The Breathtaker (33 page)

With a gathering sense of optimism, she stepped out of the shower and dried herself off with a terrycloth bath towel, then put on the extra-large T-shirt she used as a nightgown. Constantly aware of Anna all along the edges of herself, Daisy collapsed back in bed, heart racing, and had a hopeful image of her sister taking refuge in some local homeless shelter or halfway house. Once or twice a year back in Edgewater, after she and Lily had had a particularly bad fight, Anna would sometimes freak out and disappear. But they always knew where to look for her—at her best friend Maranda’s house, or else the Edgewater Presbyterian church or the local battered women’s shelter. Anna always showed up eventually, like a cat.

Soon Daisy was sound asleep, dreaming of the flight out to Los Angeles, of the dark earth below and the man seated next to her.
Bram. Short for Bramwell
. In her dream, he grew horns, and the peanuts he offered her looked like miniature penises.

She woke up in a clammy sweat. It was dark outside, still the middle of the night. She switched on her bedside lamp and stretched, contrasting the paleness of her skin with the dark blue of the motel wall. There was a pattern of miniature gold anchors on the blue background. She’d always envied her sister’s close relationship with their mother. Lily and Anna had the biggest case of love-hate Daisy had ever witnessed. She was always getting caught in the middle of their feuds and taking frantic phone calls from one or the other.
She’s doing this, she did that, she said blah blah blah
. Still, Daisy envied their bond. Sometimes she felt as if her entire life had been swallowed up by Anna’s problems.
How’s Anna? What’re we going to do about Anna? What’s wrong with Anna?
From the time she was eight or nine,
ad nauseam, ad infinitum
. Daisy and Lily rarely had a conversation that didn’t revolve around her younger sister.

Suddenly thirsty, she remembered the soda machine in the front office and got out of bed. Pulling on a pair of jeans, she left the security of her cabin for the vastness of the arid hot night. She had once heard that Los Angeles was seventy suburbs in search of a city, and she was somewhere in the middle of that lostness now, surrounded by concrete and glass. Out here, everything was called something-wood:
Brentwood, Hollywood, Inglewood
. And where were these so-called woods? All she could see were two rows of palm trees running along the spine of Santa Monica Boulevard, swaying in the balmy breeze. The palm trees, stamped against the night sky, reminded her of movie props. Back in Boston, it was probably snowing, the New England sky dropping more and more inches, as if it wanted to obliterate spring.

The deserted front office behind the Moorish-style fence and plastic-webbed lawn chairs was brightly lit. “Hello?” Daisy said, but the office was empty. She found the soda machine, inserted a few quarters, and out clunked a can of ginger ale. On her way back to her cabin, the asphalt’s warmth surprised her. She padded along in her bare feet, while a Buick Regal drove past, casting a large shadow across the motel’s facade. Her own shadow grew like a cornstalk, then slid sideways in the headlights’ glare as the car sped on down the boulevard. These shadows were reborn again as another car drove past, detritus stirring and skittering in its wake.

Back inside the false security of her cabin, Daisy took a seat in a moldy-feeling armchair and drank her soda, gripped by an undefined panic. There was nothing to do now but wait. She rubbed her shivering arms. It was too early to call Lily. She had to fix her eyes on something. Anything. Fear was a slippery incline. She turned on the TV set and wrapped her arms around her knees. She had brought the smell of outside in, her molecules mingling with the heavy metals of this polluted city.

“STUNNING.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“BRILLIANT.”

—
New York Daily News

“A KNOCKOUT.”

—
San Jose Mercury News

“EXCEPTIONAL.”

—
Denver Rocky Mountain News

“FANTASTIC.”

—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A SHOCKER.”

—
Publishers Weekly

From the award-winning author of
Darkness Peering
comes a tale of murder in the heart of tornado country…

THE
Breathtaker

A mammoth twister tears through the sleepy town of Promise, Oklahoma, and leaves behind three mutilated bodies in a ravaged farmhouse. Police Chief Charlie Grover believes the victims were impaled by flying debris…until gruesome evidence comes to light, proving that they were brutally murdered. How could the killer predict exactly when and where a tornado would strike and use it to cover his tracks?

With the aid of a tornado-chasing scientist, Charlie delves into a high-tech, high-risk search for a cunning criminal—one who may be stalking Charlie and his own daughter. For this is a predator unlike any other: one who conspires with the ferocious power of nature to commit and conceal unspeakable crimes
.