Dark Matter

Selected praise for the heart-stopping debut by

bestselling author

CAMERON CRUISE

“A first-class thrill ride from a top-notch talent. Cameron Cruise is going to be around for a long time.”

—John Lescroart

“Ms. Cruise delves deep into these two characters and comes up with pay dirt. Seven and Erika are phenomenal. Complex and edgy, The Collector is a wild, twisty ride into a dark, creepy terror. As a post note, [it] will have a sequel—maybe even become a series. I hope so. I am not ready to leave Ms. Cruise’s wonderful characters just yet.”

—Romance Reader at Heart

“Cameron Cruise is a phenomenal new talent. The Collector is compulsive reading! The details are rich and meaty, the pace brisk and the edge razor sharp.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“The Collector is an extraordinary multi-faceted novel…Intriguing…a story you cannot forget.”

—The Mystery Reader

“Cruise’s debut has a serpentine, impossible-to-adequately-summarize plot and a wealth of interesting characters. But what really makes an impression is the story’s sense of time, place and culture.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“A check-under-the-bed read from Cameron Cruise! Talent and dramatic instinct conspire in this powerful novel.”

—Bestselling author Stella Cameron

Dark Matter

Cameron Cruise

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Jonathan.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

1

The first thing Jack heard was the drip-drip of water. The first thing he felt was metal biting into his wrist.

Handcuffs?

He felt groggy, like maybe he was dreaming, stuck in those magic moments right before his eyelids fluttered open and he woke up. He tried hard to hang on. Sometimes, he could do it…fall back into the story in his head.

Jack didn’t like to wake up. Waking up meant being cold and hungry.

He felt cold, but not hungry. That was different.

“Jack?”

The voice sounded far away. Jack looked around the room, squinting in the dim light. He shivered. Someone there? Standing over him?

He tugged at his hand and heard metal rattling. Handcuffs—the real kind. A rush of adrenaline hit.

Not a dream.

He felt sick. He was going to throw up. Shit! What had he gotten himself into?

He hadn’t done a lot of drugs. Sure, there was always the occasional john who wanted to get him a little loose, giving him a few drinks. Men didn’t like to think they could hurt a kid. Jack always assured them he was seventeen, but could pass for a lot younger. He’d never tell them his real age, fourteen.

He yanked the hand strung up by the handcuff, trying not to freak out.

“You’re awake.”

The voice sounded familiar. Jack blinked up at the blurry image hovering over him and tried to focus. He remembered going to dinner last night, some fancy Italian place where he’d eaten his fill. But he’d only drunk a soda. So why did he feel so weird?

“You know what they used to call it in the old days? You’ll get a kick out of this. They called it a Mickey Finn. I slipped you a Mickey, Jack.”

Jack reached up to rub his eyes, only to have his hand stop dead, his wrist tethered to something solid and heavy. He realized he was propped up against some piece of furniture, a desk maybe.

The guy, the john from last night, leaned closer. His breath smelled minty fresh with Altoids.

“These days, they call it a roofie. You know what that is, don’t you, Jack?”

The guy said roofie like he was having fun with it. His lips wrapped around the word, giving it a slight whistle. Through the haze in his head, Jack remembered that smile. Last night, he’d thought it was nice.

They were in some kind of basement. There was a musty, earthy smell and a naked lightbulb hung in the middle of the room, giving off a bleary glow. The guy was close enough that Jack could see his even, white teeth.

A roofie was a well-known date-rape drug. Basically, it knocked you out. Eventually, when you woke up, you never knew what hit you.

“How do you feel?” the man asked.

“Like an ice pick is having a go at my head,” Jack answered.

“An ice pike? Yikes.”

The fuzzy image gelled into longish red hair that feathered around the man’s face, vivid blue eyes and a strong nose. And dimples; Jack remembered those from last night, too.

The guy was young, maybe in his early twenties. Even though he had red hair, he didn’t have a freckle on him. Jack remembered thinking he could be one of those models on the billboards; he was that good-looking. And tall, like maybe six feet five or something. Nothing like his usual john.

The sights and sounds from the night before flooded Jack’s brain. The guy standing over him—last night he’d told Jack his name was Adam—had picked Jack up at his usual corner at Hollywood and Vine. He’d taken him to dinner. A real dinner, like Jack was someone who deserved a menu and a waiter with a tie.

They’d both ordered sodas. Adam had asked for a root beer, Jack, a Pepsi.

In the old days, they called it a Mickey Finn.

“You slipped me a roofie?” Jack said, his tongue thick and tired around the words.

“Had to.” The guy stroked the side of Jack’s face.

Jack pulled again on the handcuffs. He was having trouble catching his breath.

“What are you gonna do to me?”

Immediately, he regretted the question. When he’d first hit the street six months ago, the more experienced kids had let him know what was what. To get out of a mess like this, he had to act all cool, like he was in the know. The worst thing he could do was get all scared. The bad ones liked you scared.

Only, he felt so funky. Woozy and like he’d been sucking on a stick of chalk. With a hammer having a go at his head. He had to concentrate—raise your right hand—but still there was this time delay.

“It’s the drug,” Adam explained. “It makes you feel…disjointed. Try not to worry, Jack. I promise. It won’t hurt too much.”

Jack knew he’d landed in some serious shit. Here this guy was smiling at him, looking like nothing was up. Sure, Jack was handcuffed in some dark, damp cellar and this weirdo was talking about pain. So what, that smile seemed to ask? Nothing wrong here—not with such a beautiful face shining down on him.

But then Jack saw that Adam was holding a needle, the kind doctors used to give flu shots, only bigger. He plunged the tip into a glass medicine bottle. The syringe filled with a milky-white liquid. Jack blinked, forcing his eyes to work, focusing on the handsome redhead and his smile.

“What are you doing?” he asked, the words slurring.

“Something very special. I’m going to make you a superhero, Jack. Give you special powers. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No more cold nights on the street, pimping yourself out. I’m going to make you someone.”

The man named Adam winked, then leaned in close and whispered in Jack’s ear, “Trust me, Jack. It will be worth it.”

Jack didn’t even see the needle coming when the guy jabbed the syringe into his neck and sunk the plunger.

2

Gia Moon woke to the sound of screaming.

It took her a moment to understand she was actually awake. Screaming was a normal part of Gia’s sleep; her dreams were often filled with the hideous imagery of bloodied body parts and faces contorted in pain. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It didn’t have to be real, portents of things to come.

Only, tonight was different. Tonight the screams weren’t Gia’s.

She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand: 3:07 a.m.

More screams. This time, she registered the source. The sounds clearly emanated from her daughter’s room.

“Stella,” she said, throwing back the covers.

Gia raced for the door and careened into the hall. She stumbled across the living room, bumping into the coffee table with her knee and sending last night’s board game crashing to the floor.

Not so long ago, her daughter slept right alongside Gia in her king-size bed. Only recently had Stella started to flex her newly minted teen muscle, choosing to sleep in her own room. After a lifetime curled up next to her mother, her daughter had proclaimed her independence shortly after her thirteenth birthday.

“Stella?” Gia cried, pushing open the bedroom door.

She found Stella sitting upright in bed. She looked like a puppet, her arms stiff at her sides and her legs sticking out like two planks of wood. In the dim glow of the nightlight, Gia could see the sheets and quilt bunched at Stella’s feet. She imagined her daughter kicking the covers aside as she swam up to the surface of her dreams.

Even with her eyes wide open, Stella kept screaming.

Gia swept her daughter up in her arms and held her tight. She made soft soothing sounds intended to help Stella transition out of her nightmare. Stella eventually quieted down, but her eyes remained fixed on something across the room.

Gia followed her daughter’s gaze. She was staring at the stool in front of the Queen Anne vanity as if someone were sitting there.

“What is it, baby?” Gia whispered. “What do you see?”

But instead of answering, Stella buried her face in her mother’s neck.

In a normal family, waking up screaming in the middle of the night might be explained as a simple night terror. No big deal. Any cause for concern would be temporary, nothing a kiss or a cup of hot cocoa couldn’t fix. But normal didn’t describe the lives of Gia and Stella Moon.

Gia felt her daughter trembling against her. Stella was small for her age, her tiny size a contrast to her great spirit. Stella had been born an old soul, not prone to hysterics. Waking up in the middle of the night, that would be Gia, the woman haunted by her gifts.

“I’m okay,” Stella told her, all too soon pushing Gia away. “It was just a nightmare—a real nightmare,” she assured her mother. “The normal kind.”

The normal kind.

Not a vision, Gia thought with some relief.

Her daughter crawled back under the covers, pulling the quilt up to her chin. Tucked in her bed, her inky curls and vibrant blue eyes contrasted dramatically with her flawless white skin. Lying there, Stella presented a virtual Renaissance painting. Gia’s artistic sensibilities appended the dewy full lips and cheeks, heightened in color from the nightmare. The antique sleigh bed with its starburst-pattern quilt in shades of blue was a fitting background. It wasn’t quite chiaroscuro in the glow of the nightlight, but close.

Gia brushed back a curl from Stella’s face. There was this perceived resemblance between mother and daughter. Goodness, Gia, she’s a mirror image. A clone.

But Gia knew better. The dramatic coloring—black hair, blue eyes, translucent skin—deceived. Those curls, that delicate nose and dimpled chin, these were all Stella…Stella and Gia’s mother, Estelle.

“Geez, Mom, you’re freaking out for no reason, okay?” Stella added.

Gia hesitated, knowing when she was being dismissed. Suspicious of just that.

Sealing it, Stella closed her eyes and turned onto her side, giving her mother her back. “Don’t be weird. I’m fine.”

Which meant she was hiding something.

It happened more and more often these days: Stella shutting her out. Gia knew it was a normal part of growing up. She’d read all the books; teenagers needed space.

But tonight felt different. Secretive. And not in a good way.

She glanced back at the empty stool in front of the vanity. Only Gia and her daughter atop the sleigh bed reflected back in the mirror.

There wasn’t even a glimmer of a presence.

Gia nodded toward the opened door and the hallway beyond. “Sure you don’t want to crawl into bed with me? I could use the company.”

Stella rolled her eyes, giving her a mental puhleeze! She settled deeper under the covers. “I just want to go back to sleep, okay?”

Once again, Stella gave her mother her back, but not before Gia caught her daughter’s nervous glance toward the vanity and the empty stool.

Gia took a breath and held it. But in the end, she rose to her feet and stepped away from the bed. “All right, sweetie.”

Out in the hall, Gia felt torn between her desire to run back into Stella’s room or allow her daughter to set the pace for her revelations.

She knew Stella was lying. The question was why?

She froze at the entrance to the living room, her hand on the light switch, trying to shake off her fears. That look Stella had given the empty stool…there’d been a presence there. A presence Gia couldn’t see.

Gia Moon, psychic artist and mother to one very precocious teenager, hadn’t seen a damn thing.

She hit the light switch. The floor lamp glowed to life, spotlighting the Scrabble tiles scattered across the Navajo rug under the coffee table and the oak floor boards beyond.

The living room showcased her eclectic tastes. The top of the coffee table, a mosaic of broken pieces of china, served as a foil to the green papier-mâché leaves sprouting from the arms of the burgundy cloth sofa. The leaves crept up the wall behind as if some wayward philodendron had managed to take root and thrive in the darkened room.

Opposite the sofa stood a love seat covered in Mexican serape cloth. There was quite a bit of religious art—a hand-painted crucifix with the bleeding heart, a Greek icon of the virgin, a statue of the elephant-headed Ganesha, the wise and gentle Hindu god known for removing obstacles.

But to Gia’s eye, the focus as always was on her daughter. There were drawings, from stick figures to watercolors, matted and framed like great works of art. And photographs, each documenting cherished moments, snapshots of the tiny miracle that was Stella.

On her hands and knees, Gia picked up the lettered tiles and tossed them back into their box. She told herself she’d talk to Stella first thing in the morning. She’d learned the dangers of keeping secrets and she’d remind her daughter of just that. Gia suspected she knew what was bothering her daughter—Stella was just the right age. Gia needed to convince her that whatever changes Stella faced, they’d face them together.

That’s what she’d been thinking—tomorrow, I’ll lay down the law, no secrets—when she stopped herself in the act of scooping up the game pieces.

On the rug under the coffee table she saw five tiles from the Scrabble set. The game pieces formed a perfect half circle. She stared, realizing the letters spelled a word.

Seven. Just like the number.

Gia frowned. She reached for the S.

As her hand reached for the tiles, a static charge like the snap of a rubber band shocked her fingers. She sat back on her heels, stunned.

Seven.

“Don’t,” she told herself, grabbing the Scrabble pieces in a sweep of her hand and throwing them into the game box with the others.

Back in her room, she dropped onto the bed and stared at the phone on the nightstand. The last two months, the desire to call him had been a dull ache inside her. Like a toothache, she’d learned to ignore the pain—part and parcel of a past that had trained her well to deal with regrets.

But now, that desire burned in her chest. She rubbed her hand, recalling the shock of static electricity.

She glanced at the clock: 3:17 a.m.

When she’d first heard Stella screaming, she’d checked the hour, as well. The time had been 3:07.

Seven, Seven, Seven.

She shut her eyes. “No,” she said out loud.

She shoved aside the covers and massaged her pillow into a ball before settling in. She told herself her gift didn’t work like that, cute little signs that could easily be mistaken for coincidence. That’s how the heart worked; it looked for meaning where there was none.

She’d had a scare tonight. Of course, she’d think of the man who had once saved her life.

Gia woke up three more times that night. Each and every time—by coincidence—the digital clock showed the number seven.

When the door shut behind her mother, Stella threw back her bedcovers and sat up in bed.

“Go away,” she hissed at the boy sitting on the vanity stool.

She recognized him from her dream. She’d seen him so clearly during that horrible nightmare that waking up had been this weird business: the image in her head seemed to crash into her dimly lit bedroom.

The whole thing reminded her of one of those overhead projection sheets her geometry teacher sometimes flashed on the wall. You had to stare at it awhile before anything made sense.

The dream had been a bad one, like nothing she’d ever had before. The kid sitting on the vanity: she was pretty sure that, in her dream, someone was torturing him.

She could still remember the cold bite of the handcuffs on her wrist. She’d even caught the scent of shadow-man’s cologne as he’d bent over the boy.

When the guy stuck the needle in the boy’s neck, she’d felt that, too.

The pain of that needle, she’d felt it as if it were happening to her. Not the boy, but her. That’s why she’d woken up screaming, bringing her mother running.

Only now, the kid—she guessed he was about her age, tall, maybe as tall as five feet eleven, with gray eyes and dark blond hair—was sitting on her vanity stool, the nightlight shining at his feet. To Stella, he looked completely real, the living breathing version of the boy in her dream.

Of course, she knew he wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be. No live kid was sitting in her room, creepy eyes watching her.

He was a ghost.

And Mom hadn’t seen him.

Mom—the lady who talked to ghosts, who painted portraits in order to pass along messages to loved ones left behind—hadn’t even known he was there.

In Stella’s life, it was Mom who did the woo-woo thing. Her mother had these dreams. Visions. A lot of times, the awful stuff her mother saw came true.

“Go away!” she said, louder this time.

The ghost just stared back at her.

She told herself she wasn’t like her mother. Sure, she’d get a weird vibe every once in a while, mostly about her mother’s paintings. But the really scary stuff, like waking up in the middle of the night and seeing someone who wasn’t there, that was Mom’s gig.

“Please,” she whispered. “I can’t help you. Just leave me alone, okay?”

Stella slipped back under the covers, tucking the sheets and quilt under her chin, using them like a protective shield. She concentrated on a giant sunflower painted on the wall across from her, part of a mural her mother had painted in Stella’s room, turning it into a kind of English garden. She tried to forget that awful basement and the sound of the boy’s screams.

When looking at the flower didn’t work, she squeezed her eyes shut. What did people do to fall asleep? Count sheep?

Suddenly, she felt a cold touch on her neck. She opened her eyes.

The kid, he was right there, standing next to the bed.

“Get out!” she said.

She pulled the covers over her head, breathing hard. How many times had her mom told Stella how to banish a bad spirit? Why hadn’t she paid attention?

Get a grip, Stella! She tried to even her breathing, telling herself that if she’d had anything to do with bringing him here—some weakness a loose spirit might glom onto—she should have the strength to make him disappear.

After a few minutes, she lifted the sheet, scared of what she’d find.

He was gone.

She let out the breath she’d been holding. She knew her mother could get in touch with some pretty gnarly things. She’d heard Mom explain it once, how the really bad spirits were drawn to powerful psychics. And that’s what her mother was. A superpsychic. Last year, she’d even helped the police catch two serial killers, a woman and her son who’d targeted other psychics.

Her mom had a very powerful gift—the kind of gift Stella didn’t need.

The only thing Stella wanted was to be normal.

She glanced back at the stool in front of the vanity. It was still empty.

He was really gone.

Stella lay back on her pillow, staring at the ceiling. Funny how that fact didn’t make her feel better.

3

There was blood everywhere—on the mats, on the cage itself, in the men’s hair and dripping down their bared skin. And the noise…the sounds of violence washed over Evie, drugging her.

The Junoesque redhead with striking blue eyes sat near the front row of the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena. Tonight, the stadium housed a near-record crowd, each and every fan mesmerized by the battle on the raised platform, center stage. The caged enclosure called The Octagon housed two fighters locked in a human cockfight.

Suddenly, the champ, Curtis “The Native” Santos, felled his opponent with a double-leg takedown. The crowd went insane as Santos scissored his legs around the challenger’s midsection. There were two minutes left in the final round.

Sweat mixed with blood as the two warriors remained locked against the cage’s vinyl-coated fencing. Wearing only shorts and light gloves with the fingers cut off to allow for grabbing, both gladiators heaved for breath. The challenger, Teri “The Greek” Dupas, defended against the champ’s relentless attack, now pinned in a rear choke. The men’s muscles clenched and gleamed under the white-hot lights.

That’s exactly what she wanted, Evie thought. Those hands on her. That battle for life embracing her.

With just under a minute left in the match, the crowd began to get antsy, screaming for a standup. The referee complied, bringing both fighters to their feet. Santos didn’t waste any time, nailing Dupas to the canvas with a killer left hook.

The crowd went ballistic as more blood sprayed from the challenger’s nose. The round before, Santos had hammered Dupas to the mat with a straight right, opening the floodgates.

Men and women chanted “San-tos!” jumping to their feet as the champ landed punch after punch. Santos maneuvered Dupas into a mount and scored yet another takedown. The crowd began counting down the last seconds of the fight as if it were New Year’s Eve in Times Square. When the bell sounded, marking the end of the fight, Santos, bald and tattooed, paraded around the ring, pumping a fist in the air.

Ten minutes later, the redhead’s long-legged stride took her out to the casino floor. Popping gum and listening to “Fergieliscious” on her iPod nano, she pushed past the minions working the slots and video poker machines.

As she walked past, each and every slot hit.