Excerpts

Chapter One Dying is a lonely thing. Then again, so is living. We all spend our lives alone inside our heart of hearts. However much we share with those we love, we always hold something back. Sometimes it's a small thing, like a woman remembering a secret but long-gone love. She tells her husband she's never loved anyone more than him, and she speaks the literal truth. But she has loved someone as much as him. Sometimes it's a big thing, a huge thing, a monster that cuddles up next to us and licks us between the shoulder blades. A man, while in college, witnesses a gang rape but never steps forward. Years later that man becomes the father of a daughter. The more he loves her, the worse the guilt, but still, still, still, he'll never tell. Torture and death before that truth. In the late hours, the ones when everyone's alone, those secrets come knocking. Some knock hard and some knock soft, but whispering or screeching, they come. No locked door will keep them out; they have the key to us. We speak to them or plead with them or scream at them and we wish we could tell them to someone, that we could get them off our chest to just one person and feel relief. We toss in bed or we walk the halls or we get drunk or we get stoned or we howl at the moon. Then the dawn comes and we shush them up and gather them back into our heart of hearts and do our best to carry on with living. Success at that endeavor depends on the size of the secret and the individual. Not everyone is built for guilt. Young or old, man or woman, everyone has secrets. This I have learned, this I have experienced, this I know about myself. Everyone. I look down at the dead girl on the metal table and wonder: What secrets did you take with you that no one will ever know? She's far, far too young to be gone. In her early twenties. Beautiful. Long, dark, straight hair. She has skin the color of light coffee, and it looks smooth and flawless even under these harsh fluorescents. Pretty, delicate features go with the skin: vaguely Latin, I think, mixed with something else. Probably Anglo. Her lips have gone pale in death, but they are full without being too full, and I imagine them in a smile that was a precursor to a laugh; light but melodic. She's small and thin through the sheet that covers her from the neck down. The murdered move me. Good or bad, they had hopes and dreams and loves. They once lived, like all of us, in a world where the deck is stacked against living. Between cancer or crashes on the freeway or dropping dead of a heart attack with a glass of wine in your hand and a strangled smile on your face, the world gives us plenty of chances to die. Murderers cheat the system, help things along, rob the victims of something it's already a fight to keep. This offends me. I hated it the first time I saw it and I hate it even more now. I have been dealing with death for a long time. I am posted in the Los Angeles branch of the FBI and for the last twelve years I have headed up a team responsible for handling the worst of the worst in Southern California. Serial killers. Child rapists and murderers. Men who laugh as they torture women and then groan as they have sex with the corpses. I hunt living nightmares and it's always terrible, but it's also everywhere and inevitable. Which is why I have to ask the question. "Sir? What are we doing here?" Assistant Director Jones is my longtime mentor, my boss, and the head of all FBI activities in Los Angeles. The problem though, the reason for my maybe-callous query, is that we're not in Los Angeles. We're in Virginia, near Washington, DC. This poor woman may be dead, the fact of her death may touch me, but she's not one of mine. He gives me a sideways glance, part thoughtful, maybe a little bit annoyed. AD Excerpted from The Darker Side: A Thriller by Cody McFadyen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.