“James delivers first-rate characters [and] dazzling plot twists, and powers it all with nonstop action.”
—Emmy Award–winning screenplay writer John Tinker
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF STEVEN JAMES
Every Deadly Kiss
“James brings complexity and intrigue to his latest Patrick Bowers thriller, layering plotlines and unfolding characters in a way that keeps readers on the edge through the very end . . . Fans of the Bowers Files will not be disappointed.”
—RT Book Reviews
“As always, James’s writing is top drawer, suspenseful, and unnerving.”
—Mystery Scene
Every Crooked Path
“Steven James is right up there with the likes of James Patterson . . . I can’t wait for more.”
—Fresh Fiction
Checkmate
“High tension all the way . . . Fast, sharp, and believable. Put it at the top of your list.”
—John Lutz, Edgar® Award–winning author of
Single White Female and Slaughter
The King
“His tightly woven, adrenaline-laced plots leave readers breathless.”
—The Suspense Zone
“Steven James offers yet another slam dunk in the Bowers Files series!”
—Suspense Magazine
Opening Moves
“A mesmerizing read . . . My conclusion: I need to read more of Steven James.”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author of
The Wrong Side of Goodbye
“Steven James has created a fast-moving thriller with psychological depth and gripping action. Opening Moves is a smart, taut, intense novel of suspense that reads like a cross between Michael Connelly and Thomas Harris . . . a blisteringly fast and riveting read.”
—Mark Greaney, New York Times bestselling author of
Gunmetal Gray
“[A] fast-moving, intense thriller that has as many demented twists and turns as the crimes themselves.”
—Examiner.com
The Pawn
“Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[An] exceptional psychological thriller.”
—Armchair Reviews
THE BOWERS FILES
Opening Moves
The Pawn
The Rook
The Knight
The Bishop
The Queen
The King
Checkmate
Every Crooked Path
Every Deadly Kiss
Every Wicked Man
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Steven James
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
The Edgar® award is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.
Ebook ISBN: 9781101991602
First Edition: September 2018
Cover design by Jae Song
Cover photographs: Abandoned greenhouse by Gregory A. Pozhvanov / Shutterstock; Silhouette of a man by Carlos G. Lopez / Shutterstock
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Ashley
CONTENTS
Praise for the novels of Steven James
Also by Steven James
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
STAGE I: DenialChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
STAGE II: AngerChapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
STAGE III: BargainingChapter 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
STAGE IV: DepressionChapter 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
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
STAGE V: AcceptanceChapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Acknowledgments
About the Author
“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”
—PHILOSOPHER AND WRITER MICHEL DE MONT
AIGNE (1533–1592)
“If we could see each other’s thoughts, no one would be considered good.”
—FROM MAXIMS BY ST. STEPHEN OF MURET (1045–1124)
STAGE I
Denial
Camera angles. The observer.
There’s a number for everyone.
1
“Have the nightmares been getting worse?”
Timothy Sabian didn’t like being here at his psychiatrist’s office, didn’t like what it implied. “No. I mean, they’re about the same.”
“Well, that’s good, then. I’m glad to hear that, Timothy—that they’re not escalating in severity.”
Sometimes they happen when I’m awake, Timothy thought, but kept that to himself.
Dr. Percival looked maybe fifty or so, and even though he was about the age Timothy’s father would be, Timothy had never seen him as a father figure. This was a different kind of relationship.
“And the bugs?” the doctor asked.
“They’re not real.”
But even as he said the words, Timothy could feel the insects crawling across his abdomen.
In the literature, the feeling was described as “disturbing cutaneous sensations” rather than just saying that it felt like bugs crawling on you day and night. Then you had the constant itching, which doctors tried to make sound more scientific by naming it pruritus.
He didn’t want to show Dr. Percival the scars on his arms from the scratching and from trying to use the tweezers and the razor blade to dig out the bugs that burrowed into his skin. The bandage wrapped around his left arm was keeping the fresh blood hidden today. That, and the dark knit, long-sleeved sweater.
Yet still, Timothy felt the urge to scratch at them, to swat at them, to make them somehow, somehow go away.
Somehow. Go.
Away.
But he did not. He just sat still instead and nodded knowingly to his psychiatrist. “No bugs. That’s just delusional parasitosis.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Percival said. “They’re delusions.”
But Timothy caught a hint of condescension, that subtle shift in tone that meant the doctor had moved from believing the patient to trying to understand what the patient believed.
He’d been through this before.
He’d seen how these things end.
It meant that empathy was on its way out and a diagnosis was on its way in. And at that point, it was just too hard to go back. Once doubt crept in there, the more you claimed you weren’t mad, the more convinced they became that you were.
“We both know there aren’t any bugs,” Dr. Percival went on, “but I’m more curious if they’re still bothering you.”
“All gone,” Timothy said. “I’m not here today about the nightmares or the bugs.”
“Okay. Tell me why you’re here today.”
“How do you turn it off?”
“Turn what off?”
“The noise, the voices. Is it this way for everyone?”
“What do you mean?”
Since he didn’t want his doctor to think he was crazy, Timothy hadn’t brought this up before, but today, for some reason, he felt like he needed to talk about it, just to make sure, just to be certain that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him.
“All the chatter, chatter, chatter,” he said. “The words and the spiderweb connections, back and forth, all the time, touching each other. Intertwining, overlapping. Threading between things, around them. Is there a way to turn it off?”
“Tell me more about this chatter. About what it’s like.”
“I see a leaf on the ground and wonder about the tree that dropped it there, when it was planted, how long it’s been growing, how many other trees its roots touch down there, deep underground. A server at a restaurant hands me a pen to sign my credit card receipt, and I think of all the other people who’ve ever held that pen—the dates they were on, the argument or lovemaking or chilled silence that might have followed later that evening after one of them signed the receipt and handed back the pen. I pass a girl on the street and see her smile after reading a text message, and I fill in what it was she might have read.”
“That simply shows you have a vivid imagination.”
“So you don’t hear them?”
“I imagine different scenarios. Yes, of course. Different ways things might play out. Everyone does.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
Dr. Percival glanced at the clock on the wall, something they should teach psychiatrists never to do, for all that it communicates to their clients.
Still twenty minutes left in their session.
“I think it’s natural to see connections between things,” the doctor said, “to wonder about something’s past, its origins, its future. I think it’s a skill you’ve honed over time. Being a novelist, you’ve taught yourself to be observant and inquisitive. Your livelihood depends on it. Don’t mistake creativity for mental illness. Your imagination is—”
“Overactive. That’s what my fifth-grade teacher used to tell me: ‘You have an overactive imagination.’ Is that possible?”
“It’s just a saying.”
“How can an imagination be overactive? Isn’t there something wrong with it, then? I mean, if it’s more active than it should be?”
“Timothy, most people’s imaginations have been blunted by years of sensible thinking and—”
“Beveled dreams.”
“Beveled dreams?”
“Dreams that have been chisel-wedge sharpened by the futility of slamming against an uncompromising reality.”
Timothy caught himself scratching at his arm, at the bugs crawling out of the open sores he’d been so careful to bandage over, the bugs Dr. Percival assured him weren’t real.
The doctor watched him carefully, then jotted something in his notebook—another therapist habit that silently spoke volumes.
Sometimes Timothy wondered if Dr. Percival was really writing things related to his case. Maybe he was scribbling out a shopping list. Maybe he was drawing farm animals. Maybe he was writing a letter to his daughter and he was going to mail it to her as soon as Timothy left for the—
Kill him.
“It’s happening,” Timothy whispered.
“What’s happening?”
You see that letter opener on his desk? Pick it up.
“No.” Timothy shook his head, tried to quiet the voice. “Make it stop, make it stop.”
Pick up the letter opener.
Dr. Percival was watching him carefully. “Tell me what it’s like right now, Timothy. What you’re hearing.”
“No. I can’t.”
Do it.
He had to make it stop. He had to had to had to had to.
And there was only one way.
Timothy picked up the letter opener.
“What are you doing?”
Now drive it into his neck.
“No,” Timothy yelled. “I won’t!”
“You won’t what?”
Lean across the desk, grab him by the collar to hold him in place, and then push it up into his throat. Just like the others.
No, no. There haven’t been others. You’re lying to me!
I’m not lying, Timothy. You know that—
“No!”
But yet he stood.
The psychiatrist eased back and reached for the button under his desk, the one he’d pressed eight months ago and Timothy knew was still there. He wasn’t stupid, after all. He wasn’t dangerous anymore. Not like he was back then.
He wasn’t—no, of course he wasn’t—or else he wouldn’t be here today; he would be back at the White Shirts Place with all those people who needed to be locked away, the ones who were a danger to themselves or others.
The crazy ones.
The unstable ones.
You’re unstable, Timothy. You’re crazy.
“No, I’m not!”
“You need to put that down, Timothy.”
But Timothy walked around the desk to where Dr. Percival was standing, and the doctor backed up even farther, until he was almost to the window.
Timothy felt his hands trembling. “You have to help me.”
“Timothy, get back.” The psychiatrist’s voice caught with fear. “Now!”
You have a vivid imagination. Overactive. There’s something wrong.
Beveled dreams.
Oh, beveled dreams.
Just like the others.
And then, Timothy Sabian shoved his psychiatrist fiercely against the wall and drove the letter opener into his own neck.
* * *
+++
You’re not supposed to survive something like that. Some people said he was lucky; others, that it was a miracle. Timothy just knew that he was in the hospital for a long time afterward. They kept his wrists and ankles strapped down so he couldn’t move, so he couldn’t hurt himself, and despite all the drugs they gave him and all the therapy they tried, the voices didn’t go away.
And neither did the bugs.
He knew that too.
2
Friday, November 2
New York City
Dusk
“C’mon,” my stepdaughter begged me. “Just once more around the pumpkins. Seriously. I’ve got this.”
It was our fourth visit to this parking lot since she’d turned sixteen a week and a half ago. Teaching a daughter to drive. A rite of passage for dads, and in this case, I was the closest thing she had to that.
“I need to get back, Tessa. I have to work tonight.”
“It’s that suicide, isn’t it?”
“I can’t tell you about the case.”
“Thought so.”
She shouldn’t have known anything about what I was working on, but because of who was dead and what I do for a living, it hadn’t been hard for her to deduce how I might be spending my evening.
But as bright as she was, she wasn’t exactly a prodigy at driving a car.