Killers Read online

  a sequel to Serial by

  BLAKE CROUCH & JACK KILBORN

  INTRODUCTION

  PART ONE: Lucy

  PART TWO: Donaldson

  PART THREE: Together at Last

  AFTERWORD

  Excerpt: SERIAL UNCUT

  Excerpt: SERIAL UNCUT, Part One, Tampa, 1978

  Excerpt: BREAK YOU

  About the Authors

  Also by the Authors

  The original version of SERIAL was a 7500-word horror short story written as an experiment. In less than a year, that experiment was downloaded over 300,000 times, and has received over a hundred scathingly negative reviews, with many people claiming it was the most depraved, awful thing they’ve ever read.

  But there were also those who wanted more. We expanded the scope of SERIAL and added new content, creating SERIAL UNCUT, which was over 30,000 words.

  Readers demanded a sequel.

  Which brings us to KILLERS, an 18,000-word novella. Even though SERIAL UNCUT seemed to end on a final note, there was still more to reveal about Donaldson and Lucy. A lot more…

  If you can handle horrific thrills, proceed at your own risk. But if you suffer from anxiety attacks, nervous disorders, insomnia, nightmares or night terrors, heart palpitations, stomach problems, or are of an overly sensitive nature, you should read something else instead.

  The authors are in no way responsible for any lost sleep, missed work, failed relationships, or difficulty in coping with life after you have read KILLERS. They will not pay for any therapy you may require as a result of reading KILLERS. They will not cradle you in their arms, rock you back and forth, and speak in soothing tones while you unsuccessfully try to forget KILLERS.

  You have been warned…

  Love,

  Blake Crouch & Jack Kilborn

  February, 2011

  Lucy

  Where am I?

  Think.

  Think.

  Think…

  Lucy opened her eyes to a blurry brightness.

  Couldn’t feel a thing but the weight of her eyelids.

  Her first conscious thought was that she’d been drugged, and if that was the case, this made only the third time she’d lowered her guard enough to let that happen. Normally, she didn’t party with guys she picked up. Sure, she’d sip a beer, pretend to take a toke off a joint—never inhaled—but for her, inebriation itself was worthless. She’d never understood what people saw in getting stoned and drunk. It only dulled the senses, and for her, intensity was everything.

  If they’d drugged her, then they’d probably raped her and beat the shit out of her, too.

  And she wouldn’t begrudge them if they had.

  Good for them.

  This wasn’t her first rodeo, and if someone had found a way to slip something into a drink or otherwise incapacitate her before she did the same to them…

  Then kudos.

  Hats off.

  But the hole in her memory was just so gaping she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe she’d let herself get drugged.

  No, something else had happened.

  Something much, much worse.

  Slowly, images were beginning to sharpen all around her.

  A black cube up in the corner near the ceiling that she realized was a television set.

  Empty chairs.

  The railing of a…bed…she was lying in a bed, and those things wrapped in red and brown stained bandages were her legs. In four places, black foam dressing had been taped to her appendages and drainage tubes arched out of them.

  An IV stand loomed above her, and several bags filled with clear liquid dangled from its hooks, running their contents down various intravenous lines into her left arm.

  A heart monitor behind the stand displayed her rate and rhythm.

  Her nose itched, and when she tried to raise her left arm to scratch it, something arrested the movement—her wrist was handcuffed to the railing.

  The door to her hospital room stood open, and sitting just outside was a pudgy lawman in a khaki uniform, reading Guns & Ammo. His gun—looked like a .40 mil subcompact Glock from her vantage point—bulged off his right hip next to a can of pepper spray and a sheathed baton.

  What the hell happened?

  Or perhaps more appropriate…What the hell did I do?

  She wasn’t in any discomfort. The only pain of note was a steady, subtle burn in her urethra, which, to be honest, felt just a little bit nice. The kind of thing she could get off on under the right circumstances.

  Then again, she’d always had a soft spot for catheters.

  She wiggled her bottom, and a burning flush crept up her tailbone.

  Lucy glanced down at her right hand.

  Thank God.

  A morphine pump.

  She squeezed the button.

  The push was immediate.

  Numbness shooting down into her veins, filling her head to toe.

  Floating.

  Both weightless and sinking at the same time…the mattress and pillows slowly swallowing her.

  She felt relaxed and faintly itchy, and three words crossed her mind before she lost consciousness again.

  Sweetest. Death. Ever.

  The next time she regained consciousness, a doctor was standing bedside, studying a chart.

  He was broad-shouldered and handsome in a boxy, unoriginal sort of way she’d never been attracted to.

  Lots of right angles.

  Bland good looks.

  Quarterback handsome.

  When he saw that she was awake, he lowered the chart and said, “Kurt Lanz, M.D. How you feeling?”

  She had to swallow before she could answer.

  “My peehole really hurts.”

  “Want me to take a look?”

  “Would you mind?”

  Dr. Lanz lifted her hospital gown, and though that prevented Lucy from seeing what he was doing, she felt a slight tug around her urethra. He seemed to fiddle with it longer than needed.

  The perv.

  “Might be a bacterial infection from the catheter,” he said. “I’ll have a nurse replace it.”

  “Thank you. Where am I?”

  He dropped her gown. “Blessed Crucifixion Hospital in Durango, Colorado. You were airlifted here two nights ago.”

  “What happened to me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head.

  Dr. Lanz glanced over his shoulder at the deputy outside the door.

  “I think the Feds want to be the first to actually talk with you about the accident, but I can go over your injuries.”

  Feds?

  “Frankly, you’re lucky to be alive. You suffered a hairline fracture to the skull. Broken nose. You lost your two upper, front incisors. Sustained severe lacerations and abrasions to your back and legs.”

  “How severe?”

  “When you were dragged, the pavement essentially peeled away your skin over approximately eighteen percent of your body. You’ve already been through two surgeries that saved your legs, but you’re going to need extensive debridement and skins grafts. Right now, we have you on a regiment of negative pressure wound therapy. We can talk more about this tomorrow. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

  Lucy swallowed. I bet I look so pretty.

  “Any broken bones, Doc?”

  “Your coccyx took a savage beating.”

  “My coccyx?”

  “Your tailbone. It was—I don’t know exactly how to put this—ground down as you were dragged across the pavement.”

  Lucy smiled. “You’re telling me I lost my ass?”

  Lanz flashed a high-beam, soap-opera-star smile.

  “About fifteen percent of it. But considering the car dragged you through a guardrail and do
wn the side of a mountain, I can’t quite wrap my head around how you survived. You’re a lucky young woman.”

  Lucy squeezed out a single tear that slid down her left cheek. She forced a sniffle. “I don’t feel so lucky right now.”

  Lanz reached forward and touched her cuffed hand, running a finger across her thumb.

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  “How does my face look?”

  She registered the arousal in his eyes, his pupils dilating—a small tell, but one she’d learned to read. If a guy was trying to fuck you, that lowered a lot of defenses.

  “You’re still stunningly beautiful,” Lanz said. “Just don’t smile until we find you some new teeth.”

  Lucy smiled with her lips together, made herself blush.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Honey, what’s your name? You didn’t have any identification on you.”

  “Lucy,” she said.

  “Lucy what?”

  “Just…Lucy.”

  “You’re not wanting to tell me, or you don’t remember, or—”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Hmm. Could be some retrograde amnesia. It’ll probably clear up. You didn’t sustain a traumatic brain injury. Is there any family I should call? Just to let them know you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “No one who’d care.”

  “Oh, I don’t see how that could possibly be true.” He winked at her and wiped the tear off her face. “There’s a man outside waiting to speak with you. You feel up to that?”

  “Sure.”

  “The media has taken an interest in you being here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but I want you to know that aside from your physical needs, your privacy in this hospital is our utmost concern. We won’t let anyone from the press bother you.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “I’ll be back to check on you within the hour. You need anything in the meantime, just buzz Nurse Winslow.”

  Lucy watched Lanz turn away and head back through the door into the corridor.

  The morphine must have been waning because she noted a subtle sting beginning to encompass her entire body. She activated the pump again and the drug hit her bloodstream just as a black-suited man strolled into her hospital room, closing the door after him.

  He dragged a chair over from underneath the television set and unbuttoned his black jacket as he eased down into the chair.

  Lucy studied him through the opiate fog.

  He was lanky with short, dark hair.

  A perfect shave.

  Underneath that suit, she would’ve bet he owned a pair of thin, muscular arms. Wiry strength. Scrappy. A fighter when it came down to it. God, she would’ve loved to have encountered him in a hotel bar. She’d have marked him as a lawman right away—he had superficially cold eyes from his training. From the Academy and possibly a few years in state law enforcement. Maybe law school. From toting that big badge around and all the bullshit respect he’d convinced himself he deserved. But there wasn’t real ice underneath. Just a thin, crusty layer that she could’ve shattered in about thirty seconds.

  In her entire life, she’d only seen real ice, deep ice, in a handful of people.

  “Special Agent Raymond Nash,” he said, flipping open a black, leather wallet and flashing his credentials.

  “Hi, Special Agent Nash.”

  “Are you cogent enough to speak with me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  Lucy smiled. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here. Like how I got here, I mean.”

  “You have no memory of the accident?”

  “No sir, Special Agent Nash.”

  She thought her voice sounded all right—a husky girlishness, her just-woke-up voice, the kind of voice Agent Nash would probably imagine begging him to stop while he turned her over his knee and spanked the eighty-five percent of her bottom she could still call her own.

  He stared at her through those hard, unblinking eyes and said, “You were found at the bottom of a ravine, chained to the back of a car. You’d been dragged for two miles down a rough country road. The car crashed through a guardrail and took you and another man for a three hundred-foot ride down a mountainside.”

  In an instant, it all returned to her.

  Donaldson—now there was a man with ice eyes. Deep ice eyes.

  She recalled the car ride.

  His trick seatbelt.

  Drugging him.

  Hiding from him.

  Overcoming him.

  Helmeting him.

  She’d had him all set to go for a nice little road trip, but he’d handcuffed her leg at the last second and then the parking brake on his cheap-ass Honda had failed.

  A smile came at the memory of the pain.

  Two of the longest miles of her life.

  Her last memory—striking the guardrail at thirty miles per hour.

  Nothing after.

  “Who was I with, Special Agent Nash?” she asked.

  “Just Agent Nash is fine.”

  “You aren’t special?”

  He didn’t acknowledge her playfulness, only said, “You don’t remember?”

  “No, sir. Doctor Lanz told me I suffered a hairline fracture to my skull and that maybe it gave me amnesia or something.”

  If this frustrated Nash, he didn’t show it.

  “You were with a man named Gregory Donaldson. Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name. Was he injured, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Badly?”

  “I would be in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to disclose any information regarding his condition.”

  “We wouldn’t want that. Can you at least tell me if he’s, like, alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  Lucy realized there was a question she should have asked the moment the agent had come into the room, wondered if Nash had noticed that she hadn’t.

  “Why am I handcuffed to the bed?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. The man you were with, Mr. Donaldson—he’s a killer. The car that you were dragged behind was in his name, and we found evidence of multiple crimes inside.”

  “Crimes?”

  “Murders.”

  “Do you think he was trying to kill me?” She let her voice wander up an octave. “Could that be why I don’t remember? Because I was, like, traumatized and stuff?”

  “You didn’t have any identification on you when the paramedics arrived.” Nash fished a notepad out of an inner pocket of his jacket and clicked a pen. “What’s your name?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy what?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Nash just stared at her for a moment.

  “Are you being straight with me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Because this is a serious situation we got here. See, I’m what they call at the Bureau, a soft touch. But my partner, Penington, isn’t. He’s, to be blunt, kind of a dick. My point is…you want to be dealing with me, Lucy. And I want to help you, but I can’t if you lie to me. Penington deals with the liars.”

  Lucy shut her eyes and thought about her father.

  When she opened them again, a sheet of tears had formed across the surface of her eyes.

  She waited five seconds, and then blinked.

  Two trails started down her cheeks.

  It only lasted for a second, but she saw a flicker pass across Nash’s face—a millisecond of softening.

  Compassion.

  So he had a heart. But then again, most people did.

  She had him.

  “I’ll be back here tomorrow,” Nash said.

  I won’t.

  He rose, buttoned his jacket.

  “You better start remembering some things, Lucy.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll try.”

  He gave her a curt nod and strode out the door into the hallway, where he muttered something in passing to the deputy. Lucy let her mind drift.

  Donaldson.

  She smiled, wondering how badly he’d been injured. God, she hoped he wasn’t in a coma. That would be absolutely no fun at all. Vegetables didn’t feel fear. You couldn’t look in their eyes and watch the life leave or the pain come.

  Lucy thought about her guitar case, wondering if they’d found it. If she had any luck at all, the thing had been destroyed in the wreckage. Under the velvet lining, there were photographs—she was even in a few of them. Then there was that weathered copy of Andrew Z. Thomas’s novel, The Passenger, signed to her and referencing that Indianapolis mystery convention she’d attended fourteen years ago as a young girl.

  Great convention—she’d met Luther Kite and Orson Thomas there, two men who’d forever changed her life.

  If a smart lawman saw that book, they’d make the connection.

  She had to get out of this room.

  Deal with Donaldson.

  Escape.

  Lucy pressed the NURSE CALL button, and fifteen seconds later a rail of a woman breezed into her room.

  She checked the IV bags and heart monitor before turning her attention to Lucy.

  “I’m Janine Winslow,” she said. “What’s going on, sweetie? You in pain?”

  “My catheter hurts.”

  “Really?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “You’re staying on top of your morphine pump?”

  “Yes, but it really hurts,” Lucy lied. “It burns.”

  Winslow furrowed her brow. “Dr. Lanz gave you your nerve block less than two hours ago. You shouldn’t be feeling anything at all.”

  “What’s a nerve block?”

  “A combination of lidocaine, corticosteroids, and epinephrine. Without a shot every twelve hours, you’d be in agony.”

  “I thought that’s what the morphine pump is for.”

  “That’s just to take the edge off. The nerve block is what’s keeping you from screaming hysterically.”

  “Can you take it out?” Lucy asked.

  “Take what out?”

  “The catheter. So I can use the bathroom.”

  “You can’t walk to the bathroom with the condition your legs are in.”

  “I’m sure I can make it.”

  The nurse swept her hair out of her eyes. “Lucy, you haven’t seen your legs yet, have you?”