The Girl in the Woods Read online

  Highest Praise for Gregg Olsen

  Fear Collector

  “Thrills, chills, and absolute fear erupt in a story that

  focuses on the evil Ted Bundy brought to society.

  Readers will not see the twists and turns coming

  and, even better, they’ll get the shock of a lifetime.

  This author has gone out of his way to make sure

  this is a novel of true and utter fear!”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “Excellent, well written, fascinating . . . an engaging

  story that will captivate from the very start. Olsen has

  combined the power of fiction with the stark reality

  of fact. It’s a book you’ll not easily forget.”

  —Kevin M. Sullivan, author of

  The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History

  “An exciting tale . . . surprising twists and suspenseful

  spins. . . . Olsen keeps the reader hooked.”

  —Genre Go Round

  “Fantastic, awesome . . . exciting twists and turns and

  an explosive, unexpected ending . . . the best suspense

  thriller I’ve read all year!”

  —Friday Fiction

  Victim Six

  “A rapid-fire page-turner.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Olsen knows how to write a terrifying story.”

  —The Daily Vanguard

  “Victim Six is a bloody thriller with a nonstop,

  page-turning pace.”

  —The Oregonian

  “Olsen is a master of writing about crime—both

  real and imagined.”

  —Kitsap Sun

  “Thrilling suspense.”

  —Peninsula Gateway

  “Well written and exciting from start to finish, with a

  slick final twist. . . . a super serial-killer thriller.”

  —The Mystery Gazette

  “Gregg Olsen is as good as any writer of serial-killer

  thrillers writing now—this includes James Patterson’s

  Alex Cross, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhymes and

  Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. . . . Victim Six

  hooks the reader . . . finely written and edge-of-seat

  suspense from start to finish . . . fast-paced . . . a

  super serial-killer thriller.”

  —The News Guard

  Heart of Ice

  “Gregg Olsen will scare you—and you’ll love

  every moment of it.”

  —Lee Child

  “Olsen deftly juggles multiple plot lines.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fiercely entertaining, fascinating . . . Olsen offers

  a unique background view into the very real world

  of crime . . . and that makes his novels ring true

  and accurate.”

  —Dark Scribe

  A Cold Dark Place

  “A great thriller that grabs you by the throat and takes

  you into the dark, scary places of the heart and soul.”

  —Kay Hooper

  “You’ll sleep with the lights on after reading Gregg

  Olsen’s dark, atmospheric, page-turning suspense . . .

  if you can sleep at all.”

  —Allison Brennan

  “A stunning thriller—a brutally dark story with a

  compelling, intricate plot.”

  —Alex Kava

  “This stunning thriller is the love child of Thomas

  Harris and Laura Lippman, with all the thrills and the

  sheer glued-to-the-page artistry of both.”

  —Ken Bruen

  “Olsen keeps the tension taut and pages turning.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  A Wicked Snow

  “Real narrative drive, a great setup, a gruesome crime,

  fine characters.”

  —Lee Child

  “A taut thriller.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “Wickedly clever! A finely crafted, genuinely twisted

  tale of one mother’s capacity for murder and one

  daughter’s search for the truth.”

  —Lisa Gardner

  “An irresistible page-turner.”

  —Kevin O’Brien

  “Complex mystery, crackling authenticity . . . will

  keep fans of crime fiction hooked.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Vivid, powerful, action-packed . . . a terrific, tense

  thriller that grips the reader.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Tight plotting, nerve-wracking suspense, and a

  wonderful climax make this debut a winner.”

  —Crimespree magazine

  “A Wicked Snow’s plot—about a CSI investigator

  who’s repressed a horrific crime from her childhood

  until it comes back to haunt her—moves at a

  satisfyingly fast clip.”

  —Seattle Times

  ALSO BY GREGG OLSEN

  A Wicked Snow

  A Cold Dark Place

  Heart of Ice

  Victim Six

  Closer Than Blood

  Fear Collector

  The Bone Box (novella)

  Envy

  Betrayal

  Run

  Shocking True Story

  Abandoned Prayers

  Starvation Heights

  Cruel Deception (aka, Mockingbird)

  If Loving You Is Wrong

  A Twisted Faith

  Bitch on Wheels (aka, Black Widow)

  Bitter Almonds

  The Deep Dark

  WITH REBECCA MORRIS

  If I Can’t Have You

  Bodies of Evidence

  THE GIRL IN THE WOODS

  GREGG OLSEN

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Highest Praise for Gregg Olsen

  ALSO BY GREGG OLSEN

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  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

  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

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  For Jean M. Olson, who likes to make everything go smoothly

  PROLOGUE

  Molly O’Rourke worked as a nurse’s aide at a convalescent center in Silverdale, Washington, and loathed the early morning and weekend hours that came with the job. It wasn’t what she’d envisioned at a
ll. At twenty-seven, the petite redhead with sharp, angular features had expected that she’d be a bit further along at this stage. It was true she was no longer under her mother’s roof—and that was a godsend—but she wasn’t exactly moving along in life at a fast clip. She rented a slightly rundown house at 509 Camellia Street in Port Orchard, up on the hill overlooking the naval shipyard and its row of hulking gray ships awaiting repair or dismantling. She put a pencil to her budget and realized that the only way she could afford a better place was if she had a roommate or a boyfriend, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not with her terrible hours.

  Molly wasn’t a quitter, but a realist. She stood in the dim light of the parking strip in front of her 1940s house and ran every possible outcome for her life through her head. The list had very few “pluses” and a plethora of “minuses.”

  She’d completed her training from a quasi-university in downtown Bremerton and was saddled with what she had determined after graduation was minimal skills and maximum debt. Her mother had needled her for paying so much for an education that basically had her changing diapers on the elderly.

  “And you thought you were going to be a nurse,” Mrs. O’Rourke said, in a cutting way that she’d perfected. “You should have stayed at the doctor’s office where you were a receptionist and you had a decent meal benefit. I’m not being harsh. You know, honey doll, I always believed in you.”

  Honey doll was like a twisted dagger in the gut.

  That entire exchange came into Molly’s head at a little after 4 o’clock Saturday morning as she stood with her dog while the pooch found a suitable spot on the fringe of a juniper bush in the parking strip. A late-night rain had left the asphalt black and shiny and the lamp on her driveway cast a glistening puddle of light at her feet.

  “Hurry up, Candy, I gotta get to work.” Molly tugged on the hot pink leash to redirect the dog to the duty at hand. “Honestly, do you have to smell every little thing? Every single time? Can you just do your job so I can do mine?”

  Candy, a miniature schnauzer with a decidedly independent streak, was not about to be rushed. Not ever. Her silver-furred face tilted at her owner with a look that was probably a kind of canine F-U, but the dog owner didn’t take it that way at all.

  “Be a good girl,” Molly said, relaxing the length of the leash.

  Just as hope had been all but dashed, Candy got her act together and squatted.

  “Good girl,” Molly said, satisfied that she might get to work on time.

  Molly looked up toward the top-to-bottom renovated house next door as lights in the upstairs bedroom sent a beam out into the early morning darkness. It was the home of her neighbors, Ted and Jennifer Roberts.

  The nurse’s aide glanced at her phone. It was 4:15 a.m. She let out a sigh. Ted Roberts had been ill for months. Seriously ill. There was a terrible irony to his downward spiral. He’d been a typical Northwest-erner—the kind who fishes, skis, kayaks, and generally just lives his or her life in the elements, out in the abundance of outdoor-related activities that make the region the focus of so much attention by sports and lifestyle magazines.

  Molly admired Ted for doing all that he did. She was a TV watcher, not a doer. That, her mother told her, was one reason why she couldn’t get a boyfriend.

  Or a decent one.

  “No one wants to marry a couch potato, honey doll,” she had said.

  Molly knew that. But then again her shift at work made doing anything but flopping in front of the TV out of the question. She hadn’t had sex in more than a year. The encounter with an old boyfriend from high school hadn’t been of the caliber to make her want a repeat.

  Ted Roberts had invited her to go kayaking one time when he was still single, but Molly didn’t want to miss a reality TV marathon she’d been sucked into, and passed on the opportunity.

  She wished now that she’d said yes. She liked Ted.

  So robust.

  So strong.

  So vital.

  As she stood there looking up at the lighted window, she caught a memory of how Ted had appeared before getting sick.

  He was in his forties, but his body surely didn’t look it. That former classmate she’d hooked up with looked like he’d swallowed the Pillsbury Doughboy. Whole.

  Molly didn’t go kayaking with Ted, but she kind of imagined he had been asking her out on a date. She’d never had said yes to that, anyway. Not cool to date your neighbor. Not at all.

  “You only live once,” he said when she declined his offer.

  If that was her window for the older guy next door, it snapped shut shortly thereafter.

  It was around that time that Jennifer and her son, Micah, and daughter, Ruby, showed up on the scene. Molly could see a change coming over her friend and neighbor. Even though he’d always had a smile on his face, a joke, a laugh, something that indicated a love of life, Ted Roberts hadn’t really been happy at all. Oh he looked like he was happy, but that wasn’t genuine.

  Ted had even admitted one day the previous summer that he’d been filling up his time biking, running, and kayaking to escape the emptiness of his own life.

  “You got a boyfriend yet, Mol?” he asked her while he washed his Jeep on a sunny August afternoon.

  Molly looked away, embarrassed. “Not really,” she said. “I’ve had a few maybes, but none that I’d ever go out with. The guys I see at work are super old, you know, in their fifties and forties and stuff.”

  Ted smiled. “Old like me?” he said. His eyes squinted and his gaze challenged her a little. His brow was a crinkled patch of sunburned skin.

  “That came out wrong,” Molly said, her face feeling hot.

  He grinned and flashed his bright white teeth. “No worries,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something very important.”

  He motioned for her to come closer.

  “What?” Molly asked, leaning in, keeping an eye on the hose in case he was going to try to drench her in some Ted-like prank.

  “I didn’t start living until I found Jennifer,” he said. “Don’t wait like I did. Sometimes the best thing is standing right in front of you.”

  Molly was lonely and naive enough to think that he was kind of hitting on her. It was a thought she’d like expunged from her memory because he hadn’t been doing anything of the sort. Yet for some reason the encounter came back to her while her dog squatted by the bush and the light came on in the bedroom.

  Ted was not like that at all. He was no flirt. He was deliriously happy that he had found Jennifer.

  With Candy now doing her little dance, flipping dirt and barkdust back toward the parking strip, Molly’s thoughts drifted to the last time she saw Ted. It was about a week ago. She went over after work with the better part of a chocolate sheet cake.

  Jennifer answered the door. She was in her forties, too, but looked younger. She had a lovely figure, the kind Molly had always wanted—a little larger on top, but not so much that it distracted from her face. Her wrists and ankles were thin—which were always stops on Molly’s survey of another girl. Her mother had piano legs and so did she.

  “I thought you, Ted, and the kids might like this,” Molly said. “They made me take it home. I guess they think I have no life and it doesn’t matter if I get fat. Anyway, you, all of you, are always so perfect.”

  “Molly, you’re so thoughtful,” Jennifer said. “I’m sure Ruby and Micah will devour it.”

  “Ah, maybe Ted too,” Molly said, almost as a question.

  Jennifer turned toward the living room. “Would you like to see him?”

  Molly didn’t hesitate to get into the living room. It was the real reason she was there. The cake had been an excuse.

  She shut the door and followed Jennifer into a darkened living room, where the sole illumination came from the seventy-inch big screen TV.

  “You have a visitor, babe,” Jennifer said. She turned to Molly and gave her a little look, a warning, it seemed.

  Molly could scarcely believe her eyes. Ted
was covered in a Navajo blanket up to his neck. His eyes were slits. His face had shrunken to a kind of Edvard Munch gauntness. Even with the flickering glow—or especially because of it—he was a horrific sight.

  Ted couldn’t even lift his head from the sofa to say hello.

  Jennifer stood next to him and stroked his pasty brow.

  “If it gets to the point that you can’t stay home anymore, Teddy, I’m going to see that you are sent to Molly’s nursing home.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Molly said, trying to lighten the mood. “Our cafeteria is all carbs and no protein. He’ll starve there.”

  Ted attempted a smile.

  Jennifer handed him a water bottle.

  “Drink some iced tea,” she said. “You’re getting dehydrated, babe.”

  Ted sipped slowly from the flexible straw that stuck out only a quarter of an inch from the top of the bottle.

  “You are getting better, aren’t you?” Molly asked, her heart quickening a little. She’d seen people at the convalescent center who looked better than Ted, and they died.

  “I think so,” Ted said, his voice a slight croak. “Every day I do feel a little bit stronger.”

  He closed his eyes and Jennifer motioned for Molly to come to the kitchen where she set the cake on the counter.

  “Jennifer, he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

  Jennifer opened the refrigerator and rearranged a dozen bottles of iced tea so she could accommodate the cake.

  “I don’t know, Molly,” she said.

  With the space barely big enough to accommodate it, Jennifer shoved the cake onto the top shelf. Molly could see that the back end of the cake had smashed the refrigerator wall.