Midnight Betrayal (Midnight #3)(86)

Her captor leaned in. The light glittered on a knife. Louisa pulled her legs up and kicked out. Her feet connected, and she knocked the figure backward.

“You bitch.”

Louisa froze. She knew that voice. But it was impossible.

A knife flicked out, severing the thin plastic tie that bound Louisa’s ankles. A gun was pointed directly in Louisa’s face. “Get out of the car.”

Shock paralyzed Louisa. Had her ears been affected by the electricity?

“Now.” The gun shook with erratic motions.

Louisa wiggled to the edge of the seat and sat up. A fiery pins-and-needles sensation burned through her feet as she flexed her ankles. Her bound hands behind her back impeded her movements. With an awkward heave, she lurched to her feet. Dizziness swirled in her head. She had to be wrong. She squinted into the darkness.

“Move.” The figure motioned forward with the muzzle of the gun. Louisa looked up at a crumbling old row home. In the darkness, all she could see was the outline of the building against the sky. The roofline appeared to have significant gaps. A dog barked in the distance.

With a prod from the gun, Louisa stumbled into a narrow alley that ran between buildings. With the muzzle pressing hard into her back, she climbed three cement steps and pushed open a door. Her mind reeled. The stench of garbage and human waste assaulted her nostrils as she crossed an unstable floor, the wood creaking and shifting under her feet. She walked toward a faint glow. A doorway led to a wooden stairwell.

“Downstairs.”

The shove sent her tumbling. She flipped once. Her head struck a tread, and the faint light faded to blackness.



Camden, New Jersey, jockeyed with Detroit and Flint, Michigan, for the highest per capita murder rate in the nation. With boarded-up factories, plenty of vacant row homes, and crack houses, Camden was a model of urban blight. After Conor passed the demolished Sears building, he exited Admiral Wilson Boulevard onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. Once he drove through the public facade of Camden, the refaced buildings and inset brick crosswalks that marked the new city center, he emerged into the heart of the city, a heart that could use a thousand-way coronary bypass.

Conor pulled over and turned on the dome light. He counted the streets past Broadway, drove through three more intersections, and turned right. Before he navigated the next two turns, he turned off his headlights and crawled forward in the dark. The Porsche bumped along. The paved-over backstreet was worn down in spots to its original cobblestones.

Boarded-up row houses lined the street. An occasional chain-link fence corralled God-knew-what. Buildings slated for eventual demolition were tagged with red-and-white signs. A house with fresh paint on the door and flowers in urns on the step was the saddest sight of all, a sign that someone cared. The streetlights were dark. Half the lots were vacant and knee-high with weeds. On the left, a six-foot rusted privacy fence ran the length of the street. Dogs barked behind it.

Several wrong turns wasted precious time. The star on the map was just up the block. Conor pulled over behind a Dumpster.

He called Detective Jackson again, this time leaving a detailed message with the address of the mapped star. The Philly cops would have to coordinate with the Camden police. Conor didn’t have time for any of that bullshit. If Louisa was here, he’d find her.

Then he got out of his car, opened the trunk for the tire iron, and headed toward the boarded-up brick row home halfway down the block. He paused, hiding behind a rusted Cadillac on blocks, and sized up the house. Bricks crumbled. Graffiti covered most of the surfaces.

Tire iron in hand, Conor crept toward the side of the house. Like all the others, the side window was boarded up.

Sweat trickled down his back, and his heart thudded, loud as a bass line. But now was his chance to check inside. Moving toward the rear of the building, he climbed the cracked cement stoop and checked the door. Unlocked. He pulled it open. The inside was beyond dark. No moonlight penetrated the boarded-up windows. He stepped to the side and listened, easing the door closed behind him. The inside of the house was dead silent. He didn’t even hear any rats or insects rustling around.

He gave his eyes and ears a few minutes to adjust, but he still couldn’t see six inches in front of his face. There was zero light for his desperate pupils to absorb. Conor pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it an arm’s length away, and turned on the screen. Nothing attacked him. He let out his breath. He brightened the display and swept it around the space. More graffiti tags decorated the walls. Trash, a rotted mattress, and bottles littered the floor. The odors of feces and urine burned his nostrils. He shined his phone at the floor. Something had been dragged through the dirt. Stepping around a scattering of used needles, Conor followed the path to a doorway. Stairs descended into the black cellar.

He turned up his phone’s brightness to maximum and started down the steps.



Pain lanced behind Louisa’s eyeballs and swelled in her temples, radiating downward through most of her body. She cracked an eyelid to total darkness. Judging from the hard coldness seeping through her clothes, she was lying on cement. A basement? Curled on her side, she wriggled, but she could barely move. Her hands and feet were bound and fastened to something solid behind her back. She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t. She moved her lips. Something sticky tore at her skin. Tape.

Where was she? What had happened?

As she lay still, a memory pushed past the agony in her head. The museum. She’d gotten into the town car and . . .