Meet Me In The Dark: (A Dark Suspense) (39 page)

“You can live in the heat of hell and still be happy. As long as that hell is your home.”

– Case

“Y
ou know why we like the desert, Syd?”

She’s looking at my safehouse on the outskirts of Palm Springs with utter disgust as I try to find the right key for the front door. I don’t blame her. I have a four-million-dollar log home up in Montana and this is… well, I think the whole thing cost me seventy-five grand after renovations.

“Who’s we?” she asks, simultaneously shaking off a spider that is trying its best to crawl up her flip-flop and wiping the sweat off her brow. It’s ninety-seven degrees today. And it’s only late March. We’ve been traveling for weeks, just enjoying each other. And the freedom we have to be ourselves. But I’m ready to settle down, so I brought her here. My favorite place in the whole fucking world.

Plus, it’s nothing but sunshine for as far as the eye can see.

“Uhh…” Fuck. I’m not an assassin anymore, and I’m not here to dry out, either. But I already started to tell her that us assassins like to come to the desert to dry out after the kill. So I have to say something. “Me and you,” I answer back, recovering.

“It’s hot here.”

“It’s supposed to be hot. It’s the desert.”

“And this place, Case… I’ve lived in the woods for weeks on end at times. But”—she fans herself now as I try another key in the lock—“it’s
hot
here. Is this house even up to code?”

The door swings open and a rush of cool air hits her in the face. She remembers I was talking and looks up at me with a smile. I love that smile. “Why do we like it here?”

I pull her inside and watch her face as she takes it in. She walks down the stairs to the sunken living room and with each step, the temperature drops. Three-feet-thick adobe mud walls will do that for a desert house. Especially one that is mostly underground.

She takes in the comfy couches and the cool tile floor. There’s artwork on the whitewashed walls and a guitar over by the Spanish-tiled fireplace, which I use on cold winter nights. And then she wanders over to the archway that leads into the kitchen. A chef’s kitchen with industrial appliances, white cabinets, and a nice stone countertop. I follow her in there, enjoying her reaction.

“We like it here,” I say, pulling her attention and her body back to me, “because I’m gonna make love to you in every room here. And get you pregnant here. And we’re gonna raise kids here and build an oasis in the backyard with a pool and a water slide. We can do anything we want here. Be ourselves forever here. We’re gonna start our new life here, Syd. And that’s why we like it here. We like it here… because it’s home.”

Read other books by JA HUSS

Jana Aston, my seriously talented personal assistant and BFF, just messaged me on Facebook and asked if I was raised by killers. I shit you not. Well, first she asked me, all innocent like, “Dude. When u write shit do u worry people will think u r fucked in the head or r u past that?”

I laughed. (I am past that, if you’re wondering. I am not this book. I am not these characters. I am merely their voice.)

But I started asking myself where the hell this book came from about halfway through writing it. This mind control stuff freaked me the fuck out. I had to do research, so I Googled it, and six hours later I was convinced Al Roker and Tila Tequila were under the influence of Illuminati MKUltra mind control. I slept with my gun that night, I swear to God. I even loaded an extra magazine I had sitting empty in a drawer for five years, and put it within easy reach. (Jana: “But the illuminati can mind fuck around your gun.”) #
ThanksForYourSupportJana

I did not like the research at all, and even though the mind control stuff in this story is pretty intense, it’s nothing like the shit I saw and read online. I tamed it down by huge orders of magnitude because it really bothered me.

I don’t know where I get these ideas, they just pop into my head. But I will tell you a little bit about this process as it relates to Merc, because he is really the only character where I had so many background constraints that came out of so many completely different scenarios.

Merc first appears in
Slack: A Day in the Life of Ford Aston
which released in December 2013. And in that book Ford picks him up at the airport and delivers him to Cheyenne where Ford first encounters Sasha as a twelve-year-old girl.
Slack
took place on the same Christmas Eve as this book. Then Ford got Merc involved in another scheme in
Taut
. Merc was also mentioned, though not present, in
Come Back
with Sasha, Harper, and James. And he had his biggest role yet in
Coming For You
.

I went into
Slack
knowing I wanted to write some twisty suspense about this dude and that he was “on a list” of killers being used by high and powerful people. I didn’t invent “the Company” until I wrote
Come
for the
BEND Anthology
in May 2014, but I knew in
Slack
there would be a secret organization in a future book to explain what Merc was doing that night. In fact, thinking back, I had written out some scenes where Ford actually went with Merc to that job, but I deleted them all, and left Ford out of it to keep
Slack
on track.

I also knew Merc’s book would be a long time coming because I had a lot of other projects planned, but
Slack
was my initial set-up for what would become
Meet Me In The Dark
. So by the time I started writing MMITD, Merc was real to me. I know him pretty well. I knew the book started with him saving Sasha on Christmas Eve and ended with him being fucked over by the girl he left behind. And I had already set up this mind control stuff in the
Come
books. James was insane, Harper was on weird drugs, Sasha might be a sleeper assassin.

All that stuff was there.

But I tell you what—this Sydney girl surprised the hell out of me in this book. She was the only one I didn’t know. I knew her father, he’s been mentioned before. But the only thing I knew about Sydney going in was that at the end of
Guns
(oh yeah, Merc was in that too) Merc is watching her coming out of a bar in Cheyenne with a guy… (“I watch the girl hanging on her piece of shit boyfriend outside the bar.”)

That was it. That’s all I had about Sydney. So her story unfolded as the plot progressed. I knew she was gonna have secrets and I knew she was going to get the better of Merc. She did that twice, so that made me happy. I knew Merc was an asshole and that he would walk away. That’s all I had. So I don’t know where I get these ideas. I do remember about a month ago, walking into the gym and telling my trainer, James, that I was writing some fucked up shit. That was during “research week”.

I find this book disturbing, but not for the same reasons that most people will. I don’t find Merc disturbing at all. I know him intimately. I see past what others can’t because I created him. So even though he is a violent asshole in the first half of the book, I know
why
he’s like that. I’m fine with Merc.

But all this mind control stuff really affected me in a negative way. I spent about a week researching it online. I read articles and watched videos. (And FYI, this
MKUltra stuff was real
. The really did these experiments on people back in the day by pumping them up with drugs without their knowledge. They admitted to it, and then the CIA, under the Nixon administration, promptly destroyed all the records) I looked for specific drugs to use, but ended up keeping it simple and leaving most of those brand names out. And it took me a while (Julie time – like a week) to put this plot together so that it made sense and could still be something people might like.

It was a difficult book for me in a lot of ways.

But I remember watching the commentary video on the Director’s Cut version of that Tom Hank’s movie,
Castaway
, and the one thing that stuck out was that they came up with the plot after they randomly put objects inside the Fed Ex boxes. And then they consulted survivalists to determine how Tam Hank’s character might use those things to stay alive on that deserted island.

So I kinda felt like that’s what I was doing in MMITD. I had these objects in the form of Merc’s past roles in other books, and I needed to figure out how I can use them to survive. It was fun (now that my mind control paranoia has waned) and challenging. But I’m really happy with how the book turned out.

There is also a lot of set-up for Sasha’s book in here, which will hopefully release a month from now. May 20, 2015 is my plan, but release week usually puts me behind schedule, so I might not make it. I’m trying hard though. Sasha’s book will be the “end of” book. Meaning—end of these Company plotlines. I think she is the last character who needs to deal with them. But who knows, maybe someone who survived in
Coming For You
will be back? ;)

Anyway, I know I write twisted thrillers. And sometimes people ask me why I don’t stop writing romance and just write thrillers. I have a really good plot for one just waiting for the time to write it. But I
like
romances. I don’t want to write thrillers with no romance. I think the romance is the best part. I like the way my characters are all so unlikable by themselves, but putting them together makes them complete. It softens their edges and makes them companionate. I almost never finish reading a book if the characters are too perfect. I like them to be damaged and ugly inside. I like the men to be mean and/or unlovable until that one special girl comes along who can tame them. And I like the women to find their own strength. These twisted plots give them the opportunity to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. So I’m gonna keep writing romantic suspense as long as I have plot ideas.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Merc and Sydney are messed up by themselves, but they are complete when they are together. I guess that’s my aim when I write. Take two fucked up people and make them better once they fall in love. :)

***

If you read Three, Two, One (321) and didn’t see that I posted a bonus ending scene between Ark and Blue online, you can
read that scene here
.

The Street Team and Shrike Bikes people teamed up for a contest I ran to promote MMITD on release week and I gave them five different tasks to do. Some of the amazing ideas they came up—I’m blown away. And one of the tasks was to spell out the title of the book using household objects. One of these images in particular stood out in my mind, because she used her husband’s guns and hunting gear to do this. I asked her if I could use these images in the official book trailer and she said yes. So I’d just like to say thank you to Lauren and Matt Duncan. Love your guns, man. Love them!

I have one more thing to say, and this is about my editor. I get a lot of messages from people telling me how to edit. Why, I don’t know. I have an editor. Her name is RJ. I am
never
, as long as she keeps taking my manuscripts, going to ditch her. She is the only editor I’ve ever used, she’s been working with me since my first book,
Clutch
, and she has been a major contributor to my success. She is the only person who read this book before the ARC’s went out and so I owe her a huge thank you for all her guidance.

After writing thirty books I know what an editor is. And it’s
not
a proofreader. I still get typos, everyone does. Editing is not about typos or grammar. Editing is about plot and characterization. Editing is about sentence structure and flow. It’s about knowing what part of the book is my “true story” and what part needs to be cut. She also knows my style. Fiction is not bound by grammar or spelling. The point of a good story is not to have perfect grammar. That’s silly. I take some liberties in this area and those liberties create my “voice”. People seem to like my voice, so I’m gonna keep doing it.

We do our best to find stray typos after the editing is done, but that’s not why I hire RJ. I hire her to take what I write and tell me how to improve it. That does include grammar and stuff. She has a master’s degree in publishing—she knows what she’s doing. But what RJ does is something most people can
not
do. She sees my story arc. She knows what works and what doesn’t. She calls me on all the parts I try to half-ass my way through. She knows what I’m capable of and never lets it slide.