The Killing Grounds: an explosive and gripping thriller for fans of James Patterson

He shook his head. This was bullshit. He wasn’t thinking straight. Didn’t know if it was the pills beginning to work or just him. He snorted with audible self-contempt. Jesus, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d managed to spend more than a few days at the ranch. Hell, nor did he have any desire to try. He wasn’t good at quiet. Give him a crowded prison cell any day. What the hell had he been thinking coming here? He never learnt. He thought each time it would be different.

Already he could feel the tightness in his chest. And it wasn’t just the opiates. It was his warning sign. The sign telling him he had to stop. Get away. Because any minute now it was going to hurt. Hurt real bad. Memories hypoxic. Stopping him breathing. Depriving him of air.

Turning to leave the kitchen to grab his clothes, he stopped, not wanting to, but unable to force himself to walk past without looking. To his right, where he and Ellie had planned to build a row of cream wooden cupboards, was a map. A map of Africa adorned with multi colored pins and criss-cross patterns of nylon red string, depicting the towns, the routes and ultimately the dead ends. Illustrating all the days and weeks and months which had translated to years he’d spent searching for Ellie.

His thoughts spilled aloud. ‘Come on, Ellie. Where did you get to baby? Where the hell are you?’

‘Tom?’

‘Ellie?’

Maddie threw down her car keys on the side as she walked into the kitchen.

‘What did you say…? What did you just say to me?’

Confused, Cooper said, ‘I didn’t say anything.’

She brushed past Cooper, her face sketched with tiredness and stress. Looking around and shaking her head she picked up a photo of Ellie and Cooper before resting her eyes on him.

‘Seriously? Jesus, Tom, this place is like a shrine to her. Why the hell did you get all this stuff out of the attic? Could you push me away anymore?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘You really did skip charm school didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Maddie’s gaze drifted from Cooper to the large table in the corner of the room. Her voice accusatory. Her manner tense. She said, ‘What are they?’

Cooper followed Maddie’s stare. He shrugged. Never met her eye. ‘Nothing.’

‘You’re back on those pills aren’t you?’

‘Maddie… look…’

‘Don’t, Tom. I don’t want to hear any bullshit. No more than you’ve told me already.’

Cooper walked across to the table. Scooped the bottle of pills up. Quickly threw them in the khaki canvas bag on the floor. ‘I’m not. They’re old pills. Stuff from before. I was just having a clear out, okay? Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. How come you’re here?’

Hands on hip and a shake of the head. ‘Well if you do turn off your phone for two days what do you expect? And you know what, Tom, some people might think a wife coming to see her husband was kind of a normal thing to do, but not you, Tom? Not you, hey? You want to just disappear whenever you feel like it and don’t give a damn how anyone else feels.’

It was Cooper’s turn to shake his head. He licked his lips. Tried to conjure up saliva from his dry mouth. A side effect of the pills. ‘You came all this way to tell me what a hopeless husband I am? Well you wasted your time. I already know… but believe it or not, I’m sorry.’

Her beautiful brown face flushed red. Flushed anger. ‘No, Tom, I didn’t come here to tell you how bad you are as a husband. I came to tell you our daughter wouldn’t blow out her candles at her party until her daddy came. And you know we waited. Me and her friends, Levi and Granger, and my parents all waiting for you. But guess what…’

‘Maddison, I’m so sorry. Is Cora okay?’

‘Oh she will be, once she’s put her heart back together. No little girl should have their heart broken at four years old. Especially not by her daddy.’

‘I don’t know what happened, I was going to come. I got her a present.’

Maddie’s voice was loud and broken. ‘She doesn’t want a present, she wants you. That’s all, Tom. You!’ Her tone softened. ‘A bit like the rest of us.’

‘Please, Maddie…’

‘Don’t say you’re sorry, Tom because you’re not. No, I’m wrong, you are sorry but only sorry for yourself. I came to get you from Eritrea, Tom, and you couldn’t even come home to us. That hurt.’

‘I thought you might want some time on your own.’

‘No you didn’t, because you never even asked me! You came here so you could be close to her. Let me ask you something. Why did you marry me?’

‘What?’

‘Just answer me.’

‘Maddie, do we really need to do this?’

Maddie cocked her head to one side. ‘Is it that hard to tell me?’

‘No… I just…’

‘Let me guess, Tom… You’re not in the mood to do emotion.’

Cooper sighed. Hard. Heavy. Long. Real long. ‘Okay… I married you because I loved you… love you, I mean. Happy?’

‘Happy? Are you serious? How could I ever be happy when there are three people in this marriage? Though in our case the third one happens to be a goddamn ghost.’

Cooper clenched his jaw. Felt the pulse on his temples. Decided to focus on something else. ‘I know I didn’t turn up to Cora’s party and I’m so sorry, but I know you, Maddie, and I know this isn’t just about that.’

Bitter and angry and hurt and sad and trying her damnedest not to cry, she spoke evenly. ‘You’re right. You promised me, Tom. You told me no more searching. No more disappearing. Remember?’

‘And I didn’t… I haven’t.’

‘Oh come on. I’m not stupid.’

‘Jesus, Maddie. If this is about Eritrea, I was just doing my job. Don’t make something out of nothing.’

‘Sounds a bit like our marriage.’

Cooper rubbed his face. Tried not to be drawn in. Felt irritated as hell. ‘Look, you need to get some sleep. Why don’t we go check into a motel? We can talk in the morning on our way home.’

Maddie picked up her keys from the side. ‘You know something, Tom? When we got together five and a half years ago, my daddy warned me about you. He told me not to do it. Told me you were going to hurt me.’

Iced. ‘Oh come on, Maddie, Marvin’s never liked me. I was never good enough for his precious daughter.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is and you know it.’

‘What I know is I’ve become one of those women I never thought I’d become.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The woman who thinks they can change the guy. Tries to save him but ends up drowning themselves. But you know what, no more… ’ She paused to sweep the mass of brown curls out of her face. She glanced down at nothing in particular. A faraway look in her eyes. ‘I’m leaving you, Tom.’

‘What? Oh come on, Maddie, don’t make this a big deal.’

‘You still don’t get it. There really isn’t any other way. And you know what? It hurts so bad because I love you so much, but I can’t go under with you. Not anymore. Not this time. I gotta think of Cora. The irony is I was always so afraid to lose you. But then, I don’t think I ever had you in the first place, did I?’

With the pills making it difficult to concentrate, Cooper said, ‘Maddie… come on. You’re looking into things too deeply. You don’t have to be like this.’

‘I do and you know I do. Remember the first two years of us being together? You were gone. Never there. Too busy looking for her. Have you any idea how that felt? Do you?’

‘What did you want me to do? Leave her? Let her rot in some godforsaken place? You knew her, and you also knew how I felt about her. I loved her.’

Maddie stepped towards Cooper. Her body weary from the pain which lay heavy. ‘Yeah, I know, but she wasn’t here and I was. And I loved you, Tom.’

‘You make it sound so simple. You knew how I felt about Ellie when we got together, but you still went ahead with our relationship.’

‘I knew how you felt about Ellie when she was alive, and I also knew about the guilt you felt surrounding the accident. But Jesus Christ, Tom, not for one moment did I think we’d have a ghost in our marriage.’

‘Why do you have to say stupid things like that?’

Maddie stared at him blankly. ‘It’s really never occurred to you that she could’ve drowned that day has it?’

‘You know it has. That’s why I stopped looking for her.’

‘No, you stopped looking for her because everybody told you to. Told you to let it go.’

‘And that’s what I did. I let it go.’

‘No you didn’t, you just hid it well… I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘For God’s sake Maddie, you’re the one who needs to let things go.’

There was a heavy silence before Maddie eventually spoke. ‘I do. At least we agree on something. So that’s why I’m going to go now. But tell me one thing. Why now? If you really did let it go. Her go. Why all of a sudden can I see it in your eyes that you still think she’s alive? Why after all this time start searching for her again?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Maddie turned and walked towards the door.

‘Goodbye, Tom.’

6

Ten minutes later, on a deserted stretch of dirt road, Maddie pulled up the ’54 Chevy truck Cooper had bought her last Christmas, and stepped out into the cool of the Colorado night and, looking up to the starry sky and to the silver moon, her legs gave way under her and she fell to the soft earth and cried. Weeping. Hurting. Anguish cutting into her shredded heart. Deep and painful cries and howls coming from her very soul.

Managing. Just. To go into her pocket, she pulled out her cell and dialled.

‘Daddy, it’s me. I need you to come and get me.’

7

The sunset, a blended color wheel of powder pinks and eggplant purples, splashed with intensity across the Congolese sky, seemed to go unnoticed by the elderly man resting on the isolated red clay shores of the Congo river. The heated mounds of rotting, stinking rubbish now cooled down by the evening air gave the man a place to sit, alongside the raw sewage which flowed down the bank as if from a mountain spring. It was the only place of solace, a sanctuary of quiet away from the squalid living conditions of the Kitchanga refugee camp, home to the displaced, the desperate, where diseases ran through like the east winds.

The old battered truck pulling alongside, its load covered with blue tarpaulin, went similarly unnoticed by the man, untroubled by its presence. It was nothing to do with him. It certainly wasn’t unusual for the locals to park their vehicles, to take the rest of the narrow road on foot, rather than risk the hazards of the crumbling tracks, risk being another casualty of the snaking and twisting river.

Unperturbed, and grateful for the peace, the elderly man continued to relax, not bothering to turn round at the sound of the men walking towards the water. It was only when he felt the coarseness of the thick rope, pulling and dragging him backwards, tightening his airways, dragging him through the clay that he tried to turn. Escape.

He heard a gruff voice, words fused by putrid-smelling breath.

‘Stay still. Do not struggle, my brother, it won’t do you any good. It’s too late… Arrête de lutter. Stop fighting.’

A hood placed over his face began to burn as the cotton, transfused with chilli, irritated and blistered his skin. He squirmed in pain whilst a noise made him jolt. He heard it again. Then again. Only this time it was nearer. Closer. Much closer.

He swivelled round, panicked, unable to see through the hood, but he suddenly froze. He felt the breath on his back. Warm. A different voice. A gentle voice. Which said,

‘Bonjour monsieur…’

A pain he didn’t think imaginable sped through his body as his eyes were driven down into his skull. He felt the pressure and then the pull and the digging and the gouging and blood streamed down his face. He retched with agony, choking on his own vomit as more quiet words were spoken.

‘C’est bon, vomis le diable… Vomit up the devil… That’s it, you did well my brother, you did well.’

He felt a soothing hand on his head, mixed in with his pain as he was carried. Lifted. Thrown. Hitting a hard surface with force.

Feeling something next to him, he realized there were others there. And too terrified to speak, too raked with pain to cry for help, he heard the voices of several men followed by the sound of an engine, driving him away, taking him somewhere he didn’t want to go, somewhere he didn’t know. A place he was sure he was never coming back from.

8

Throwing the empty pill bottle into the glove compartment of his classic Chevrolet truck, Cooper saw the small airstrip of the Onyx Asset Recovery Company come into view as he drove up the dusty, cactus-lined road whilst swallowing, with some difficulty, the two pills in his mouth.

The office he’d been working out of for the past five years was built in the middle of four hundred acres of wilderness. Hot. Remote. Dry desert land, based just outside North Scottsdale, Arizona, with panoramic views of the Granite Mountain. It was one helluva place.

It was mainly himself, Granger, Levi and Maddie, along with a scattering of aircraft engineers who worked out of the Scottsdale office. Granger had other investigators out in the field on an ad hoc basis, but his core staff rarely changed. Partly due to trust and partly due to Granger believing he already had the best team in the business.

There were huge risks involved with every job, with all of them feeling like legal heists. Granger’s motto was, No job is too big or too much trouble, though at times Cooper doubted that was true. Many times. Especially when the jobs he’d been sent on involved trying to recover Russian-bought military jets from a remote, perilous location in Belize, in the middle of a multi-million dollar dispute with an Austrian import-export company. Or when a court order had been acquired to impound a sixty-million-dollar plane from the middle of Ecuador, and the owners happened to be a drugs cartel who were after his butt to the point he’d found himself hiding out in a derelict house in the city of Guayaquil for four days without food or water. Or when he was facing the irate owner of a helicopter who hadn’t kept up with the repayments, in the heart of Mexico, who greeted him with a smile and an Uzi Pro 9mm which could blow his head off in an instant. It was then that Granger’s motto, No job is too big or too much trouble, made him want to stick those words right up his ass and ask Granger, too much trouble for who?

With Onyx being one of the most successful high asset recovery firms worldwide, with a hit rate of just over ninety-seven percent, several of the companies and banks they dealt with wanted the business to expand, encouraging Granger with monetary incentives to open other branches in major cities, as well as wanting him to take the head office to New York. But Granger, being Granger, refused point blank. Not wanting to risk weakening the firm by expansion. Believing that by keeping it small but strong it would hold onto its powerful reputation for reliability and results. But ultimately not wanting to leave the isolated, yet picturesque part of Arizona that Granger called God’s country.

Cooper sighed. Pushing the thought of Maddie out of his head. Hell, he was going to see her soon enough and he hoped by then she would have calmed down and realized he hadn’t meant any harm. Never did.

Putting his foot down on the gas, he was surprised how good it felt to see the place again. Even broke a smile. The past couple of weeks he’d rather forget. They’d been tough. Real tough. Tougher than he wanted to admit, and strangely he’d spent a lot of the time thinking about his Uncle Beau, and his days in Missouri, something he rarely let himself do. He and the past just didn’t go.

Levi waved as Cooper pulled up.

‘Hey, Coop, thought you’d be at the ranch for another few days. How you feeling? I bet you never thought you’d see this place again.’

It was a good sight. A friendly face. Something he needed right now.

Leaning out of the driver’s window, Cooper’s smile turned into a grin. His strawberry blonde hair, in dire need of a cut, fell over his eyes. ‘I hope you’ve been practising your pool, Levi, you owe me a game. What is it now? Eight-one down?’

‘Eight-two. And it would’ve been three if it wasn’t for the fact you decided to call it a night.’

Cooper’s deeply tanned face lit up. ‘Levi, don’t push it. If I remember rightly, it was actually you who called it a night… or was it Dorothy, when she found out where you were hiding your butt?’

Levi laughed. Couldn’t deny it. Knew what Cooper was saying held more than a ring of truth. Though his laugh was quickly replaced by concern. ‘I’ve spoken to Maddie. She told me. I’m sorry, but I guess it was a long time coming.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Levi screwed up his face, beads of sweat pushing out between the creases. ‘You and her. You do know she’s left you?’

Cooper closed his eyes then slowly opened them enough to squint at Levi through the rays of the Arizona sun. And the OxyContin began to hit and he rolled his tongue round his dry mouth. ‘Yeah, she came over to the ranch. She said a lot of stuff but I don’t think she was being serious. You know how she get sometimes when I mess up. She just needs a couple of days to calm down.’

Levi let out a long whistle. ‘Coop, I love you man but get real, you’ve just pushed her too far this time. It’s like from nowhere you’ve stepped back to how it was a few years ago. Gone all crazy on our ass. You can’t expect her to go through all what she did before.’

Cooper rested his head on the steering wheel. ‘I know she’s hurting but I got things going on, Levi.’

‘Like what, Coop? Whatever it is it’s in your head, because from where I’m standing, you got it made, bro. A great job. A great daughter and a great wife. Maddie, she’s one of the best… Look, why don’t you come across to stay with Dorothy and I? She’d like that. She worries about you like the rest of us.’

‘I appreciate the offer but I’ll just find a motel. Give me time to think and try to sort things out with her.’

‘And what about the job?’

Rubbing his chin and watching specs of sand be blown on and off the car window, Cooper said, ‘What about it?’

‘You and Maddie. Won’t it be awkward the two of you working together?’

‘Levi, you’re taking all this too far but to answer your question, no it won’t. Why would it? Nothing’s changed. But if it’s really a case of her taking some time out from me, which I don’t think it is, well we’re both grown-ups. Both trained in the military just to get on with the job at hand. We still care for each other. Still respect each other. Want the best for each other and our daughter… I can’t see there’d be a problem.’

‘You’re serious aren’t you…? Coop, let me tell you something, brother… You’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about women.’

And with that, Levi’s laughter soared once more, cutting through the Arizona air.

‘All this is funny to you, isn’t it?’ Granger’s voice broke through the banter. Silenced the moment as he stalked towards them. ‘It’s all one big joke to you, Cooper. Maybe I should’ve punched you harder. Knock some sense into you.’

Cooper stared at Granger. He hadn’t seen him since the airport in Scottsdale. After that he’d headed out, taking the five-hundred-mile journey back to the ranch just outside Telluride, Colorado.

He felt the vein in his temple throbbing as he clenched his jaw. A habit. Not a particularly bad one as his habits went. Absentmindedly, he rubbed the side of his head as he got out of the truck. Without bothering or wanting or needing to look at Granger, Cooper said, ‘I can think of a lot of things to call the last couple of weeks, but a joke sure isn’t one of them.’

‘And that’s my fault, is it? You’re a mess, Cooper. A total bag of mess. But like always you expect the rest of us to clear up. Look at your eyes… I see you’re back popping those pills.’

Cooper shot him a stare. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. So let’s just drop it, hey?’

‘You’d like that wouldn’t you, Cooper? Drop everything. That should be your middle name.’

Cooper shook his head and kicked up the bleached white gravel with his desert boots and felt the warm Arizona winds whip up the dusty ground and maybe it was just tiredness and maybe it was his own shame but he was pissed. Real pissed with what Granger had just said.

‘I don’t want anyone to clear up my mess. I never have done, never will do, and you of all people know that.’

‘Really? Try telling that to Levi and Maddie. They clear up your mess that often, sometimes I get them mixed up with the garbage men.’

‘Real funny, Granger. Look…’

‘Save it, Cooper, it’ll just turn out to be bull anyway. Oh, and Maddie told me the news about you two. I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not. She deserves better.’

‘I know that, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep out of my business.’

Granger sniffed loudly, emphasizing the words he was about to say. ‘I know you would but when it’s going to affect my business then it becomes my business.’

‘Nothing’s going to affect anything. What is it with everyone, huh? Just because Maddie and I are having… I don’t know… difficulties, that doesn’t mean it’s going to alter anything.’

Granger’s blue eyes cut Cooper a stare. ‘I wouldn’t call leaving somebody difficulties. And if you think it’s going to be a bed of roses, you clearly don’t know women.’

‘So everyone likes to tell me, and maybe you guys are right, I don’t know women. But I do know Maddie, and I know she and I are going to be fine with it all. I’ll sort it out.’

‘You think you’ve got it all sewn up don’t you Cooper? The sun always shines out of your ass.’

Cooper chewed the inside of his cheek. Even before Eritrea, he and Granger had been at loggerheads. Seemed like nothing had changed. Hell, he doubted it ever would. And he knew it wasn’t just because he’d screwed up with the last assignment. No, Granger’s problem was with him and him alone.

There’d always been the snipes, and until recently he’d left it. Letting it ride. Always. Usually. Not this time. ‘What’s your goddamn problem, Granger? The fact that you didn’t get the plane back from Eritrea, or the fact that it was me that didn’t get the plane back?’

‘You know what my problem is, Cooper, so why don’t you do us all a favor and grow up.’

Maddie, who’d now come outside into Onyx’s parking lot, stood back and watched. Listened.

Cooper could feel the anger rising up. Something he felt a lot these days. He said, ‘You want me gone, Granger? Just say the word, and you won’t see me again.’

Granger, at five foot three, stood a foot shorter than Cooper, though his height had never hindered him in any way; taking on one or three men at a time, if justified, was all the same to him. His face was gnarled and ruddy. And Cooper thought he was doing a good impression of a man who hated him.

‘What I want, Cooper, is for you to take responsibility. Be accountable.’

‘Like you, Granger?’

‘Hey, I can live with the decisions I’ve made. Question is, can you?’

‘Why don’t you say what’s really bugging you, Granger. Let’s clear the air once and for all.’

Maddie cut in. ‘Hey guys, this is stupid. We’re all on the same side here… Tom, leave it.’

Although once, a long time ago, he’d had the ability not to be goaded into arguments, that was no longer the case. She knew it. He knew it. Hell, and so did Granger. ‘No, Maddie, I want to hear what Granger has to say.’

Not backing down either, Granger stepped forward. Real close. ‘You can’t deal with what I’ve got to say.’

‘Guys! Come on! Stop this… Tom, for God’s sake, come on! Please.’ Maddie signalled to Levi to do something other than just stand there. Cooper ignored anything other than what Granger was saying to him.