Cover

BOOKS BY JONATHAN DUNSKY

ADAM LAPID SERIES

Ten Years Gone

The Dead Sister

The Auschwitz Violinist

A Debt of Death

A Deadly Act

The Auschwitz Detective

A Death in Jerusalem

The Unlucky Woman (short story)

STANDALONE NOVELS

The Payback Girl

Dedication

To my mother and father

1

The nightmare tore me out of sleep before dawn.

I opened my eyes, but all I could see were fragments of the dream. Barbed-wire fences and watchtowers. Thick smoke shooting out of tall chimneys, blackening the Polish sky. Uniformed men with evil faces and cruel laughs. Guard dogs straining at their leashes, foaming at the mouth. A huddled mass of frightened, disoriented humanity on the train platform.

With me among them.

What brought me out of the nightmare and into the present was the heat.

July in Tel Aviv was murder, with blazing temperatures and stifling humidity. Nighttime brought only minor relief. It was a favorite topic to grumble about among Tel Avivians.

As hot as it was outside, my room was even hotter. And stuffier. Which was to be expected, I supposed, since I slept with all my windows closed.

I was probably the only person in Tel Aviv to do so.

Or maybe I wasn't. After all, I wasn't the only person with nightmares. Maybe other people were also worried their screams would wake up the neighbors.

Faint echoes of my scream still reverberated in the dark room. My jaw hurt, a sure indication I'd been clenching my teeth during my sleep. I blinked twice, consciously slowing my breathing, until all I could hear was the deep silence of the enclosed room, and all I could see was the darkness around me.

Groaning, I rolled to a sitting position, lowering my feet to the cool floor tiles. Working my jaw from side to side, I stood, stepped over to the window, and pulled it open.

Night air flowed inside, chilling the sweat on my skin. I looked three stories down to Hamaccabi Street below. No people were about. No cars were moving. Somewhere a night bird hooted. Across the street, a baby howled for its mother. The number tattooed on my left forearm itched, and I absently scratched it. I tapped a cigarette out of the half-empty pack on my nightstand, struck a match against the sill, and lit up.

By the time I crushed out the stub of my cigarette, dawn was beginning to paint the sky gray. The nightmare was gone, but it had left its mark. The memories were there, just below consciousness, trying to dig through like burrowing beasts and infest my mind. I had to work hard to keep them away, where they couldn't hurt me.

And I was tired. Dead tired.

Too many fractured nights. Too many nightmares.