Love Never Dies (6 page)
Jacob Denisov sat in his upright chair in his living room, staring into the dark. If he kept his eyes open and stared with precisely the right concentration, without movement or thought, the pain didn't break through. It took work, but for months now, he had practiced, and he had gotten pretty good.
No pain, slashing at his skull, trying to get out, to explode, to manifest itself in wild screams and violence that never stopped until he broke everything … especially himself…
No North Korea. No deaths. No fault. The world beyond the dark did not exist. He floated in bleak eternity and only the stench of guilt lingered, ceaseless…
Then the phone rang.
He jumped.
It rang again.
He jumped again. Thought returned.
Five rings and the answering machine picked up.
"Jakie." It was his mother's voice, patient, loving, but with a sprinkling of fear and a dollop of exasperation. "I know you're there. Pick up the telephone."
His mother was a morning person. That was when she did her best nagging. So the sun must be up.
She continued, "Just tell me you're all right. That's all you have to do, is tell me you haven't died sitting in the dark in that house, brooding about a past you cannot change."
A pause.
He waited.
"Jakie, are you eating right? You are a big man, like your father. You should be eating right. On Sunday, Father Ilovaiski asked about you. He said he was praying for you. Doesn't that feel good, to know he's praying for you?" As it did when she grew excited, her Russian accent strengthened. "If you came home to Everson and went to church with me, you would be healed. I would fix you your favorite meal — the black bread, the stroganoff, the pirozhki — and the family would rejoice at the return of the prodigal son."
Oh, no. She was trying her patented,
Trust in God and Family
routine and throwing in a food bribe. She didn't understand that being out in the sunshine with people would break him. She didn't understand he had lost his faith in God. He didn't care about his family. Food meant nothing to him. And he could never be healed. How could she comprehend? She was his mother, she remembered the boy he had been, and she would love him and believe in him forever.
That boy would never return. He had drowned in an ocean of blood and come to life only to die again. Soon, he hoped.
Her tone of voice changed, and her rising temper crackled across the wires. "Jakie, if you don't pick up the telephone soon, I will come down there and break down the door of your pitiful little hiding place. Don't think I won't!" She ended the connection so violently she cut off her own voice.
He closed his eyes. He knew she would. Nothing his father could say would stop her. His mother was a force of nature.
So next time when she called, he would answer, and he would talk to her. To relieve her mind he would pretend he was fine, that he had been outside working on some unspecified and manly project and couldn't make it to the phone … for the last week …
His parents lived in Everson, up by the Canadian border, and he had deliberately moved here, to this location on the Olympic peninsula, so he could feel at home and at the same time be far enough away from his extensive family to avoid their well-intentioned intrusions.
It worked … mostly.
He never knew when the sun rose or set; no light leaked through the black-out shades on the windows. He hadn't eaten since … he didn't remember. Yesterday sometime. How long had it been since he'd had a grocery delivery?
He groped for the lamp on the end table, found the switch and turned it on. Even the pitiful amount of light the twenty-five watt bulb produced made him blink. When his vision cleared, he looked at the marks he had scratched on the wall.
Five days since the boy rang the doorbell, took the check Jacob taped on the window, and left two grocery bags of canned soup, prepared food, and milk.
That meant every bit of food in this house was stale or rotting, or needed a can opener, a clean pan, and the will and energy to prepare it for consumption.
Only two more days until he received groceries again.
He turned off the light.
He could wait.
At the camp, he had learned to wait for the right moment. He had learned…
He pushed his spine hard against the chair, braced himself for the wave of pain—
And with a high screech of jagged wood against paint and metal, a gray Subaru Forester shot up the concrete steps of his front porch and exploded through the wall of his house, front wheels in the air, headed right for the stars — and then for him.
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Twenty-three years ago, in the isolated coastal town of Virtue Falls, Washington, four year old Elizabeth Banner witnessed her mother’s brutal murder. Elizabeth’s father was convicted of killing Misty and sentenced to prison. Elizabeth grew from a solitary child to a beautiful woman with an instinctive distrust of love. Now she is back in Virtue Falls, a geologist like her father, her life guided by logic and facts. But nothing can help her through the emotional chaos that follows the return of her ex-husband, Garik Jacobsen, an FBI agent on probation and tortured by the guilt of his past deeds. Nor can it help her deal with her father, now stricken with Alzheimer’s and haunted by Misty’s ghost. When a massive earthquake reveals long-concealed secrets, Elizabeth soon discovers her father is innocent. Is the killer still at large, stalking ever closer to the one witness to Misty’s murder? To Elizabeth herself? Elizabeth and Garik investigate, stirring old dark and deadly resentments that could provoke another bloody murder— Elizabeth’s own.
"Nail-biting suspense... the novel's sexy romantic core will still please [Dodd's] longtime fans."--
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“Edge of the seat suspense and fascinating premise. Couldn’t put it down. My kind of thriller!” — Iris Johansen, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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OBSESSION FALLS
Taylor Summers witnesses the death threat to a young boy, and does the only thing she can do—she sacrifices herself to distract the killers. Her reward is a life in ruins, on the run in the wilderness, barely surviving a bitter winter and the even more bitter knowledge she has lost everything: her career, her reputation, her identity. She finds refuge in Virtue Falls, and there comes face to face with the knowledge that, to live her life again, she must enlist the help of the man who does not trust her to defeat the man who would destroy her. She’s being hunted, but it’s time to turn the tables…
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* From Bookbub: Books to Read If You Love Nora Roberts.
“If you’re a fan of Nora’s In Death series, you’ll delight in this tale of suspense by another master of the genre.”
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* Library Journal: Best of the Year.
“A remarkable mesmerizing series.”
* BookPage: Best of the Year.
“A spooky, nerve-stretching read that is sure to please Dodd’s many fans.”
* Starred BookList review.
”The plot’s twists and turns are handled with a positively Hitchcockian touch, while the brilliantly etched characters, polished writing, and unexpected flashes of sharp humor are pure Dodd.”
* RT Reviews Top Pick.
“The evolution of this heroine from everyday individual to relentless survivor adds an intensity that will keep you on the edge of your seat.”
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Who is Christina Dodd?
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Readers become writers, and Christina has always been a reader. Ultimately she discovered she liked to read romance best because the relationship between a man and a woman is always humorous. A woman wants world peace, a clean house, and a deep and meaningful relationship based on mutual understanding and love. A man wants a Craftsman router, undisputed control of the TV remote, and a red Corvette which will make his bald spot disappear.
So when Christina’s first daughter was born, she told her husband she was going to write a book. It was a good time to start a new career, because how much trouble could one little infant be?
Quite a lot, it seemed. It took ten years, two children and three completed manuscripts before she was published. Now her over
fifty New York Times and USA Today bestselling novels — paranormals, historicals, romantic suspense and suspense — have been translated into twenty-five languages, recorded on Books on Tape for the Blind, won Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart and RITA Awards and been called the year’s best by Library Journal. Dodd herself has been a featured author at the Texas Book Festival
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a clue in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle (11/18/05, # 13 Down: Romance Novelist named Christina.) Publishers Weekly praises her style that “showcases Dodd’s easy, addictive charm and steamy storytelling.”
Christina is married to a man with all his hair and no Corvette, but many Craftsman tools.
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