Killing Ways
Dark times lie ahead for Special Agent Ren Bryce and the Rocky Mountains Safe Streets Task Force in the heart-stopping new thriller from the bestselling author of DARKHOUSE and BLOOD LOSS.In the game of vengeance, he holds a killer hand.In her most shocking case yet, FBI Special Agent Ren Bryce takes on a depraved serial killer fuelled by a warped sense of justice.A master of evasion, each life he takes ramps up Ren’s obsession with finding him. Then one victim changes everything and brings Ren face to face with a detective whose life was destroyed by the same pursuit.Together, can they defeat this monster? Or will he take them both down?
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Alex Barclay 2015
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photographs © Tony Watson/Arcangel Images (subway); Eliada Toska/Getty Images (woman running); Shutterstock.com (wing)
Alex Barclay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780007494545
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780007494552
Version 2015-03-04
‘The rising star of the hard-boiled crime fiction world, combining wild characters, surprising plots and massive backdrops with a touch of dry humour’
Mirror
‘Tense, no-punches-pulled thriller that will have you on the edge of your deckchair’
Woman and Home
‘Explosive’
Company
‘Darkhouse is a terrific debut by an exciting new writer’
Independent on Sunday
‘Compelling’
Glamour
‘Excellent summer reading … Barclay has the confidence to move her story along slowly, and deftly explores the relationships between her characters’
Sunday Telegraph
‘The thriller of the summer’
Irish Independent
‘If you haven’t discovered Alex Barclay, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon’
Image Magazine
To Moira Reilly,
Thank you for being your warm, wise, and wonderful self.
With you here, the book begins on the perfect note.
Table of Contents
Amanda Petrie stopped dead in front of the skeletal wreck of a creature stumbling toward her on legs like knotted spindles. The woman looked to be in her sixties, bruised, wounded and terrified. She was dressed in a faded blue nightgown draped no differently than if it was on a hanger in a store, except that it was caked in filth of all kinds, and it stank like something inhuman. Her matted gray hair grew between bald patches, she was missing teeth, she was hollow-cheeked, she was a shell.
Amanda dropped her cell phone, didn’t even notice how it bounced and cracked and spat out its battery, how the binder she’d been holding struck the ground, broke open, sent loose pages from magazines sliding across the concrete.
From the awful silence that followed, Amanda began to hear something – a soft pit, pit, pit. She looked down. A bright photo of a rainbow-themed garden party had floated from the binder and landed between the old woman’s dirty feet. Maggots were dropping onto it – pit, pit, pit – from under her nightgown.
Amanda turned away, heaving. She pressed her hand tightly over her mouth. Her eyes bulged and watered. Slowly, she turned back to the woman.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Are you OK? I mean … do you need help? Obviously you need help …’
The woman stood before her, wide-eyed, not a blink. And from this desolation, Amanda noticed eyes the most incredible shade of blue, and was suddenly struck with an image of a baby girl in a bassinet smiling up at her parents, innocent, expectant, hopeful, years from this.
‘Where did you come from?’ said Amanda, looking around. They were on a quiet road in an isolated part of Sedalia, sixty miles southwest of Denver, Colorado. She was there only to check out a venue for her sister’s surprise fortieth. She had just crossed it off her list.
The woman didn’t reply.
Amanda took a step away from her, then crouched down to gather the parts of her phone, putting them back together with a shaky hand.
