The Vanishing Read online

  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

  The Vanishing

  Untouchable

  Promise Not to Tell

  When All the Girls Have Gone

  Secret Sisters

  Trust No One

  River Road

  Dream Eyes

  Copper Beach

  In Too Deep

  Fired Up

  Running Hot

  Sizzle and Burn

  White Lies

  All Night Long

  Falling Awake

  Truth or Dare

  Light in Shadow

  Summer in Eclipse Bay

  Together in Eclipse Bay

  Smoke in Mirrors

  Lost & Found

  Dawn in Eclipse Bay

  Soft Focus

  Eclipse Bay

  Eye of the Beholder

  Flash

  Sharp Edges

  Deep Waters

  Absolutely, Positively

  Trust Me

  Grand Passion

  Hidden Talents

  Wildest Hearts

  Family Man

  Perfect Partners

  Sweet Fortune

  Silver Linings

  The Golden Chance

  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS AMANDA QUICK

  Tightrope

  The Other Lady Vanishes

  The Girl Who Knew Too Much

  ’Til Death Do Us Part

  Garden of Lies

  Otherwise Engaged

  The Mystery Woman

  Crystal Gardens

  Quicksilver

  Burning Lamp

  The Perfect Poison

  The Third Circle

  The River Knows

  Second Sight

  Lie by Moonlight

  The Paid Companion

  Wait Until Midnight

  Late for the Wedding

  Don’t Look Back

  Slightly Shady

  Wicked Widow

  I Thee Wed

  With This Ring

  Affair

  Mischief

  Mystique

  Mistress

  Deception

  Desire

  Dangerous

  Reckless

  Ravished

  Rendezvous

  Scandal

  Surrender

  Seduction

  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE

  Illusion Town

  Siren’s Call

  The Hot Zone

  Deception Cove

  The Lost Night

  Canyons of Night

  Midnight Crystal

  Obsidian Prey

  Dark Light

  Silver Master

  Ghost Hunter

  After Glow

  Harmony

  After Dark

  Amaryllis

  Zinnia

  Orchid

  THE GUINEVERE JONES SERIES

  Desperate and Deceptive

  The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 1

  The Desperate Game

  The Chilling Deception

  Sinister and Fatal

  The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 2

  The Sinister Touch

  The Fatal Fortune

  SPECIALS

  The Scargill Cove Case Files

  Bridal Jitters

  (writing as Jayne Castle)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Charmed

  (with Julie Beard, Lori Foster, and Eileen Wilks)

  TITLES WRITTEN BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ AND JAYNE CASTLE

  No Going Back

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Krentz, Jayne Ann, author.

  Title: The vanishing / Jayne Ann Krentz.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2020. | Series: Fogg Lake trilogy ; 1

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019024907 (print) | LCCN 2019024908 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984806437 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984806451 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3561.R44 V36 2020 (print) | LCC PS3561.R44 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024907

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024908

  First Edition: January 2020

  Cover design by Rita Frangie

  Cover images: woman running © ILDIKO NEER / Arcangel; forest by Niyazi Uğur Genca / Getty Images

  Interior art: fog on Loon Lake © BGSmith / Shutterstock.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Frank, as always, with love.

  CONTENTS

  Titles by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Fogg Lake, fifteen years earlier . . .

  Catalina Lark saw the murder take place about four se
conds before it happened. Maybe five seconds. She was still getting used to the ominous visions. They always caught her off guard.

  She’d had flashes of bizarre scenes for the past couple of years, but a few months ago, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, they had started occurring more frequently. She was trying to convince herself that the visions were merely hallucinations. Tonight, at least, she had a reasonable explanation for the murky vision. She and her best friend, Olivia LeClair, were deep inside the vast cave system surrounding Fogg Lake. Everyone in town knew that those who went into the Fogg Lake caverns often experienced hallucinations and other inexplicable sensations. That was, of course, why every self-respecting teen in the small community made it a point to sneak out of the house and spend a night in the caves at least once before graduating from the one-room high school. The adults didn’t approve, but Catalina had heard some of them refer to it as a local “rite of passage.” Most of them had done the same thing when they were in their teens.

  Tonight was the night that she and Olivia had decided to brave the caves. They had brought sleeping bags, a camp lantern and a couple of flashlights. Their day packs were crammed with bottled water and snacks. An underground river ran through the caves, surfacing in various caverns before it vanished again into the rocky depths. The water was clear and safe to drink, but it was dangerous to get too close to the edge. The wet, slippery rocks were treacherous and the current in the river was strong.

  They had heard the two men arrive just as they were trying to decide where to set up camp.

  The sounds of footsteps and low voices had echoed in the underground labyrinth. She and Olivia had turned off the camp lantern, grabbed their sleeping bags and rushed to hide in one of the many side tunnels.

  They had been startled when the two men—strangers—showed up with a camp lantern and a large black case.

  The small community of Fogg Lake didn’t get a lot of visitors, nor did it welcome the few who did manage to find their way into town. Most kids are taught to be wary of strangers, but in Fogg Lake, parents took that instruction to extremes. Catalina and Olivia had been raised with a degree of caution that bordered on paranoia, which was why it did not occur to either of them to reveal their presence to the two men. Instead, acting on their ingrained training, they had retreated deeper into the narrow side tunnel. Once safely concealed in the darkness, they had gone very still, hardly daring to breathe. Like baby rabbits confronted by a snake, Catalina thought. The analogy was annoying.

  The two men had not quarreled. There had been no demands, no violent threats; just some tense, muffled conversation. The shorter of the pair was middle-aged and a little overweight. He wore black-framed glasses and looked like an engineer or a scientist.

  His companion was younger—midtwenties, Catalina decided—lean and fit. His head was shaved. He was the one who had carried the black case into the cavern.

  Both men were dressed for a trek in the woods.

  A short time ago the man with the glasses had opened the case and removed what appeared to be a sophisticated lab instrument. Catalina could have told him he was wasting his time. Computers, cell phones and other high-tech devices did not work well in the vicinity of Fogg Lake, if they worked at all.

  The man with the glasses was clearly frustrated by whatever he saw on the screen of his fancy instrument. He leaned over the device to tap some keys. That was when Catalina got a dark vision of Shaved Head reaching into a zippered pocket on the side of his pack. She saw him take out a syringe, yank off the plastic cap and plunge the needle into the other man’s neck.

  Catalina was still struggling with the vision when reality struck, disorienting and shocking all her senses.

  Shaved Head took the syringe out of his pack, removed the cap and stabbed the needle into his companion’s neck.

  The doomed man cried out and sank to his knees. His aura weakened rapidly. He gazed up at his assailant in disbelief and confusion.

  “What?” he managed. Then understanding descended. “You stupid bastard. You don’t understand how my invention works. It’s tuned to my frequencies and only mine. I’m the only one who can activate it. You’ll never find what you’re looking for without me.”

  The killer waited. His aura did not blaze with rage or with the spikes that indicated mental instability. The energy around him was hot but all Catalina could detect was satisfaction and maybe a sense of anticipation. She wasn’t sure of her reading, though. Olivia was better at interpreting auras.

  The man who had set up the odd instrument grunted and collapsed on the floor of the cavern. Shaved Head crouched beside him and began to search the dying man’s pockets.

  “Why?” the victim managed in a voice that was thick with the effects of whatever had been in the syringe.

  “You served your purpose,” the killer said. “You’re no longer needed.”

  “Stupid, stupid fool,” the victim muttered.

  In the next second his failing aura sputtered and died.

  Catalina blinked a few times in a desperate attempt to suppress the images—she was getting better at it, even though the visions were becoming stronger—but the horrible scene did not disappear. The man who had fallen to the floor of the cavern was very real and very dead. His attacker casually checked for a pulse.

  Catalina looked at Olivia, who was trying to shrink into the shadows on the opposite side of the narrow tunnel. Olivia’s aura was ablaze with shock and panic. So much for the faint hope that what had just gone down in the cavern was nothing more than a particularly powerful hallucination. They had both witnessed a murder.

  The sound of movement in the cavern made Catalina turn her attention to Shaved Head. He was on his feet now. The body of his companion was draped over one shoulder. He walked to the edge of the river and dropped his victim into the water.

  He watched for a moment, probably making certain that the current carried off the evidence of his crime. When he was satisfied, he went back to the device the victim had set up and started to tap the keys.

  He stopped suddenly, his attention caught by something he saw in the shadows of a nearby boulder. His aura flared.

  A terrifying vision began to unfold but Catalina did not need it to warn her that she and Olivia were in mortal danger. Common sense was more than enough to kick off a wave of panic.

  For a beat, an unnerving hush gripped the cavern. In the echoing stillness only the soft murmur of the underground river could be heard. Catalina held her breath. She knew Olivia was doing the same. She also knew they had both just realized that in their hurry to hide they had left the lantern behind.

  Shaved Head saw the lantern, grabbed it and spun around on his heel, searching the shadows of the cavern. Catalina knew he couldn’t see them from where he presently stood, but if he began a methodical search it was only a matter of time before he found them.

  Shaved Head dropped the lantern and once again reached into his pack. This time he took out a gun.

  With a flashlight gripped in one hand and the pistol in the other, he started to examine the side tunnels one by one. Catalina knew that if she and Olivia did not move, they would be doomed.

  She looked at Olivia again and sensed that her friend had come to the same conclusion. They had no choice but to retreat deeper into the tunnel in which they were hiding.

  * * *

  —

  The man with the gun continued to prowl the vast cavern, pausing to spear the beam of his flashlight into every side passage.

  Catalina switched on her own flashlight. The killer would surely see the glare, but he was still on the far side of the cavern. It would take him a couple of minutes to cross the big chamber to the tunnel where she and Olivia were hiding because of the curve in the underground river. He would have to circle around it. If they moved fast they could be out of sight in seconds. He would hear their footsteps for some time because the cavern w
as an echo chamber, but it would take him a while to locate the right tunnel.

  “Stop,” Shaved Head shouted. “Police. I won’t hurt you. I’m an undercover cop working for the Feds. I’m here to protect you. That man was a killer, a danger to your community. I was sent to stop him.”

  A couple of kids from a town on the outside might have bought that story, Catalina thought. But Shaved Head had picked the wrong teens to try to fool. Fogg Lake youth were raised to be suspicious of outsiders in general. It seemed like a good idea to double down on that concept when you had just watched one stranger kill another stranger.

  * * *

  —

  They plunged deeper into the tunnel and rounded a corner, and suddenly the passageway was transformed into a hall of mirrors. At least, Catalina thought, that’s how I see them. She blinked hard but her vision didn’t change. She did not know exactly how things appeared to Olivia, but judging from the way her friend clutched her hand, the visions were just as frightening.

  “You’ll get lost,” the killer shouted. His voice echoed down the tunnel. “You’ll die in there. Come out. I promise you’ll be safe. Trust me. I’m a cop.”

  Catalina and Olivia kept going. They rounded another curve in the cramped passageway and scrambled to a halt at the sight of the storm of energy—intense swirls of light that Catalina could both sense and see—that barred their way.

  “What is it?” Olivia whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Catalina said. “But he’s still coming. We’ve got no choice. We’re going to have to go through it.”

  “You might as well come out,” the killer said. “Just a matter of time before I find you.”

  His voice was more distant now but he had not given up the chase.

  Catalina studied the strange storm. “It looks like one of those pictures of giant hurricanes taken from a satellite. There’s sort of an eye in the center.”

  “We’ll aim for that,” Olivia said. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  They tightened their grip on each other’s hands and hurtled forward, straight into the core of the vortex of fierce energy. They dove through it.