Catch Me
Lisa Gardner
CACTH ME
ALSO BY LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
The Other Daughter
The Third Victim
The Next Accident
The Survivors Club
The Killing Hour
Alone
Gone
Hide
Say Goodbye
The Neighbor
Live to Tell
Love You More
LISA
GARDNER
CATCH ME
DUTTON
PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, February 2012
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Gardner, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gardner, Lisa.
Catch me / Lisa Gardner.
p. cm.
EISBN: 9781101559963
1. Warren, D. D. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.A7132C38 2012b
813′.54—dc23 2011043577
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Sabon LT Std
Designed by Leonard Telesca
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
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
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
Prologue
THE LITTLE GIRL WOKE UP the way she’d been trained: quickly and quietly. She inhaled once, a hushed gasp in the still night, then her eyes fixed on her mother’s drawn face.
“Shhh,” her mother whispered, finger to her lips. “They’re coming. It’s time, child. Move.”
The girl threw back her covers and sat up. The winter night was cold; she could see her breath as a frosty mist in the glowing moonlight. The little girl was prepared, however. She and her older sister always slept fully dressed, layering T-shirts, sweatshirts, and coats regardless of season. You never knew when They might come, flushing their prey from warm sanctuary into the treacherous wild. Unprepared children would fail quickly, succumbing to exposure, dehydration, fear.
Not the little girl and her sister. They’d planned for such events. Their mother, from the time they could walk, had trained them to survive.
Now the little girl grabbed her backpack from the foot of her bed. She slipped the wide straps over her shoulders while sliding her small feet into her loosely laced sneakers. Then she followed her mother onto the darkened second-story landing. Her mother paused at the top of the stairs, finger on her lips, as she peered down into the gloom.
The little girl halted a step behind her mother. She glanced toward the back of the hall, where her sister usually slept. The tiny rental didn’t allow for her older sister to have her own room, or even her own bed. Instead, her sister slept on the floor, with her coat as a mattress and her backpack as a pillow. As a good soldier should, their mother said.
But the spot against the far wall was empty—no sister, no coat, no frayed red pack. Fully awake now, the little girl felt the first tingle of fear and had to resist the urge to call out her older sister’s name.
Her mother’s instructions on this subject were firm: They were not to worry about each other, they were not to wait for one another. Instead, they were to get out of the house and into the woods. Immediately. Once they’d managed to safely evac and evade, then they would meet up at the predetermined rendezvous points. But first priority, get out of the house, elude capture.
And if they did not…
As their mother had told them many times, thin features pinched, face too old for her years: Be brave. Everyone has to die sometime.
The little girl’s mother descended the first step, staying to the far right, where the riser was less likely to groan. Her oversized wool coat swirled around her legs as she moved, like a black cat weaving around her ankles.
The little girl followed in her mother’s wake, placing each foot with similar care while she strained her ears for sounds from the darkness below. Their tiny two-story rental used to be a farmhouse. It was located away from town, down a long dirt road on a dusty brown patch of land at the edge of the woods. They had no roots in the community, no ties to their neighbors.
Everything the girl owned, she wore on her back. From clothing to water bottle to dried fruit and almonds to one battered Nancy Drew novel she’d bought for ten cents at a garage sale to a quartz rock she’d found two years ago along another road in another town where her mother had also woken her and her sister in the middle of the night and they’d never seen that house again.
Maybe other children had toys. Pets. TVs. Computers. School. Friends.
The little girl had her backpack, her older sister, her mother, and this.
Her mother had reached the first floor. She held up her hand, and wordlessly, the little girl halted. She still heard nothing, but watched silvery dust motes swirl around her mother’s boot-clad feet.
Now the little girl could hear a noise. A rattle, followed by two thumps. The old furnace, finally registering the chill and kicking to life. After another moment, the distant thumping ceased and the midnight hu
sh returned. The little girl looked. The little girl listened. Then, unable to determine any sign of danger, she peered up solemnly at her mother’s pale face.
Sometimes, the little girl knew, they didn’t flee in the middle of the night because of the infamous evildoers, the nameless threat lurking in the shadows.
Sometimes, they fled because training didn’t allow time for working, which didn’t allow for money to pay for rent, or heat, or food. “They” had a lot of strategies, and keeping the little girl’s family hungry, cold, and tired was the most effective of all.
At this stage of her life, the little girl could drift as soundlessly as a shadow and see as keenly as a cat in the dark. But maybe her stomach would growl, or her body would shiver. Maybe, in the end, being too hungry, too cold, and too tired was all it would take for her to give her family away.
Her mother seemed to register her thoughts. She half turned, taking the little girl’s hand.
“Be brave,” her mother whispered. “Child…”
Her mother’s voice broke. The rare and unexpected show of emotion scared the little girl far more than the dark, the cold, the too quiet house. Now she clutched her mother’s hand as tightly as her mother held hers, realizing this wasn’t a drill. They were not practicing. They were not planning.
Something had happened.
They had found them. This was the real deal.
Her mother moved. Pulled the little girl toward the small kitchen, where the bank of windows allowed the moon to pool on the floor and cast rows of finger-thin shadows around the edges.
The girl didn’t want to go anymore. She wanted to dig in her heels. Stop the madness. Rush upstairs and bury herself beneath the blankets on her bed.
Or bolt out the door. Flee from her home, the tension, her mother’s harshly lined face. She could race to the old white house on the other side of the woods. A young boy lived there. She watched him sometimes, spied on him from the sprawling oak tree. Twice, she caught him watching her back, expression thoughtful. She never said a word, though. Good girls didn’t speak to boys. Soldiers did not consort with the enemy.
SisSis. She needed her older sister. Where was SisSis?
“Everyone must die sometime,” her mother was muttering. She’d reached the middle of the kitchen, stopping abruptly. She seemed to be studying the moonlight, maybe listening for sounds of further danger.
The little girl spoke for the first time. “Mommy…”
“Hush, child! They could be right outside the kitchen. Did you think of that? Right there. Outside that window. Backs resting against that wall, listening to our every footstep. Already getting hard and hungry with the thought of what they’ll do to us.”
“Mommy…”
“We should light it on fire. Torch the wall. Listen to them yowl in fury, watch them dance in pain.”
The girl’s mother turned abruptly toward the windows. The moonlight caught her fully in the face, revealing eyes that were huge, dark pools. Then her mother smiled.
The girl shrank back, letting go of her mother’s hand, but it was too late. Her mother still clutched the little girl’s wrist. She wasn’t letting go. She was going to do something. Something horrible. Something terrible.
Something that was supposed to get Them, but that the little girl already knew, from past experience, would hurt her or her big sister instead.
The little girl whimpered. “Mommy,” she tried again, searching those too dark eyes, trying to find a flicker of familiarity.
“Matches!” her mother cried now. Voice no longer hushed, but booming, nearly gay. They could be at a birthday party, lighting candles on a cake. What a grand time! What a great adventure!
The little girl whimpered again. She tugged on her arm, trying to pull her wrist out of her mother’s grasp, struggling more forcibly.
But it was no use. At times like these, her mother’s fingers were talons, her entire body radiating a taut, wiry strength that was impossible to break. She would have her way.
Her mother yanked open the first kitchen drawer. Her left hand still clutched the little girl’s wrist, while her right hand raked through miscellaneous contents. A glossy white shower of plastic silverware rained down on the peeling linoleum floor. Sprays of ketchup packets, mustard pouches, bags of free croutons the little girl sometimes crept out of bed to eat, because her mother believed hunger would make them stronger, but mostly it made the little girl’s stomach ache, so she would pop croutons and suck on ketchup, before stuffing her coat pockets with mustard for her older sister, whom she knew was also starving but couldn’t move nearly as quietly through the house.
Soy sauce. Chopsticks. Paper napkins. Wet wipes. Her mother pawing her way furiously through drawer after drawer, dragging the little girl in her wake.
“Mommy. Please, Mommy.”
“Aha!”
“Mommy!”
“This will teach the fuckers!” Her mother held up a matchbook. Shiny silver cover, fresh black strike stripe.
“Mommy!” the girl tried again, desperate. “The front door. We can go through the front door. Into the woods. We’re fast, we can make it.”
“No!” her mother declared, voice righteous. “They’ll be expecting that. No doubt have three, six, a dozen men already waiting. This is it. We’ll torch the curtains. Minute the wall’s fully engulfed, they’ll flee the property. Fucking cowards.”
“Christine!” The little girl cracked her voice, changing tactics. She planted her feet, drew herself up as tall as her six-year-old frame would allow. “Christine! Stop it! This is no time to play with matches!”
For a moment, the little girl thought it might work. Her mother blinked, her face losing some of its overbright luster. She stared at her daughter, right arm falling lax to her side.
“The furnace shut off,” the little girl declared boldly. “But I fixed it. Now go to bed. Everything’s all right. Go to bed.”
Her mother stared at her. Seemed confused, which was better than crazy. The little girl held her breath, chin up, shoulders back.
She did not know about Them. But she and her older sister had been preparing, planning, and strategizing to survive their mother for their entire young lives. Sometimes, you had to play along. But other times, you had to seize control. Before their mother went too far. Before they really were running for their lives, their mother having done the unspeakable in order to combat the unseeable in her mind.
Years ago, the little girl had suffered from bad dreams. She would hear a baby crying, and the sound haunted her. Her mother, calmer then, softer, rounder, would come into her room to comfort her. She would brush back the little girl’s hair and sing, in a sad, pretty voice, of green grass and sunny skies and faraway places where little girls slept through the night in big soft beds with warm, full tummies.
The little girl had loved her mother during those moments. Sometimes, she wished she would have bad dreams just to hear her mother sing, feel the gentleness of her mother’s fingertips tracing across her cheek.
But the little girl and her older sister didn’t have nightmares anymore. They lived them instead.
The boy, in the woods. Maybe, if she jerked from her mother’s grasp hard enough, ran fast enough…
The little girl drew herself up. She didn’t really believe a boy could save her. Never had. Never would.
“Christine, go to bed,” the little girl ordered.
Her mother didn’t move. She let go of the little girl’s wrist, but her right hand still clutched the matches. “I’m sorry, Abby,” she said.
The little girl’s voice softened. “Go to bed. It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
“Too late.” Her mother didn’t move. Her voice was quiet, sad. “You don’t know what I did.”
“Mommy—”
“I had to. You’ll understand someday, child. I had to.”
“Mommy…”
The little girl reached out a hand. But it was too late. Her mother was already moving. Dashing to the yellowed
lace curtains. Match cover popping open, flipping back. First match ripped from the cardboard prison.
“No, no, no!” The little girl gave chase, clutching at her mother’s oversized coat, trying to grab the thick wool fabric and yank her mother back.
They were dancing, whirling around in beams of moonlight, twirling around long, quivering shadows, except her mother was bigger, faster, stronger. Her mother was powered by madness, and the little girl had only desperation on her side.
The first match flared to life, a beautiful lick of orange in the dark.
Her mother paused as if to admire her accomplishment.
“Isn’t it gorgeous,” she whispered.
Then she tossed the match at the dangling curtain. Just as the little girl’s older sister stepped out of the shadows of the family room and swung a brass candlestick lamp into the back of their mother’s head.
Their mother stumbled. Looked up. SisSis struck her again, this time across the left temple. Their mother dropped like a rock.
The ancient candlestick lamp fell to the floor beside her, while with a faint whoosh, the hem of the lace curtain burst into flame.
The little girl got to the curtain first. She beat it out with her bare hands, flattening the flames against the dirty wall, smacking it until, with a charred sputter, the fire was extinguished and only the palms of her hands burned.
Breathing hard, the little girl turned at last to her sister, the two of them on either side of their mother’s fallen form. The little girl looked up at her older sister. Her older sister looked down at the little girl.
“Where were you?” the little girl spoke first.
Her sister didn’t answer, and for the first time, the little girl noticed something else. The way her sister studied her left side. The way the gray nylon of her winter coat bloomed with a dark flowering stain.
“SisSis?”
The little girl’s sister clutched her side. She splayed the fingers of her hand, and the dark rushed out, racing across the gray of the jacket, stealing the moonlight from the room.
The little girl realized now why her sister hadn’t met her on the upstairs landing. Because their mother had woken her first. Brought her downstairs first. Listened to the voices telling her what to do to her older daughter, first.
