City of the Lost (Casey Duncan #1)(38)
I fill our shot glasses halfway. He takes his. We drink them. Not a word exchanged for at least two minutes afterward, until he says, “I’ll come by at ten. Yeah, not a lot of time to sleep …”
“But we have a manhunt to launch. I know.”
He nods and leaves without another word. I lock the door behind him, settle on the couch in front of the blazing fire, and soon fall asleep.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the internationally bestselling author of the thirteen-book Women of the Otherworld series, the Nadia Stafford crime novels and a new series set in the fictional town of Cainsville, Illinois, which includes the novels Omens, Visions and Deceptions. She is also the author of three bestselling young adult trilogies, and the YA suspense thriller, The Masked Truth. She lives in rural Ontario.
PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA Copyright ? 2015 K.L.A. Fricke Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2015 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House company. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Armstrong, Kelley, author
City of the lost : part three / Kelley Armstrong.
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-81617-7
Cover design by Terri Nimmo
Image credits: Foxes ? Potatpov Alexander / Shutterstock; skulls ? Korinoxe / Dreamstime
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Previously in City of the Lost
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Previously, in City of the Lost…
To protect Diana from her vengeful ex, Casey strikes a deal with Rockton’s enigmatic and short-tempered sheriff, Eric Dalton. Together, Casey and Diana successfully disappear to the remote town.
When she gets there, Casey learns that Rockton may need her just as much as she needs it—a man’s been murdered, and she’s the new detective in town.
Before she’s even had time to take a tour of the place, Isabel, the owner of a local bar, whisks her away to break up a fight. Mid-brawl, Eric arrives and arrests Jerry Hastings, a man suspected of making Rydex, the powerful new drug sweeping the isolated community.
Casey soon learns that not everyone in Rockton is there for a good reason. Harry Powys—the murder victim—had once performed illegal organ transplants, often killing his patients. Powys had actually paid off council members so he could hide from the consequences in Rockton. To make it more confusing, an autopsy reveals that Powys may have been killed—and dismembered—by hostile cannibals.
But Casey has no time to process these troubling developments. Hastings has also gone missing, and Casey, Eric, and the deputy, Will Anders, embark on a manhunt in the surrounding forest. When Casey finds a skull and two bloodied legs nailed to a tree, she knows one thing for sure: A killer is loose in Rockton.
One
I only get a few hours’ sleep after our manhunt, and I’m awake by the time the sun’s up. I make breakfast before I head out. It’s simple fare: toast and a hard-boiled egg. Well, actually, the toast is just bread with peanut butter after I burned two slices trying to brown them on the wood stove. I planned to have a fried egg, but that seemed to be pushing my luck. Figuring out the French press coffee maker had been tough enough, so I just used the leftover water for boiling my egg.
Fortunately, between what Anders has said and what Dalton explained on the drive, my poor camp-cook skills wouldn’t be a serious drawback in Rockton. There are three restaurants plus a place that does takeout only. That’s not so much a matter of convenience as conservation of resources—you’ll waste less buying a precooked meal for one than cooking for one. The chefs are also more flexible and more skilled at making the substitutions necessary under these conditions.
Anders says the restaurant food is reasonably priced. Just don’t expect the menu to be vast. Or to find the same thing on it from one day to the next. Again, it’s a matter of availability and conservation. Right now, blueberries are just ending their local season, so I have a box on my counter, but in another week the only way I’ll be able to get them is in jam, which the local cooks are madly bottling as the picking expeditions clear all nearby patches.
I finish my breakfast, and I’m at the office before nine. I figure Dalton will put some time in before he picks me up at ten, and I’m like the little girl who chases after her big brothers to prove she can do anything they can. I spent my youth refusing to live up to the standards set by my parents and my sister, and ironically, I spend my adult life chasing my colleagues. At least here I have a chance, so I pursue my goals with a childhood of repressed ambition fuelling my fire.