PRAISE FOR BRIAN FREEMAN

“If there is a way to say ‘higher’ than ‘highly recommended,’ I wish I knew it. Because this is one of those thrillers that go above and beyond.”

—Suspense Magazine on Goodbye to the Dead

“Deftly plotted . . . a standout.”

—Publishers Weekly on Goodbye to the Dead (Starred Review)

“Freeman skillfully weaves together diverse story lines . . . with twists that build suspense, in this fine, character-driven addition to a strong series.”

—Booklist on Goodbye to the Dead (Starred Review)

“Goodbye to the Dead is a superior psychological thriller that adroitly weaves obsession, sex and revenge into a page-turning mystery. At the end there is the Freeman hallmark: a shocker of a plot twist that turns everything that’s gone before upside down.”

—Open Letters Monthly

“Thriller fiction doesn’t get much better than The Cold Nowhere.”

—Bookreporter

“[In the Dark is] Freeman’s most ambitious—and accomplished—work to date . . . Powered by darkly poetic atmospherics and deep character development, this harrowing and heartrending novel will leave readers guessing until the very last pages.”

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Brian Freeman is a first-rate storyteller. Stalked is scary, fast-paced, and refreshingly well written. The characters are so sharply drawn and interesting, we can’t wait to meet the next one in the story.”

—Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author

ALSO BY BRIAN FREEMAN

The Jonathan Stride Series

Immoral

Stripped

Stalked

In the Dark

The Burying Place

Spitting Devil (e-short story)

Turn to Stone (e-novella)

The Cold Nowhere

Goodbye to the Dead

The Cab Bolton Series

The Bone House

Season of Fear

Stand-Alone Novels

Spilled Blood

The Agency (as Ally O’Brien)

West 57 (as B.N. Freeman)

Title Page

Copyright Page

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2017 by Brian Freeman

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 Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781503943568 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1503943569 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503941892 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1503941892 (paperback)

Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

Dedication

For Marcia

and in loving memory of

Thomas Freeman

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

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FROM THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Start Reading

A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory.

—John Milton

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not;

but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter.

—Mark Twain

1

1

Like a shiny Christmas display, red brake lights flashed to life across the five westbound lanes of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Two hundred feet above the frigid waters off Yerba Buena Island, the car horns, bangs, and skids of a chain-reaction fender bender transformed the traffic into a parking lot. Hundreds of gridlock-weary Bay Area travelers knew they were going nowhere fast. They turned off their engines, grabbed their smartphones, and settled in to wait.

Trapped in the rightmost lane, Lucy Hagen began to panic. Her fists squeezed closed; her nails dug into her palms. “Oh, damn, damn, damn,” she murmured, shutting her eyes. “Not up here.”

Her friend Brynn, who was behind the wheel of the top-down Camaro convertible, patted Lucy’s leg. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”

But it was not okay.

Lucy hated bridges. If she could have never driven across another bridge in her life, she would have happily done so, but Lucy lived in San Francisco. There was water, water everywhere, and going anywhere meant crossing a bridge. The Richmond Bridge. The Bay Bridge. The San Mateo Bridge. The Dumbarton Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge. She took BART under the bay whenever she could, but too often, she had no choice but to venture across the tall spans to get where she was going. Bridges were her enemy.

“Can you get us out of this lane?” Lucy asked Brynn.

“And go where?” Brynn sighed.

They were boxed in. The parked cars around them filled every space. Brynn switched off the motor of the Camaro, but she left the radio playing. Steely Dan sang “Do It Again,” and Brynn tapped her thumbs on the wheel with the beat of the music. She was utterly unaffected by their situation, but Lucy was living her worst nightmare—frozen on the bridge, inches away from the railing and the terrifying drop to the water.

It was night. Eleven o’clock. Tendrils of fog laced through the darkness like ghosts spiriting between the bridge cables. The giant suspender climbed above the car, outlined by white lights, with rows of taller and taller cables leaning toward the main tower. A cold, ferocious wind whirled and sang. Lucy sensed the almost-imperceptible sway of the bridge deck under the car, reminding her that she was trapped in midair. Clammy sweat bloomed on her skin. Involuntarily, her body twitched, as if she’d been shocked by electricity.

“Maintenance people have to walk up there to replace the lights,” Brynn said, pointing at the sharp slope of the suspension cable. “Now that’s freaky. Think about having a job like that.”

“Shut up, Brynn.”

Her friend giggled. “I guess this would be a bad time for the Big One to hit.”

“I said, shut up. Please. It’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry,” Brynn told her, reaching over to squeeze Lucy’s hand. “This is really bad for you, huh?”

“Awful.”

“You should talk to my shrink.”

“That won’t help. Nothing helps.”

“Hey, she’s pretty good. She helped me with my thing. What do you think is going to happen, anyway? Do you think the bridge is going to fall down or something?”

“No,” Lucy said.

“Then what?”

“Brynn, I don’t want to talk about this, okay?”

Her friend held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Just relax. We’ll get out of here soon. I’ll turn up the music.”

Brynn did. The radio blared an Elton John song. “Bennie and the Jets.” Elton thumped through the speakers, and the music fought with the roar of the wind.

Lucy knew that bridges didn’t bother most people. Here they were, all of them imprisoned on a strip of steel and concrete high above the bay, and nobody else cared. She looked around at the other cars. A man in a Lexus beside them barked into a cell phone; he was simply annoyed by the delay. Several people texted; she saw thumbs flying. A DVD played on the dashboard screen in a minivan. She recognized the movie. Inside Out.

It was just one more California traffic jam.

Then Lucy’s mouth went dry. With her head craned to look behind her, she spotted a black Cutlass with smoked windows three lanes over and one car length behind them. The Cutlass was dented and dirty. She only noticed it because at the moment she looked, the passenger window rolled halfway down. The window was dark, the night was dark, and the car was dark. Even so, for a single moment, she saw a face behind the glass, deep inside the car.

Not a face. A mask.

The mask was bone white, with a grotesquely oversized smile, framed by cherry-red lips. The rounded eyeholes were chambered, like the eyes of a fly. The chin made a sharp V, and the white forehead had deep, exaggerated bones that stretched halfway up the skullcap. Ropes of black hair—a wig—hung down on both sides of the mask. It grinned at her.

“Holy shit!” Lucy exclaimed.

Brynn glanced at her. “What is it?”

“That guy! Look!”

Brynn peered over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”

The window of the Cutlass was closed now. They couldn’t see inside. Lucy wondered if it had ever been open. Maybe she was hallucinating. The terror of the bridge was making her imagine things that weren’t there.

“What did you see?” Brynn asked.

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“You’re still really scared?”

“Yes.”

“Look, all you have to do is sit and wait,” Brynn said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I know, but I’m afraid I’m going to freak out.”

“Close your eyes. Breathe slowly in and out. My shrink said it was called self-soothing.”

Lucy shut her eyes and tried to measure out her deep breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Twice, three times. It helped at first, but then a gust of wind rocked Brynn’s Camaro, and Lucy’s eyes shot open. She screamed and wrapped her arms around herself. Beside her, Brynn simply savored the fresh air blowing off the water. Even in her lace shift, which bared her legs up to her thighs, Brynn didn’t look cold. Her expression was dreamy.

Lucy envied Brynn because her friend was so damn put together. They both worked counter jobs at Macy’s. They shared a Haight-Fillmore studio apartment. If you weren’t a lawyer or banker or tech guru and you wanted to live in the city, you had to cram bodies into tiny rooms. Brynn was one of those tall blondes who sucked up all the male energy wherever she went. Great hair, great body, long legs, electric smile. That was annoying, but hanging with Brynn meant getting into the best clubs and the best parties. Lucy liked her. Brynn was pretty, but she wasn’t a mean girl who rubbed her advantages in your face.

You couldn’t be around Brynn and not feel her happiness. She had the magic touch. Looks. Sexy new boyfriend. Parents with money for when times got tight. Lucy wished she could trade places with her. Even for a day, it would be nice to know what it felt like to be inside her head and inside her body. To be confident and unafraid. Lucy felt anxious in the city every day.

“Come on, Lucy, let’s dance it up,” Brynn told her.

As Elton John crooned the chorus, Brynn sang about Buh-Buh-Buh Bennie and the Jets in an off-key voice. She swayed; she drummed on the dashboard. She shook her loose blond hair. Lucy gave in and sang, too. Nearby, other drivers saluted them with a toot of their horns. For a moment, Lucy forgot about the bridge and felt a timid smile creep onto her face. Seeing it, Brynn beamed at her and flashed a thumbs-up.

“That’s it! Show ’em, girlfriend!”

Lucy laughed. She danced faster and sang louder. Her chestnut hair flew.

“You’re crazy!” Lucy shouted at Brynn, but crazy was what she needed right now. Brynn was weird, wonderful, and keen, just like Bennie.

When the song finally ended, Lucy flopped her head onto the seat rest. She stared at the hypnotic lights over their heads as another, quieter song began on the radio, something by Carole King. She listened to the wind and felt the sway. For the first time, being trapped up here felt beautiful and not scary at all.

“Thanks,” she said. “That helped.”

When her friend didn’t answer, Lucy looked over at her. “Brynn?”

Brynn had both hands clamped like a vise around the wheel. Her knuckles were white. Beads of sweat formed like raindrops on her forehead, below the silk of her blond hair. Her mouth hung slack and open. Her blue eyes were huge. Something was wrong.

“Brynn, if this is a joke, it’s not funny,” Lucy said. “Cut it out.”

A scream bubbled up from Brynn’s chest between desperate breaths. She peeled her fingers off the wheel. Her hands shook like palm leaves. She clawed with long nails at her forearms, making scarlet streaks, and then she ripped at the skin of her face, scratching until blood smeared across her mouth and spattered her golden hair.

“Brynn!” Lucy cried.

The people in the other cars noticed what was happening. Some called out. Lucy heard car doors opening.

Brynn lurched up in the front seat of the convertible. Wind swirled her hair and tore at her purple dress. She scrambled over the windshield and rolled clumsily down the hood of the Camaro to the bridge deck. Other drivers were out of their cars now. Brynn kept screaming. She covered her face as if birds were picking at her eyes.

“Brynn, what is it?” Lucy shouted at her. “What’s wrong? Brynn, it’s me, it’s okay.”

Lucy unbuckled her seat belt. She pushed open the door, but when she tried to climb outside, she saw the blackness of the water beyond the railing. Her legs became lead. Spasms rippled through her, knocking her knees together. All she could think about was the height. The wind. The water. The fall. She couldn’t go out there.

Brynn bolted in her lavender high heels to the railing. No words dribbled from her mouth, only screams. She climbed the concrete barrier and clung with both arms to one of the ascending cables high above the bay. Her skimpy dress hugged her body. The wind threw her back and forth like a toy.

“Brynn! No!”

Lucy slid from the car, but she crumpled to the bridge deck. She couldn’t stand up. The sensation of being outside, on the bridge, vulnerable, overwhelmed her. The world spun. The concrete was ice-cold. She crawled, twitching, and stretched out a hand to Brynn, who wasn’t even ten feet away.

“Come here! Come down!”

Brynn climbed away from her in a weird, unsteady crawl, like a crab scuttling through the sand. She wrapped her legs around the cable, and her blood-slippery fingers clung to the steel. She pulled herself two feet above the railing. And then three feet. Four feet.

Lucy curled into a ball, staring at her. “Brynn, what are you doing?”

Brynn took a hand from the cable and slapped at the wind as if mayflies had swarmed around her face. One high heel came off her bare foot and spun away like a maple seed pod. Her foot scraped for traction. The rough wire bit her knees. Her fingers pawed, pulling herself higher inch by inch. She looked down and wailed, because whatever she saw was following her. Climbing after her. She kicked at an invisible enemy, and her leg dangled and twirled.

“Brynn!”

A man on the bridge deck thrust up his arms toward her, but she was too high for him to reach. He beckoned her. Smiled at her. “Hey, it’s okay, honey. Just slide down. I’ve got you.”

Brynn didn’t see him or hear him.

She didn’t see or hear Lucy shouting her name.

Brynn shut her eyes. Her bloody hand slipped from the wire. So did her legs. With nothing to hold her, she was free, flailing and falling. The roar of the air swallowed her screams. Lucy buried her face in her palms as Brynn dropped past her and disappeared to the bay far below.

2

2

Frost Easton of the San Francisco Police leaned between the cables of the Bay Bridge and stared down. In the water, Coast Guard searchlights crisscrossed the waves. They’d been there for an hour, but the body of Brynn Lansing remained hidden among the frothy whitecaps. Eventually, he knew, she would make landfall. Jumpers from the Golden Gate sometimes washed into the Pacific and were never found, but the more inland Bay Bridge usually returned its victims.

He knew hydrologists at the state college who analyzed the bay currents and made wagers on when and where the bodies would turn up. It was never smart to bet against them.

Frost got up on the tips of his shoes. The wind buffeted his body, making him unsteady. His short, slicked-back hair, which was a messy mix of gold and dark brown, loosened into tufts on his high forehead. He frowned as he thought about the young woman, falling, and the black water sucking her in. Five seconds was all it took to end a life.

“Could you not do that?”

He looked down at the voice below him. His lean, tall body was still halfway over the bay. The witness to the incident sat in Brynn Lansing’s Camaro convertible. She stared straight ahead, her body rigid with fear.

“What?” Frost asked.

“Could you please not do that? Lean over the edge like that? It makes me want to throw up.”

Frost climbed down to the bridge deck. He strolled to the passenger door of the Camaro ten feet away. His dark blazer flapped like a cape in the wind, and his tie blew over his shoulder. He knelt beside the door and balanced his bearded chin on his hands. The girl had a sweet face behind her tears and terror.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this must be terrible for you.”

“I thought she was teasing me.”

“What do you mean?” Frost asked.

“Brynn. I thought she was just making fun of me because I was so afraid to be stuck up here. I was freaking out.”

Frost nodded. “What is it that scares you? The height?”

“It’s the bridge, actually.”

“I’ve heard of that. Gephyrophobia, isn’t that what they call it? Fear of bridges?”

“Yes. You’re right.” She looked surprised that he knew what it was called.

“I guess everybody has something like that,” Frost told her. “With me, it’s frogs. Those slimy little things just scare the crap out of me.”

He smiled at her. He had a warm, slightly off-balance smile, and his blue eyes were lasers that never left her face. His thick blond-flecked eyebrows matched his trimmed beard. He stared at the girl until her head inched to the right, and she stared back with an empty expression. She was traumatized, like a robot with the power switched off.

“It’s Lucy, right?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Lucy what?”

“Lucy Hagen.”

“Okay, Lucy, I’m Frost. I’m with the police. And I’m going to get you off this bridge just as soon as I possibly can, but I have to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“Okay.”

Frost pointed at a black SFPD Chevy Suburban parked on an angle between a police squad car and an ambulance. “Would you mind if we talked in my car? I’ve got forensics people who need to get evidence in the Camaro, and we can’t really do that with you in it, see what I mean?”

Lucy stared at her lap. “Well, I’d love to get out of this car, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t move,” she said.

Frost stood up and rubbed a hand over his beard. “You can’t move at all?”

“No. I can turn my head, but my arms and legs don’t work.”

Frost gestured to one of the uniformed ambulance workers. Lucy shook her head as she saw a paramedic coming closer.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with me,” she told him. “This has happened before. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m off the bridge. Sometimes the fear just overwhelms me, and my body shuts down.”

“We’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out,” Frost said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to get off the bridge.”

“Well, unless you start moving soon, you’re going to the hospital, Lucy. It’s kind of a rule we have. Last time I left a woman paralyzed in the middle of the Bay Bridge, my lieutenant got really pissed at me.”

He smiled again. His cheeks and eyes had deep laugh lines. This time, Lucy’s mouth twitched upward into a shy smile of her own, and a blush deepened on her face.

“Please just get me out of this car,” she said. “I dragged myself back here after Brynn went over the side, and then I couldn’t move. It’s been an hour. I’m really cold.”

“I can carry you if you’d like. Or I could ask one of the EMTs to do it.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” Lucy said. “As long as I don’t have to watch. I can’t look over the edge.”

Frost opened the passenger door of the Camaro. Lucy Hagen was small, maybe five foot three. Her shoulder-length brunette hair had been mussed into tangles by the wind. She wore a long-sleeve gray shirt untucked over black tights, with calf-high boots. He guessed that she was no more than twenty-five years old. Life was about perspective; to Frost, at thirty-four, twenty-five sounded young. Her skin was creamy, her large brown eyes sunken by darker moons underneath. She had lips that pushed out from her mouth in a permanent pucker, and her lipstick was deep red. Her rounded nose was slightly too large for her face, but she was pretty.

Lucy closed her eyes. Frost leaned down to her waist and lifted her effortlessly. She was as limp as a sack of Chinatown rice. He hoisted her so that her torso nudged over his shoulder and carried her the short distance to his Suburban. With one hand, he opened the passenger door, and then he gently draped her inside. When he went around to the other side of the truck and got behind the wheel, her big eyes were open, and she was staring at him.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Frost said. He turned on the engine. Heat surged from the vents. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s better inside. The convertible makes the bridge thing worse.”

“That makes sense.” He tugged the knot to tighten his tie and smoothed his hair down as much as he could. It was still messy as it swept back high on his forehead, but messy worked for him. His hair was buzzed short on the sides of his head, emphasizing his small ears. “Can you move yet?”

“No, but I’m sure the feeling will come back soon.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened out there?”

“Brynn went nuts,” Lucy said. “That’s what happened.”

“Nuts how?”

“We were stuck in traffic. I was scared because of the bridge, but Brynn was fine. Joking, singing. Totally normal. And then she turned psycho. It came out of nowhere. She was screaming, going crazy, clawing at herself. She tried to climb the bridge, like she was being chased, and she fell. It was horrible.”

“Did she fall or did she jump?”

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