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Overview
Allander Atlasia is an infamous psychopath whose heinous crimes have earned him a lifetime stay at the Tower (nicknamed Alcatraz II), the world's most extreme maximum-security prison. But after a briliant and brutal escape, the criminal mastermind begins a killing spree that is intensely personal—one by one, victims fall prey to a twisted and chilling re-enactment of his own depraved past.
Jade Marlow is an ex-FBI profiler and tracker whose fearlessness is only surpassed by the severity of his own inner demons. With a record of irrational behavior and a genius for putting himself into the mind of a criminal predator, he may be the one man diabolical enough to catch Atlasia. In an excalating contest of wills and wits, two equally defiant men race toward a showdown where daring is deadly and failure is fatal.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780684871899 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 390 |
| Sales rank: | 24,855 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
Prologue
He didn't sleep well, but then he never did. He woke in the night and it seemed as if he had been awake all along. He tried to close his eyes and let sleep wash over him again, but it didn't.
Throwing back the covers, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and rested his hands on his knees. The first light of morning showed through the blinds. Soft morning light, still dull around the edges. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and stood up.
The dim light cut him at the waist and shadowed the muscles in his stomach. He ran his hand hard across the back of his neck and stretched his shoulders. The greenness of his eyes was startling; they seemed to draw the dim light of the room into themselves. Green, flickering gems set in the dark silhouette of a face.
Picking up a thin chain from the nightstand, he examined it for a moment before putting it on. He had worn the chain for years, though he had long since removed the medical tags it once held.
He pulled the blinds up. It was 5:26 in the morning and the air was still a heavy gray. He went into the kitchen and took a healthy swig from a carton of milk. The house was impeccably neat, as if some divine hand had swept things into order. He placed the milk back in the refrigerator, pushing it gently into line with the other items.
The living room was adjacent to the kitchen, and he went and lay across the couch. The room seemed empty although it was filled with furniture. It was sparsely but well decorated.
He grabbed the remote from the glass table and flicked on the TV without looking at it. Blue light danced across his face and the hum of voices filled the room. He gazed at the ceiling, shut his eyes, and counted as he breathed. He was still for a long time. It was a forced restfulness.
Finally, he got up and went to the bedroom. Lying backward on the bed, he put his feet on the wall. He reached into a drawerful of papers in his nightstand. On top was a Phi Beta Kappa key. His dirty little secret. He turned it aside and dug deeper, pulling out a racquetball.
He squeezed it, then threw it at the wall, catching it in front of his face. The ball's rhythm relaxed him, the tick against the wall, the tock against his palm.
The television sounded from the other room. The sounds of six in the morning. "Tired of spending another night rearranging your sock drawer? Well, now's your chance! It's time to be social -- but not in a way that'll make you uncomfortable, like in all those singles bars."
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Each time he caught the ball, he gave it a firm squeeze, pressing his fingertips into its soft surface. Tick. Tock.
"I never thought it would be so easy. I just pick up the phone and I have a whole network of friends to talk to."
He looked over at his phone. It was like the President's line. It usually rang out.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. He was into the four hundreds when he lost count. The ball became a blue blur, a line to the wall and back to his face. He threw and caught, threw and caught as the sun made its tedious ascent outside his window.
At about seven, he got up and went into the study. He pulled a pistol from the top-left drawer and felt its familiar balance in his hand. It was a Sig Sauer, government issue, a weapon he had learned to use and love in his Quantico days.
He went to the dining room and gazed out across his front yard. There was a difference in the air that he could taste, as if something was about to fall out of place.
He twirled the pistol around his finger, cocked it and uncocked it expertly with his thumb, and twirled it again. A mail truck made its way slowly up the street, stopping at each house. It passed his mailbox without slowing and went to the next.
Pulling a chair around the table to face the window, he sat down, leaning back so two of the chair's legs tilted off the ground. The early morning joggers were out: a tired middle-aged man, a mother with her daughter, a couple with a dog.
He played with his pistol almost unconsciously, turning it over in his hand, spinning it around his finger, catching it in his palm. Sometimes he held it at arm's length, sometimes he held it on his lap. But he always held it well.
The stream of light through the front window climbed his body slowly as the sun rose. Just before it reached his eyes, he got up and walked back into the study, pulling a maple gun case from the drawer. He slid the pistol back into the velvet lining. It fit snugly. His fingers perched lightly on the case's lid as his gaze lingered on the gun. He slammed the case shut.
There was a name emblazoned on its brass plate: JADE MARLOW.
Copyright © 1999 by Greg Andrew Hurwitz
Chapter 17
Allander laughed softly as he wiped the noses of the two children. Their arms and legs were bound with gray duct tape and they lay struggling on the couch. The tape was also wound around their heads several times, covering their eyes but leaving the rest of their faces exposed.
The bodies of their parents lay on the carpet next to the couch. The woman's body was sprawled over her dead husband, her limbs interlocked with his. Their heads, arms, and legs were positioned at unnatural angles. Although Allander had intended them to look like two people holding each other intimately, they looked more like broken action figures.
Before arranging this deadly embrace, Allander had carefully gouged out their eyes with a knife he had found in the kitchen. It had taken him some time to get up the courage to approach the woman. The first thing he had done was to wet a towel and smear the white beauty mask off her face.
Now, he sat on a love seat with his knees pulled up to his chest. He hugged himself and grinned as he addressed the children.
"I'm certain that your estimation of your mother and father was rather hyperbolic anyway. Parents are deified by their children, but as you can see, the idols in the temple have come tumbling down." He extended a foot and touched the woman's corpse.
The little girl choked on a sob. "What did you do to my mommy?"
Allander chewed his cheek and squinted. "Let's just say I did nothing you didn't want to do yourself. I only put your desires into action. You see, that's the worst part about being a child -- you're too small to have an impact on anything. Just a confused mind and a weak body with tiny little fingers insufficient to grasp and swing a blunt object."
He took the girl's hand and caressed her trembling fingers tenderly until she jerked them away. They brushed the ragged tape that covered his ring finger and a jolt of pain shot through his hand.
The boy was clearly too petrified to speak. His legs poked out of the large leg holes in his shorts, looking foolishly small and unimportant.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to dispose of you both for the time being," Allander said.
The girl's chest began to shake uncontrollably and she jerked around on the sofa and pulled at the tape on her wrists.
"Oh no. Oh no no no." Allander threw his head back and laughed a deep, rolling laugh. "I'm not going to kill you. Just move you to the bedroom, away from the watchful eyes of your parents." Standing up, he faced the children and his voice dropped. "They see not what they do."
The girl's bedroom was pink and yellow and splendid. The wallpaper had grand stripes of dancing color, and the bed was adorned with a flowing canopy. Above the girl's desk were several cut-out letters that had been colored with crayons.
The letters were aligned with an ordered sloppiness that only a child's hand could have accomplished. "L-E-A-H." They were proud, bright and confident. Allander stared in fascination at the girl's name, standing with one child tucked under each arm. "Astounding." He shook the girl gently. "Such self-affirmation. To be admired in a budding woman."
He laid the children side by side on the mattress underneath the canopy and unwrapped their wrists, allowing their groping hands to meet and clasp together. Then, he secured their fearful handhold and taped their other arms down to their sides.
After kissing both children on their foreheads, he stood back and admired his work. His fingertips moved lovingly over the boy's face, lingering for a moment on his lips. Running his other hand smoothly down his own stomach, Allander fondled himself. He moved his hand from the boy's lips, across his rosy cheeks to the back of his head and held it there for a moment before turning away.
It would be easy, but not quite what he wanted. The woman in the mask had scared him, but he had dominated her. The boy was nothing next to that.
He cleared his throat and found his voice again. "Brother King, Sister Queen. So much contradiction harmonized in a single pair. Play, children, and see each other not."
Allander stood naked in front of the full-length bathroom mirror and stared at his pale, bruised body. His dirt-covered feet had left marks on the white carpet. Gazing at the mirror through his tangled locks, he looked at the crusted blood on his bottom lip, the swirls of dried salt that clung to his chest, the small leaf of seaweed pasted by his left nipple, and the thin, wiry stubble that sprouted unevenly around his jaw and throat.
Peeling off the tape, he looked at the red slit in his finger. It was a brand, he decided. They had marked him like an animal, right across his own fingerprint.
He reached out his hand and touched the mirror. "What have they done to you?" he said aloud, his query bouncing off the white walls of the bathroom.
Allander sat on the love seat in the living room wearing a royal-blue silk shirt and a loose pair of pants with a drawstring. He had showered, shaved carefully, and re-dressed his finger. He had decided on the exotic outfit after trying on several; he felt it looked somehow princely on him.
He swirled some milk around in his highball glass and leaned back against the sofa, closing his eyes. After a few minutes, his head lolled back, and in his mind he caught a glimpse of an overweight man pulling a clown mask over his unruly hair. Images of heads with the eyes gouged out and a hand wiping a white mask from a woman's face flashed rapidly through his mind. He awoke with a start, the glass of milk sliding from his grasp. He watched the milk spread across the carpet, sinking into the soft fibers. It reminded him of semen.
He was instantly alert, his eyes darting around until he realized where he was. "Ah, there's the rub," he said, and walked to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.
The boy and girl lay next to each other, the sound of their breathing all that interrupted the perfect silence of the room.
"Leah?" the boy said.
"Ssssshhhh, Robbie. Don't talk. We don't know what the man will do."
"Is he gonna -- " Robbie's breath caught in his throat and he started gasping, sucking air in and out through his wavering lips. Leah pressed his hand tightly.
Robbie finally regained control of his breathing and continued. "Is the man gonna hurt us?"
Leah didn't respond right away, but squeezed Robbie's hand again. Their palms were both sweating profusely and the moisture mingled to make a slick seal.
"I think he already has," she replied.
Copyright © 1999 by Greg Andrew Hurwitz
What People are Saying About This
In The Tower, GreggAndrew Hurwitz merges his formidable intellect with his love of a good story. The gratifying result: a smart and impressive first novel where the pages seem to turn themselves.
— (Peter Hedges, author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape)
Gregg Andrew Hurwitz puts the pedal to the floor in his first paragraph, and doesn't let it up until the very last page....Don't start this novel in the evening if you need to get up on time and go to work the next morning.
— Author of Five Past Midnight
