Shadow Moon Read online

  SHADOW MOON

  Book VI of the Huntress/FBI Thrillers

  by

  Alexandra Sokoloff

  Author’s Note

  The Huntress series takes place over six months of the present, and multiple timelines in the past. Shadow Moon is a culmination of those characters and storylines, and it is very strongly recommended, by me and every reader who has ever found the books, that you experience the series in order:

  Huntress Moon

  Blood Moon

  Cold Moon

  Bitter Moon

  Hunger Moon

  Shadow Moon

  Complete series: mybook.to/HuntressSeries

  Welcome to the hunt.

  - Alexandra Sokoloff

  February 2019

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  Praise for Alexandra Sokoloff

  Huntress Moon

  A Thriller Award Nominee for Best E-Book Original Novel

  A Suspense Magazine Pick for Best Thriller

  An Amazon Top Ten Bestseller

  “This interstate manhunt has plenty of thrills…keeps the drama taut and the pages flying.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The intensity of her main characters is equally matched by the strength of the multilayered plot…The next installment cannot release soon enough for me.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “Who you know: Agatha Christie, Gillian Flynn, Mary Higgins Clark. Who you should read: Alexandra Sokoloff.”

  —Huffington Post Books

  The Price

  “Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A heartbreakingly eerie page turner.”

  —Library Journal

  “The Price is a gripping read full of questions about good, evil, and human nature…the devastating conclusion leaves the reader with an uncomfortable question to consider: ‘If everyone has a price, what’s yours?’”

  —Rue Morgue magazine

  The Unseen

  “A creepy haunted house, reports of a 40-year-old poltergeist investigation, and a young researcher trying to rebuild her life take the “publish or perish” initiative for college professors to a terrifying new level in this spine-tingling story that has every indication of becoming a horror classic. Based on the famous Rhine ESP experiments at the Duke University parapsychology department that collapsed in the 1960s, this is a chillingly dark look into the unknown.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews

  “Sokoloff keeps her story enticingly ambiguous, never clarifying until the climax whether the unfolding weirdness might be the result of the investigators’ psychic sensitivities or the mischievous handiwork of a human villain.”

  —Publisher’s Weekly

  “Alexandra Sokoloff takes the horror genre to new heights.”

  —Charlotte Examiner

  “Alexandra Sokoloff’s talent brings readers into the dark and encompassing world of the unknown so completely, that readers will find it difficult to go to bed until the last page has been turned. Her novels bring human frailty and the desperate desire to survive together in poignant stories of personal struggle and human triumph. But the truly fascinating element of Sokoloff’s writing is her deep dig into the human psyche and the horrors that lie just beneath the surface of our carefully constructed facades.”

  —Fiction Examiner

  Book of Shadows

  “Compelling, frightening, and exceptionally well-written, Book of Shadows is destined to become another hit for acclaimed horror and suspense novelist Sokoloff. The incredibly tense plot and mysterious characters will keep readers up late at night, jumping at every sound, and turning the pages until they’ve devoured the book.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews

  “Sokoloff successfully melds a classic murder-mystery whodunit with supernatural occult overtones.”

  —Library Journal

  The Harrowing

  Bram Stoker and Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel

  “Absolutely gripping…it is easy to imagine this as a film. Once started, you won’t want to stop reading.”

  —The London Times

  “Sokoloff’s debut novel is an eerie ghost story that captivates readers from page one. The author creates an element of suspense that builds until the chillingly believable conclusion.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews

  “Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an ancient evil presence. Plenty of sexual tension, quick pace and engaging plot.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Also by Alexandra Sokoloff

  The Huntress/FBI Thrillers

  Huntress Moon: Book I

  Blood Moon: Book II

  Cold Moon: Book III

  Bitter Moon: Book IV

  Hunger Moon: Book V

  The Haunted Thrillers

  The Harrowing

  The Price

  The Unseen

  Book of Shadows

  The Space Between

  Paranormal

  The Shifters (from The Keepers Trilogy)

  Keeper of the Shadows (from The Keepers: L.A.)

  D-Girl on Doomsday (from Apocalypse: Year Zero)

  Nonfiction

  Stealing Hollywood: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

  Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors II

  “A Woman Wouldn’t Do That” (in Hollywood Vs. the Author)

  Short Fiction

  The Edge of Seventeen (in Rage Against the Night)

  In Atlantis (in Love is Murder)

  The New Girl (from Nasty Woman Press)

  Learn more about the author at: http://alexandrasokoloff.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Huntress Productions. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13 9781950696000

  Cover design by Cissy Hartley

  Cover photo by Professional Fine Art

  For Siegrid, who knows all the roads

  Contents

  PART ONE

  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

  PART TWO

  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

  PART THREE

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

&nbs
p; PART FOUR

  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

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  PART SIX

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Salton Sea: three weeks ago

  Singh

  Desert wind blows through the mosaic of cracks and holes in the walls of the abandoned motel.

  FBI Special Agent Antara Singh lies on the concrete floor, breathing shallowly beneath the cloth blindfolding her eyes. She can smell the blood of the man Cara Lindstrom has just murdered. A heavy, coppery stench, fouled with the body fluids of Detective Gilbert Ortiz.

  Now she feels fingers on her ankles, cold, expert hands tightening circles of rope, pulling them taut to bind her legs.

  Singh hears Lindstrom step back. Now she feels an explosion of sensation: a boot connecting with her rib cage, her kidneys, as Lindstrom systematically kicks her. Damaging blows, but she experiences them more as motion and impact than pain. The narcotics Lindstrom has given her are already taking effect.

  There are soft, booted footsteps on the concrete floor, retreating.

  Singh suspends her breath to listen.

  Lindstrom’s presence is gone. Singh is alone in the shell of the derelict hotel lobby.

  She knows what she has been left with.

  The body of an overweight young man slumped in a chair behind a table laden with video equipment, blood pooling at his feet from his slashed throat.

  And a platform in the center of harsh klieg lights. Its surface red, drenched in blood. Ortiz’s naked body spread-eagled on the top of the platform, gutted, bloodied beyond recognition.

  In her drugged state, Singh’s mind drifts above her own body and she sees herself as part of the gruesome tableau as well. Blindfolded, bound, bruised.

  A cover story for her own part in the carnage.

  Her consciousness falls back into her body as someone bursts through the front door of the lobby. Two sets of footsteps. Heavy. Male. There is a paralyzing instant of terror that it is the men, the online trolls who attacked her in the parking garage, or the ones who had paid Ortiz in the hope of assaulting Cara…

  Then there is a familiar voice calling her name, a rush of motion as someone hurls himself to the ground beside her… the touch of familiar, beloved hands as Damien gathers her into his arms.

  Her partner. Her rescuer. The man she has just deceived in a way she would never in her life have expected or wanted.

  Damien pulls off her blindfold. He kneels above her, his regal face harrowed with worry. Her ASAC, Matthew Roarke, hovers behind him.

  Men she would trust with her life. Men she must now lie to…

  The full effect of her ordeal and the narcotics hits her and she passes gladly into the dark relief of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 2

  San Francisco – present

  Singh and Roarke

  The San Francisco Bay is a gleaming mirror of the city today.

  Singh stands in Roarke’s office, looking past his desk, out the window at the glimmering bay beyond. Perhaps it will be the last time she sees this view, from this building.

  She has rehearsed her speech in the shower, during her morning and evening meditations, while walking on the white sand beach during the week she has just passed in the Maldives with Damien, “recovering” from her ordeal in the desert. She has spent days preparing her words, her mind, her heart, for what she knows she must do.

  She meets Roarke’s eyes and lifts her arm, extends her letter of resignation…

  Her ASAC will not let her speak. He stares into her face, does not acknowledge the envelope in her fingers.

  “I called you in because I’m sending you to Seattle. Special Agent Snyder is putting his case files in order in preparation for his retirement and he needs a researcher to help. I’m assigning you.”

  She opens her mouth to protest and he cuts her off again. “This is not a request. I am ordering you on assignment.”

  She inclines her head in acknowledgement and steps to the door, then turns back and speaks quietly, a reminder of their last conversation.

  “Do you think that things are better?”

  He stares at her, through her, and says flatly, “I’ll need you to turn your sidearm over to me.”

  A seemingly unrelated request, which has everything to do with everything. He no longer trusts her with her weapon.

  Her face flushes, a high burn in her cheeks. But she nods, and removes herself to her cubicle to fetch her service weapon.

  She surrenders it to Roarke in a wordless exchange. After, she walks down the corridor—not back to the bullpen, but to the elevators, down to the lobby of blue-veined marble, out the front doors.

  It is only when she steps into the chill of the outside that she realizes how badly she is shaking.

  Roarke stood at the window watching Singh cross the Civic Center Plaza, as if viewing her from behind the reinforced glass of a prison wall.

  He found himself wishing he had been the one to leave.

  His life seemed unbearably constrained. He longed for the sound and touch of the wind, the vast stretch of desert vistas. The wilderness.

  He knew banishing Singh was hypocrisy of the highest order. Her words had taken him back to that last conversation in the desert. It was where he lived now, in his mind, that windy night when he’d stood in the palm grove, calling out for Cara.

  Had he heard her say, “Come”?

  Or was that his own, desperate imagining?

  The truth was, he had been half a breath away from following her out into the desert, never to return.

  We are all mad, here.

  Chapter 3

  San Francisco - present

  Singh

  Singh walks blankly across the Civic Center Plaza, with its p
ollarded mulberry trees and statues and bundled-up homeless, toward one of the grand marble buildings surrounding the square. She mounts the stairs of the Asian Art Museum, moves between the slender columns of the building.

  The expansive lobby and open galleries are instantly calming.

  She finds her way to an inner gallery, to a stone bench among the familiar gods and goddesses: Tara, Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, and sits in the midst of the statues to examine her sentence.

  Banishment to Portland to assist Agent Snyder in what is essentially administrative paperwork. What used to be called secretarial work.

  Exile—under the supervision of a psychological profiler. Who presumably will be able to monitor her for signs of violence, even psychosis.

  An elegant solution, she must admit, to a problem that must have caused Roarke no end of sleepless nights since the bloody standoff in the Salton Sea desert, under the Hunger Moon.

  She had expected almost anything else. Firing. Arrest.

  Last month she had been teetering on the brink of insanity. And had certainly crossed the line into criminality.

  She had not killed the Palm Desert sheriff’s detective, Ortiz. That bloody task had been Cara Lindstrom’s. But Singh had been an accomplice, in thought and deed.

  And she had been planning for a far more direct and consequential action, before Roarke had intervened at the last moment. It had been a fever dream of an idea. Singh is not herself sure if she would have been able to go through with it.

  She does not know if she is grateful or resentful that Roarke stopped her.

  The man she intended to kill, the man Roarke prevented her from killing, has left the administration and is trying to foment other right-wing takeovers in other countries presently vulnerable to his toxic agenda of racism and dominionism.

  Perhaps that is one definition of “better.”

  There is still a madman in office, doing damage every hour of every day that he is allowed to remain.

  But she has not been fired. Her ASAC is not arresting her, nor institutionalizing her, though these things may come.