Ten years ago in Duluth, Minnesota, Police Lieutenant
Jonathan Stride handled the worst murder/suicide case of
his career. He's never been able to forget how he failed to
protect a young mother from her abusive ex-husband. Stride
found their six-year-old daughter, Cat Mateo, cowering
under the porch after hearing the brutal crime. The
incident still haunts Stride, especially now after finding
16-year-old Cat, drenched and trembling, hiding in his
extra bedroom.
After hearing Cat's explanation that she needs protection
from a stalker who's trying to kill her, Stride feels
obligated to do what he can for her. Unofficially
investigating the situation, Stride enlists the aid of his
partner Maggie Bei, who is not so easily convinced of Cat's
story. It doesn't help Cat's credibility that she's
homeless and selling her body to support herself.
As Stride and Maggie seek answers from different angles,
there's a fine line between fact and fiction. It soon
becomes obvious that someone is messing with their
investigation, setting up obstacles to lead them astray.
Who is the stalker? And what is it about Cat that's so
important someone wants to kill her?
Brian Freeman brings back the incomparable Jonathan
Stride for a sixth time in THE COLD NOWHERE, an intensely
compelling police/crime thriller. Stride is a flawed, but
honorable, protagonist supported by a highly realistic cast
of characters in a storyline filled with enough twists and
turns to occupy readers' interests until the final page.
Lieutenant Stride goes home to his cottage on the shore of
Lake Superior, where he is confronted with a crime he
cannot ignore. He discovers a young woman, Cat Mateo,
hiding in his bedroom, scared and dripping wet from a
desperate plunge into the icy lake.
The girl isn't a stranger to Stride; she is the daughter of
a woman he tried and failed to protect from a violent
husband years ago. When Cat asks Stride for protection from
a mysterious person she claims is trying to kill her,
Stride is driven by guilt and duty to help her.
Stride's police partner Maggie Bei doubts the homeless
orphan, who has been supporting herself as a prostitute and
living rough on the streets of Duluth. She marvels at how
easily the hard-bitten young girl, who sleeps with a knife
under her pillow, has won Stride's trust.
As Stride investigates Cat's case off the record, Maggie's
suspicions solidify and a single question haunts the void
between them: should Stride be afraid for – or of – this
damaged girl?
Excerpt
Despite the ribbons of blood on his face, which were as
angry as war paint, the man on the bed was still breathing.
She hadn't killed him.
He lay on his back, sprawled in a tangle of bedsheets. His
unbut- toned dress shirt exposed a flat chest, winter-pale
and hairless. His pants puddled around his ankles. He
smelled of cigar smoke and cologne. The whiskey bottle he'd
opened lay tipped on the floor of the old stateroom,
dripping Lagavulin onto the emerald carpet. He still
clutched a crystal tumbler in his hand. Her blow had come by
surprise, knocking him off his feet.
Cat slid a flowery cocktail dress over her nude body. She
wanted to be gone before he woke up. She grabbed one of her
cowboy boots from the floor. Its heel was slick with blood
where she'd swung it into the man's temple. She shoved her
foot inside, and the leather nestled her calf. Her legs were
lithe and smooth; young legs for a young girl. She reached
into the toe of her other boot, retrieved the chain that
held her father's ring, and slipped it over her head. She
fluffed her nut-brown hair. Reaching into the boot again,
she curled her fingers around the onyx handle of a knife.
Wherever she went, whatever she did, Cat always carried a
knife. She felt a wave of desire—as tall and powerful
as a tsunami—to
unsheathe the blade and plunge it into the torso of the man
on the bed, slicing through skin, tissue, organs, and bone.
Up and down. Over and over. Thirty times. Forty times. A
frenzy. She knew what he would look like when she was done,
butchered and dead, a slaugh- tered pig. She could picture
herself spray-painted with his blood, like graffiti art in a
graveyard.
She'd seen that painting before. She knew what knives did.
Cat hid the blade in her boot and left him there,
unconscious. He wasn't worth killing. She felt sick from the
images popping in her brain like fireworks. She headed for
the bathroom, sank to her bare knees on the cold tile, and
vomited into the toilet. She flushed down the puke. When she
felt steady on her feet, she hurried down the steps and
escaped outside, where the elements assaulted her
immediately.
She stood on the deck of the giant ore boat Charles
Frederick, but she wasn't at sea. This ship didn't go to
sea anymore. It was a museum showpiece, locked away from the
open waters of Lake Superior on a narrow channel in the
heart of Duluth's tourist district. The long, flat deck,
like two football fields of red steel, swayed under her
heels. The ship groaned like a living thing. Wind off the
lake made a tornado of her hair and sneaked under her dress
with cold fingers. It was early April, but in Duluth, April
meant winter when the sun went down.
Dots of frigid moisture beaded on her skin from the flurries
whip- ping through the night air. She hugged herself
tightly, shivering, wish- ing she had a coat. Her heels
clanged on the deck as, feeling alone and small, she picked
her way beside a rope railing sixty feet over the water.
When she looked down, she felt dizzy. Her eyes darted with
the quickness of a bird, alert to the shadows and hiding
places around her. She was never safe.
Cat located a hatch, where steep wet steps descended to an
interior room that was like a prison of gray metal, with
huge rivets dotting the walls. The room was dark and empty.
On the far wall, snow blew inside through an open exit door.
She exhaled sharply in relief; all she had to do was hurry
to the ground and run. She bolted for the door but at the
gangway she stopped and nervously studied the deserted
street below the ship. Her boots were on a metal landing in
the water of the snowmelt. She wiped wet flakes from her
eyes and squinted to see better.
Then, with her heart in her mouth, she froze. Even in the
bitter cold, sweat gathered on her neck like a film of fear.
She backed into the shadows, making herself invisible, but
it was too late.
He'd seen her.
He'd found her again.
For days, she'd stayed a step ahead of him, like a game of
hop- scotch. Now he was back and she was trapped. She
pricked up her ears and listened. Footsteps crunched across
the gravel and ice, coming closer. She ran to a steel door
that led to the mammoth cargo holds in the guts of the ship.
She tugged on the door—it was heavy—and slipped
through it, closing it behind her. Looking down, she saw
only blackness; she couldn't see the bottom of the steps.
The interior was cold and vast, like she'd been swallowed
down into a whale's belly. She was blind as she descended.
The air got colder on her wet skin, and the wind made
muffled shrieks outside the hull.
When she finally felt the bottom of the ship under her feet,
she inched forward, expecting open space. Instead, she
bumped against walls, and wire netting scraped her face. Her
fingers found grease and peeling paint. With no frame of
reference, she lost her sense of direc- tion. Her eyes saw
things that weren't there, mirages in the shadows. Objects
moved. Colors floated in the air. Vertigo made her head
spin, as if she were on a catwalk instead of safely on the
ground.
Something real skittered over her foot—a rat. Cat
flailed and couldn't stifle her cry. She collided with a
stack of paint cans, which clattered to the floor and rolled
like squeaky bicycles. The noise bounced around the walls,
rippling to the high ceiling in ghastly echoes. She dropped
to her knees, tightened into a ball, and slid her knife out
of her boot and clutched it in front of her.
The door high above her swung open. He was here. A
flashlight scoured the floor like a dazzling white eye. The
light, passing over her head, helped her see where she was.
She was crouched behind a yel- low forklift in a maze of
makeshift plywood walls. Twenty feet away, a corridor beside
the hull led from the cargo hold where she was hiding. That
was the way out.
Cat waited. She heard the bang of footfalls. He was on the
floor with her now. His light explored every crevice,
patiently clearing every
hiding place as he hunted her. She heard his footsteps; she
heard his breathing. He was on the other side of the
forklift, no more than six feet away, and he stopped, as if
his senses told him that she was near. She rubbed her
fingers on the knife; her sweat made it slippery. She aimed
her blade at his throat. His light spilled across the dusty
floor in front of her. He took a step closer, until he was a
dark shape beside the wheels of the machine.
She saw the light glinting on his hand. He held a gun. Cat's
breath shot into her chest, loud and scared. She sprang up,
slashing with the knife, but as she lurched toward him her
wrist collided with the cage and the blade dropped to the
floor. Helpless, she charged, taking them both to the
ground, landing on dirt and scrap wood. The gun fell, and
the flashlight rolled. Cat jabbed with her fingers and found
his eyes. She poked hard, and when he screamed she squirmed
away, scooped up the flashlight, and ran.
With the light bouncing in front of her, she sprinted down a
nar- row passage. He scrambled to follow, but she heard him
lose his foot- ing and fall. She widened the gap between
them. The passage opened into a second cargo hold, and she
saw another set of steps, which she climbed two at a time.
Her mouth hung open, gulping air. At the top, she bolted
back onto the ship's deck.
She was out of time. She took off the way she'd come, beside
the rope railing with the water far below her. The metal was
wet, and she skidded, trying to stay on her feet. He was
already closing on her again. She heard his running
footsteps behind her, but she didn't look back. She sprinted
on the slippery steel like a clumsy dancer, until she
reached the end of the boat and had nowhere else to run. She
stood at the stern, with the massive anchor chain beside her
and the wind and flurries stinging her face from the
midnight sky. The steel floor thundered, reverberating with
his heavy footfalls. He was almost here. He almost had her.
Cat clasped her fists in front of her face and stared in
despair at the harbor below her. Then she did the only thing
she could do.
She flung herself off the ship into the ice-strewn water.
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