The Running Girls

ALSO BY MATT BROLLY Detective Louise Blackwell series: The Crossing The Descent The Gorge The Mark The Pier DCI Lambert series: Dead Eyed Dead Lucky Dead Embers Dead Time Dead Water (prequel) Lynch and Rose series: The Controller Standalone titles: Zero 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 © 2023 by Matthew Brolly 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: 9781662506161 eISBN: 9781662506178 Cover design by Lisa Horton Cover image: ©Evannovostro / Shutterstock; ©MR. BUDDEE WIANGNGORN / Shutterstock; ©Mara Fribus / Shutterstock; ©Leonardo Alpuin / Arcangel To the memory of my friend, Matt Wulff CONTENTS Prologue SUMMER Chapter One Chapter Two FALL Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Epilogue ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Follow the Author on Amazon Prologue He couldn’t remember how many times he’d been here or how many thousands of people he’d seen running along the seawall over the years. Until yesterday, no one had come close to that first one, but there she was—and here she was again, twenty-four hours later. How had he not seen her in the past? As he’d hoped, she was a creature of habit, once more gliding along the sidewalk as if she were floating above it, her gait so reminiscent of the first that she could have been her reincarnation. The gait—the very word itself a siren call—was always the first thing he noticed. The subtle differences were undetectable to most—the length and speed of the steps, the pelvic sway, the elongation of the lower leg—but he discerned each and every variant with a voyeur’s obsessiveness. And he’d waited so long. What appeared to be a regular running motion was disrupted every nine or ten steps, when her left leg would drag. SUMMER Chapter One As the Greyhound pulled into the Houston bus terminal, Frank Randall experienced a surge of anxiety. He’d never really liked the city, and after so much time away the thought of so many people in one place was unnerving. The trip here had been bad enough. He was used to crowds—fifteen years in a Texas state prison, and six months in a Huntsville halfway house, would do that to a person—so being cooped up for four hours in the company of strangers should have been a breeze. He’d been warned there would be a time of adjustment, but watching the various people board the dirty-blue vehicle had almost made him long for the inside. He’d passed the miles in silence, the young woman sitting next to him not acknowledging his presence—her focus on the shiny gleam of her cell phone’s screen, her ears plugged with white earphones. As the Texas wasteland scrolled by his window, Randall had searched for clues as