ANDREW GROSS
Killing Hour
To Alex Jeffrey Gross, his memory and brief life
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse . . .
– Bruce Springsteen, ‘The River’
Contents
Prologue
PART ONE
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
PART TWO
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
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
PART THREE
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
Chapter 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
PART FOUR
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Novels by Andrew Gross
Copyright
Prologue
Sherry Ann Frazier knew she’d seen him somewhere before.
The gaunt, sharply cut edge of his jaw. The narrow, dimly lit eyes, staring back at her. The probing intensity of his crooked smile.
Maybe on a trip somewhere, or at an airport. You know how you pass by someone you might never see again and yet their face is permanently implanted in your mind. Or maybe she’d seen him at her shop. People were always coming in... She’d seen him before – that much she knew. Definitely.
She just couldn’t remember where.
She was packing her groceries into her hatchback in the lot outside Reg’s Market in the town of Redmond, Michigan. On Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula. Sherry had a bakery there, a couple of blocks off the lake. Muffins, zucchini bread, brownies. And the best damn apple crisps on the UP, according to the Redmond Crier.
She called them Eve’s Undoing – a temptation no one could resist.
He was simply staring at first. Leaning in the entrance to Singer’s Pharmacy, next door. Looking very out of place. He never took his eyes off of her. Initially, it gave her the chills, but nothing bad or creepy ever seemed to happen in Redmond. Maybe he was a workman at one of the marinas. Or a war veteran down on his luck. The town always had a few of those; they made their way up here in the summer, when the place was filled with vacationers. She always gave them a treat. Everyone has dignity, Sherry always maintained. Everyone was always loved by someone in their life.
In Redmond, the biggest worry was losing value on the Canadian ‘loonies’ the tourists came here to spend.
Aware of him, she felt herself hurrying to fill up the car. Then she wheeled back the cart, telling herself not to make eye contact.
As she climbed in her Saab she allowed herself a final glance in the rearview mirror.
He was still following her.
That’s when she had the sense that she had seen him somewhere before.
Sherry was fifty-two, youthful, still pretty, she knew, in a bohemian sort of way. She didn’t wear much makeup; she still kept her hair braided back from her days as a flower child. Still wore peasant blouses and kept herself thin. She was single again. Tom and she had divorced, though like a lot of people in her life, they remained good friends. She took art classes and yoga, studied Reiki.