I see dead people. Mostly I see those of the furry dearly departed variety, but on occasion I see a bona fide once upon a human. But unfortunately for me, I’m not looking into the eyes of some adorable little long-dead creature. I’m looking into the eyes of a very much alive human—Carlotta Sawyer, my […]
If you were here with me now, I’d say sorry for everything. I know I’ve let you down, disappointed you, and it hurts. This is how it ends for me, isn’t it? Alone with my thoughts, with my pain, all the regrets about who I am and how I acted coming back to haunt me. […]
GORNJI CRNAČ, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA The grandfather of six stood on his front porch, a cup of tea in hand as he looked out across the valley at the green hills, thinking of the old days. They didn’t seem so long ago, but still he often wondered where they had gone. The warm afternoon tired […]
Angel. I had seen one—or someone I thought was one. She had been right before me. Somewhere. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Flawless. A real angel? No…a girl. There was a girl, and now she was gone, transitioning from female to male. A man. A man yelling at a woman with dark hair. They were young. […]
PROFESSOR JAHAN Darvish nudged his thick black glasses along the bridge of his nose and stared into the minibar fridge of his swanky Manhattan hotel suite while doing his best to ignore the outrageous price list posted off to the side. Twenty-eight dollars for one of these tiny little bottles of vodka? Seriously? But Darvish […]
The woman’s face might be beautiful, but it was also the stuff of nightmares. And Jane MacGuire just wanted it to go away! She jerked upright in bed, her heart pounding. She closed her eyes, her hands clenched into fists. She wouldn’t do it again. Not again. There wouldn’t be any change from the last […]
I see dead people. Mostly I see dead pets, and on the rare occasion I do see a dearly departed of the human variety, but right now, I’m seeing a man that I wish I could kill with my bare hands. Rich Dallas has his own leathery mitts around my mother’s waist as they observe […]
MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT isn’t exactly a tranquil space on a normal day—if there’s such a thing as a normal day at MIA. Now, as I watched a human trafficker strolling toward the immigration portal with six kids in tow, it felt like a hurricane was about to hit indoors. An illtempered Customs supervisor from the […]
A YEAR LATER, WHAT SARAH remembered most was waking up to the sound of giggling. “Shhh. Not so loud! My roommates hate it when I bring boys home. Killjoys need their beauty sleep.” “So, no making noises? Like this?” A wolf howl from outside Sarah’s bedroom door. Fresh giggling. Then loud thumps as someone, probably […]
“ANOTHER SODA AND LIME. Easy on the lime this time.” The bartender pursed her lips and gave him a pitying look. She obviously thought he was a recovering alcoholic, desperately clinging to sobriety by his fingernails. He was nothing of the sort. He just needed to keep his wits about him. Zachary looked up at […]
EENY, MEENY, MINY, MOE. FBI Special Agent Atlee Pine stared up at the grim facade of the prison complex that housed some of the most dangerous human predators on earth. She had come to see one of them tonight. ADX Florence, about a hundred miles south of Denver, was the only supermax prison in the […]
THE cave was more than ten meters square, illuminated with a handful of battery-powered work lights. The glare and heat from them was centered on two rows of men kneeling on colorful cushions. Armed guards lurked near the jagged walls, barely visible in the shadows. Mullah Sayid Halabi sat cross-legged, gazing down from a natural […]
Death does not suit me. I wear it like a borrowed coat; it slips of my shoulders and trails in the dirt. It is ill-fitting. Uncomfortable. I want to shrug it of ; to throw it in the cupboard and take back my well-tailored clothes. I didn’t want to leave my old life, but I’m […]
IT WAS SO dark in the shed. His underwear was wet, and his skin itched. It smelled awful in here —a little like the mouse that had died under his family’s porch that one time. And he could hear the ocean going whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, but he didn’t know where the sound was coming from. He hadn’t […]
A ragged dress was hanging from one branch of a rotting pine tree. It put the old man in mind of a song from his youth, about a dress on a washing line. But this dress wasn’t hanging in a southerly breeze like in the song, but in the ice-cold meltwater in a river. It […]
My name is Bizzy Baker, and I can read minds. Not every mind, not every time—but it happens, and believe me when I say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. “Good morning.” I hold up the carafe to the elderly man reading his paper. As the manager of the Country Cottage Inn, I […]
Jake Buckman knew his son had a secret, because his wife told him so. They didn’t know what it was but they suspected it was about a girl, since Ryan had been texting non-stop and dressing better for school, which meant he actually cared if his jeans were clean. Jake wished he and his son […]
A perfect May night in Chicago, warm but not quite balmy. A soft breeze coming in off the lake, carrying with it the faint murmurings of traffic from Michigan Avenue twenty floors below. Juliana was sitting alone on one end of a couch on the Peninsula’s rooftop terrace, still wearing her conference lanyard, still wired […]
THE ROAD WAS A KILLER, HARDLY WIDER THAN a decent stream of spit and snaking like a cobra between giant bushes loaded with strange flowers that resembled drops of blood. She had to remind herself that the trip had been her idea—love was another killer—but how could she have known driving in western Ireland meant […]
o you have plans Saturday night?” If my boyfriend Jed had been the one asking, my answer would have been a wholehearted “spending the night with you,” but this was my brother Joe. Four weeks ago, he’d started dating the woman from hell, and she and I hadn’t exactly taken to each other. “Depends on […]
