"Good Things Come: A Psychological Thriller" Excerpt

PROLOGUE

It’s dark. So dark, I almost believe my eyes are still closed. But they’re open. Yet the dark... that’s the first thing I see.

The silence. It presses in from every direction, crawling into my ears, my nose, through my skull. It’s loud in a way that defies logic. But it’s real, and it’s speaking words just beyond my understanding. I know better than to ignore it. I need to listen, figure out what silence is saying. I have to get out of here.

I try to sit up, and pain answers with a low, guttural groan rising from the back of my dry throat.

“Umph.” I press my lips together, waiting for the stinging in my joints to subside. It’s my right shoulder and hip; one or both might be dislocated. I can’t tell yet. Thankfully, I’m left-handed.

This is unbelievable. Am I trapped in an actual nightmare?

"Wake up!" I yell.

“Help?” a weak voice answers from somewhere in the opaque blackness. It belongs to a woman.

I search the darkness. “Hello? Someone here?” I strain to see something, anything.

“You’re help?” she whispers. She keeps repeating those same words, and something in her tone suggests she’s not all here.

I clench my teeth and attempt to lift myself once more. I can’t help her until I understand what’s happening to me. The sharp, overwhelming pain shoots down my arm. I reach out instinctively for something to steady myself, something firm, something tangible, but there’s nothing—only cold, hard concrete beneath me.

I take another beat to collect myself. A deep inhale and a long exhale settle me into the reality that something terrible has happened to me and to the other woman, or perhaps a girl. She sounds very young, but that could be due to her condition.

“Do you know where we are?” I ask, trying to break through her delirium. I force my vision to focus, pushing it to adjust to the darkness faster than it naturally would.

“Please… You have to… I can’t anymore,” is all I get from her, and I try to keep my cool because it’s frustrating. I can already see she’s no help.

I try to piece together how I could have gotten here. My last memory is hazy, the edges blurry. I see myself working. But I’m always working because I love what I do. I see myself at my desk, on the phone with a department head. But what were we discussing? I can’t recall a word of it. I must have left my desk at some point, unless I was knocked out while still sitting there. That would explain the headache. All the throbbing is internal. I don’t feel any bleeding. I touch my head, pressing against the front, back, and sides to prove it. No blood or bruises.

So, at some point, I must have gotten up and left the office, then the building, and walked forward into my future. Closing my eyes tight, I try to remember something, anything, but nothing comes. All I feel is this damn headache, sharp and insistent, pulsing behind my eyes like a warning bell.

It’s not normal.

I must have been drugged. Maybe I went to happy hour and someone slipped something into my drink.

“I’m dying,” the girl murmurs.

I take another breath and try harder to spot her. “Where are you?”

“And no one knows I’m here. I should’ve never…” Her voice trails off into that horrible silence again.

I glance up and focus hard, determined to see something. A white ceiling comes into view. There must be a hatch or an opening up there. I must have been dropped from above. That would explain the pain on the right side of my body. It must have been the angle of impact.

“I don’t know…” the woman says suddenly, her voice low and dazed. “Where are we? “ I don’t know.”

My vision is finally adjusting. A smooth, bare white wall emerges from the shadows. I drag myself with my left arm and lean against it.

I steady myself against the wall and look around. This looks like an unfinished basement.

What the hell is this place?

Who did this to me—to us?

“There’s no way out,” she says, her voice hollow. “We’re trapped.”

“How did you get here?” I ask, my eyes fixed on the far wall, which helps sharpen my vision even more.

“I... it was him.”

“Who’s him?”

“My perfect match.”

* * *

CHAPTER 1

This man checks boxes I didn’t know I had. Around us, the clinking of flatware against porcelain mixes with the low hum of conversation, like background music. Yet, his voice carries above it. He’s relaxed and confident. I like that. He feels new, like a gift from the universe, a reward for all I’ve been through to be here, experiencing every sensation stirred by my perfect match.

“Some people mistake comfort for happiness. That’s why too many stay stunted, never expanding their minds,” he says.

I barely grasp what he means in context. Attraction is too powerful for me to care. Frankly, all I want to do is shut him up by making out with him. This isn’t like me at all.

He’s been talking a lot, though. Maybe because I’ve been too quiet. I should speak up, ask questions, and show that I’m fully invested in taking this connection to the next level as fast as possible.

“So, Mia, what do you do for work again?” he asks, cutting in just as I start to inquire about his past relationships—or better yet, whether I’m the woman he envisioned when he signed up for Your Perfect Match.

But he said “again.” I don’t remember him asking about my work before. Maybe he did.

I drop my gaze to my salmon salad. Funny—we ordered the same thing. We also arrived at the same time. There was no need to ask whether he was my date; we just knew. While we waited to be seated—which wasn’t long—we kept grinning at each other like we were in on some sweet, private joke.

It was beautiful. I’ll never forget it.

The introduction brochure said most connections report a tug in the gut; others, a sensation like free-falling. I felt both. At times, I find myself unable to look away from him. I can hardly believe my luck. More than that, I can’t believe it’s working.

Nothing in my life has ever come easy. That’s how I know this must be fate. My reward for being a good daughter to people who rarely returned the favor.

“I’m a digital archivist with the company, actually,” I say.

“What company?”

I look up. His curious gaze spreads across my face like the approaching light of morning. With my hand pressed to my warm cheek, I’ve never felt so beautiful. Does he also like what he sees?

“Um…” I refocus and tap the device on my wrist. “The developer of this. The Your Perfect Match band.”

He sits up straighter, intrigued.

There’s no use admitting that if I didn’t work for the company, we probably never would’ve met. Who can afford this product and service? After twenty years on the market, you’d think the price would have decreased by now. If they want to increase the number of users and subscribers, they’ll have to do exactly that.

The band costs $9,999. I only managed to buy it because, as an employee, I received a seventy-percent discount, which is still too much for my blood. But I’d been saving for a while. And sitting across from him now, I know it was the best investment I’ve ever made.

“Wow,” he says quietly, almost to himself, rubbing the trimmed hairs on his chin. “Are you a programmer?”

I shake my head quickly. “I can program—everyone can these days. It’s the first language we’re taught,” I say with a nervous chuckle. “But no, my job is mostly administrative.”

My skin heats as I scramble for something more impressive to add. I have something, but it’s too early to disclose. And explaining what I do would lead to a very sad conversation. I archive people’s hopes—filing away the matches of those who, for whatever reason, will never meet their soulmate the easy way: through quantum entanglement matching.

The technology is breathtaking, really. It captures the energy flowing through a person’s body and makes it visible. According to the science, true soulmates share a unique energy string that hovers exactly two inches above the navel. Their colors and patterns are exactly alike. That’s how you know. That visible sequence is the match.

“I see,” he says, still stroking the neatly trimmed stubble along his chin, and then abruptly stops. “So what do you like to do for fun?”

I let out a small breath, grateful for the change in topic.

“For me, fun is the gym,” I say. “It’s where I go to work out the kinks, you know?”

His eyes narrow slightly. He’s back to rubbing his chin.

“What?” I ask. He’s thinking something.

“I like the gym too.”

“I don’t do it for vanity,” I add, a little too fast. “I do it to…”

Images flash through my mind. My mother. My father. Two broken people that I had to survive.

“Work out the kinks?” he finishes in a silky voice.

My attention snaps back to him. He’s smirking, flirting—and oh boy, is that a good sign. A sign that my life is finally turning in my favor. Proof that good things really do come to those who endure.

___