroud

www.harlequinbooks.com.au

For The Love Of My Life

Contents

go down to the river and prey

An afternoon in late August, a Thursday, four hours and sixteen minutes left on Day watch, cruising down the A1A twenty miles south of St. Augustine in an unmarked shark-gray Crown Vic, Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol and his rookie trainee were watching a black Suburban with heavily tinted windows and Missouri plates. They were watching the black Suburban because it was lurching across two lanes of heavy traffic like a wounded rhino.

Far out over the Atlantic a tsunami of storm clouds was filling the horizon. An onshore gale gritty with beach sand was lashing at the rusted flagpoles over the tired old lime-green and pink stucco motelsCrystal Shores, Pelican Beach, Emerald Seasthe gale fluttering their faded awnings. The air smelled of ozone and sea salt and fading magnolias.

Redding looked over at his trainee, a compact sport-model blonde by the name of Julie Karras. Since she was fresh out of the Academy and this was her first day on the job, she was on fire to pull the truck over and carpet bomb the drivers ass.

What do you think, boss? Can I hit the lights?

Redding went back to the truck. It had eased up on the lurching. It was now more of a wobble. Maybe the driver had been fumbling around in the glove compartment or checking his iPhone and had finally stopped doing that. Or maybe he was totally cranked out of his mind and had just now noticed a cop car riding his ass. Whatever it was, the guy was slowing down, doing a little less than the 60 per allowed.

Grounds, Julie?

He could see her mentally running the Traffic Infractions List through her mind. She was too proud to check the sheet on her clipboard. Although hed only met her at 0800 hours, when Day watch started, Redding liked her. She had...something.

Style was the wrong word.

No. She had bounce.

I Five, she said, after a moment, Improper Change of Lanes.

Julie Karras was in Reddings unmarked cruiser because her regular training officerwho had been born in Chicago, the frozen attic of the nationhad confused Canadian ice hockey with a real American sport, such as football, and had gotten all of his upper front incisors duly redeployed. So the CO had handed her off to Redding for the week.

Try not to get her killed on her first shift, said the CO, whose name was Bart Dixon but everybody called him, inevitably, Mason, often shortened to Mace. Its bad for recruitment.

Dixon, a bullet-shaped black guy with a shaved head and bullet scar on his left cheek, had grinned at him around an Old Port cheroot that smelled like burning bats. The part about not getting her killed wasnt entirely irrelevant because Reddings main job wasnt Patrol.

He worked Serious Crimes Liaison with the State Bureau of Investigations. Hed killed five men and one woman while doing that because, while he didnt go looking for gun fights, he didnt do a whole lot to avoid them either. And in a hellhole city like Jacksonville, gun fights were always on the menu.

Redding didnt mind taking on Julie Karras. She was crazy pretty, it was a fine summer dayor had been up until just nowand late August was slack time for the SBI, with most of them off on vacation. So if you were a career criminal and you desperately wanted to get your ass busted you were going to have to wait until after the end of the month.

Karras was from up North he remembered her saying. Charleston or Savannah so she had that sweet Tidewater lilt in her voice. She had the infraction number wrong though.

I Six, you mean, he said, but gently.

I Five was Improper Backing. Both infractions, but when hed been in Patrol thats where you started off, with a possible infraction. It hardly ever stayed there, but you had to have probable cause before you could make a stop. Otherwise everything that flowed from the stopdrugs, guns, illegal transportation of underage gerbils across state lineswould get thrown out of court.

How about you run those plates first? Lets see what were getting into here.

Karras swiveled the MDT display around on its base, punched in 407 XZT, hit the search tab.

The Suburban had steadied and was now doing the speed limit. Exactly the speed limit. Reddings unmarked was several cars back, in heavy traffic. Maybe theyd been seen and maybe not. But something was going ping in Reddings cop brain.

He didnt like big black SUVs with dark-tinted windows. Most cops felt exactly the same way. Big Black Boxes packed with Explosive Situations.

A gust of wind blew a cloud of beach sand across all four lanes of A1A and everybodys brake lights flared as the drivers reacted. Grains of sand were peppering the glass at his shoulder and he could feel the car rocking. He looked east past the roofs of the beach houses that lined the coast, and there it was, heading their way, a white squall.

Karras looked up from the computer screen.

Comes back with a Gerald Jeffrey Walker. DOB November 10, 1971. Address of 1922 Halls Ferry Road, Florissant, Missouri. No Wants No Warrants.

Redding started to back off, letting his ping fade. Not every black Suburban was full of

Now this, said Karras, giving him a puzzled look. It just popped up on the screen. A ten-thirty-five? Whats a ten-thirty-five?

Redding kept his eyes on that black Suburban. It had suddenly become much more interesting.

Thats the code for Confidential Information.

What does it mean?

Youll see in a moment, he said, letting the Suburban drift farther ahead, falling back out of the guys rearview, if he was watching the cruiser at all. Which he sure as hell was because everyone did. A cop car in your rearview was like a scorpion in your martini. People noticed. He heard the MDT chirp, and Karras read off the radio code.