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  PRAISE FOR CHRISTOPHER RICE

  Bone Music

  “A stellar and gripping opening to the Burning Girl series introduces the tough, smart Trina Pierce, a.k.a. Charlotte Rowe, who survived a childhood of murder and exploitation to discover there might be another way to fight back . . . Readers will be eager for the next installment in Rice’s science-fiction take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “Bone Music is a taut and gripping thriller that’s as bleak and harsh as the Arizona desert. It never lets up until the final page. Rice has created a great character in Charlotte Rowe.”

  —Authorlink

  “A simply riveting cliff-hanger of a novel, Bone Music by Christopher Rice is one of those reads that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Christopher Rice’s first Burning Girl novel weaves a complex, suspenseful, gritty tale with grace and energy that turns the tables on the female victim trope.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Blood Echo

  “An undeniable page-turner . . .”

  —Library Journal

  “Rice has something to say about the devastating effects of childhood trauma and what makes a monster . . .”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Strong sequel . . . Rice combines bloody violence, complex characters, and high tech in a dark tale that will leave readers wanting to see more of [Charlotte Rowe].”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Christopher Rice has written a suspense-filled, forceful second entry in his series, a well-balanced thriller with deep-delving characterizations. Blood Echo is filled with a complex cast of characters imbued with both good and evil, as well as a good man who walks the thin line between.”

  —New York Journal of Books

  “A deftly crafted novel by author Christopher Rice, Blood Echo is an inherently riveting read with a wealth of unexpected twists and turns right down to its nail-biter finish.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Blood Victory

  “Cyrus’s true story unravels to dramatic effect. Fans of paranormal suspense will be well satisfied.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The third Burning Girl thriller has action aplenty for superhero fans.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  OTHER TITLES BY CHRISTOPHER RICE

  A Density of Souls

  The Snow Garden

  Light Before Day

  Blind Fall

  The Moonlit Earth

  The Heavens Rise

  The Vines

  Bone Music: A Burning Girl Thriller

  Blood Echo: A Burning Girl Thriller

  Blood Victory: A Burning Girl Thriller

  ROMANCE

  The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella

  The Surrender Gate: A Desire Exchange Novel

  Kiss the Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella

  Dance of Desire

  Desire & Ice: A MacKenzie Family Novella

  As C. Travis Rice

  Sapphire Sunset: A Sapphire Cove Novel

  WITH ANNE RICE

  Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra

  Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris

  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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2022 by Christopher Rice

  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.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542032742 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542032741 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542032766 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542032768 (paperback)

  Cover design by M.S. Corley

  First Edition

  This one’s for Eddie Shine,

  whose San Francisco summer program first introduced me to the power and mystery of the woods when I was a child.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE SHADOWS

  I The Crash

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  II The Park

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  III The Pulse

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  IV Home

  31

  32

  33

  34

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  SHADOWS

  Fourteen Years Ago

  Claire followed her brother into the woods because she was afraid he wouldn’t come back if she didn’t go with him. They were only two years apart in age, but up until that camping trip, which would shatter their family, she’d assumed she would always be his protector.

  In the wild, Poe tended to flip over large rocks without pausing to see if a snake was coiled underneath, to head in the direction of strange noises with a confident stride, arms swinging, backpack bouncing, heedless of whatever animal might be lurking past rustling branches. His curiosity had frightened her from the moment he first learned to walk. At ten years old, he loved the world so fearlessly she worried its sharp edges would one day result in an injury that crushed his spirit.

  And so she went with Poe into the dark that night because if he took a wrong step, she’d be there to pull him from the waters of the lake their father had described in seductive detail before nodding off next to their illegal campfire.

  “Trees go right up to the edge,” their dad had explained, one hand outstretched, eyes glazed from the shots of Wild Turkey he’d promised their mom he wouldn’t drink during the trip. Back then, with his shoulder-length hair and heavy beard, he dressed the part of the naturalist he’d always wanted to be, not a guy who spent most of his days installing drywall for house flippers who’d just relocated from Los Angeles to Spokane. “No docks. No beach. No real shore when you get right down to it. Just this almost perfect bowl of clear water surrounded by gorgeous pines. And you don’t have to deal with any boaters because nobody’s going to hike in a bunch of equipment through all that. Some days, when the light’s just right, you can see down forever.”

  Lake Michele, it was called, and the description made Poe’s round blue eyes blaze in the campfire’s glow. “Can we go tomorrow, Dad?”

  “Next time, kiddo. Mom’s watching the clock and wants us back before Sunday.”

  He’d fallen asleep in his folding chair next to the fire’s last embers. And because Claire knew her brother, she knew he would wait and try something reckless. So when she heard him sliding out of his sleeping bag later that night, she reached through the shadows and grabbed his arm with the same force she used to keep him from stepping off a curb before the signal had changed.

  “Come with me, Bear,” he’d whispered in response.

  Most of the time, her
little brother’s nickname for her—a product of the way his toddler-aged mouth had rebelled against hard consonants—made her feel loved, but out here in Glacier National Park, it made her think of the black-and-white pictures she’d seen in her father’s dog-eared paperback copy of Jack Olsen’s Night of the Grizzlies, a true story about a series of fatal bear attacks in the 1960s. Not only had he kept the book hidden in the shed, he’d also underlined passages and made notes. This made her feel good. It meant that even though her dad always pretended to be unafraid of the wild, he was privately assessing the risks.

  But tonight, thanks to the Wild Turkey, he’d be no help unless she woke him. And if she woke him, she’d pay a serious price with her brother, who was still her best friend.

  “There’s a full moon,” Poe whispered. “We’ll be able to see down forever.”

  The way he repeated their father’s words, his exact intonations, made Claire feel like some anxious outsider to the intrepid spirit that united the men in their family and left her and her mother on the margins, dismissed as whiners and crybabies. If she hadn’t been roused by his movements, he might have slipped off and come back without her knowing, and then she wouldn’t have been faced with this choice. But now she knew, so she had to go.

  Their father shunned traditional campsites, dismissing them as overused trash magnets, and so the minute they left the little clearing where they’d spent the last two nights, branches started scratching at their Gore-Tex jackets and they had to step over giant rocks every few feet. The slow going made it easy for Claire to reach out and break a branch every now and then, marking the path back for when it was time to turn around. After a half hour of strenuous hiking, Poe’s excited chatter started to take on the same refrain, most of it attempts to assure her they hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

  “It’ll be cool, Claire. Timmy Preston’s always bragging about how his dad took him to Europe last summer and he saw the Eiffel Tower and stuff and now I’ll be able to tell him we saw all the way down to the center of the earth and all we had to do was drive to Montana.”

  “The lake’s not that deep.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t been there.”

  “No lake is that deep, Poe,” she said.

  “I think there’s one in Africa or something.”

  “There isn’t.”

  He was baiting her, of course. They all knew she was the only member of their family who read Wikipedia for fun. There was no point in getting into a dispute with her about geography or history. But she played along because it was preferable to letting the quiet of the vast forest close in around them.

  For most of the trek they’d been ascending a gentle slope. Everywhere their flashlight beams landed revealed thick brush.

  Poe came to a sudden stop.

  His beam had landed on a rock ledge several paces ahead. As she caught up to him, she saw the seven-foot drop just beyond. If he hadn’t lowered his flashlight at just the right second, he might have broken his leg.

  “Poe,” Claire whispered. “We need to go back. Seriously.”

  “No, look.”

  Beyond the drop-off, a steep but manageable slope descended toward shadowy trunks. Between them, water sparkled in the moonlight. Poe reached back and took her hand. He aimed his flashlight at her stomach so that it sent a soft glow up onto their faces without blinding them.

  “OK. Make you a bet,” Poe said. “If we can’t see all the way to the center of the earth, then—”

  He never finished the sentence.

  The earth under their feet shook with enough force to send gooseflesh up Claire’s legs. Her flashlight was ripped from her hand, the beam bouncing wildly as it sailed through the branches. Then she felt like she’d been punched in the stomach and her head yanked sideways, as if someone had pulled hard on her straw-colored ponytail.

  In the next instant, she felt her brother’s chest slam into hers. The same force that had torn her flashlight away had driven the two of them into a half embrace. The rush of hot air on her face was his breath, she realized. He was screaming, but his scream was drowned out by a thunderous growl that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Her feet had left the earth. Since their bodies were intertwined, she realized his must have too.

  They were flying.

  Her ears popped like they sometimes did on planes.

  A landslide, she thought.

  But when Claire slammed back to the earth with enough force to knock the wind out of her, Poe was gone, and there was no tidal wave of mud and debris. Broken branches rained down, shorn leaves slapping her face. The pain of the impact was delayed, and then it spread. Her right shoulder felt like it had been torn open. The throbbing in her head became a tightening vise. She felt swarms of something crawling under her skin, scrambling to break free.

  She blinked, saw tangles of shredded and dangling limbs overhead, but it looked like there were two sets of everything. And one set was moving.

  She was hit by a light so blinding it stole time itself.

  The next thing she knew, the deafening roar had been replaced by a helicopter’s blades, and she was staring up at several neat fluorescent rectangles. The floor underneath her rocked. She was high above the earth as medics conversed frantically over her body. A tight band across her forehead kept her immobilized. Now the pain was like spreading fire beneath her skin. She had a terrible fear she’d been burned, but when she jerked her head as much as she could against the restraint, she saw the arm of her jacket was shredded, not scorched.

  She couldn’t turn her head enough to see who was next to her, but she figured it was Poe. When she tried to cry his name, she coughed up grit instead. Dirt. There was dirt in her throat from the force of the blast. It speckled the inside of the oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth.

  Claire closed her eyes, remembered what she’d seen before the blinding flash had claimed her, after she’d slammed back into the earth—two sets of branches in the air above. One set had looked like it was moving away.

  Shadows, she realized. It was the branches and then their shadows. Whatever the source of that impossibly bright light, it had moved toward them through the woods before drowning them in white. And these shadows, and the light that followed them, had come after the terrible blasts of air that had sent her and Poe flying off their feet. Like the light had been seeking them out after knocking them down.

  This seemed important, and she wished she could share it with the EMTs right then. But she was coughing, and the mask wasn’t helping, and when it was pulled from her and she felt someone wiping at her mouth, darkness claimed her again.

  She heard her father’s voice next.

  “I saw it my damn self. It lit up the whole damn lake, and now you’re going to tell me—”

  “We’ll do some more extensive tests, Mr. Huntley, but for now she needs to rest,” another man said.

  She opened her eyes. She was in a hospital, and the man who’d just spoken was the doctor examining her. The touch of his cold, gloved fingers was dulled by the drugs in her system.

  When he saw she was awake, his brown eyes met hers, but there was something remote and suspicious in his gaze. “Hi, Claire,” the doctor said, and at this, someone shot up out of a chair in the corner of the room and rushed to her side.

  Her father took her hand. He was about to speak when the doctor said, “Claire, can you remember anything about the attack?”

  Attack. The word came close to describing what had happened, but not close enough. Force, power, wind, light. If it was an attack, it had been waged by the earth itself. “Light” was all she could manage, a rasping whisper that made her sound ninety years old. When she spoke, the excruciating pressure in her temples started up again. She closed her eyes. The pain lessened only a little, so she opened them again.

  “Look, she’s got no bite marks.” The piano-wire tension in her father’s voice told her they’d been having this debate for a while. Bandages wrapped his right forearm. Some s
ort of injury. When did he get injured?

  The next thing Claire knew, her father was following her doctor out of the room, arguing furiously under his breath. She glimpsed a uniformed park ranger standing in the hall outside. He looked back at her with an expression she couldn’t read, as if she’d become a source of both mystery and dread for them all.

  An attack. Bite marks. They thought a bear had done this, and maybe that was the case. And maybe the light was something that had happened in her head. Maybe she’d whited out instead of blacking out. She wasn’t sure.

  And she wanted to sleep. The next time she woke up, she asked about Poe, and the nurse told her that he was fine. He’d broken his right arm and she’d broken her left. They made a pair, you see. Wasn’t that funny? But Claire didn’t laugh, because both of her arms hurt like the devil even though only one was in a cast. Every time she woke up, she had a few good minutes before her head started throbbing like her brain needed more space than her skull allowed. And each time she woke up, her memory of those moving shadows seemed more distant, farther away. Just some trick of her mind resulting from the powerful swat of a bear’s massive paw against her head.

  Whited out instead of blacking out. That had to be it.

  But even then, through her drugged haze, through the confusion of being wheeled in and out of MRIs and other giant machines meant to peer deep into her body in search of injuries people couldn’t see, she wanted to tell them about the shadows, but her next visitor was her mother. She looked exhausted and disturbed but explained in a soft and gentle voice how their father was to blame for everything that had happened, that he’d been terribly irresponsible to bring them that far out into the woods, that far from help. She didn’t ask for Claire’s opinion, didn’t ask for Claire’s version of events. Claire was relieved. This meant she didn’t have to talk about her father’s drinking or his falling asleep by the fire and how far he’d taken them from a trail or a real campsite. But it was always that way with her mother. Always easier to let her tell you what to do. The downside was that she would also tell you what to think and feel.

  When Claire woke next, her mother was gone, and she could hear her father down the hall, arguing with everyone, it seemed—Claire’s mother, the doctors, a man who might have been the park ranger she’d glimpsed through the door to her room. “It wasn’t a goddamn bear, for Christ’s sake,” he kept yelling, and when they asked him what he thought it was, his answer shocked her. “Something we don’t understand,” he’d fired back. “Something none of you understand!”