Cover

Also by Jeffery Deaver

Mistress of Justice

The Lesson of Her Death

Praying for Sleep

Speaking in Tongues

A Maiden’s Grave

The Devil’s Teardrop

The Blue Nowhere

Garden of Beasts

The Bodies Left Behind

Edge

The October List

THE RUNE SERIES

Manhattan is My Beat

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Hard News

THE LOCATION SCOUT SERIES

Shallow Graves

Bloody River Blues

Hell’s Kitchen

THE LINCOLN RHYME THRILLERS

The Bone Collector

The Coffin Dancer

The Empty Chair

The Stone Monkey

The Vanished Man

The Twelfth Card

The Cold Moon

The Broken Window

The Burning Wire

The Kill Room

THE KATHRYN DANCE THRILLERS

The Sleeping Doll

Roadside Crosses

XO

A JAMES BOND NOVEL

Carte Blanche

SHORT STORIES

Twisted

More Twisted

Trouble in Mind

THE SKIN COLLECTOR

Jeffery Deaver

Dedication

For Dennis, Patti, Melissa and Phillip

Epigraph

The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were animals – humanised animals – triumphs of vivisection.

H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

I
THE OUT-OF-PRINT BOOK

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5
NOON

CHAPTER 1

The basement.

She had to go to the basement.

Chloe hated it down there.

But they’d sold out of sizes ten and twelve Rue du Cannes – the tacky little floral number with scalloped hemline and plunging front – and she needed to replenish the racks, fill ’em up for the grazers. Chloe was an actress, not a retail fashion expert, and new to the store. So she hadn’t fathomed why, in a November impersonating January, these particular dresses were selling out. Until her boss explained that, even though the store was in alternative SoHo in Manhattan, the ZIP codes of the purchasers situated them in Jersey, Westchester and Long Island.

‘And?’

‘Cruises, Chloe. Cruises.’

‘Ah.’

Chloe Moore walked into the back of the store. Here the shop was the opposite of the sales floor and about as chic as a storage unit. She found the key among those dangling from her wrist and unlocked the basement door. She flicked on the lights and studied the unsteady stairs.

A sigh and she started down. The door, on a spring, swung shut behind her. Not a small woman, Chloe took the steps carefully. She was also on Vera Wang knockoffs. Pseudo-designer heels and hundred-year-old architecture can be a dangerous combination.

The basement.

Hated it.

Not that she worried about intruders. There was only one door in and out – the one she’d just come through. But the place was moldy, damp, cold … and booby-trapped with cobwebs.

Which meant sly, predatory spiders.

And Chloe knew she’d need a dog roller to remove the dust from the dark-green skirt and black blouse (Le Bordeaux and La Seine).