The Night Shift, page 1
Praise for THE NIGHT SHIFT
‘A terrific thriller, tautly written with compelling characters. I was totally hooked.’
PETER JAMES
‘Wow, this is crime fiction at its best. Instantly immersive, pacy and propulsive, and full of surprises. Alex Finlay is the real deal, believe me.’
LEE CHILD
‘The Night Shift weaves together two crimes, past and present, into a fast-paced, page-turning, slam-dunk of a thriller. An exciting, entertaining read that I couldn’t put down!’
SAMANTHA DOWNING
‘In his second novel, The Night Shift, Alex Finlay takes his place in the upper ranks of thriller writers. From the very first chapter, Finlay expertly grabs the reader’s attention… Filled with crisp dialogue, incredible suspense and memorable characters, The Night Shift is one not to miss. Highly recommended.’
BRENDAN DuBOIS
‘With an unforgettable cast of characters and a plot that races through twist after twist, Alex Finlay’s explosive new thriller, The Night Shift, will grab you and not let go until the final, electrifying conclusion. I can’t remember the last time I tore through a book so fast, or how many times I thought I knew what was going on only to be proven wrong yet again.’
JULIE CLARK
ALSO BY ALEX FINLAY
Every Last Fear
The Advocate’s Daughter
The Last Justice
The Outsider
THE
NIGHT
SHIFT
ALEX FINLAY
An Aries book
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the United States in 2022 by Minotaur Books,
an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Alex Finlay, 2022
The moral right of Alex Finlay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781800245303
ISBN (XTPB): 9781800245310
ISBN (E): 9781800245327
Head of Zeus
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For Trace
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Farewell to Arms
CONTENTS
Praise for The Night Shift
Also by Alex Finlay
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
DAY 1
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
DAY 2
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
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
DAY 3
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
PROLOGUE
NEW YEAR’S EVE 1999
The night was expected to bring tragedy.
Planes falling from the sky. Elevators plunging to earth. World markets collapsing.
A digital apocalypse.
But Y2K was an otherwise typical Friday night at the Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey. Steve had been store manager for six months now, and it was sure as shit a step up from his last job at the Taco Bell. Where his clothes always smelled of cooked meat and grease, and where cadres of drunken teens arrived loudly around eleven until he kicked them out at 2 a.m.
Here, they closed at ten, sharp. The customers were polite. Tonight, mostly couples looking for a rom-com or “something scary.”
They didn’t call Steve “pizza face,” on account of his acne; didn’t mock his uniform or leave smashed enchiritos all over the floor. His employees were better here too, more or less. The night shift included four sweet, albeit mischievous, teenage girls. All juniors or seniors, like the Taco Bell hooligans. Hell, like Steve himself only a few years ago, but somehow the girls treated him like he was their embarrassing dad. After only a few months on the job, he truly felt for their real fathers.
“Can I go on break?” Mandy said, shoving a VHS cartridge into the store’s machine. It was the bane of the job, proof that nobody read the BE KIND, PLEASE REWIND stickers on the tapes.
Steve studied the long checkout line, the new girl, Ella, fumbling at the register next to him. “We close in half an hour,” he said, exasperated. “Can’t you wait? I need you to take register three.”
“But Steeevie,” Mandy said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I have girl issues.”
Steve blew out a loud breath. Unless he’d missed something in Sex Ed, it was impossible to have girl issues every single weekend, but what could he do?
“I can cover for her,” Katie said, coming in from the cold, snowflakes in her hair, a pile of videos stacked in her arms from emptying the metal return receptacle stationed in the parking lot. She was the most responsible of the group, a Catholic school kid, a rule-follower. But even she was a pain in the neck. Just an hour ago, he’d had to remind all the girls not to venture out to the parking lot alone. The buddy system—was that so friggin’ hard to grasp?
“Make it fast,” Steve said to Mandy. “And where’s Candy?”
Candy O’Shaughnessy was Mandy’s partner in crime, the other perpetrator of what the Blockbuster, Inc. Employee Handbook called “Class A violations.” Though the store was four thousand square feet of open space, Candy always managed to disappear. She constantly gave him attitude, and once smuggled wine coolers into the break room. And Steve remained convinced that she was the one who put Friday the 13th inside the box for 101 Dalmatians. Those parents had given him an earful. Said their kid would need therapy.
Join the club.
“I think she was in the kids’ section,” Mandy said with a smirk as she sauntered off to the break room.
Steve shook his head as he reached around the theft censors at the door and handed the customer the small plastic bag full of movies.
*
By closing time, neither Candy nor Mandy had emerged. They’d be hearing about this. For sure. Not cool.
Steve instructed Ella to work the door, unlocking and locking the dead bolt to let customers out but ensuring no one got in. She could handle that much, he thought. He told Katie to close out the registers. He’d go deal with the other two. Always something. He just wanted to get out of there, stop by Dad’s house for a Pabst to celebrate surviving another year before the old man fell asleep. Then maybe catch more beers at Corky’s Tavern, watch the ball drop on the TV behind the bar, see if there’d been any real chaos from the computer bug the news wouldn’t shut up about. Not exactly “party like it’s 1999”—if he never heard that song again it would be too soon—but it beat being alone at his crap apartment.
He navigated through the shelves of tapes, past the newer section with DVDs, and to the break room. It was cold as hell in there.
“Dammit, girls,” he said to nobody, as he noticed the back door was open, the wind howling. If they were smoking out there, he swore to God … He’d told them a milli
He froze when he saw two sets of legs on the floor jutting out from behind the break room table.
As fear shredded through him, Steve felt someone grab a fistful of his hair and yank his head back. Then a strange coldness at his throat.
He was on the floor now, an ugly gurgle emanating from his neck. He watched as the figure turned out the break room lights. It felt like a small eternity before the door flew open, a burst of light filling the room. The sound of teenage chatter abruptly dying.
Steve wanted to call out, to warn them. But he felt his body convulsing and the world turning dark.
The last thing he heard was the screams.
DAY 1
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
CHAPTER 1
ELLA
APRIL 2015
Ella pops a Xanax as she waits for the valet to take her keys. Driving into Manhattan always stresses her out. The frenetic confluence of cabbies rage-driving, cops jetting by with sirens blaring, pedestrians all but challenging you to run them over as they step defiantly into the street.
What the fuck is she doing here?
Last time, she’d promised herself that it would be the last time.
A young guy in a bellhop uniform stands at her window now. She hums down the glass.
“Checking in?” he asks. He’s in his twenties and gives her the once-over.
“No, just meeting a friend.”
He nods as if enjoying the euphemism. Sure, in that outfit, a friend.
Ella slips out of the car and palms the kid a five. She catches him stealing a look at the bill, unimpressed.
Give her a break. She’s a therapist making $30K a year, for fuck’s sake, not some businessman on an expense account.
Inside the marble lobby of the Carlyle hotel, she makes a beeline for the bar. Against all sound medical judgment—she’d taken a pharmacology class at Wellesley—she pops another tiny blue pill.
She feels eyes on her as she enters the mahogany room. Faux old-money decor and the din of Franz Liszt from the gray-haired pianist trying not to look defeated at the culmination of his music career.
Ella should talk. She’s barely making her half of the rent, coming into the city so she won’t bump into one of her fiancé’s friends. Or a client from her fledgling practice. She thinks about sixteen-year-old Layla from their session that morning. She’s cutting herself again. Layla didn’t need to explain why. Ella understands.
Surveying the bar, Ella snags the look of a man in an expensive suit holding a tumbler of Scotch. They always drink Scotch. And love to talk about it. The special barrels this, the unique region that. Beyond the Scotch prattle, most tend to have a pale band of skin on their left ring finger. Ella doesn’t bother to take off her engagement ring. The Scotch guys don’t care.
The man smiles at her.
He’ll do.
Ella is always surprised how easy it is. She doesn’t need Tinder when she has this black dress.
So she goes to meet her new friend.
*
A few hours later, her phone chimes. She’s in a hotel room now, the only light from under the door. On these frolics, she always sets the alarm for 5 a.m. It avoids awkward morning-after talk.
But it isn’t the sound of the alarm. It’s an incoming call. She extracts herself from under Rick’s hairy arm. She wonders if that’s his real name. He looks like a Rick. Though he probably thought she looks like a Candy. Something sweet but bad for you. Much like her old friend, whose name she borrowed. She always uses their names. Candy, Mandy, Katie. She has no idea why.
“Hello,” she whispers into the phone. She scuttles quietly to the bathroom, scooping up the black dress off the floor. The marble is cool under her feet.
“Ella, I’m sorry to call this late. It’s Dale.”
“Mr. Steadman?” After all these years she can’t bring herself to call him by his first name. You’re always a kid to the teachers in your life. She hasn’t spoken to him in a year, not since her former teacher and now principal at her old high school had her meet with students in the wake of a school shooting in a neighboring township. “Is everything okay?” She feels drumbeats in her chest. Why would he be calling at this hour? Could it be? Could they finally have caught him? No, good news rarely arrives in a wee-hours call.
“Something awful has happened. I know it’s asking a lot. But can you come to RWJ?”
Come to the hospital? Now?
Before she can ask, Mr. Steadman says, “There’s been a—one of my students needs your help.”
She wants to protest. Wants to make an excuse. But she can’t. Not after everything Mr. Steadman has done for her.
“Sure, of course,” she says. “I’m visiting a friend in the city. I can get there in about an hour.”
“I wouldn’t drag you out here if I thought there was someone else who could…” He trails off.
Ella’s head is swirling. She’s exhausted. Still tipsy. Confused. She composes herself. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
Mr. Steadman’s voice catches. “Four girls were attacked at an ice cream shop in Linden. Only one survived. She needs someone who understands, who can—”
“I’m on my way,” Ella says killing the line, knowing she’s uniquely qualified to help this girl.
Knowing what it’s like to be the only one who made it out alive.
CHAPTER 2
The parking lot of the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is covered in a spring fog. The lot is nearly empty save for a gathering of police cars. A woman in scrubs paces outside the front doors, talking on a cell phone.
Ella grips the steering wheel even though she’s parked, and looks down at her pale, bare legs. She debates going home to change into something more professional. But Mr. Steadman sounded uncharacteristically rattled. He’s usually a rock.
She takes a look at herself in the visor mirror, thumbs her smeared eye makeup. Climbing out of the car, she decides the fuck-me heels are a bit much. She reaches back for her gym bag, pulls out her sneakers.
The woman in scrubs is still pacing out front. Ella sees her discreetly put a fist to her mouth, suck in a deep breath, followed by a plume of vape mist.
We all have our secrets.
The receptionist inside barely gives her a second look. The woman has probably seen it all working the ER night shift. Ella once dated a med student who’d done an ER residency rotation, and he regaled her with tales of the guy with a Barbie stuck up his ass, the PCP fiend who’d eaten two of his own fingers during a bad trip, the construction worker with a nail deep in his brain yet still conscious and talking. A therapist in nightclub attire probably didn’t make the Top 10 for weird.
The receptionist says something into the phone, then waves Ella inside the treatment area. The door makes a jarring buzz and Ella walks into a large room bathed in fluorescent light, beeping and voices echoing from behind beds surrounded by blue curtains. At the far end, she sees Mr. Steadman talking to a group of white guys. Three uniformed police officers and a stern-looking man with a mustache whose polo shirt is tucked tight into his jeans. He and Mr. Steadman seem to be having a disagreement.
For a split second, Ella feels a flight instinct. A memory slithers into her head, the procession of cops, doctors, and social workers asking the same questions. Did you get a look at him? What do you remember? Did he touch you? She looks at the floor for a moment, trying to collect herself, then catches a glimpse of her bare thighs again and is transported back to the exam room, her legs in stirrups.
Ella had been nonresponsive after the attack. The hospital’s psych team was unsuccessful, and Ella’s parents were at a loss. The school sent over Mr. Steadman. He wasn’t trained in trauma response, he was merely the fill-in for a guidance counselor out on maternity leave. The cool teacher. Young, good-looking. The one the moms fawned over. At the same time, he was capable, no-nonsense, the kind of person who you wanted in charge, which is probably why they later made him the school’s principal.
Mr. Steadman sees her and gives a small wave. He doesn’t react to the muffled screams coming from a curtained room near the huddle of men. A doctor emerges from the room, grimacing. He says something to the group gathered with Mr. Steadman, shaking his head. Mr. Steadman puts a reassuring hand on the doctor’s shoulder, then walks over to Ella.
