The Darkness Gathers: A Novel Read online

  Praise for

  the darkness gathers

  “Tough but tender—a harrowing ride in the company of Lydia Strong, one of my favorite new characters, by one of my favorite new writers.”

  —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author

  “Once in a while a mystery novel appears that has everything you want and more: gutsy, complicated characters, a rocket-paced story that hardly gives you time to catch your breath, and twists and turns you never see coming. This is that novel.… The Darkness Gathers is flat-out terrific.”

  —Margaret Coel, New York Times bestselling author

  “Fast-paced mystery … the tension is palpable.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  “Taut and suspenseful.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Miscione appeared on the thriller scene a year ago with the widely acclaimed Angel Fire and should garner equally enthusiastic reviews for her second … it soars.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “The author, who lives in Clearwater, has a thorough understanding of the vagaries of South Florida. And Miscione delivers some action-packed scenes, especially a few creepy nights in Manhattan and a chilling visit to Albania.”

  —Sun-Sentinel

  “The Darkness Gathers is a compelling read with an interesting story line. The author’s portrayal of sexual slavery and the Albanian situation is edifying as well as disturbing.”

  —Knoxville News Sentinel

  “Miscione’s heroine [Lydia Strong] is suitably tormented and complex.… The Darkness Gathers doesn’t lack for thrills.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “This is a great second novel.… The suspense is almost unbearably high … an intelligent thriller, and the love story between Lydia and Jeffrey adds a poignant and beautiful relief to the omnipresent evil that pervades the rest of the pages. We can’t wait for the third.”

  —New Mystery Reader Magazine

  “Another fantastic page-turner … Lisa Miscione knows how to take an idea and make it extraordinary!”

  —Book Review Cafe

  “The intensity of the suspense of this novel is overwhelming with the surprises the author has in store for the reader. It will lead to sleepless nights and a sense of moral outrage when what the evil men do is exposed. The Darkness Gathers is a powerful novel.”

  —I Love a Mystery Newsletter

  “The second in Miscione’s series featuring true-crime writer Lydia Strong is a winner.… An exciting story enriched by a glamorous writer-heroine who carries a Glock and knows how to use it.”

  —Booklist

  “Complex protagonists, intense prose, and atmospheric descriptions combine to make Miscione’s second fictional outing a solid and satisfying read.”

  —Library Journal

  also by Lisa Unger

  Darkness, My Old Friend

  Fragile

  Die for You

  Black Out

  Sliver of Truth

  Beautiful Lies

  writing as Lisa Miscione

  Smoke

  Twice

  Angel Fire

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Lisa Miscione

  Preface copyright © 2011 by Lisa Unger

  Excerpt from Twice copyright © 2004 by Lisa Miscione

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 2003 and subsequently in paperback by St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 2004.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Miscione, Lisa.

  The darkness gathers / Lisa Miscione.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Teenage girls—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Women journalists—Fiction.

  3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Crime writing—Fiction. 5. Miami (Fla.)—

  Fiction. 6. Kidnapping—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.183 D3 2003

  813’.6—dc21 2002024527

  eISBN: 978-0-307-95312-4

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Cover photography by Jen Kiaba/Trevillion Images

  v3.1

  To my grandparents,

  Carmella and Mario Miscione

  The solid foundation upon which all things are built,

  The roots of the tree,

  The source from which we all grew,

  To be the people that we are …

  And will be.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface by Lisa Unger

  Part One

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Twice

  Preface

  by Lisa Unger

  I was nineteen years old when I first met Lydia Strong. I was living in the East Village, dating a New York City police officer, and attending Eugene Lang College, the undergraduate school of the New School for Social Research. I was sitting in a car, under the elevated section of the “1” line in the Bronx, waiting—for what I can’t remember. But in my mind that day, I kept seeing this woman running past a church. She was in New Mexico. And all I knew about her was that she was a damaged person, someone in great pain. Running, for her, was salve, religion, and drug. That was Lydia.

  I pulled a napkin and a pen from the glove compartment and started writing the book that would become Angel Fire. It took me ten years to write that novel, mostly because the years between age nineteen and twenty-nine were, for me, years of hard work and tumultuous change. But also because during that time, I let my dreams of becoming a writer languish a bit. Lydia was faithful; she waited.

  In spite of a first-rate education, a career in publishing, and a strong desire to write fiction, I didn’t know much of anyt
hing when I was writing my first novel. I don’t think you can really know anything about writing a novel until you’ve actually written one. (And then you go to school again when you sit down to write your second, and your third, and so on.) All I knew during that time was that I was truly fascinated by this woman occupying a place in my imagination, and I was deeply intrigued by her very dark appetites. I was enthralled by her past, by the mysteries in her present, and why she wouldn’t let herself love the man who loved her. There were lots of questions about Lydia Strong, and I was never happier over those ten years than when I was trying to answer them.

  I was fortunate that the first novel I ever wrote was accepted by my (wonderful, brilliant) agent Elaine Markson, and that she fairly quickly brokered a deal for Angel Fire and my second, then unwritten, novel The Darkness Gathers. I spent the next few years with Lydia Strong and the very colorful cast of characters who populated her life. And I enjoyed every dark, harrowing, and complicated moment with them as I went on to write Twice, and then Smoke.

  I followed Lydia from New Mexico, to New York City, to Albania, to Miami, and back. We trekked through the abandoned subway tunnels under Manhattan, to a compound in the backwoods of Florida, to a mysterious church in the Bronx, to a fictional town called Haunted. It was a total thrill ride, and I wrote like my fingers were on fire.

  I am delighted that these early novels, which I published under my maiden name, Lisa Miscione, have found a new life on the shelves and a new home with the stellar team at Broadway Paperbacks. And, of course, I am thrilled that they’ve found their way into your hands. I know a lot of authors wish their early books would just disappear, because they’ve come so far as writers since they first began their careers. And I understand that, because we would all go back and rewrite everything if we could.

  But I have a special place in my heart for these flawed, sometimes funny, complicated characters and their wild, action-packed stories. I still think about them, and I feel tremendous tenderness for even the most twisted and deranged among them. The writing of each book was pure pleasure. I hope that you enjoy your time with them as much as I have. And, thanks, as always, for reading.

  part one

  The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead to the heart of an immense darkness.

  —JOSEPH CONRAD

  Heart of Darkness

  chapter one

  The voice on the tape was thin and quavering. Lydia Strong had to rewind the tape and turn up the volume. In the background, she could hear the wet whisper of cars passing on rain-slick roads and, once, the loud, sharp blast of a semi’s air horn.

  “It’s Tatiana,” the message began, followed by a nervous little noise that was somewhere between a giggle and a sob. “Are you there … please? I can’t believe she’s doing this to me.” The girl inhaled unevenly, holding tears back from her voice. She went on in another language, something throaty and harsh, Eastern European–sounding. Then she switched back to English. “I’m not supposed to call anyone. I don’t have much time. I’m somewhere in—” The connection was broken.

  The package had been sitting beige and innocuous in the pile of mail that had collected in Lydia’s office during the two weeks she had been gone. The small, soft envelope mailed to Lydia care of her publisher and forwarded was just one item in a mound of mail she had received from what Jeffrey Mark called her “fan club.” Prisoners, families of murder victims, aspiring serial killers, and miscellaneous psychotics drawn to her because of the books and articles she wrote about heinous crimes and the people who committed them. Winning a Pulitzer Prize and solving a few cases along the way as a consultant with the private investigation firm of Mark, Hanley and Striker, Lydia had become an icon of hope, it seemed, for the world’s most desperate and its most sick and twisted.

  She was about to toss the envelope into the trash with the rest of the letters, but when she lifted the pile, the Jiffy, heavier than the other items, fell to the floor with a dull thud and the slightest rattle. She looked at the package for a second, then reached down to pick it up. There was no return address, though it had been postmarked from Miami more than three weeks earlier. Written in capital letters in the lower-right-hand corner was an urgent plea: “PLEASE READ ME!”

  She observed the moment where she could choose to open the package or choose to throw it away, never the wiser to its contents and the impact it might have on her life. But something about the smallness of it, the innocence of its soft beige form and the slight rattle that indicated to her a tape cassette piqued her curiosity, lit a tiny jolt of electricity inside her.

  Lydia extracted a pair of surgical gloves, a letter opener, and a pair of tweezers from her desk drawer. She opened the package with the letter opener, careful not to disturb the seal, then removed a tape cassette and a handwritten note with the tweezers. The note was written with big loopy letters in a faltering cursive hand.

  Dear Miss Strong,

  You are a good woman of strength and honor. And you must help Tatiana Quinn and all the other girls who are in need of rescue. There are too many who are already past helping. But if you begin with Tatiana, you may be able to save so many more. I cannot tell you who I am or how I know this, or we will die. But I beg you to come to Miami and see for yourself. Nothing is as it seems here, but I know that you will see the truth and make it right. I pray that you will.

  It was like a thousand other letters she had received over the years, and she felt the familiar wash of anxiety, resentment, and curiosity that generally overwhelmed her when someone asked for her help. But there was something different about this letter. Maybe it was the child’s desperate voice, or the earnest tone of the letter, or maybe it was the implication that Lydia was responsible for the lives of the young girls supposedly in danger … and the fact that part of her believed that. Or maybe it was the haunting memory of Shawna Fox. But whatever it was, she didn’t crumple the letter or destroy the tape. She just sat staring at the youthful handwriting, with its loopy letters full of hope.

  Lydia leaned her head back against the black leather chair, closed her eyes, and released a long, slow breath. She felt two weeks of fatigue pulling at her muscles and her eyelids, even as the excitement of “the buzz” made her heart race a little. Images danced through her head: a girl alone on a street corner, huddled in a phone booth, staring nervously around her; the crowds that had gathered at Lydia’s book signings during the media tour she had just conducted to promote Blind Faith; a murderer’s face as she straddled him in a burning church, her gun inside his mouth; Jeffrey’s smiling eyes. The tape player by her computer gave off a blank hiss for a few moments before she noticed and reached over to click it off. As she picked up the phone, she heard the elevator door that opened into their apartment. She realized that she was still wearing her jacket, still had her bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Lydia?”

  She jumped eagerly from her chair, moved quickly from her office, and walked across the bleached hardwood floor of the foyer and into the tight embrace of Jeffrey’s arms.

  “Hey, you,” she said, leaning back to look at his face. His brown hair was damp from the light rain outside, and she caught the slightest scent of his cologne.

  “God, I missed you,” he said, kissing her, tasting her.

  “Umm, me, too,” she answered. She was amazed by the exuberance she felt, the sheer excitement of seeing his face and feeling his body.

  “How did it go?” he asked, taking her bag and helping her off with her coat.

  “You know, the usual. Inane interviews, packed book signings, bad hotel rooms. I’m never doing another book tour. It’s torture.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You love it.”

  She smiled at his knowledge of her. “I didn’t love being away from you,” she replied.

  They walked from the foyer to the kitchen, wh
ere they embraced again, Lydia looking over his shoulder at the view out their window. She missed the view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from her Santa Fe home, but nothing excited her like the New York City skyline at night. The possibilities were endless. She had to wonder what was happening behind each lighted window. She knew it was all happening—love, death, sex, drug abuse, loneliness, happiness, despair, even murder. But these days, it was what was happening in her own kitchen that excited her most of all. The buzz she had felt before Jeffrey came home, listening to the tape, had almost disappeared from her mind. Almost.

  Jeffrey had coined the term the buzz, inventing a word for Lydia’s unique ability to perceive what others did not—her ability to know when something was wrong, or not what it seemed, or needed investigating. Sometimes the truth left only a footprint in the sand, a scent on the wind. And Lydia had an uncanny ability to detect the most fleeting clues. Listening to the girl’s voice on the tape, she’d felt it. She got a lot of crazy mail, a lot of false leads, a lot of desperate pleas. But listening to that tape, she’d heard the unmistakable pitch of fear, of need. A year ago, she would already have been researching. She’d have been on the Internet, looking for articles on a missing girl named Tatiana Quinn in Miami. But instead, she was now immersing herself in the happiness of being home with Jeffrey.

  In their friendship, they’d been apart more than they’d been together. They met when she was just fifteen years old. At that time, he was an FBI agent working a serial-murder case; her mother was the thirteenth victim of the killer he hunted, Jed McIntyre. There had been a bond between Lydia and Jeffrey since the first night they met, a bond that had grown stronger over the years. Her mentor, her colleague, her friend—he had been all these things to her. And then last year, as together they worked a serial-murder case in Santa Fe, they had finally surrendered to the feelings that had always been just beneath the surface.