“How did you know that?”
“I know many things, Andrew.”
“I have a book coming out,” I pleaded. “I’ve got readings scheduled. My agent-”
“Lie to her.”
“She won’t understand me just leaving like this.”
“Fuck Cynthia Mathis. You lie to her for your safety, because if I even suspect you’ve brought someone along or that someone knows, you’ll go to jail or you’ll die. One or the other, guaranteed. And I hope you aren’t stupid enough to trace this number. I promise you it’s stolen.”
“How do I know I won’t be hurt?”
“You don’t. But if I get off the phone with you and I’m not convinced you’ll be on that flight, I’ll call the police tonight. Or I may visit you while you’re sleeping. You’ve got to put that Smith and Wesson away sometime.”
I stood up and spun around, the gun clenched in my sweaty hands. The house was silent, though chimes on the deck were clanging in a zephyr. I looked through the large living room windows at the black lake, its wind-rippled surface reflecting the pier lights. The blue light at the end of Walter’s pier shone out across the water from a distant inlet. His “Gatsby light,” we called it. My eyes scanned the grass and the edge of the trees, but it was far too dark to see anything in the woods.
“I’m not in the house,” he said. “Sit down.”
I felt something well up inside of me-anger at the fear, rage at this injustice.
“Change of plan,” I said. “I’m going to hang up, dial nine one one, and take my chances. You can go-”
“If you aren’t motivated by self-preservation, there’s an old woman named Jeanette I could-”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Sixty-five, lives alone, I think she’d love the company. What do you think? Do I have to visit your mother to show you I’m serious? What is there to consider? Tell me you’ll be on that plane, Andrew. Tell me so I don’t have to visit your mother tonight.”
“I’ll be on that plane.”
The phone clicked, and he was gone.
LOCKED DOORS
Published July 2005 by Thomas Dunne Books
DESCRIPTION: Seven years ago, suspense novelist Andrew Thomas’s life was shattered when he was framed for a series of murders. The killer’s victims were unearthed on Andrew’s lakefront property, and since he was wanted by the FBI, Andrew had no choice but to flee and to create a new identity. Andrew does just that in a cabin tucked away in the remote wilderness near Haines Junction, Yukon. His only link to society is by e-mail, through which he learns that all the people he ever loved are being stalked and murdered. Culminating in the spooky and secluded Outer Banks of North Carolina, the paths of Andrew Thomas, a psychotic named Luther Kite, and a young female detective collide. Locked Doors is a novel of blistering suspense that will scare you to death.
Crouch quite simply is a marvel. Locked Doors is as good as anything I’ve read all year, a stay-up-all-night thriller that will have you chewing your fingers down to the nub even as you’re reading its last paragraph. Highest possible recommendation.
BOOKREPORTER
Palpable suspense. Non-stop action. Relentless and riveting. Blake Crouch is the most exciting new thriller writer I’ve read in years.
DAVID MORRELL
Excerpt from Locked Doors…
The headline on the Arts and Leisure page read: Publisher to Reissue Five Thrillers by Alleged Murderer Andrew Z. Thomas.
All it took was seeing his name.
Karen Prescott dropped The New York Times and walked over to the window.
Morning light streamed across the clutter of her cramped office--query letters and sample chapters stacked in two piles on the floor beside the desk, a box of galleys shoved under the credenza. She peered out the window and saw the fog dissolving, the microscopic crawl of traffic now materializing on Broadway through the cloud below.
Leaning against a bookcase that housed many of the hardcovers she’d guided to publication, Karen shivered. The mention of Andrew’s name always unglued her.
For two years she’d been romantically involved with the suspense novelist and had even lived with him during the writing of Blue Murder at the same lake house in North Carolina where many of his victims were found.
She considered it a latent character defect that she’d failed to notice anything sinister in Andy beyond a slight reclusive tendency.
My God, I almost married him.
She pictured Andy reading to the crowd in that Boston bookshop the first time they met. In a bathrobe writing in his office as she brought him fresh coffee (French roast, of course). Andy making love to her in a flimsy rowboat in the middle of Lake Norman.
She thought of his dead mother.
The exhumed bodies from his lakefront property.
His face on the FBI website.
They’d used his most recent jacket photo, a black-and-white of Andy in a sports jacket sitting broodingly at the end of his pier.
During the last few years she’d stopped thinking of him as Andy. He was Andrew Thomas now and embodied all the horrible images the cadence of those four syllables invoked.
There was a knock.
Scott Boylin, publisher of Ice Blink Press’s literary imprint, stood in the doorway dressed in his best bib and tucker. Karen suspected he was gussied up for the Doubleday party.
He smiled, waved with his fingers.
She crossed her arms, leveled her gaze.
God, he looked streamlined today--very tall, fit, crowned by thick black hair with dignified intimations of silver.
He made her feel little. In a good way. Because Karen stood nearly six feet tall, few men towered over her. She loved having to look up at Scott.
They’d been dating clandestinely for the last four months. She’d even given him a key to her apartment, where they spent countless Sundays in bed reading manuscripts, the coffee-stained pages scattered across the sheets.
But last night she’d seen him at a bar in SoHo with one of the cute interns. Their rendezvous did not look work-related.
“Come to the party with me,” he said. “Then we’ll go to Il Piazza. Talk this out. It’s not what you--”
“I’ve got tons of reading to catch up--”
“Don’t be like that, Karen. Come on.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have this conversation here, so . . .”
He exhaled sharply through his nose and the door closed hard behind him.
Joe Mack was stuffing his pink round face with a gyro when his cell phone started ringing to the tune of “Staying Alive.”
He answered, cheeks exploding with food, “This Joe.”
“Hi, yes, um, I’ve got a bit of an interesting problem.”
“Whath?”
“Well, I’m in my apartment, but I can’t get the deadbolt to turn from the inside.”
Joe Mack choked down a huge mouthful, said, “So you’re locked in.”
“Exactly.”
“Which apartment?” He didn’t even try to mask the annoyance in his voice.
“Twenty-two eleven.”
“Name?”
“Um . . . I’m not the tenant. I’m Karen Prescott’s friend. She’s the--”
“Yeah, I get it. You need to leave anytime soon?”
“Well, yeah, I don’t want to--”
Joe Mack sighed, closed the cell phone, and devoured the last of the gyro.
Wiping his hands on his shirt, he heaved himself from a debilitated swivel chair and lumbered out of the office, locking the door behind him.
The lobby was quiet for midday and the elevator doors spread as soon as he pressed the button. He rode up wishing he’d bought three gyros for lunch instead of two.