A Terrible Place to Wake Up

The engine was off, and the car wasn’t moving. I lifted my head and looked out the window.

We weren’t at a temple.

We were parked in the driveway of a house I didn’t recognize, on a quiet street with no pedestrians, no traffic, no sound except a distant rooster and the ticking of cooling metal from the engine.

I’d hired this driver that morning to take me temple-hopping around Yogyakarta, Indonesia. We’d visited one. I fell asleep in the back seat on the way to the next.

I had absolutely no idea where I was.

The driver caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and smiled.

“This is my home,” he said. “Come inside. We can rest for a little bit.”

Home?
Come inside?
Rest?

The first thing that popped into my head was that this is how a Dateline episode starts.

Cue Keith Morrison’s voice: “He had come to Indonesia for ancient temples. What he didn’t know… was that he was about to become part of the story.”

I glanced at my phone. One bar. But who was I going to call anyway? I’d arrived in Yogyakarta late the night before.

I looked outside again. Still empty. Not a person in sight.

I’d like to think that years of writing crime fiction made me sharper. More situationally aware. The kind of person who could recognize a bad setup and pivot fast.

Nope.

For reasons I still can’t fully explain—maybe train lag, maybe the heat, maybe stupidity—I got out of the car and followed him inside.

The air in the house was cooler, dimmer. The floors were tiled, and the furnishings were average. Everything looked neat, staged a little.

I started cataloging.

Family photos? None.
Women’s shoes near the door? None.
Kids’ drawings? None.
Anything that suggested another human regularly lived here? Something that would tell me I hadn’t just made a serial killer’s job easy.

Nothing.

If this guy was a serial killer, he was extremely organized. I’ll give him that. The place wasn’t a bachelor pad. No mismatched furniture. No empty beer bottles lying around.

He pointed to a sofa. “You rest.”

In the movies, this is where the smart character laughs nervously, backs toward the door, and says, “You know what, I think I’m good.”

I was not the smart character.

I told myself I was overreacting. That I was projecting American true-crime paranoia onto a man who had done nothing but drive me around all morning, like I’d hired him to do.

So what did I do next?

I sat down. No hesitation. No pushback. No suggestion that we continue with our original plan of touring temples. None of that. I simply fell asleep.

This wasn’t the kind of sleep where you keep your eyes half-closed, ears on alert, pretending to nap. No, this was dead sleep. I was out the minute my head hit the throw pillow.

Looking back, waking up in that driveway probably says more about me than I’d like to admit. I seem to have a habit of putting myself and my characters in places they didn’t plan to be.

If you’ve read enough of my books, you’ve probably noticed something. Abby Kane wakes up in terrible situations.

Rusted warehouses. Muddy huts. Sterile containment rooms. You name it, and she’s probably woken up there.

Why do I keep doing that to her? I’m not entirely sure.

In my next book, Bright Days, Abby wakes up in yet another situation she didn’t choose. The question is whether this time it leads to something brighter or somewhere much darker.

Bright Days is available for preorder now. Find out where Abby’s waking up next.

If you’re wondering, here’s the actual living room. Looking back, I probably overreacted.