The Herd Read online

  The Herd is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Andrea Bartz Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Bartz, Andrea, author.

  Title: The herd : a novel / Andrea Bartz.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Ballantine Books, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019038590 (print) | LCCN 2019038591 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984826367 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984826374 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Missing persons--Investigation--Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.A8438 H47 2020 (print) | LCC PS3602.A8438 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019038590

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019038591

  Ebook ISBN 9781984826374

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Sarah Horgan

  Cover photograph: Isabella Bejarano/Gallery Stock

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Katie

  Chapter 2: Hana

  Chapter 3: Katie

  Chapter 4: Hana

  Chapter 5: Katie

  Chapter 6: Hana

  Chapter 7: Katie

  Part II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9: Hana

  Chapter 10: Katie

  Chapter 11: Hana

  Chapter 12: Katie

  Part III

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14: Hana

  Chapter 15: Katie

  Chapter 16: Hana

  Chapter 17: Katie

  Chapter 18: Hana

  Chapter 19: Katie

  Part IV

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21: Hana

  Chapter 22: Katie

  Chapter 23: Hana

  Chapter 24: Katie

  Chapter 25: Hana

  Chapter 26: Katie

  Chapter 27: Hana

  Chapter 28: Katie

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Andrea Bartz

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The cold crept inside the body’s outermost parts first. It turned aqueous cells into something solid, worked its way in millimeter by millimeter. The pert nose. The eyelashes, still coated in thick mascara. The earlobes, studded with delicate silver rings. The fingertips were quick to crystallize, dusty whiteness spreading over the knuckles until the nails, painted black with tiny white stars, stood out like a sore thumb. The blood was briefly sludgy, then solid and stiff, its hard work, zipping oxygen and nutrients and white blood cells around the body, complete.

  And the brain—this was a pity. It was an exceptionally good one, a coiled spring packing potential energy, all the grand ideas and glinting insights yet to come. Its tissue froze neuron by neuron, the little synapses that so recently zapped and sparked now just cold, dead space between the cells.

  In a way, it was a blessing. They say anything frozen, in theory, could last forever. Beauty may be fleeting, the smooth skin and shiny hair of youth giving way to crinkles and crags, to thin, dingy locks. Taut thighs plumping out or growing weak and scrawny. But not this body. The subzero air surrounding every inch of it assured total preservation. A stopping of time.

  It was almost midnight, but the body was bright, bathed in ugly artificial light. A door thudded closed; blackness descended, and the body was left to freeze in peace.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  Katie

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 10:48 A.M.

  My body tensed before I knew what I was seeing: strobes of red and blue, the universal sign of an emergency. I paused and squinted at the squad car across the street, its lights flashing, eerier for the lack of a siren. I breathed deeply, commanded my chest to relax. Two weeks back in New York City, and despite everyone’s warnings, the sounds, the smells, the crush of people and hulking cliffs of steel and glass—none of it bothered me, none of it took any reassimilation. But this was the first manic police light I’d seen, and like Pavlov’s bell it’d made every muscle tighten.

  I crossed the street and realized the two cops standing bored on the road weren’t just blocking my entrance—they appeared to be at the Herd, speaking to a wisp of a woman in an impressively flattering parka. I leaned forward and flashed my widest smile.

  “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to interrupt.” They flicked their heads my way, annoyed. “It’s okay for me to go in?” I pointed at the door behind them.

  “Are you a member?” the woman asked.

  “I have an appointment with Eleanor.” She raised her eyebrows and I sighed. “I’m Hana’s sister.”

  She took a half step back. “Oh, go on up. The Gleam Room’s closed but everything else is, uh, business as usual.”

  I thanked her and hurried out of the cold to wait for the single elevator. The Gleam Room? What the hell is a Gleam Room?

  On the tenth floor, the doors slid open and I stepped out into a sunlit entryway. I paused, momentarily stunned. I’d seen the floor shortly after Eleanor had first rented it, had even donned a hard hat and closed-toe shoes for a tour shortly before I’d left town, but that hive of dust and drywall and sweaty contractors had little in common with the space before me. It had the girly chicness of a magazine office, but without the clutter or bustle—here everything was calm. Sunlight spilled in from the windows; it was warm but not stuffy, and the air smelled vaguely of plumeria. A woman with glossy French-braid pigtails and molded spectacles smiled at me from behind a marble-fronted desk. On the wall behind her was the now-famous logo: THE HERD, the H-E-R a deep plum, the other letters gray.

  She checked me in, had me scribble my finger across an iPad in the wild snarl I counted as my signature, and then she gestured toward the nearest lounge. “Eleanor will get a notification that you’re here,” she said brightly, touching off a little chirrup in my chest. “Feel free to take a seat.”

  I thanked her and stepped inside the room, which was ringed with forest-green booths and benches, a few sofas and armchairs clustered at the center. I peeled off my coat and sent a text: “You here?”

  I heard Hana before I saw her, her heels clacking along the parquet floor. Hana enters any room like Lily Tomlin in an ’80s office comedy. “Katie!” she cried, arms wide.

  “I take back everything I said,” I said into her shoulder. “This place is unreal, Hana. I feel like I’m inside Athena’s vagina.”

  She cracked up and let me go, then took a step back. Evaluating. “That’s the Katie I know,” she said, tapping my shoulder. “You’ve been off your game the last couple of weeks. I was beginning to
worry Kalamazoo had permanently killed off your sense of humor.”

  Ah yes, Hana coming in hot with the thinly veiled criticism. “Don’t scapegoat Michigan. I’ve just been getting my bearings.” I looked beyond her. “Is Mikki here? Oh, and do you know what’s going on this morning? There are cops by the door.”

  She frowned. “Somebody broke in last night. Spray-painted some obscenities in the Gleam Room.”

  I held up a finger. “Is that a fancy term for the bathroom? Because I will not abide that nomenclature.”

  She laughed. “It’s a beauty room with mirrors. You can hire someone to do your hair or makeup or just use the products there, like, if you have a meeting or audition or date to go to.”

  A few members had floated by, all perfectly coiffed and clad in stylish, breezy outfits. “Good, ’cause everyone here looks like shit,” I remarked.

  A woman with a black bun the exact size and shape of a bagel paused behind Hana, leaning in expectantly. Hana noticed her and jumped.

  “Katie, this is Aurelia,” Hana said. “She’s the head member relations coordinator.”

  She looked younger than me, early-twenties, impossibly chic in a tailored black jumpsuit. A radiant smile, teeth like pearls. “So you’re Hana’s sister!”

  It clicked—she was the woman I’d seen out front. I shook her hand enthusiastically, and she didn’t do the annoying double take we often get when people learn we’re siblings: the back-and-forth between Hana’s thick, dark hair, golden-brown eyes, and dark skin and me, as bland as a cornfield.

  “Eleanor mentioned you were coming,” she said. “You just moved back, right?”

  “She was researching a book in Michigan,” Hana jumped in. “She’s a journalist.”

  “Wow! What’s the book about?”

  I’d been practicing this on the subway ride here: “There’s this small technology company there that sort of stumbled into the lucrative world of reality manipulation: fake news, convincing bots, that kind of thing. I wrote a feature about them for Wired and now I’m expanding it into a book.”

  “That’s so interesting.” Something in her eyes unsettled me, a quivering intensity. “Eleanor and I were just talking about the falsity of the online world, and how everyone’s craving real connection. She said—”

  “I’m so sorry, but she has an interview!” Hana’s teeth gleamed as she sent Aurelia away. When she’d gone, Hana shrugged. “She’s sweet, but she’ll talk your ear off. I want you focused before your big Herd interview.”

  “Hopefully Eleanor will go easy on me.” I glanced around. “I think people are looking at us. Are you and Mikki basically celebrities?”

  Hana rolled her eyes, but I could sense her pride. The Herd employed Hana as its part-time publicist, and Mikki, another of their friends from Harvard, was its freelance graphic designer. More important, the two freelancers were Eleanor’s confidantes, part of her tiny inner circle. Now everyone in the room was feigning disinterest in us, too subtle to gaze at Hana head-on; instead they tilted their high cheekbones and typed rapidly into their keyboards.

  “Anyway, make yourself at home. I’ll find Mikki.” She took off, her heels ticking.

  I strode after her and peered into the next room, the one that’d just swallowed her up. White bookshelves stretched from corner to corner, the books organized by color. So neatly aligned I wanted to shove one out at an odd angle, fling a few books onto the floor just to see what would happen. Farther in there was a vast, sunny room, and off to the side, a short hallway plastered in hip wallpaper—a pattern of illustrated red lips smirking and smiling and sticking out their tongues. Someone had sealed off the hallway with a strip of Scotch tape, a Post-it in the middle proclaiming CLOSED FOR A MINUTE! The Gleam Room. I wondered again what was scrawled across its walls—what merited the squad car out front.

  Then Hana and Mikki burst in from the sunny room, marching out to meet me near the doorway. When she hugged me, Mikki smelled the way I remembered, sweet and a little musky. Winter be damned, she was wearing a crocheted halter top and loose pants covered in an elephant print, her feathered ’70s-style hair in crumpled curls, her face bare.

  “For fuck’s sake, Hana, why didn’t you offer to take her coat?” Mikki pulled at the leather jacket slung over my forearm. “C’mon, let me give you the tour and then I want to hear all about Minnesota.”

  “Michigan.”

  “Shit. This is how badly I need an update.” She grinned, freckles dancing on her cheeks, and spun toward the sunlight at the far end of the space. I’d hoped to see Mikki a couple weeks ago; she’d hosted a big “Misfit Toys Friendsgiving” in her rent-controlled, ramshackle apartment. But when the day had come, I’d been too tired and disoriented to attend.

  Hana announced she had to answer some emails and split off as Mikki pointed out a chic café counter along a wall, avocado toast on vintage-looking plates sliding across its marble top: “Coffee is free, but everything else is expensive.” She bopped along, smiling serenely, oblivious to the Herders stealing glances at us as we passed. Mikki’s superpower is that she very rarely cares—about anything, really. When I’d announced my book deal on Facebook—my most-liked post to date—she’d commented only to say the CEO of the company I was writing about was sort of hot. At the time, it had stung, but now her cheerful indifference was a relief: one less person pressing me about my research, the months that got bunched up and knotted and ended with ambulances, with sirens chopping the air.

  She and I hooked right toward a final set of doors; one led into the bathroom and one was marked MOVE with a faint capital L behind the M. But it was the third door that Mikki took me through, into a small room with birchwood lockers on one side and clothing racks on the other, holding up a rainbow of coats.

  “You can pay for a locker if you want to keep stuff here overnight,” Mikki said, plunging a hanger into my jacket’s shoulder, “but nobody really steals anything. Just now I left my laptop out on a table.” She gestured back into the sun-splashed room, with its blue velvet workstations and glossy acrylic chairs girdling a long, medieval-looking table. “Everyone’s so well vetted.”

  “Except that someone broke in last night, right? A vandal.” I followed her back into the brightness. “Aren’t people freaked out?”

  She leaned in, lowered her voice. “Babe, most people don’t know. But it’s weird, you need a bunch of different keys to get in. I don’t even have them all. And the security camera in the elevator, it’s motion-activated—no footage from last night.” She paused in front of the lipstick wallpaper, the makeshift police tape, then ducked and ran past it like a slapstick ninja. I stifled a giggle and followed.

  “Eleanor will be so mad if she sees us,” she hissed, leading me into a room and fumbling for the light switch.

  “So will my sister,” I replied as the lights blinked on. Hundreds of them: vintage-looking bulbs ringing six oval mirrors, a purple stool perched in front of each, the countertop lined with Gleam beauty products. I knew Mikki had done the graphic design on their packaging, jade-green words on a dove-gray background. I was about to reach for a lipstick, as entranced as a magpie spotting something shiny, when movement in the mirror made me turn around.

  Mikki was staring at the back wall, her arms crossed. I followed her gaze up to where the striped mauve and white wall met the ceiling: black spray paint, deliberate bubble letters.

  UGLY CUNTS

  “Someone really sucks at writing positive affirmations,” I said after a moment.

  Mikki whipped around and smiled. “Some jealous idiot. Probably a dude all enraged that there’s five thousand square feet on the surface of the planet he’s not allowed to dominate. Maybe someone from the Antiherd.”

  “ ‘The Antiherd’?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s a secret online hate group dedicated to Eleanor and the Herd. Or that’s the rumor—I haven�
�t seen the message board. You heard a group of guys tried to sue us for violating antidiscrimination laws earlier this year? Word is that was organized through the Antiherd.”

  “Gross.” But interesting. My journalist antennae went up—there was an article there. Just as quickly, I dismissed the thought: It was a topic Eleanor and Hana would never, ever let me cover. I looked around the room again. “No cameras?”

  “None. Ask Hana about that.” She flapped her hand. “Eleanor said someone’s wallpapering over it tonight. She was so horrified by it she wouldn’t even tell me what it said. She hates the word.”

  “What, ‘cunt’? Weird they used it, then.” I cocked my head. “Actually, I guess it’s not that weird. It’s the worst thing you can call a woman.”

  “You can’t be here.” I jumped and we both turned to see Aurelia, the chatty member relations coordinator, glowering in the doorway. She blanched when she saw Mikki’s face. “I mean—the Gleam Room is closed for the day.”

  “Just needed a little Gleam Cream.” Mikki strolled into the hallway.

  “Sorry you had to see this,” Aurelia said to me as we strode back into the main room. She smoothed the tape onto the wall behind us. “And just let me know if you need anything.” I sent her off with a wave.

  “Are you hanging out today or just meeting with Eleanor?” Mikki asked.

  “I’m planning to stay.” I trailed her to the corner where her MacBook and bag were spilled across a loveseat’s cushions. Her backpack gaped and a whole jumble of shit was slipping out, as if trying to sneak away: tampon, Blow Pop, vape pen, set of X-Acto knives, glue stick, what appeared to be a fun-size can of Mace. “I mean, if Eleanor lets me.”