Author: Dean Koontz
Date: 2018-04-25 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Thriller; Mystery; Horror; Suspense; Crime
Description: An original novella featuring bestselling author Dean Koontz's compelling new heroine, Jane Hawk. From the case files of the former FBI agent before she became the nation's most wanted fugitive - The Bone Farm details a desperate man-hunt for a serial killer before he murders again. Katherine Haskell, a young college co-ed is on her way back to school, but she never makes it there. Instead, she becomes the latest prey of the rapist and murderer dubbed by the tabloids the "Mother Hater." He is a twisted soul who kidnaps young girls for pleasure then discards them. Katherine is missing, but she'
Publisher: Brilliance Audio

The Bone Farm

A Jane Hawk Case File

Table of Contents

1. Cover

2. Titlepage

3. Chapter One.

4. Chapter Two

5. Chapter Three.

6. Chapter Four

7. Chapter Five.

8. Chapter Six.

9. Chapter Seven

10. Chapter Eight

11. Chapter Nine.

12. Chapter Ten

13. Chapter Eleven

14. Chapter Twelve

15. Chapter Thirteen.

16. Chapter Fourteen.

17. Chapter Fifteen.

18. Chapter Sixteen.

19. Chapter Seventeen.

20. Chapter Eighteen.

21. Chapter Nineteen.

22. Notes

1. Cover

Chapter One.

I've never killed anyone Kerry Burkett said.

Have you ever killed anyone.

Not yet said Jane Hawk.

Wounded a couple.

Do you think you're capable of killing someone.

I better be so would you.

She drove fast eager to conduct the final interview of the day and then head home to Alexandria which would be a three hour drive.

She'd been away from her husband Nick and her boy Travis for three days and although she took great satisfaction in her work she loved her family more.

The long shadows strange toward the east as if yearning to join the wave of night that would soon break across the horizon.

Small towns and smaller hamlets.

The farms were herds of cows ambled barn word at days end.

Corn fields cut the stubble readied for the Hitchin Harrow.

The drone of the suburbans tires on the county to lane was a monotonous song of weariness.

This had been a grim and tedious day in a bucolic landscape.

However she reminded herself.

Tedium can become terror from one moment to the next.

I'm thirty two Kerry said in the bureau nine years a lot longer than you and never doubted I could kill about guys who came to that but something's different now that.

Now that what.

Now that I'm going to be a father.

His wife Rosalynn was five months pregnant.

If I have to kill someone what will my daughter think of that when she's grown up and has their own opinions.

She's going to be an FBI kid Gerry.

She'll understand bad guys and how they sometimes have to be stopped cold.

Probably she will.

But you never know about kids.

Half the early September sky was a please and across the other half sapphire blue dark old toward black as the stars prepared to come on stage.

The signs to the critical incident response group she and Gary were in south central Pennsylvania interviewing family and friends of a kidnapped twenty year old college student.

Catherine Haskell was the twenty second victim of a serial killer whom the worst of the tabloid press had labeled the mother hater.

She disappeared six days earlier.

Three days after she went missing her mother received an envelope postmarked Cumberland Maryland.

It contained a photograph of Kathy on a wooden stool in front of a sky blue wall.

She was naked and looks terrified.

Twenty one other mothers had received photos of their daughters within a week of their disappearance host mark in a variety of northeastern cities and states.

A second photo came between two and four months later.

The missing girl again make it but now brutalized and dead lying on bare earth as if on the brink of a grave.

However ruthlessly the killer had used Kathy during the past six days at least she wasn't dead.

He didn't kill them until he tired of them.

The high quality photos were not embedded with any smartphone signifiers they were taken with the camera but the bureau lab could not identify the manufacturer.

The brand the photographic paper was sold in forty nine of the fifty states no fingerprints.

The self sealing envelopes didn't require the sender to lick the glue line which eliminated the possibility of finding DNA material from dried saliva.

The killer had access to a photographic lab but it was likely a small in home hobby set up untraceable.

Months of investigation of commercial labs and photographers had turned up nothing of value.

Are you sure your boy would understand you're killing someone.

Hi this is three Gary he's not yet brooding about justifiable homicide.

But you're confident you'll understand when he grows up.

Yes.

Because Nick and I will teach him how the world really works not how some people wish it worked.

Just like you and Rosalynn will teach your daughter.

The voice of the GPS assured them that they had arrived at Gossage farm and Jane turned right on to the long private drive that led to the house.

Overhanging oaks roofed a lane of oiled earth.

She switched on the headlights.

The trees were only partly dressed in autumn color still more green than purple red.

None of the first twenty one victims had been snatched in Pennsylvania.

It vanished from places in Ohio New York New Jersey Maryland and West Virginia.

The youngest had been fifteen the oldest twenty three.

At first it seems significant that the mother hater had begun hunting in new territory but interviews with those who knew Kathy coupled with the details of her life and disappearance had turned up not a single fact that suggested anything different about the killers choice of this victim nothing that might lead them to an.

Exactly where she had disappeared was not known her car a ten year old Honda remains missing.

Three days among the girls grieving loved ones had left the graininess in Jane's soul and the second hand sorrow in her heart.

Handsome house at the end of the oak shaded lane faced west.

So that by reflection the burning portion of the sky a ruse to the clobbered that would be white in daylight.

Mercer Gossage a cousin of Kathy Haskell's mother Anita must've heard the suburban approaching.

He waited on the porch.

A tall imposing man of forty four.

Country royalty.

A three hundred acre farm had passed from his grandfather to his father and just five years earlier to Mercer through his widowed mothers will.

He welcomes Gary Burkett and Jane up the porch steps and shook their hands.

His smile was sewn through with a sadness also apparent in his blue eyes but he seems naturally cordial and perhaps could not by his very constitution imagine introducing himself without a smile even in solemn situations.

Hi brewed a fresh pot of coffee.

I warn you it is to Starbucks what great fruit juices to dom Perignon but you're welcome to it.

If you'll just follow me through to the kitchen we can do this there.

Jane didn't want coffee.

In fact she felt that they were to some small extent surrendering control of the interview by accepting Gossage's hospitality but before she could decline Kerry said he could use a Cup.

For grandfather clocks stood along the ground floor hallway pendulums swinging mechanisms softly clicking away the seconds.

My mother collected antique clocks Gossage said.

Long case clocks like these but also bracket clocks carriage clocks mantel clocks.

For the longest time I thought it was a little Batty but then slowly I began to appreciate the beauty of them and now I'm just as much a clock not as she was.

Through our twenties to the living room and dining room Jane saw over done indeed fussy Victorian decor and fireplaces that each for three large clocks.

Beyond the open door to a study were walls lined with shelves on which stood a small fortune in antique clocks ornate gilt bronze and fuel and cold and porcelain clocks.

A contemporary style kitchen featured white cabinets black granite counters in modern appliances to grandfather clocks linked to the back door each with a marquetry case exotic wood inlays depicting elaborate floral designs.

William and Mary long cases by Jon Lai's us instead of the clocks late seventeenth century.

Gene was a pianist and understood the passion for collecting weather clocks or in her case vinyl recordings of piano masters like Arthur Rubenstein and Glenn Gould.

However sometimes passion could metastasized into obsession and when that happened there was the possibility that the collection was a symptom of one kind of mental disorder or another.

The aroma of fresh brewed coffee was so appealing that Jane did not object when Gossage poured three cups rather than to.

Jerry Burkett said so many clocks in so little taking.

Said Gossage as the three of them sat at the table.

Mom and die muffled the mechanisms otherwise I would have ended up in a mad house well maybe I did after all.

I had a ten year career in politics.

At twenty six he had been elected to the County Board of supervisors at thirty he was chairman of it.

Following that he'd been elected to the state legislature.

Some including his cousin Anita Haskell were among those who thought he might one day be governor.

Considering that the man had such charisma and an appealing habit of self deprecation Jean wondered.

Why did you give it up.

He frowned and shook his head.

There are so few people in that world with honor so many driven by greed or a lust for power.

You never know who to trust.

I was naive when I got into it.

Eventually I didn't have the stomach for politics.

Good coffee said Gary.

Hostage smiled.

No offense intended agent Burkett but the way you say that with a straight face maybe you do all right in politics.

In fact the coffee was excellent.

And the way Gossage modestly disclaimed appraise struck Jane as entirely political.

Your cousin and need a says you understood Kathy as well as anyone that you literally turned the girl's life around when she went off the rails at fourteen.

I need a credits me too much.

She's a single mom but a great one.

Kathy was Justin rebellion.

This was her identity.

Hanging with the wrong crowd a pot head boyfriend.

I've told Anita a hundred times it was hardly me at all it was mainly Lenore my mother who got through to Kathy back then got her back on the rails.

This was a year before mom died.

She was sixty nine but young at heart.

Kathy loved my mom.

Nearly everyone did.

Chapter Two

The following is a compilation of extracts from the journal of Mercer Gossage he gun when he was fourteen in which he never refers to himself as I only by his name and as he.

Mercer has long suffered anxiety regarding his hateful father.

Mercer suffers because he has a very great destiny.

A very great destiny requires suffering in preparation for it.

Mother says Mercer has a great destiny and mother can't live because she is love.

She is your love.

He says you're in love cannot lie.

Mercer's father Vernon is one of those rare people who do not love Mercer's saintly mother Lenore.

But then Vernon doesn't love anyone.

He is a distant I see a man who seems happiest if he is ever happy when he's engaged in some endeavor alone is shooting or hunting or horseback riding.

Earnings meager capacity for affection is reserved for his horses and his pickup truck.

Vernon does not seem to love his only child.

Mercer suspects this by the time he is six and when Mercer asks mother if his father loves him she says.

Your Daddy loves himself so much that he doesn't have any left over for anyone else.

Lenore has always showered Mercer with a mother's love cuddles and pets him as she might a beloved dog if she liked dogs.

And after she answered his question about his father she takes six year old Mercer into our arms but also into her confidence to a greater and most remarkable extent.

From that day forward she shares with Mercer every selfish act committed by Vernon every meanness and insult and why every act of infidelity.

Vernon has other women and he doesn't care if Lenore knows it.

Indeed Vernon tells her about them in the most vicious and taunting manner.

By the time Mercer is ten he is also privy to every intimate turn of his mother's life.

He knows specifically how his father uses her in bed how he hurts her and humiliates her and knows no limits to his cruelty.

This makes Mercer angry so angry that Mercer wants to hurt his father.

But his loving mother cuddles him and pets him gentle in him because anger harms no one but the person who harbors at.

She is the best mother.

She is the best mother in the world and so patient with her hateful husband.

She is not angry with Vernon only sad and terribly hurt.

Many is the night when home alone together Mercer and mother have a good long cry over the terrible suffering that she and yours.

Vernon has been willed the farm by his father but Lindores inheritance and the income it spins off make it possible for Vernon to forego farming and devote himself to fishing hunting horseback riding and serial adultery.

He is shipped.

Mercer's father is a piece of shit.

From time to time he sells off a parcel of land and over the years diminishes the property from five hundred acres to three hundred.

But the money he received this spent on his whores and other pleasures.

He is a whoremonger and he has no shame while like a leech he lives off mothers investment income.

She worries that one day he will have sold off all the land and we'll have impoverish them with his gambling debts.

But she is afraid to leave him for fear that he will harm her into Mercer.

She often recounts for Mercer the threats that Vernon has made to kill them both and free himself from marriage and fatherhood.

Mercer is blessed to have such a mother who cherishes him and tells him only truths.

Even the hard truths about his father and her suffering.

She devotes herself tirelessly to Mercer and home schools him to keep him safe.

Or you can never be safe in either public or private schools where there are boys of the worst character.

Young wolves.

Mercer would be so alone without her.

Even with mother here for him whenever he needs her Mercer sometimes feels desperately alone lost and alone.

As though he is the last person on earth.

He stepped outside and runs into the yard and turns in a circle and there is no one in sight the hundreds of on worked acres all around no traffic noises even from a distance no sound except the breeze whispering through the trees.

This guy empty and the land follow.

He fears the time has stopped there is no future anymore that nothing will change.

And he is trapped alone in this moment end to this one eternal minute handle like a butterfly to a collector's board.

When that mood overcomes him and the quiet panic begins to rise and Mercer's blood he runs to mother.

She calls him.

Reassures him that he is not alone and never will be as long as she lives.

When Mercer sixteen father's thrown by a horse and dies of a broken neck.

Neither Mercer nor mother grieves but in fact they celebrate with cake and ice cream is though it is a birthday not a death Hey.

The hateful whoremonger is dead the whoremonger is dead dead and will always be dead.

After that.

Everything is perfect.

He send your love and happiness.

Lenore continues to home school Mercer and they are never apart the two of them stand together against the wicked world and old the world is dark and populated by predatory people who would steal every dime from a widow and her child leaving them homeless and starving.

But they are safe as long as they have each other.

Each other and only each other.

Mercer has no need of a girl friend a girl friend would only be the female equivalent of his father a dirty **** who would betray him with any man who wanted her.

No woman can be trusted as mother can be trusted.

Mercer has a very great destiny and nothing can destroy his great destiny sooner than a dirty little **** will coupled him and hold him up to public ridicule.

To relieve Mercer of the need for a girl of his own five years ago when he was eleven Lenore showed him what any boy can do for himself in the privacy of his room to make a girl unnecessary.

Ever since by mail she has purchased for Mercer thrilling magazines then even more thrilling videos and eventually DVD movies to facilitate his erotic fantasies and spare him the mortal danger of real girls.

When Mercer is twenty six he runs for a seat on the County Board of supervisors and wins.

For the sole purpose of shepherding through certain land use changes that will increase the value of his precious mother's property.

So she will never again have to worry about becoming destitute.

When he goes away to the state legislature for a similar purpose he still comes home from Harrisburg six nights a week.

During two years in Harrisburg he achieves what mother needs from the state government.

And he is through with politics which is a dirty business better suited to the late Vernon Gossage than to his son who has never been with slut and never will be.

Mercer never spend another night away from home.

He is thirty nine when mother dies of a stroke.

Mercer feels as though a part of himself is perished as well.

Something inside him at the very center of him has imploded and black and then taken upon itself the gravity of a dead star.

Mercer puts on a very brave front publicly but.

Prize himself to sleep night after night.

His grief is nearly disabling and the loss so invaders him that he considers torturing and killing her position damn well should have recognized the threat to that precious woman.

He full doctor is incompetent or worse use a dirty whoremonger like Vernon he is a whoremongering hated mother for the purity of her love.

However.

His mother taught him.

Anger only harms the one who harbors it.

So Mercer must gentle himself.

The gens dans star at the center of Mercer is pulling him into its absolute darkness.

But Mercer smiles and puts on a brave front.

As mother taught him it is at all times essential to put on a brave front.

Hide one's fears and truest feelings because this sad world is full of wolves in human clothing wolf who will exploit your every fear and weakness until they destroy you.

The five months following mother's death are Graham.

A test of Mercer's ability to maintain self control and repair for his great destiny.

That hasn't happened in many years he now again and often finds himself standing in the yard turning in a circle.

Alone and lost under the empty sky.

In all that fallow land.

The last human being on earth end to this eternal minute.

With no future forthcoming.

But then everything changes dramatically one day when he answers the door bell and finds that he has come calling on himself.

Mercer Gossage faces Mercer Gossage through the screen door one of them in the foyer.

The other on the porch.

Chapter Three.

Flying hard shell Beatles clicked against the kitchen windows in pursuit of light.

Toll muffled clocks traced the futures second by second.

Mercer Gossage stirred his coffee rather than drink it clinking the spoon against the cop.

Stern not to cool the coffee because the coffee was already cool enough to sip but as though he wanted to transform the brew into something else.

He spoke movingly of the kidnapped girl Kathy Haskell of her mother's pain on receiving the photographs sent by the killer.

His grief seems genuine and profound on shed tears in his eyes.

Yet June hawk found him vaguely disturbing.

He directly not their eyes and answered all their questions about Kathy and the bad crowd that she had hung with for a while when she'd been fourteen.

He didn't seem in any way evasive or insincere or nervous except for how he kept stirring the coffee.

Sometimes you look down at the Cup for a minute or so nearly always when emotions threatened to get the better of him.

Perhaps he'd known he would inevitably be shaken by grief.

He spoke of Kathy and her parents with such fondness and had wanted the coffee only as a distraction toward which he could shift his attention when he needed to collect himself.

Yes.

Perhaps.

But perhaps not.

More often than not when he lowered his gaze to the Cup and the tireless spoon he glanced surreptitiously at his wrist watch.

As if in patients with the passage of time and eager for an end to their questions.

The William and Mary long cases flanking the back door were behind costs which.

When again he furtively consulted his watch June looked past him at those tall clocks and realized that they didn't present the same time.

In fact.

As the minute hand of that to the left of the door softly click forward one check.

The comfortable handle not to the right of the door simultaneously click backward one check.

One of those clocks is running backward she said.

Raising his eyes from his coffee Gossage managed an expression of melancholy amusement.

Yes that's right.

My mother Lenore was the dearest woman.

But she had her superstitions.

Very Burkett frowned.

What superstition is satisfied by J. growing up plot to run backwards.

Mother was superstitious and I regret to say I've lifted with just the littlest bit of dementia and her last years she convinced herself that if some clocks were counting forward while others counted backward in time would stand still in this house so she wouldn't age further and wouldn't die.

Are you saying that half of all the clocks in this place a ring to run backwards Kerry asked.

Jane said nothing but watched intently as Gossage shrugged his big shoulders and summoned again that smile of melancholy amusement.

It's a lot of clocks I'll grant you.

But it meant so much to her and she meant so much to me.

I didn't mind all that tinkering with them.

It made her happy.

That's very sweet Jane said though she didn't think it was sweet at all but perhaps indicative of obsession.

How long ago did your mother pass Mr Gossage.

Four years six months almost to the day.

Chapter Four

Mercer stares at himself through the screen door for a moment certain this is how death visits those he reads not in a hooded black robe and carrying a wicked side but as the very image of the person whose life he has come to end as if to say you exist now in me.

No longer in the world.

Mercer never knew he had an identical twin the resemblance is remarkable although they haven't met until now Mercer and his double dress in similar clothes and even sports similar hairstyles.

If one of them ways a few pounds more than the other the I cannot detect the heavier of the two.

The faithful visitors name is Jack Crockett.

And he has been seeking his twin brother for three years in spite of the resistance of the church associated adoption agency and authorities.

His skill as a computer hacker and his disdain for laws and protocols have served him well in the search.

Jack brings with him a bottle of Macallan Scotch to celebrate their reunion.

The choice of this fine whiskey is extraordinary.

Mother did not approve the consumption of alcohol.

Well Lenore was alive Mercer respected her wishes and did not invite since her death however Mercer has taken consolation and Scotch and it is this very brand that he drinks.

Their journey to the kitchen where each takes two fingers of whiskey.

Mercer first assumes that mother delivered twins and that is hateful father who had no use for children would not tolerate two of them in the house.

But the truth is different and devastating.

Mercer is not his mother's child.

He is adopted.

Both he and Jack are the children of a former prostitute named Brandy Wines who put them both up for adoption.

Randy still lives Jack found her before he found Mercer.

Because Randy used birth control one with a John but not when in bed with her main man up to him named to doing Gordan that horror master is almost certainly their father.

If your love cannot lie which mother often told Mercer then she Lenore was not sure love as she claimed.

Mother deceived him about the most fundamental things his origin his heritage.

Ridge all her relatives to cooperate with her in this shocking deception.

Whether wide to Mercer as well about his great destiny which she had never defined.

With my guidance my lovely boy you've kept yourself you're allowed no girl to seduce you which has prepared you for a great destiny.

It isn't for me to say what that destiny might be although I know.

Hello my dear child I know but it is for you to discover.

I must never rob you of the delight the joy that will come with the surprise of discovering your great destiny.

However Mercer is the child of a slut and of him.

Raised by a lawyer and he can't see how someone with route as we stood as his and grow into a great destiny.

He is thirty nine and a loan.

And waiting for a great destiny that does not exist.

Mercer has never been an angry person.

Mothers moved away his anger each time that it arose cuddled and headed him as she might have gentle the beloved dog if she liked dogs.

If you didn't like dogs and maybe she didn't like Mercer very much either.

Maybe she manipulated and used him lie and manipulated and you missed.

The black hole that has existed at the core of him ever since mother died the dense dead star of depression.

Slowly begins to change in character.

It becomes a simmering anger.

Mercer is frightened by the potential of that anger to fester and grow.

Jack Crockett has no problem with anger.

He thrives on it.

He didn't take well to his adopted family and hasn't seen them since he was seventeen.

He was his father's son and proud of it.

His research has shown him that the late do we Gordon was a bad ass dude who took what he wanted and did what he wanted.

And anyone who got in his way regretted crossing him.

Jack pours another two fingers of Scotch for each of them.

Sitting at the kitchen table listening to his brother Mercer feels that not only has he been lied to but also has the lived a lie his entire life.

Mercer has never known who he really is has not been allowed ten now.

Jack is colorful Jack is funny.

Jack is known many adventures much excitement.

Jack has been everywhere and has endless colorful stories to tell.

Jack takes no shit from anyone.

Jack is the Mercer that Mercer was never given the chance to be.

Jack will stay with Mercer for awhile.

You must stay they have to get to know each other.

For months Mercer has not been able to see his future or to find any way to get there.

Jack Crockett is a door to the future.

When Jack brings his luggage and a lot of photography gear in from his white Chevy van.

He also brings a girl named Danika.

Mercer was not aware that she had been waiting in the vehicle.

She is in her early twenties slim but full breasted blonde hair green eyes she moves with the grace of light.

Mercer cannot stop looking at her.

She is as desirable as any of the hot girls in the thrilling magazines and movies that his mother bought for him over the years beginning when he was not yet quite twelve.

Jack can Danica sleep in Mercer's old room because shortly after mother's death Mercer had taken to sleeping in her bed.

On the third night after the brothers begin to share the house.

Mercer awakens when Danica turns back the covers and naked slips into mother's bed.

Surely she has had too much to drink has confused the rooms and believes she is betting down with the twin who brought her.

But she says.

Jack sent me.

He thinks you need this.

Sometimes Mercer has awakened in the night sure that mother's spirit haunts this bedroom.

Pulling with the Danica is an exorcism.

The next day Mercer and then I could do not come downstairs until one o'clock in the afternoon whereupon Mercer discovers that Jack has been working on some of the clocks to make them run backward.

Until now Mercer hasn't noticed the Jack wears to wristwatches.

The first counts time forward while the hands on the second to move steadily counter clockwise.

One of the exotic places the Jack knows well is New Orleans where he met an old black woman my my day day look very cool not only practices voodoo but is queen of a cult.

She gave him this watch the breaks the basic rule of all clocks.

On the back of the casing is engraved of who do they have a voodoo.

According to mama date a live brink wearing her watch on one wrist and an ordinary walks on the other insurers that Jack will live at least a one hundred thirteen in perfect health possibly forever and that until his last day he will perform sexually as though he is a.

Jack says man with all these clocks of half a running forward in half backward this whole house will be a place outside of time and no one in it will ever age it's like my destiny to find you wouldn't be here.

My destiny bro and yours.

At that moment Mercer decides that no one must know Jack is here.

The situation is magical yes.

Magical.

It is a very magical situation is though another more exciting version of himself stepped out of a looking glass and brought with him a princess and.

The magic can best be sustained in secrecy.

Chapter Five.

Only Kerry Burkett's drank the coffee.

Mercer Gossage stirred his ceaselessly and after a single cent Jane let hers get cold.

When Gossage said that his mother had been dead for years and six months Jane said and you haven't fixed all these backward running clocks in all that time.

Gossage selected a wistful version from his deep catalogue charming smiles.

The clocks running backward.

They remind me how cute mother was how sweet.

They make me smile.

Jane pushed aside her cold coffee.

Did you say your mother made you jigger the clocks after she began to suffer from dementia.

Just touch him dementia mother never got really bad she always knew who she was.

Mother always knew exactly who she was.

Your maid of better stuff than I am Jane said.

When my grandmother suffered dementia I couldn't deal with it.

This was a lie she had no grandmother with dementia.

I wanted to remember her only as she had been before her mind started to go thank you.

You want to remember all of it before and after.

Although Jane had freeze to response says vague craze also detected the underlying suggestion that she found his maintenance of the backward running clocks curious.

He stopped stirring his coffee and used his right hand to pull thoughtfully on his chin his gaze seeming to fix on a far away sure as if she inspired him to some philosophical consideration.

It is it strange I suppose.

Maybe I'm too slow to let go.

After all it's been nearly five years.

Four years six months almost to the day Jane quoted him.

The clocks are beautiful and quite valuable Kasich said.

I really should put them right.

Maybe even sell some after all how many would still keep her memory alive here.

His gaze returned from elsewhere and he made a little production of noticing Gary's empty Cup.

You like the coffee agent market.

Yes Sir.

Excellent.

Feel free to help yourself to more.

Gossage gestured toward the coffee maker.

Hi I believe I will Kerry said rising from his chair.

Agent Hocker would you like to warm yours.

No thank you.

Caffeine makes me eat acid reducers like candy.

Gossage had called his father a hard man.

His mother seem to have had her problems to.

Evil breeds in dysfunctional families I truth Jane had known since she was nine.

Her father.

Martin Jr rock was a famous concert pianist.

Women were drawn to and then he wanted them all.

Regretting his marriage he killed James mother the NASA and stage death as a suicide.

Young Jane had no need done it but she found it difficult to believe what she knew too confused and afraid to speak up.

If her mother had shared with her the truth of margins many betrayals nine year old Jane might have been better prepared to face facts and to bear witness against her father when evidence might have existed to corroborate her accusations.

No.

Vanessa was long dead while Martin performs to standing ovations.

He looked at his full Cup and gene believed was sincerely surprised to find that he had not touched it.

Perhaps he realized that ceaselessly stirring it had made him look nervous.

I like it cool he said to explain himself.

He drank from the Cup with means pleasure.

Jane saw him flinch slightly at the taste.

Chapter Six.

When Jack first says he believes that mama data breaks claim about backward running clock is true that this house can be made to exist outside of time and allow them to live forever.

Mercer wonders about his brother's sanity.

However he professes interesting mama dayday and says nothing critical because there is then occur.

You consider.

If Jack leaves.

So will panic and after one experience of the girl.

Mercer is addicted to our.

She is a vigorous partner in the bedroom but also.

Thrillingly submissive.

There are after day by day everything around Mercer fades and only Dynaco remains vividly rail.

Is in a thick fog of desire and the girl is such a light unto him that like a muffin chanted by the flame of a candle Mercer would press himself upon her even if the contact might set him afire.

For a week.

She services the twins in their separate rooms.

On the seventh night when Mercer is with her he is not surprised when Jack.

Enters mother's former private chamber and.

Joins them.

Into Manasa Twyla.

On some level Mercer has known this is inevitable.

There is no awkwardness not even for a moment because when Mercer looks at Jack with.

The girl between them.

He is not looking at a strange man but.

Only at himself.

Already Mercer and his brother anticipate each other stocks and.

Finish each other's sentences.

They were meant to be one oh rising from a single egg fertilized by a single sperm but.

The fertilized egg divided early in Brandy Wine's pregnancy.

In the womb they shared one amniotic sac and a single placenta and know.

They share this woman.

This house.

One destiny.

Jack supplies Dan echo with a variety of pills that she requires and none is given for a medical reason.

The pills generally sustain the girl in a buoyant mood and.

For a few months she is mostly a delight to be around.

Good ID cards and other games as funny as she is wildly erotic quick to laugh a good cook never a nag and always ready to be taken however they wish to take her.

Jack photographs and makes videos of Danica.

Looking at these makes Mercer feel as though he has stepped into one of those adult magazines or movies into a life he has fantasized about ever since his mother introduced him to the world of eroticism.

Mercer likes this feeling.

He likes it very much.

Danicia usually has days when she is troubled by what she calls.

Blue Meanies she becomes soalan caustic.

Argumentative.

She will not be touched.

It is on one of these days that life it Gossage farm takes a new turn although.

It is no more of a surprise then was the moment when Jack joined Mercer and then okay and then.

In her blue Meanies Dannecker insults Jack once too often refuses to have sex and he hits her.

It's her again.

Mercer tries to stop Jackson sold by reminding him of the value of the Dan echo has for them.

But Jack is in a range.

Mercer has never seen anyone.

In such a rage.

Jack scares him a little which.

Shouldn't be the case because Jack is only Mercer himself identical in all ways that matter.

Jack says you think I've never had a bitch this hot I've had dozens better than this and they damn well don't saying no to me.

Are you bored with her bro I'm bored to death with the bitch variety bro variety variety is the spice of life.

Mercer does not.

Want to participate in the beating of Annika.

But he cannot look away.

For some reason Mercer cannot.

Look away.

Watching Jack beat the girl is like.

Watching himself beat her.

As though Mercer is standing outside of time observing the life you might have lived if he hadn't lived the one as mothers.

Had.

Jack is in a rage or fury but it doesn't seem to be the kind of anger that is harmful to the one who harbors.

Jack is clearly exhilarated in his range.

It is a happy anger.

Jack even alive says he curses Danica and hits her.

Looks so powerful.

As Mercer has never been.

Jack.

Doesn't accept rejection.

Doesn't take shit.

From anyone.

His range is like an.

Act of nature the Roches.

Under storm tornado.

Earthquake.

And then it's way glorious to be home.

Mercer wonders if mother lied to him about.

The need to repress anger.

She lied about everything else.

Why not this to.

Jack looked at Mercer and says.

Don't be a pussy bro.

Take your shot.

He's just a user.

Whore like all the other horrors.

They use you and throw you away like you're an old Kleenex full of snot.

Well they don't throw away Jackie Crockett anymore.

And I've got my major mo Jo working they don't get away with.

Kissing on me anymore they pay you for saying noted Jackie.

You like being thrown away boy you like being a snot rag boy right now you look as if you like being some horse snot.

Rag.

Find your mojo.

Man.

This is not.

Just Jack talking to Mercer.

This is also Mercer.

Talking to himself.

Expressing an anger that has been bottled in him for a long time.

And maybe is even present in his blood.

It is true.

Father's genes the anger of a pimp named Dooe Gordan.

Mercer looks into Jack's eyes which are Mercer's eyes looks into Jack's soul which is in Mercer's soul.

And knows himself for the first time.

The girl is on the floor struggling to get up and Mercer.

Sir.

The first kick makes him sick.

To his stomach but the knowledge of passes.

It passes so quickly.

In mere seconds.

Mr kicks her again.

And when she's eventually dead the only regret Mercer feels is that.

They killed the horror in the kitchen instead of in mother's former bedroom.

Chapter Seven

A sudden wind had come up and the flying hardshell Beatles tapping at the windows have been traced to their bore holes in their nests.

The currents of air buffeting the house and testing the panes of glass sounded wintry although this was still the warm and of September and now the muffled clocks couldn't be heard at all.

On the farther side of the refrigerator Gary Burkett stood at the coffee maker pouring a second Cup for himself.

Mercer Gossage seems to want to sell his preference for cold coffee to eliminate any suspicion that he'd stirred it obsessively because he was nervous.

My mother liked coffee cold I got a taste for it from her.

Across the table from Gossage Jane said.

I lost my mother Vanessa when I was nine.

She was a fine pianist.

I wanted to be as good as her at the piano as good as her in all things.

Gossage appeared puzzled that she would open her personal life to him.

He evidently knew this wasn't standard police procedure.

He said.

Losing a mother is hard at any age.

But when you're nine.

That would have been a real heartbreaker.

No one should have to endure that.

I am sorry to hear it.

I'm real sorry.

His sympathy sounded awkward.

Forced.

Kathy Haskill's mom said you lost your father when you were young.

Gossage frowned no doubt wondering why the murdered girl's mother would have mentioned Vernon Gossage in fact she had said only cursor is a sweet man like his mom with sweet nothing like his worthless Daddy probably was a good thing uncle Vernon never had much influence on the child Kathy would have gone off the rails all the way to the end of the line if not for have sweet Mercer was with her steering her true again.

Until Jane had met this man and grown wary of him.

This is Haskill's revelation of that bit of family history had seem of no relevance to the search for the mother hater.

Maybe it's still one of no relevance.

But he gave her a small lever to pry it Gossage and intuition said she needed to open his shell and have a look inside.

I was sixteen gossipcenter.

My father loved his horses.

One of them threw him broke his neck.

I wish I could say I admired him as much as you admired your mother but he was.

A very hard man.

My mother was an angel but not him not Vernon.

He picked up his spoon again and began to stir the brew that remained in his Cup.

Jane focused on his face as he stared into his cold coffee.

And she said.

My mother was murdered.

The killer tried to stage it as suicide.

I was the one who found her body.

In the past with most people those words had drawn a look of surprise even shock I nearly always sympathy.

Gossage didn't at once raised his head to look at her.

His brow furrowed as though he might be struggling to understand why she continued with personal disclosures whether they meant that she was in any way suspicious of him.

When he raised his head and looked at her the slight tremor in his voice would have been appropriate if he'd known her well enough and long enough to have an emotional reaction to the pain that her revelations suggested.

But it was on considering that they had known each other only half an hour.

If he had something to hide however then attack that she'd taken might inspire a tremor of anxiety.

That's horrible.

Dear god.

For a little girl to find.

That's the hardest thing I've ever heard.

As Gary Burkett turned away from the coffee maker he seems to freeze.

His attention on the nearer of the too long case clocks.

Not the clock.

Okay performed beside the clock from which various keys dangle.

One of them thanks to a ring bearing the Honda logo.

Kerry said.

Mr Gossage as a frustrated owner of a Honda I have to ask have you ever had transmission problems with yours.

Gary didn't own a Honda.

He drove a Ford explorer his wife Rosalynn drove a Subaru.

However.

Kathy Haskill'ss vintage Honda was still missing.

Chapter Eight

Using a back hoe Mercer and the other Mercer who is Jack bury Danicia very deep in which was long ago the hog pen.

The farm is not an operative for decades but Jack finds it fitting and using to stow the corpse in ground that he imagines is still rich with the fecal matter of swine.

He says this is where she belongs the pig.

Jack uses flour corn flour powdered brick gun powder and other substances to draw an elaborate voodoo faith a on her grave as mama dated taught him.

This ensures that you will not be found in that her spirit will not return here to haunt.

Things are not the same on Gossage farm with Danicia.

It is still summer but wintry dreary miss settles over the house and land.

The days pass without purpose.

Where she was so happy and no he is not happy at all.

On the fifth morning after the girl's death that breakfast Mercer says.

I wish Danicia was still here.

It was nice having a pretty girl around.

Jack smirked at him.

You wish she was here.

Duggar cell found covered in dirt and pig shit all broken up and walking dead.

You know what I mean.

Sure I know.

Nice to have easy tail around something better to look at than you and me and the man in the mirror.

Tomorrow I'll go often find there's an even better peace and bring her back.

It's like that Mercer says.

Good night tell you I've had lots better.

You've been a mama's boy too long bro.

You don't know how to score that's okay I know the ladies how they think what they need.

I'm fine did you see one.

Mercer is dubious.

And this one you'll find feel have a taste for twins.

Then I go wasn't unique bro I'll get my doing Gordon on and go recruiting like our Daddy did you just do some housekeeping catch up on the laundry while I'm away and when I get back in a couple days.

It'll be party time.

Jack is gone for days.

When he returns in his Chevy van he has a girl but.

It's not the same.

She's pretty and all.

Twenty years old maybe not much hotter than Danicia but at least as.

However she didn't come with Jack of her own free will.

She's bound and sedated and I have to carry her from the van into the house.

Her name is tile yeah and if she is hot but Mercer is at first a little disappointed because.

It is not the same.

With Dan occurred they could play cards and watch movies and she cook and they drank together and she was funny so there was a romantic quality to it.

But hello yeah he's afraid all the time and cries a lot.

If the letter rolled loose she'll try to escape.

They have to lock her in a room with boarded windows or keep her on a leash with a prong collar.

The third day Jack says.

She won't be like this forever bro.

She'll learn there's no way forward for her except total obedience.

Once we breaker she'll be a good little Pat and do what we want.

You ever done this before Mercer asks.

You over just stole a girl instead of romancing her.

Twice before.

There's lots of them who can be romanced into doing anything or they need someone to pay for their drugs.

And once in awhile you see a piece so juicy you've just got to have but.

Fuses to be romanced and doesn't do drugs so you need to take drastic action.

You can't let nobody say no to you in this world because once you start letting that happen it never stops it's always know when you're finished.

Seems awful risky.

Better to live ten years as a king than a hundred years as a peasant.

Take what you want to install penny penchers son of a bitch who gets in your way.

And I got moved Joe mo Jo working for me bro.

Over the next six weeks Thalia is broken.

She is so submissive that they can take the lesion prong collar off her and she makes no attempt to escape.

But for Mercer it's still isn't the same as with Annika.

In some ways it is not as much fun as with Dan echo but in other ways.

It is more fun.

There is such an edge to it.

When Mercer wanted janica he had to ask her and sometimes she said not right now or even know.

But tell yeah is not allowed to say no.

Now you must do which she stole.

Mercer discovers that when a girl must do is she is told there are many more things you can think to do with her than he would try to do with the girl who could say no.

It's a power trip it really is.

There's such an edge to the relationship.

That edges made even sharper by the awareness of how the relationship must end.

With then I got you didn't have to end as it had if only she had not insulted Jack too often and hadn't said no to him with such scorn.

For two reasons however there is only one possible end to their relationship with Saudia.

First they can never let her go because unlike with janica none of this is consensual.

Second.

They will inevitably tire of her and be done with her.

Jack is right about many things and he is especially right about variety being the spice of life.

Considering all the girls in the throwing movies that Mercer's mother bought for him and all the girls in the many movies that he bought for himself after mother's death.

Mercer has had many hundreds of relationships.

And he knows how important new faces and new bodies are to keeping the fun in sacks.

There will be a new girl after Thalia and another after that one as many as Jack can steal and the magic will be sustained.

This magic is there a great destiny to live like kings with absolute power here in their small kingdom and never to leave his presence.

When the time comes to be rid of Thalia Mercer participates in her disposal without even a moment of passing nasha.

Such absolute power is no less exhilarating than sex itself.

This is a world of wolves as mother's head and.

It is better to be will vanish she.

They do not beat this girl as they did Danica.

There are many ways to be finished with a girl.

One thing Mercer learns about experiences that variety in the termination of relationships is as important as variety in the relationships themselves if they're going to be as.

Fulfilling as possible.

Chapter Nine.

Standing behind Mercer Gossage Gary asked if there ever been transmission problems with the man's Honda.

Their host appeared bewildered when he looked up from his cold coffee and met Jane Hawks eye's.

Because Gary had not mentioned the perf board or the keys because the Honda was in a garage or a barn where they couldn't have seen it the question initially must have seemed to suggest an almost supernatural knowledge of Gossage's guilt.

She saw the confusion quickly give way to a subtle display of apprehension.

Increases at the corners of his eyes pleaded and his mouth tightened and he sat up slightly straighter in his chair.

Maybe he took five seconds to respond maybe only for.

Gossage's silence was freed.

Full of fevered calculation.

Before he lowered his gaze to his coffee once more and said.

Oh you mean mothers Honda.

Transmission problems.

No.

She loved that car.

It never gave her trouble.

She thought it was the best she ever owned.

All right never drove it but I know if she had problems with it.

After she died I took off the tires and put the car up on blocks it was too old to be worth much if I sold it.

And since my own Ford pickup hasn't been as reliable as I'd like I figured it was a good idea to keep the Honda just in case.

If you'd stopped after saying that his mother love the Honda he might have sounded innocent and unaware of the limited nature of Kerry's question.

But when a guilty man was supremely confident that the scam he'd been selling hot gullible buyer when he was then rattled by a question he tended to talk too much spin out a rapidly crafted response with a lot of details that he supposed made his answers sound credible.

Kerry looked at Jane.

And she met his eyes.

And he put his Cup of fresh coffee on the counter.

He said.

Maybe it was your mother's love of Honda's that influenced Kathy Haskill into buying a used one.

Directly across the kitchen from Gerry a pantry door opened and another Mercer Gossage appeared armed with a pistol in a two handed grip.

Firing as he came.

Chapter Ten

It is Jack's idea to send photographs to tell his mother one of her daughter naked and alive.

Another of her daughter dead.

Would you like to stick a shave in Brandy Wine's for throwing us away like a couple snot rags yes to Mercer referring to the prostitute who was their biological mother.

We sent the photos to tell his mother it'll be like sticking a ship enter the next best thing the cutting Brandy herself.

Mercer isn't at once convinced.

You said Brandy is still alive.

You could cut her for real.

As it turns out when Jack first track down Brandy it didn't go well.

He lost his temper and might have cut her then but.

She's a tough woman running her own group of whores these days and she is surrounded by tough people.

If Jack goes back there he's likely to take a bullet for his trouble.

Maybe she did us a favor Mercer says.

Maybe if she'd kept us and raised us in that environment we have had she lives.

Jack Crockett Maksim.

Should he lives you mean compared to your fabulous glamorous first thirty nine years on Gossage farm with your ice man father you're lying mother who kept chill like a petting gave you porn movies when you were just eleven and turns you into a jerk off artist afraid to go after real girls.

Mercer has no response.

Jack is street harder than Mercer tough reminded them Mercer with no capacity for sentimentality.

Jack seems so often to get directly to the undeniable truth the things.

Mercer has indeed been raised on lies and doesn't always recognize truths as quickly as Jack.

Jack is also one of those wolves in human clothing that mother often warned Mercer about.

The kind Mercer used to fear though now Mercer wants to be a wolf himself.

Believe without limits without laws without.

Fear of others.

Jack is showing his twin the way and Mercer does not want to alienate Jack by arguing with him.

Fact is Jack says.

What could have been better than living in that world our whore mothers world with him for our Daddy.

When we were old enough to we Gordon could have told his girls that was part of their job to be all over his twin boys.

We wouldn't have had to pay for it not even by the bitches dinner we sure as hell wouldn't of had this deal any damn girls.

Because Mercer and Jack can't stickers Shive Brandy Wine's without risking a bullet and.

Because the Lenore is dead and beyond harm.

They stick a metaphorical Shive in the mother of tell you by sending her the photos.

Jack drives all the way to New Jersey to mail them.

And to look for a hot girl who will add variety to their lives.

Pennsylvania must remain there Switzerland neutral territory from which they know their steal any girls nor mail photos to grieving mothers.

Pennsylvania is called the keystone state and it is the keystone of their strategy to avoid drawing suspicion to Gossage farm.

New Jersey is called the garden state.

And Jack says that is because they grow a lot of hot girls there.

After Thalia Jack snatches the super cute sixteen year old girl named Lori and sends a photo of her to our mother within a day or two of taking her.

Weeks later when they have finished with Laurie.

He sends a second shot of the naked corpse.

When he does the same thing with the next girl Sandra this becomes known as the mother haters pattern.

Thereafter when each family received the first photo sharing wish is greatly sharpened during the months that they must wait picture number two.

Jack likes to imagine what form and the families go through.

They think they're so special with their nice houses in their education and their good jobs in their polished up kids going to soccer practice taking music lessons.

But there's nothing special about them that I can't his son and make its for them forever.

Jack likes the girls the sex the power.

But the way he sees it there's also an element of social justice and what he and Mercer are doing.

A balancing of the scales payment for the injustices the two of them have been George.

Sometimes they drink fine whiskey long into the night talking sharing and.

Jack can often be funny doing voices and imagining what's happening in the house of the family currently waiting for the second photograph.

Jack in Mercer laughed together in these occasions and it feels good to laugh.

Mother never laughed much.

Maybe she never laughed at all.

Mr can't quite remember.

Laughter is a good thing.

Chapter Eleven

Mercer Gossage's double erupted out of the walk in pantry in a fury as a jacked up on drugs a demonic figure with a fiery flush on his face argues protruding with hatred and rage pale lips stand back from his teeth in a snarl.

If he'd been self controlled Jane might have been cut down with Gary but this guy got off on his anger for him violence was akin to an orgasm any host Kerry with no regard for the fact that the magazine in his pistol held only ten rooms.

Kerry reached to his right hip through his belt holster but he didn't get a chance to draw his gun.

He took a hard hit as did the cabinets and refrigerator.

Full metal jacket hollow points I'm not a sieve first wound maybe instant death and if not quickly out.

The moment the pantry door flew open Jane started to get up but the Mercer Gossage who was seated across from her didn't thrust to his feet instead he reached forward and under the table with his right hand even as his chair stuttered backwards slightly on the wood floor which told her that he had a firearm fixed under the table top held in clients are a holster.

Two men to weapons close quarters that was a scenario with maybe an eighty percent chance of her ending up dead.

In spite of being taken by surprise she could draw and fire and take out one of them but not both before she was cut down.

She wasn't fully to her feet yet and the Mercer from the pantry had fired maybe three rounds and Gerry had taken at least one bad hit when Jane put her hands under the table ticket up and over in onto the nearer Mercer overturning his chair with him in it.

Maybe the bastard got the concealed gun before the table crashed onto him maybe not.

Gary sliding down the stainless steel refrigerator door his face a death mask the other Mercer still shooting maybe four rounds left in his magazine Jane only now clutching the grip of the pistol in her belt holster.

The door to the hall was open and near she went for it low in quick.

Around shattered a pane of glass in a display cabinet behind her and another tore a chunk out of the door frame as she tucked into the hallway spring her with splinters.

Crossing the threshold she pulled the swinging door shut behind her.

Kathy Haskill's mother hadn't told her that Mercer had an identical twin.

Which must mean she didn't know somehow it was Mercer's secret.

The mother hater wasn't one serial killer.

He had to kill buddy.

They wouldn't come directly after her because there was a chance however slight that she might wait for them in a doorway along that narrow hall which was a shooting gallery they would expect her to sprint for the car parked in from the place and they would come after her from outside each along a different flank of the house.

She didn't have either the time or the inclination to run to the car and get away.

Kathy was in the house somewhere.

The girl had only been snatched six days earlier.

She was here and alive.

She couldn't be left to die.

Jane opened the front door it didn't step on the porch.

A warm wind rushed through the screen door hissing into the foyer.

Let them think she had gone outside let them waste time searching the night.

She turned away from the door as the invading wind pushed it all the way back against the for your wall.

And she ascended two steps at a time.

To the second floor.

Chapter Twelve

For more than four years now Jack brings home fresh girls a new one every couple of months.

Is brilliant at stealing them nothing less than brilliant.

And the hunt for mother hater is the longest running front page crime story ever ever ever.

Mercer has found his great destiny as his mother predicted.

The one truth she ever spoke.

The clocks are running backward and the house is outside of time just like mama dada breach claimed which is why the foolish authorities can't find them.

The house is outside of time and they are immune from discovery.

They are kings in a world of peasants.

The girls are throwing more exciting by far than any of those in the porn films.

Romance with Danicia was nice at the time but now Mercer understands that romance is just a distraction from the main business.

An invention of the week or afraid to admit what they really want.

Breaking the girls and using them is willing.

And they are no longer fresh enough to be exciting the variety of ways they can be killed isn't merely thrilling but also exactly what they deserve.

Because they are all whores who if they had children.

Would throw them away likes not rags.

Mercer is now dressed in white Jack.

They both wear black jeans black T. shirts in warm weather black and blue plaid flannels in colder months.

Their hair cuts were similar when Jack first arrived now Mercer and Jack are identically Barbered.

The more precisely Mercer looks like his twin the better he feels.

The city for he feels the less.

Hello.

They've got their mojo working big time.

It's a Friday morning ten o'clock a week after they finished with the most recent girl and Jack has not yet gone on the hunt again.

Kathy Haskell daughter of cousin Anita soon to be returning to college for a new academic year pays an unannounced visit while Mercer is upstairs in the shower.

Kathy is visited before and Jack has watched her secretly from another room so he opens the door and lets her and pretending to be Mercer.

He takes her into the kitchen pours coffee and so it's not a plate of many muffins that Mercer has made from one of mother's recipe has.

Then Jack excuses himself and hurries upstairs to tell Mercer.

They have company.

Mercer goes downstairs and spend some time with Kathy pretending to be the same Mercer he was before Jack moved in.

When Kathy is gone the brothers convene in the kitchen.

Jack slides the fingertips of one hand back and forth across the seat of the chair in which Kathy has been sitting.

I've said it before Perot and I'll say it again.

I really need a piece of ass.

She has all the right stuff in the right places.

This is our Switzerland Mercer reminds him anyway.

Not her.

Never.

Thank you don't want her I don't.

Back when she was fourteen and you were thirty eight.

You spend a lot of time with her.

Why.

Mother and I spent a lot of time with Kathy both of us to get her back on the rails straightened around.

You didn't once think about getting in her pants.

No.

Bullshit.

He's hot now she must've been delectable van.

No matter how hard she was I didn't need her Mercer says.

I had my movies.

Jack grins and claps his hands.

So you did want to get in her pants.

You wanted it so bad.

I bet you spend hours and hours with your freaking movies and every girl in them look like her take you.

Jack can be deceived.

He sees right through people sees the truth of them.

Yeah I could have seen the truth of mother in a minute the truth Mercer had not been able to see well mother was alive.

Mercer says.

Kathy phone.

She was a tease.

That's one of the ways she was off the rails boys were too important to our and that's the way she got them interested.

Yes another whole are says Jack.

She's off limits Jack she's family.

Her mother I need a Haskell is your cousin.

You know she has.

And they need as mother was my aunt Gladys my father's sister which you also know.

Gladys never wanted much to do with you and your mother and neither did your cousin Anita.

That's why Kathy would talk to us because mother and me we weren't Anita and Gladys we were.

Different from them.

He said it was you not your mother so much that turned Kathy around.

Because I became like a father figure to her I need a is a single mother Kathy never had a dad in her life.

At fourteen she was a real tease her.

If you teach you a man twenty four years older than her come on do you flirt.

That's your arm your hand your knee and.

But her fingers linger.

Yeah well but it didn't work with me so she started to respect me.

Jack laughs.

It work.

I'm sure you remember telling me a minute ago she got you Mega horney but you didn't need her because you had your movies he spent hours with your movies and all the girls in them look like her to you.

I didn't save half way you did because it's true.

He wanted her home right but you couldn't have her because you were your mama's gutless eunuch.

Real girls scared you thirty eight in scared of real girls.

Good thing I hope you put an end to that before you died of boredom and here's something else to think about pro.

Hearing Gladys and cousin Anita.

Aren't family.

Either is Cathy.

They aren't anything to you.

Your family is a dead end of burned out old whore who's turned herself into a female Pam.

And me.

Me.

I'm your real family.

Chapter Thirteen.

Kerry Burkett's dead father to be waited only two years earlier.

Rosalind Burkett carrying a child would be born fatherless born into its mother's grief.

This sucked.

Stank.

Jane could not allow herself anger yet or grief.

Anger and grief would interfere with clear thinking get in the way of survival.

Light filtered up the stairs from the foyer but the second floor hall was a shadow we as a catacomb the rooms to both sides as dark as compatible.

She could suppress anger and grief but she couldn't entirely quash fear.

Some fear was good.

It sharpens the senses.

Long case clocks stood on both sides of the whole as if they were deaths hooded lieutenants there are king pendulums like science ready for the reaping.

She sheltered between two of them are back to the wall head forward just far enough to look past the clock on her left and watch the head of the stairs.

She tried her iPhone.

No service.

This was farm country and she was a long way from a cell tower.

In the kitchen there'd been a wall phone.

A land line down there suggested a land line up here most likely in the master bedroom.

Find it call local law enforcement for backup then locate Kathy Haskell defends her until sheriff's deputies arrived in force.

She couldn't hear anything but wind rattling the screen door down in the four year offering the walls of the house keening across the roof.

Creeks and serve stressed joinery settled on her from the rafters attic.

She stepped out from between the clocks holding the iPhone at her side aiming it at the floor using it as a flashlight fingers occluding part of the screen to minimize the risk that the killers seeking her outside might glimpse a ghostly radiance moving across the window.

She found the master bedroom a phone on the nightstand.

She keyed in the three digits on the nightstand phone switched off for smartphone stood in the dark.

She didn't bother giving her location it was already on the nine one one operator screen.

Keeping her voice low she identified herself reported Gerry down Ided Mercer Gossage and his twin as the killers.

Catherine asked was alive somewhere here.

Fast.

Backups rolling stay on the line with me.

If I don't move I'm dead.

The operator started to say something.

And then was gone.

As if someone had cut the phone line coming into the house.

As Jane hung up the handset right in the upstairs hall beyond the bedroom door.

Chapter Fourteen.

And me.

Me.

Says Jack.

Your real family.

Jack is not.

Just making a pitch to sack Kathy Haskell.

He is making this a non negotiable condition for the continuation of his and Mercer's magical life together.

Jack badly once Kathy and.

Always takes what he wants.

Taking what he wants to never.

Taking no for an answer is how he defines himself and if that is no longer who he is and he's lost.

Is nobody.

Mercer knows.

This is reckless.

Jack is always reckless and it.

Works for him.

He's almost forty four and he skated through a lawless life without one arrest.

In addition the Dan echo he's brought.

Twenty one girls to the farm over four years.

Tormented twenty one families and during his sons.

He hasn't ones come close to being caught.

Jack is charmed.

Mama day delivery because inoculated him against arrest and prosecution.

That's what Jack believes and no reason has been presented to suggest that he is wrong.

Yeah Mercer is worried.

Mr goes outside and stands in the yard and slowly turns in a circle.

Turns in a circle again.

Under the jeep and profoundly empty sky surveying the hundreds of fallow acres.

Loneliness a sense of.

Being the only human being left on earth and isolation from all meaning and.

Purpose swell within him at the mere prospect of Jack's.

Permanent departure.

He imagines being alone in the house at night.

With no girl in the cellar to use.

With no company but that of the twenty one dead girls very in the former hog pen.

Without.

Bold exciting Jack at his side Mercer will become a middle aged.

Nothing.

As dole as ever he'd been before Jack arrived.

Jack.

Is.

The only family Mercer has or ever will have and.

Family.

Is.

Everything.

Chapter Fifteen.

Groaning wind up the windows and shrouding darkness throughout the bedroom sudden light in the hallway.

June with her Glock nineteen M. in a two handed grip.

The switch for the hallway lights might be in the first floor foyer or it might be at the head of the stairs in which case at least one of the killers was already on the second floor.

If they had gone outside they'd return sooner than Jane anticipated.

They knew there was no cell phone service maybe they came back so quickly because they realized she might be seeking a land line.

A hard roar of a shot gun reverberated off the walls as if they were drum membranes.

Here.

On the second floor.

Toward the front of the residence.

Glass shattered wood cracked buckshot rattled off metal.

At once another round follow the first.

What was he doing.

He wasn't shooting in fright at shadows and phantoms people who kidnapped twenty one girls and got away with it for four years weren't the type given the panic.

A third round shook the walls a fourth.

Those three seem to come from elsewhere than the first two perhaps from the east rather than the west side of the whole.

He was clearing rooms.

This wasn't how Jane had been taught to clear rooms at Quantico when as an agent you had to be concerned about the safety of innocence about rules of engagement but it might be how homicidal sociopathic cleared rooms when you had a lot of ammunition and didn't give a rat's ass about collateral damage.

There was no where in the master bedroom for her to take a protected shooters position and nail him when he came through the doorway.

A volley of buckshot would perceive him.

Evidently he was also shooting into closets bathrooms into any adjacent space in which he thought she might be hiding which is why the blasts were coming in groups of two and three.

A shot gun probably had a three or five round magazine plus one in the breach.

He'd spend one round from the hallway chop the room with buckshot enter with three or five more rounds ready.

As the twelve gauge roared Jane slip through the darkness to the rectangle of moonlit glass.

After two seconds silence during which she twisted open the lock on the double hung window the weapon bloomed again.

If the window was painted shut she was dead before backup could get here.

The bottom sash slid up easily wind interface it's ten thousand voices whispering in our ears beyond lay the back porch roof.

She eased through the opening hold the sash shot stepped to one side and pressed her back to the club of wall.

Glock in both hands muzzle toward the night sky.

Intervening rooms had somewhat muffled the shot gun fire so she wasn't temporarily deaf from the volume of sound but she couldn't hear clearly either.

A pounding heart sounded strangely distant like the ominous cloven hoof beats of a predatory beast in a dream forever circling her just beyond the limits of vision.

You are right a shot gun blast shattered the window.

And in the aftermath of the muscle flare.

The killer switched on the bedroom light.

Chapter Sixteen.

During Kathy Haskell's drop in visit she mentions that she is spending the night with a high school friend Lisa Shuster on the Schuster family dairy farm and leaving from there for college at eight o'clock in the morning.

Having lived largely in the isolation of mothers love Mercer doesn't know the Shuster for the location of their operation but in a few minutes on the internet he finds them.

At seven thirty A.M. Mercer is in his Ford pickup parked along the two lane county road three miles.

South of the Shuster place.

In a few minutes before eight he gets out of the truck and puts up the hood and pretends to be trouble shooting a break down though in fact he is watching the south bound lane for the first sign of Kathy's ten year old Honda.

Use a punctual girl always has been even when she was fourteen and going off the rails and.

She shows up at 8:06.

As she approaches Mercer slams the hood contriving to appear annoyed and distracted moving to the driver's door of the truck not paying attention to the approaching car.

She tapped her horn and.

Pulls off the road in front of the pickup.

Mercer bends down to the driver's window expressing surprise it is fortuitous encounter.

Because.

He knows that he is not familiar with the Schuster family she believes he doesn't realize they live only fifteen minutes from Gossage farm and she finds this crossing of paths.

Innocent.

Serendipitous.

Mercer gives her some flim flam about a crack distributor cap.

She knows that he repairs his own vehicle so it's credible when he says he has a spare cap at home.

Because they are still in his own without cell service Mercer asks if you could drive him to his place where he can grab the parking needs and then return him to the broken down pick up.

Because Mercer spent so much time talking sense two or six years earlier.

Kathy is happy to oblige.

They are together at the road side perhaps a minute.

No traffic passes in that time.

No one.

Has seen them together.

During the ride to Gossage farmers there is amazed as he listens to himself chat with Kathy.

As if he has no foul play in mind.

He is so smooth yes he thinks.

I have become Jack.

And this.

Greatly.

Pleases him.

She doesn't mind being delayed half an hour or more to aid him because she feels that she owes him.

He feels that he owes her to was her for the way she teased him back in the day.

Hey Mande him with her eyes and her string hand and all the wiles of her body.

When he was merely Mercer and.

Too weak to take advantage of what she offered.

She had a times laughingly mocked Mercer for his timidity and.

He owes her for that as well.

As they grow near the pharmacy savage please swells in Mercer and old most rapturous feeling of absolute power.

Breaking Kathy and using her will be a special pleasure.

But Mercer suddenly understands that killing her will be even more thrilling than the sex.

Because she.

Is the last remaining reminder of the feeble.

Timid fool that he had once been.

When Kathy is dead and buried in the hog and Mercer will have erased his past and he will be entirely in.

Higher early.

As.

Ruthless as Jack.

The empty sky and the fellow land will not disturb him anymore and he will never be alone because.

There will be Jack.

And there will be an.

Endless series of girls.

With the clocks and the counter clock stalling the flow of time.

In the timeless.

Bubble that is.

Gossage farm.

He parks beside the bard in which Mercer maintains his mechanic's shop.

When she disengages her safety harness and switches off the engine to wait for him it distracts her by saying.

There's something I need to say to you something I've wanted to say for a long time.

She regards him with interest and is frozen in shock for a moment when he says.

Your a totally hot bitch.

Which is precisely when Jack pulls open the driver's door and grabbed her by the hair and pulls her screaming from behind the wheel.

There is no one to hear her scream except Mercer and Jack.

Who are wildly excited by.

Jack.

Gets an arm around his neck and dragged her to the ground while Mercer runs around the Honda with the zip ties that he will use to bind her wrists and ankles.

When Kathy is locked in a room in the cellar Mercer pulls the Honda into the barn.

Jack drives his Chevy van with Mercer aboard to where the Ford.

Pickup.

Was left along side the county road.

In separate vehicles.

The brothers come home to their.

Glorious destiny.

Chapter Seventeen.

Jane on the porch roof back pressed to the cloud wall the wind rushing down out of the moon and seeming to shimmer the lunar glows through the turbulent night.

The window exploding into the wind sudden light in the bedroom another roar shotgun pellets ripping through something inside maybe through the flimsy sliding doors to the closet.

The weapon moving again probably clearing the on sweet path where the door had been standing half open a ringing cascade of bathroom mirrors dissolving from the walls to the floor.

In extreme circumstances she took crazy risks because the odds said that crazy was in that situation rational.

If the odds were backed up with a flash of intuition she moved fast using what she had learned at Quantico but she didn't allow by the book rules to override her gut.

Her pounding heart shook her arms.

Right on the fear.

The sloped roof didn't permit her preferred shooting stance but with the nine millimeter Glock in a two handed grip she stepped boldly into the outfall of light and saw Mercer Gossage or his twin starting to turn away from the bathroom toward the hallway door.

He saw her too and swung toward the blown out window.

Your initial post of the Americal gunsight was radiant in the low moonlight and she squeezed off or shots one hundred forty seven grain spear gold dot two runs three hits.

I shot gun fell from the killer's hands with his last channel still chambered.

With a wheezy gasp of shock as though his mortality surprised him he staggered backward and fell and curled on his side in the fetal position clutching the right side of his abdomen to staunch the blood spurting between his fingers.

He screamed in agony as Jane climb through the lower sash careful not to snag herself on the remaining shards of glass.

Although she didn't want to put the murderous bastard out of his misery wanted him to suffer as his victims suffered his screams mask whatever sounds his brother might be making sure she booted him onto his back and shot him point blank through the heart.

His left hand slipped off the wound which sees spurting when his heart stopped.

And Jane saw that his right hand was pressed not to the torn flesh but instead to the pistol in his belt holster.

He had lacked the strength and clarity of mind to use it.

For a few seconds crossing the room our eyes fixed on the open door to the hallway.

She heard nothing but the ringing in our ears the winds keening at the broken out window and her Tom Tom heart pounding the rhythm of mortal dread.

Then the other twin shouted from downstairs.

Jack.

What the fuck.

What's happening Jack.

Jack.

So it was Mercer hello.

She is through the doorway and looked toward the stairs.

He wasn't coming up.

He let out a long despairing cry chilling and child like in its shrill nous revealing that he was moving out of the foyer and along the hallway toward the kitchen.

Jane and Jack to the magazine from the Glock in which only four rounds remained.

Dropped it in the pocket of her sport coat snapped a fresh magazine into the pistol and move toward the stairs.

Kill buddies were rare I'm not unprecedented.

Emotionally bonded sociopaths.

The cruelty of the one in flames the violent passions of the other in a feedback loop that excited them to ever more outrageous abuses of their victims.

Jane on the stairs careful not to take a fall.

A banister on her right foot of no use to her because her right arm was her gun arm.

Glock just under her line of vision.

The step seeming to rise and fall like waves over the Americal gunsight.

Mercer had stopped screaming.

He might be coming back.

Reading through her mouth.

Pressure on the trigger.

Eyes fixed on the landing.

In the span of stairs from the landing to the apparently deserted four year.

The feedback loop between bonded sociopaths might be only a fraction as intense as that between sociopaths who were identical twins.

In either case this isolated property would become a bubble universe to them the rest of the world a mere virtual reality game in which they hunted women.

Clocks running forward running backwards their universe outside of time with only two stars Mercer and Jack each orbiting the other each dependent on the others light.

Now one of them a dead star the other.

Collapsing into a black hole.

When Jean reached the foyer Mercer's despairing cry rose again.

Not from the back of the house.

But from below from the cellar.

And then a woman's scream.

Mercer's fury fear and hate were of such gravity at what remained of his corrupted soul was being torn and crushed and sucked into an outer dark beyond mere darkness.

Less than an hour ago.

He had been an all powerful ruler of his universe right now.

Is only power was to kill one more victim.

Jane run along the hallway heedless of the rooms to either side first into the kitchen and saw what must be the cellar door near the pantry.

Locked.

She shot out the lock yanked open the door concrete block walls wooden steps with rubber runners light below.

Neither Mercer nor Katherine how schools screening now.

He silent she.

Solving.

Eating for her life.

Jane decended.

Chapter Eighteen.

The scent of mildew.

Low rafter ceilings.

Oil fired furnace water heater.

To overhead LED bold's income shades.

The sky blue wall against which the mother hater photographed the naked girls.

Ouendan spider place of focused light and sinuous shadows.

Jane thought of sweet Nick and precious Travis husband and son.

Her reasons to be bold but not reckless reasons to live.

And she thought of Vanessa her murdered mother.

Her reason for being here at all for choosing the law over music.

Justice.

Over safety.

Ahead a steel door stood ajar separating the first room from a second.

A different quality of light beyond threshold.

A bit brighter but amber rose.

Kathy's trembling voice.

Please don't, please don't please please oh.

June took cover behind the door frame at the side with the hinges.

Hearing through the gap between door and jam she saw one night stand a lamp with a tasseled shade that was the source of part of the light.

A portion of an unmade bed.

But there was no sign of the killer or his captive.

She called the trolls name.

Mercer Gossage.

Come watch me kill this slut.

You showed.

It's over.

Mercer.

Over for you over for this whore I've got here.

I called for backup.

You lighting pig you didn't have time I cut the phone line.

Jack is dead.

Better go look again which Jack wears to wrist watches.

So fucking what.

Momma Dee Dee's New Orleans voodoo watch hill live for ever.

The twins bubble universe was constructed with elements of magical thinking.

Not.

Uncommon among homicidal sociopaths.

There should be a way to use that against him.

Come on.

Come watch me blow the brains out of this dirty little tease.

He had been the cruel master of his I select world in his mind as powerful as a god.

Now he's potency evaporated and he reached in denial of his reduced circumstances.

The only proof he had that his raiment not drawing to an end was this power to kill one more woman.

But he evidently needed Jane to witness his Olympian authority maybe because he thought that proving his continued ability to play the executioner would magically undo what change she had wrought in his universe would re inflate the bubble and restore his god like might resulting in her death as well.

Come in and watch me kill this snotty college slut.

What are you afraid of bitch afraid of being buried in a hog pen with the others you will be.

You will be.

I can I will in your grave before we close it up come look come see.

No.

Back up from the thinly staffed sheriff's department might take twelve to fifteen minutes to get there which meant she would be on her own for another nerve rattling seven minutes or more.

Now.

She abruptly dreaded hearing the approaching sirens because that sounds might bring home to Mercer Gossage the truth of his situation.

The fleet.

His faith in magic whereupon he might forego a witness and kill Kathy Haskell for sheer spite.

In a voice raw and demonic and hot with impatience.

Gossage shouted. Get in here you stupid twat.

Watch me do it watch me.

Watch me.

Judging by what Jane could see if the chamber beyond the threshold it was longer than the one in which she stood maybe thirty feet from the door to the back wall.

It would almost surely be about forty feet wide as was this front room.

Gossage wasn't going to be near the door.

He'd be holding the girl against him in a far corner the gun to our head.

As long as he used Kathy as his shield Jane wouldn't have a clear shot at him.

On the other hand he wasn't trained at Quantico wasn't top of the class in marksmanship and at a distance of thirty feet.

An inexperienced gunman would miss more often then hit his target.

Kathy cried out in pain and terror. He's bitting me, he's bitting me.

In mobility leads to a collapse of nerve to failure.

To death.

Get off the X. if you move you live you save lives.

He's still in a two handed grip chain shoulder to open the door and went into the rape room low and fast.

Chapter Nineteen.

Jane through the door lock in front of her taking in the entire scene at once amber rose lamplight. A bed with disheveled sheets and armchair a toilet sink to walls mirrored floor to ceiling.

In the farther corner the kidnapped girl wearing only panties Gossage behind her his left arm around her neck gun in his right hand its muzzle hard against her temple.

A cruel bite mark in the muscle of her right shoulder.

Blood oozing down her breast blood on Gossage's mouth and chin teeth glistening in a fierce grin.

He intended the bite to draw Jane into the room.

And here she was.

In fact two Janes herself and her image in one mirror.

She didn't like how frightened she looked sheen of sweat on her brow.

Gossage was maybe seven or eight inches taller than Kathy had exposed above the girls right shoulder.

But he rocked from side to side and forced her to sway with him.

Jane couldn't risk shot.

She took another step into the room.

The muzzle of Gossage's pistols slid from Kathy's temple to her jaw.

And the killer warned Jane.

Come an inch closer I blow off this whores jaw scatter her teeth and chunks of her tongue all over the room. Let her bleed out let her know excruciating pain.

Because you took an inch.

Jane said Tell me what I can do to stop this.

Nothing.

You want something from me are you already have done it.

I want you to stand there bitch stand right there until Jack comes up behind you then you can watch me kill her.

Two seconds later he'll blow your head off.

And.

Everything will be like it was.

Jack is dead.

Liar liar liar.

The clocks are ticking.

You brought some way bad mojo into the house but the clocks are ticking some forward some backward and you're no mama dee dee you're just a dumb twat with a badge.

Four years of holding absolute power over twenty one girls four years of indulging every demented fantasy of rape and torture four years of committing one atrocity after another with never a negative consequence had convinced him that Gossage farm was a world unto itself we're no transgression would be punished.

However.

Sirens were imminent.

When he heard the sirens.

The last of his delusions would expire.

His pent up rage and hatred purified and intensified through years of violence was like a brick of C4 explosive waiting for an electric spark.

When Mercer Gossage detonated he takes a girl out with him rather than die alone.

Jane had to do something to change the situation.

Play to his need to hold fast to his fool's paradise.

She said.

Kill me instead.

His grin settled into a contemptuous sneer.

What shit is this.

Let her go.

And I'll die for her.

I am supposed to believe.

You're some saints with great tits.

Somehow she had to craft this moment so that it flowed with the fluids strangeness of a dream.

Mercer Gossage had been living a dream for years a nightmare for his victims but a fantasy of supernatural power for him.

And lulling him into that waking dream state might make him over confident and prone to miscalculation.

She said.

Clocks are ticking forward and backward right.

There's no time here right.

Death doesn't happen here.

You kill me and I still live right.

Blank with sweat his hair fell into his face as he swayed back and forth with his hostage he shook his head.

It doesn't work that way.

So how's it work.

It only works that way for me and Jack.

He has the voodoo watchin I have mothers clocks and you don't have either you have nothing.

I think it works for me.

In fact.

I know it does.

Did it work for all the sluts buried in the hog pen go out there and ask those rotting whores if it works for them.

It only works for me.

And Jack.

Let her go Jane repeated.

And I'll die for her.

You must think I'm as brain dead as you are.

Jane slowly lowered the Glock.

She tossed it on the unmade bed.

The gun landed on the pillows too far for her to reach it easily.

He regarded her with disbelief.

You are one crazy fucking bitch.

Something's happening to me.

Something weird but good.

I feel all the clocks ticking Mercer I feel them in my bones.

She took a step toward him.

Don't you feel them checking in your bones.

In your blood.

there ticking ticking ticking inoculates me against time and aging and death.

Kathy Haskell wept either pleading with Mercer or warning off Jane.

No no no.

Do you hear momma Dee Dee Mercer.

Her sweet black voice soul of the boyou.

I feel the clocks in my bones and I hear mama date a whispering all the way from out there in New Orleans.

You don't know Mama Dee Dee you don't hear anything.Jane took another step.

I'm not like the girls in the hog pen.

I'm meant.

To be here as much as you and Jack are to live outside of time.

You said Jack is dead.

I thought he was.

I really did.

But now I know he's not.

I feel the ticking and I feel Jack rising.

She took another step.

Aware that she now cast two reflections one ahead of her another in the mirrored walls were left.

Mercer's back was against the first mayor so he cast a reflection only in the second.

Three Jane's.

Two Mercer's.

She dared not take another step yet.

There's three of me do you see.

Kill me here and I'll still live there kill me there.

And the third me still lives.

Kill the third and all come alive here again under the spell of the clocks.

Without Jack at his side Mercer's magical thinking was not easily sustained right now that Jane professed a new found faith in the power of the clocks and threw away the Glock to prove it Mercer's seems to feel a renewed hope.

He was desperate to believe that his bubble universe could be re inflated and his desperation combined with his confusion made him vulnerable.

The muzzle of the pistol remained against Kathy's jaw.

Your scamming me.

He said.

But It sounded more like a question than an accusation.

This cheap slut doesn't belong here Mercer.

I belong here.

She opens the top button on her un tucked blouse.

You and Jack and I belong here but she's just another piece of ass.

Jane opens the second button.

The third.

Dared to take another step.

And her fear swelled.

His mind was a snake's nest of uncountable sexual depravity is.

Rising with violent desres and intuition told Jane to play to.

That.

Part of him no less than to his serpent not of swarming superstitions.

His gaze fixed on the fullness of her breasts in the cups of her bra.

You could be Danica.

Nothing's been the same here.

Since Danica.

Are you Danica?

Jane had no idea who Danica might be.

Whether it was safe or dangerous to allude to being an incarnation of her.

What do you think Mercer.

Dtanica belong here.

Yes.

It was different with her.

Then kill me and see if I belong here.

If I belong here I can't be killed.

And I know I belong here.

I'm taking no risk at all.

Kill me Mercer.

And live here with me.

His expression was that of a man born on the vapors of a perplexing but and chanting dream.

As Jane close to within ten feet of him he turned his pistol away from Kathy.

Jane opens the last button on her blouse.

Kill me.

The barrel of his weapons one toward her.

She put her hand on the grip of Jack's pistol which she had tucked in the waistband of her jeans under her blouse.

Mercer moved in the laconic flow of a dream of power Jean moved with the fast forward efficiency learned in Quantico she.

Firing point blank in his face he reflexively squeezing off around that singed her hair as it passed a millimeter from her skull.

She cried out.

Shit shit shit.

As he collapsed backward into the corruption sludge that had once occupied his head and that now slid down the mirror.

Sirens wailed.

Kathy fled the corpse rushed into our rescuers arms holding the terrified girl Jane couldn't tell which of them was shaking the most although she.

Unlike Kathy wasn't trembling with residual terror but with relief and gratitude and with a humbling awareness that she hadn't failed this girl as so many years ago she had failed to ensure justice for her mother.

However.

As she helped Kathy dress.

James joy was tempered hard by the loss of Gary.

Fine man.

Good partner.

Friend.

By the thought of Rosalind left alone.

And by an awareness that what this young girl had suffered during the past six days would weigh upon her for the rest of her life.

Upstairs on their way to meet the county sheriff's deputies.

He stepped out of the house into a warm night.

In two wind scented with honeysuckle under a sky diamond it but the vast wealth of stars.

Into the moon lit world in all its stunning beauty.

Which.

Even the endless evil done by the worst of human kind.

Could not soil.

Or diminish.

Notes

1: This was transcribe by audio to text converter.

2: Not in paragraph form

3: Will have errors some corrected

Table of Contents

- Titlepage

- Chapter One.

- Chapter Two

- Chapter Three.

- Chapter Four

- Chapter Five.

- Chapter Six.

- Chapter Seven

- Chapter Eight

- Chapter Nine.

- Chapter Ten

- Chapter Eleven

- Chapter Twelve

- Chapter Thirteen.

- Chapter Fourteen.

- Chapter Fifteen.

- Chapter Sixteen.

- Chapter Seventeen.

- Chapter Eighteen.

- Chapter Nineteen.

- Notes