The Dark Heart Read online

  First printing: May 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Julie Cave. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews. For information write:

  Master Books®, P.O. Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638

  ISBN: 9781683440130

  ISBN: 978-1-61458-600-5 (digital)

  Library of Congress Number: 2017940500

  Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Please consider requesting that a copy of this volume be purchased by your local library system.

  All characters appearing in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  please contact the publicity department at (870) 438-5288

  Acknowledgments

  For my own daughters, Jasmine and Sienna, who are more precious to me than words can adequately say. For Terry: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

  Contents

  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

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  January, 1996

  Abank of low, dark clouds hid the moon and threatened rain. When Jordan stepped out into the brisk air, he took a deep breath and wondered if he was going to get wet. It had been windy and dry for weeks, and thus, he’d been too busy to even eat lunch most days. The Santa Ana winds were bothering asthmatics, wreaking havoc on emphysema sufferers, and creating recurring attacks of pneumonia. He was one of only a few respiratory therapists on staff at the private hospital, and he went home after each shift exhausted. And his day wasn’t done yet: the staff parking lot was a long way from the hospital; a three-block walk.

  Jordan walked down the street, one eye on the belligerent clouds, his backpack slung casually over his shoulder. He’d made the walk many times, and he daydreamed about the big supper his mama had waiting for him at home. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

  One block over from the hospital, Jordan came across a car with its hood up, and he wondered what it was doing in this neighborhood. It was a commercial district, deserted at night and apart from hospital staff scurrying to and from work, there was little reason for anyone else to be around. Then he saw the two girls bent over it, the dim glow of a flashlight revealing confused faces. When they heard Jordan approach, they both straightened up and he could see them a little better. One was tall with red hair, and one was small and petite, built like a bird. The taller one called out: “Excuse me?”

  Jordan slowed down. “Are you okay?”

  “Could you please help us?” she asked. “Our car has broken down and we don’t know what to do.”

  The smaller woman shivered. “I’m scared.”

  Jordan smiled. “Sure. What are you doing around here anyway?”

  “We’re lost,” said the smaller woman.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do for you,” Jordan said. He put down his backpack and walked around to the front of the car. There were no obvious signs that something was wrong; no steam billowing from the radiator. Perhaps they’ve run out of gas, he thought.

  “Hmmm . . .” he mused, mostly to himself. He bent over farther. “Let’s have a look at. . . .”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. A blow to the back of his head sent bright, hot flashes of lightning off in front of his eyes. Pain unfurled in his skull like a sail caught by the Santa Ana wind. What was that? His panicked brain shouted, although he only seemed to hear his thoughts dimly. Did the hood fall on my head?

  A panting breath in his ear explained the situation. Someone had attacked him from behind: a coward’s move, his brain noted, coldly. Some instinct within him urged him to flee, but his legs had turned to limp spaghetti. He could only collapse onto the blacktop below. He became aware that he was being dragged away from the car and into the darkness. With great effort, he realized that the two women were watching, but they weren’t calling for help or screaming.

  It had been a trap.

  He ducked away from a fist aimed at his nose. He caught the flow on his chin and lower lip, which split like an overripe melon. Warm blood flowed onto his shirt. My work shirt, he thought. Mama’s going to kill me.

  He tried to fight, although he knew that he didn’t stand a chance. There were two attackers, he thought, and both were big and strong. He tried to scramble to his feet, though his head felt heavy and disconnected from anything his legs were trying to do. In desperation, he tried to work out what they wanted from him.

  “Money!” he cried. “Money. In my wallet.”

  It was a mugging, Jordan thought. Perhaps they thought he was a rich young doctor.

  The snarling response was pure hatred.

  Oh, thought Jordan. A boot crashed into his side, and he felt sure he heard the snap of his rib. They hate me because my skin is a different shade from theirs.

  He almost wished it was a mugging, because the truth was so incomprehensible. It was such a waste of time and energy, to hate somebody for no reason other than their skin color or facial features. The urgent need for quick cash made more sense.

  His attempt to defend himself quickly waned. He simply could not fight off two attackers. While adrenaline flooded his veins, numbing the pain, he remembered the stories he’d heard at his grandmother’s knee. He remembered how in times past, his family wasn’t allowed in the same bathrooms as other people. He knew that some of his ancestors had been slaves. The echoes of those times were still heard today: sometimes a patient shrank back when he came into the treatment room. Sometimes he was assumed to be the orderly, not the therapist. Yet for some reason, he still dreamed of medical school. His mama had taught him that nothing was beyond his reach.

  Yet, this attack reminded him that nothing had really changed. Racism was still here; hatred still lived in the hearts of men and women; and violence could erupt in its ugly fury. Jordan came to understand in that moment that his picture would appear in the evening news tomorrow night, right next to his weeping mother, and his name would be added to the roll call of those who’d died because of how they looked.

  Jordan could feel his consciousness slipping; his eyes swam and his ears roared like the sea. As though he was in someone else’s dream, he wondered: Can’t they see my blood is red? Can’t they see that we are all the same underneath?

  Jordan struggled to keep his eyes open. It was nearly over, he realized. He fought to stay conscious for as long as he could, and he found himself looking at the faces of the two women who’d led him into the trap.

  The taller one looked toward him grimly, her face a mask of stone, but she couldn’t look directly at him.

  The smaller one stared right back at him, and Jordan was astonished to see tears falling down her face, glistening in the dim light thrown by the street light. She stood straight and rigidly still, arms by her side, not trying to hide the evidence of her tears.


  Jordan was mystified for a moment, but another bright explosion of pain erupted at the back of his head, and everything went dark.

  ****

  February 2017

  Malia Shaw felt rising panic grip her in its intimate and painful embrace.

  She raised herself on one elbow and squinted at the blinds: they were partially closed but still allowed a few long sheaths of light through, long and lean as fingers, to spill on the filthy floor. It is morning then, she thought. She’d survived another night. Her addiction to heroin was so great that a distant part of her knew that any time she shot up could be her last. To be truthful, each time she awoke from heavy sleep she was surprised that she was still alive. Despite my best efforts.

  She sat up with a groan, the long tendrils of a cold ache wrapping around the deep of her joints. The room was dim and musty and smelled like sour milk. The floor was almost unrecognizable as such, littered with old takeout fast food boxes, discarded clothing, and empty water and soda bottles. Malia had ceased to notice it anymore. There was only one thing she thought about when she awoke in the morning, one thing that got her through the miserable, lonely day, and one thing that helped her escape vivid nightmares during the cold night. As she reached for her cell phone, she saw that her hands were shaking. A wave of nausea crashed over her with the chill of the Atlantic winter.

  She needed more smack, and she needed it now.

  Malia texted her dealer and then stood up. Despite the pain, she knew she had to find some cash for him. She began to search through pockets of clothes and handbags, looking for spare cash.

  She found some in the pocket of a pair of jeans and waited near the door, hopping from one foot to the other. Her nerves were starting to blaze with agony when the doorbell rang.

  Simon stood outside, wearing a huge coat. A biting wind tore past him into the tiny apartment, almost knocking Malia over. He looked at Malia, dressed in a thin shirt and shook his head. “Your apartment is freezing,” he said. “Don’t you have heat?”

  She hugged herself. Being cold was nothing compared to withdrawals from heroin. “I think the heat got cut off,” she said. “Have you got some stuff for me?”

  Simon handed her a paper bag. She peered in, saw what she was looking for, and gave him the cash.

  Her dealer looked around again, askance at what he saw. “Seriously, put more clothes on,” he said. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  But Malia held in her hand something that would warm her up quicker than any sweater or coat. She spent a few minutes looking for a vein that hadn’t collapsed, and then injected the heroin. Simon stood awkwardly, silhouetted by pale morning light, watching her.

  Moments later, liquid fire surged through her body. It took away the pain, made her limbs feel pleasantly heavy, and it lifted her mind to a happy, safe place. She waved a farewell to Simon, who closed the door gently behind him.

  She relaxed into the couch, enjoying the sensation of being taken away. The dull, thumping ache of regret that beat in synchronicity to her heart stopped. The memory of the wet thunk made by shattering bones beneath heavy boots retreated into a deep corner of her mind. The relentless fear, which disturbed her sleep and bit at her with tiny vicious teeth, finally left her alone.

  Her eyes closed, and she drifted into sleep.

  Sometime later, she heard the front door close, and she wondered if Simon had come back to take pity on her. When a figure appeared, profiled in the doorframe, she tried to sit up. Confused and disoriented, she realized that she was lying in her bed. She couldn’t remember how she had moved from the couch to the bed. As the planes of light changed on his face, she recognized him.

  She wasn’t expecting the person who stood, silently looking at her. There was something not right with him, but her slowed mind couldn’t figure out why. Perhaps it was the stiff, tense way he stood, his fists white-knuckled at his side. Perhaps it was that his usual smile was absent. Perhaps it was the expression on his face. Lots of people looked at her like that — their gazes full of scorn and pity, disgust and fear. They crossed the street to get away from her. She was a worthless addict, a junkie in every sense of the word. Human junk. But he had never looked at her like that. He’d always been warm and compassionate.

  Suddenly, he was inside the bedroom, closing the door behind him. For the first time, through her haze, Malia felt a sharp stab of fear. “What’s wrong?” she asked, scooting backwards from him until her bare shoulder blades rested against the headboard of the bed.

  He took off his jacket and slung it casually across the end of the bed. “How long did you think you could keep running?” he asked. “Did you think I’d never catch up with you?”

  She gaped at him. “But I thought — I trusted you —”

  He smiled broadly. “Of course you did.” From his pocket, he pulled out a curled photograph. Smoothing it, he showed it to her.

  Malia gasped.

  “Recognize it, do you?” he said. “I guess the smack hasn’t erased all of your memory. This is your past and you can’t outrun it.”

  “Listen,” said Malia, her voice brittle with desperation. She knew all about desperation, didn’t she? Her life had been one frantic act of survival, one after the other, for as long as she could remember. How well she knew she would never flee her past; it was locked in her memory and it assaulted her viciously daily.

  “You don’t get to opt out,” he continued. “You don’t get to decide to walk away. What you did, though, was worse than walking away. What you did was unforgivable.”

  “I didn’t. . . . I wasn’t, I . . . please,” stammered Malia. The realization of why the man was here suddenly assailed her. The heroin haze lifted as adrenaline dumped into her system. She looked around hopelessly for a weapon, but what good would a cushion do? There was a lamp just out of arms’ reach, but it was cheap and light, and against the bulk of the man was likely to do little. She searched for an escape route, but the door to the bathroom was a dead end, and a man she’d thought was her friend blocked the only other exit.

  “Listen,” she said, again. “I’m sorry. Please, you must know how sorry I am. I know I hurt you terribly.”

  His laugh was harsh, guttural. “You think you know how much I hurt?”

  “I know I turned a blind eye to your suffering,” continued Malia, her throat tight. “But you have to know that I was scared and hurt. I didn’t know what to do except what they told me to do.”

  Something seemed to snap inside him and he snarled: “Shut up! Just shut up!”

  “I’m sorry I was so weak. Please. I hate myself more than you could possibly ever hate me.” Malia begged, tears dripping down her face.

  He was upon her in only a few seconds. He had brought no weapons with him but his hands, and with astonishing strength, he seized Malia around the neck.

  Instinct kicked in, and Malia’s hands flew to her throat, trying to peel away the man’s grip. Desperate, choking whimpers were all the noise she could make as she tried to kick out, but it was no use. She thrashed around, in the hands of a much stronger person, much like a fish caught on a hook, fighting until the inevitable end.

  Despite her best efforts, the past had caught up with her, and it was intent on extracting revenge.

  Starbursts of purple light flashed in front of her eyes as her oxygen-starved brain began to shut down. As the light began to die, she tried to cry out.

  The brilliant flares of light in front of her eyes contained within them images from her life: herself as a small girl on a dirt floor, abandoned, frightened, hungry, and dirty, morphing to an angry and hurting teenager, an easy victim for a predator.

  Then she was falling backward into darkness that engulfed her, while the light slowly faded into tiny points. She fell and fell, forever, it seemed, and she was not scared.

  Then, it was over.

  ****

  Darkness had always been her friend.

  She had never been afraid of it, nor scared of being alone in it. T
he air, which seemed somehow lighter once the sun had gone down, was refreshing to breathe and made her feel clean. Night air felt so much more easygoing than the heavy air of daytime, with all of its loaded expectations and responsibilities. Night air was clarity, freedom, renewal.

  It was why Dinah Harris was out jogging through the small town of Ten Mile Hollow, Virginia, at midnight. It was late fall and bitterly cold, but Dinah didn’t mind. Ten Mile Hollow was a picturesque town, especially now that it was dressed in all its fall finery of deep red, copper, and gold. At midnight it was silent, and all Dinah could hear was the slapping of her sneakers on the road. The sound reminded her of the years of grief following the deaths of her husband and son, when the only time she could face leaving the house was late at night. Although the streets were arguably more dangerous in Washington D.C. than the rural hamlet of Ten Mile Hollow, she had walked its streets night after night — the only time she felt free of the heavy cloak of shame and judgment.

  Thankfully, that cloak had loosened its hold on her in recent times, though it wasn’t above a sneaky attack out of the blue, when the feeling of rising anxiety was literally a noose around her neck.

  Jogging helped. Jogging at night particularly helped. It gave her time to think, reflect, process, and pray — to rid herself of the day’s difficulties. She always returned from a night jog feeling less burdened and more content.

  There was also the fact that she no longer slept very well; an insomniac of some years. Instead of frustrated fighting with the bedsheets because her brain refused to wind down, a jog helped to calm her.

  The beautiful, cold silence of the night was shattered by the sound of her cell phone ringing. Dinah stopped running and glanced at the time before she answered the phone. It was 20 minutes past midnight.

  “Hello?”

  “Dinah? Where are you?” It was her friend and host, Elise Jones. Dinah and Elise had been friends years ago, when they went through FBI training at Quantico. They’d lost touch in the intervening years, but Elise had found Dinah through social media. They’d rebuilt their friendship as they exchanged their history — Dinah as a former star of the FBI, her spectacular fall from grace, and her new life as a private investigator, consulting mostly to other law enforcement. Elise had also left the FBI, although in less scandalous circumstances, and was now the detective in the Ten Mile Hollow Sherriff’s Department. As the only detective, she handled everything from breaking and entering to murder.