THE DARKNESS TO COME.

BRANDON MASSEY.

Author's Note.

The story you are about to read is my preferred version of the novel released in July 2008 as Don't Ever Tell. The Darkness to Come is my original title; the words to follow are those that were originally written.

I hope you enjoy this tale of renegade science, revenge, and redemption.

If her husband found out what she was planning to do, he would kill her.

She was alone in their high-rise, luxury apartment. The bright lights of downtown Chicago glimmered like watchful eyes in the window that spanned an entire wall of the living room, and a fierce October wind howled through the night, tearing at the glass as if the darkness itself were a predatory beast.

Shaking off a chill, she crossed from the living room, walked down the hallway, and entered the master suite. Although it was a large apartment, over two thousand square feet, with a desirable Michigan Avenue address, the space was as soulless as a warehouse.

No photographs hung on the walls or sat on end tables, and there were no plants, no artwork. The walls were an institutional white, the dark travertine tile floors polished to a mirror-gloss. It was full of angular furniture, stone tables and granite counters, and harsh fluorescent lights.

She had lived there for three years, and the place held no evidence of a woman's touch. Offering decorating tips wasn't allowed.

She could clean, of course. Deep, regular cleaning, in fact, was required. But decorate? Never.

In the bedroom, a suitcase lay open on the king-size poster bed. It was almost overflowing with clothes: sweaters, jeans, dresses, skirts, bras, panties, blouses, shoes.

The clothes were brightly colored and fashionable, exactly the opposite of the clothing she was allowed to wear. Matronly, shapeless dresses, plain shoes, dark colors and conservative styles-that was the kind of clothing of which he approved. Clothes that would be less likely to draw the attentions of another man.

In her research about running away to start a new life, she'd learned that it was wise to alter your style of dress. She had kept these clothes hidden for weeks in anticipation of her escape.

She had a good feeling about her chances of getting away, and more often than not, her intuition was right on about these things. She'd had a gift for anticipating events since she was a child. She trusted her instinct.

The risk, however, was that because she had been yearning to escape for so long, her desire to flee might've blinded her to the gravity of her situation. Her husband might be on his way home, might be parking in the underground garage and strolling to the elevators . . . .

No, no, he's not on his way home. I've got time.

Her husband was ostensibly working late at the law firm where he was employed as a corporate attorney, but she knew the truth. He was with one of his many girlfriends, and would shamble in sometime past midnight, lipstick smearing his shirt collar and eyes reddened from too much booze and cocaine and God knew what else he did after hours with his mistresses.

Typically upon his arrival, he would demand that she serve dinner-he loved breakfast food-and then he would want to sleep with her, groping and pawing and drooling on her like a bear.

She had been doing what he wanted for three years. Three years too long.

She gave her luggage a quick once-over. She had everything she needed.

A carry-on bag stood beside the suitcase, and among other items, it contained a wig, identification, bus schedule, and money, about three thousand dollars she'd managed to salt away over the past six months. It wasn't a lot of cash, but it was enough to get her a bus ticket to where she wanted to go and enable her to live cheaply until she could decide how she was going to rebuild her life.

She zipped shut the suitcase-it was so full that it was a struggle to close. She heaved it onto the floor, and then swung the carry-on bag over her shoulder.

Rolling the suitcase on its casters, she hurried out of the bedroom.

She didn't pause to look around one last time with regret or sadness. She felt nothing at all, only hollowness and an eagerness to get out.

When she reached the hallway, she heard the key turning in the front door lock. Terror seized her heart.

Oh, God, no. He's home.

She whirled on her heel to run back to the bedroom, to lock herself inside and hide her luggage-and her boot hit the edge of the suitcase. She stumbled, splayed her hands against the hallway wall to keep her balance.

She managed to stay upright, but the suitcase smacked hard against the floor.

He's going to hear that. He's going to wonder what it was.

Quickly, she grabbed the suitcase handle.

"What the hell was that?" Her husband's voice boomed from the front of the apartment. He called out her name.

Cold sweat crept down her spine. If he found her like this, she was dead.

Painful experience had taught her that it took little to set off his temper. A meal delivered slightly lukewarm, an unaccounted-for expenditure at the grocery store, one too many rings of the phone when he called to check on her . . . the most trivial thing could set him off and invite a beating.

And what she was doing now was hardly insignificant. If he discovered that she was attempting to run away, the punishment would be severe.

She lifted the suitcase off the floor and lugged it down the hallway as fast as she could. Behind her, she heard his shoes thumping across the foyer, and again he called out her name, his voice crackling with growing anger.

She shouldered open the bedroom door, kicked it shut behind her. She locked it, too.

"Where are you?" he asked. "What's going on?"

"I'm in the bedroom," she said, loudly enough for him to hear, and hopefully, leave her alone. "I . . . I just knocked over something. Everything's fine."

But she didn't sound fine. Her voice was trembling.

Please, God, keep him out of here for just one minute.

She hefted the luggage to the cramped closet where she kept her clothes. He had his own walk-in closet, three times the size of hers, to provide room for his designer suits and shoes.

She flung the suitcase and her bag into the closet, and grabbed a parka from a hanger and used it to cover the luggage, until she could conceal everything more thoroughly later.

His footsteps arrived at the bedroom door. He turned the knob, found it locked.

"Open the door." His voice was soft and lethal, like a serpent's hiss before it struck.

"Just a minute, please." She kicked off her boots into the depths of the closet. "I'm in the bathroom."

She rushed to the bathroom and hit the lever to flush the toilet.

Suddenly, the bedroom door burst open. She let out a cry of surprise.

Her husband stood in the doorway. Six feet of fury, like a human tornado.

She tried to smile at him, to calm him, but her gut was churning. She didn't dare speak for fear that she would start babbling like a child caught playing with matches.

Then she noticed a slip of paper in his hand.

The bus schedule.

It must have fallen out of her carry-on bag when she'd lost her balance. Oh, God.

He glanced at the schedule, and then turned an icy glare on her.

"You mind telling me where you were planning to go?"

He didn't give her time to answer. He moved on her fast, and when she opened her mouth to plead, all she could do was scream . . . .

Part One.

Chapter 1.

"No . . . no!"

Snatched to alertness by his wife's desperate cry, Joshua Moore bolted upright in bed. He'd never heard Rachel scream like that, and he was half-convinced that he was dreaming. He quickly realized that he wasn't-his heart was knocking too hard.

Joshua grabbed his glasses from the nightstand, fumbled them on. The dark bedroom came into sharp focus. They were alone. Rachel was having a bad dream.

Bed covers pulled up to her chin, face concealed in darkness, Rachel whipped her head back and forth, bed springs creaking as she screeched at her dream assailant.

"No, please . . ."

Joshua stared, mesmerized. He'd never seen Rachel suffer a nightmare; she normally slept as soundly as the dead. But she was in such a state of turmoil that he was afraid to touch her, worried that any physical contact might drive her into an uncontrollable frenzy.

Maybe he was dreaming.

Only a minute ago, he'd been lying on his back in their king-size bed, gazing at the alternating bands of coppery streetlight and shadow sifting through the Levoler blinds. Thinking about nothing in particular, floating on a cloud of quiet bliss, a new state of being for him.

A lifelong underachiever, Joshua had somehow arrived at a destination in his life that he never thought he'd reach: a place where he was genuinely happy. The woman who shared his bed had a lot to do with that.

Rachel was more than he'd ever expected to find in a woman-well, in a woman he'd thought would take a romantic interest in him. She was smart, sweet, and beautiful. Easygoing, ambitious, and funny. The kind of woman who could soothe a vicious dog with a smile, the kind of woman other women wanted to have as a best friend, the kind of woman to whom men longed to pledge their lives.

That past June, after only six months of dating, they had married.

Why she'd fallen in love with Joshua often mystified him. He didn't consider himself particularly handsome, was awkward around women, and at the time they'd met, had earned a decent but unspectacular income as a graphic designer at a firm in downtown Atlanta. When his last girlfriend had dumped him, claiming that he bored her and she needed a man who provided more excitement, he'd resigned himself to the idea that he might be a bachelor for the rest of his life.

The saying was true: nice guys finished last. He definitely had been coming in last place every time he played the dating game.

All of that changed when he'd literally bumped into Rachel at a local museum. Dating her, and then, marrying her, had been an unbelievably smooth experience, as if a magic spell had been cast over their relationship to guarantee harmony. When his married friends spoke of how marriage required hard work, he didn't know what they were talking about, and figured their complaints stemmed from and cynicism. Being married to Rachel wasn't work; it was pleasure, each day bringing a deeper appreciation of each other and their love.

And one day soon you'll leave the land of newlywed bliss, and wake the hell up, his best friend, married a decade, often told him. Reality's gonna come crashing down hard on your ass, man.

Rachel shrieked again: "You bastard!"

Like right then.

Shaken, what Joshua really wanted to know was: who was Rachel fighting? She rarely swore, and he'd never heard her address anyone with a mixture of such rage and terror.

But it had to be a man. A woman would call only a man a bastard.

Although part of him wanted to wake her and put an end to her torment, another part of him was curious, and out of that curiosity, didn't want to intervene. He wanted to wait and see if she would say something else that would clue him in on her relationship with this guy who, whoever he was, frightened her terribly.

She'd never mentioned a prior relationship with an abusive man. Actually, she never said much at all about her previous relationships. "What's in the past is over and done with," she would say with a shrug. "All that matters is that today, we're together." And with that, she would promptly change the subject.

He never pushed her for more details. He'd tell himself that she was right. What was done was done. Was the past really that important?

Yet, riveted, he watched her fling away the covers. She flailed her arms and kicked, as though trying to keep someone from climbing on top of her.

"Get off me, dammit!"

Beside the bed, Coco let loose a high-pitched bark. Coco was a cocoa-furred Chihuahua Rachel had acquired three years ago, when she'd relocated to Atlanta from Illinois. At nights, the dog slumbered in a pet kennel atop the nightstand on Rachel's side of the bed.

Like most Chihuahuas, Coco was protective of the person she regarded as her master. Coco scratched at the bars of her cage, big eyes flashing in the darkness, four pounds of righteous fury.

The little dog shamed Joshua into action. He clicked on the bedside lamp.

Rachel's caramel-brown face was twisted with her efforts to fight off her attacker, her dark, curly hair disheveled, delicate hands clenched as she shoved at an invisible body.

Joshua touched her shoulder. Her skin was clammy, but she didn't respond to him.

This is my fault. I never should have let her go on this long.

"Rachel, wake up." He shook her gently. "It's only a dream."

But she was oblivious to him. She gagged, as if being choked, and her hands went to her neck, trying to pry away an imaginary stranglehold.

A cold finger tapped Joshua's spine. There were ordinary nightmares that we all experienced sometimes-and then there were rare episodes of pure terror. This was becoming one of those scary, once-in-a-lifetime moments, and the responsibility fell to him, her husband, to help her.

Choking, Rachel kicked wildly, hands grasping at her neck. A thick vein pulsed in stark relief on her throat.