PRAISE FOR A. R. TORRE

  A Fatal Affair

  “Nothing is remotely routine in Torre’s heady brew of serial murder spiced with fraud, torture, impersonation, and assorted celebrity hijinks . . . you won’t put it down till every last drop of blood has been shed.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A thriller with surprises aplenty and a breezy pace that includes well-written characters and the singular challenge of looking for truth ‘in a sea of professional liars and seducers,’ this novel is sure to have wide appeal.”

  —Library Journal

  A Familiar Stranger

  “A whiplash suspenser that’s a model of its kind.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The author skillfully reveals the characters’ many lies and secrets. Torre knows how to keep the reader guessing.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Good Lie

  “Ambitious and twisty . . . Great bedtime reading for insomniacs and people willing to act like insomniacs just this once.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This kinky tale is compulsively readable.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A blend of serial-killer story, court cases, and even romance, this is a tricky story that will keep readers going.”

  —Parkersburg News and Sentinel

  Every Last Secret

  “Deliciously, sublimely nasty: Mean Girls for grown-ups.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Torre keeps the suspense high . . . Readers will be riveted from page one.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A glamorous and seductive novel that will suck you in and knock you sideways. I love this story, these characters, and the raw emotion they generated in me. I devoured every word. Exceptional.”

  —Tarryn Fisher, New York Times bestselling author

  “Raw and riveting. A clever ride that will make you question everyone and everything.”

  —Meredith Wild, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  OTHER TITLES BY A. R. TORRE

  A Fatal Affair

  A Familiar Stranger

  The Good Lie

  Every Last Secret

  The Ghostwriter

  The Girl in 6E

  Do Not Disturb

  If You Dare

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2024 by Select Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781662519574 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781662519581 (digital)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  Cover image: © Lukasz Szwaj / Shutterstock; © Nattapol_Sritongcom / Shutterstock; © Manuela Rohwetter / ArcAngel

  Contents

  START READING

  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

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  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

  From: info@murderunplugged.com

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  From: tfk@hotmail.com

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Mortui vivos docent.

  The dead teach the living.

  CHAPTER 1

  PERLA

  That family stuck out right from the start. We were all looking at them, even before it happened.

  —Cheryl Higgins, waitress (Tony’s Truck Stop)

  The woman’s face changed right before she fell. She was chewing, her eyes glazed, bored with the conversation at her table, her mind on other things. I watched her because I felt her. I felt that disconnect. Also, watching her was more interesting than listening to Grant talk about birds.

  “. . . What’s crazy is that their migratory patterns aren’t based on . . .”

  I swear my husband intentionally set out to pick a hobby that would bore me to death. The other night, he stopped mid-thrust, head raised, ear cocked to one side, because he thought he heard a bearded woodpecker.

  The woman could use some fillers in the deep crevices that ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth. It’d make her look ten years younger. I glanced at Grant, making eye contact long enough to prove that I was taking studious mental notes on the fascinating increase in swallows this time of year; then I flicked my gaze down to my plate—a sad display of rubbery grilled chicken, wilted spinach, and a few blueberries—and back to the woman, two booths over, facing me.

  She would never be able to afford fillers, so I kept that insight to myself, despite its potential impact on her face. No one in this diner was stepping anywhere near a plastic surgeon’s scalpel unless it was for a boob job. The parking lot was a crowded mess of bumper-stickered, cheap vehicles with bald tires and dented fenders. In the midst of them, my Range Rover gleamed, a visual reminder that we were in the wrong place. We should have waited until we got back into town to eat. Instead, we were wedged into a sticky booth with three plates of food that would give us all diarrhea.

  The woman’s eyes locked with mine. I started to look away but then noticed her fingers clawing at the neck of her Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt, her mouth gaping open. I watched, fascinated, as her eyes rolled toward the ceiling and she tilted to her left, a chubby bowling pin slowly tipping over.

  Her arms didn’t move, her body was limp, and she fell to the tile without trying to catch herself.

  It was a quick, hard hit, and she didn’t bounce or roll; she stayed stuck on her side, one arm pinned underneath her, the other suspended in the air like a bicycle kickstand.

  A hush fell in a tight knot around her body; then it spread, like a growing pool of blood, infecting each table in an outward circle until everyone in the diner was craning toward the sight, their faces alarmed, reactions ricocheting around the room. I pierced a charred chunk of chicken with my fork and placed it in my mouth, chewing quietly.

  A delayed scream came from the woman’s tattooed seatmate, who launched her rail-thin body out of the booth and onto her knees beside her friend. Looking frantically around the restaurant, she shrieked, “Someone call 9-1-1! Is anyone here a doctor?”

  The room fell silent as heads swiveled—right, left, right. I sighed and set down my fork, then raised my hand.

  “Perla,” Grant warned, and I shot him a hard look before scooting out of the booth and standing.

  A wave of murmurs swelled at my reveal. I snagged a napkin from a dispenser on the next table and wip
ed my hands clean as I approached the prone woman.

  “You’re a doctor?” her friend asked as she fisted the woman’s shirt.

  “Step back,” I snapped. “Does she have any food allergies?”

  “I—I don’t know.” The woman looked to the couple beside her for help. “Maggie? Frank? Do you know if Bev has any allergies?”

  Bev. She looked like a Bev. I knelt on the sticky tile and rolled the woman onto her back. Running my fingers quickly over the back of her head, I could feel that there was a knot where she had collided with the floor, but no blood or split skin. I bent forward and put my ear close to her mouth, waiting for any sign of breathing.

  “She’s not breathing,” I announced. The room hummed in response, and everyone’s attention was on me. Waiting to see if I saved this woman or killed her.

  I pulled open her lips and checked her mouth for any food. I worked my fingers down her tongue, trying to see if there was anything there. The thin canal was slimy and warm and I quickly withdrew my hand. “Has someone called 9-1-1?” I asked, sneaking a glance in the direction of our booth. My husband stood at the head of it, our daughter in front of him, both watching my every move.

  I bet a burrowing owl could have landed on Grant’s shoulder right then and he wouldn’t have even turned his head.

  “Yes,” the waitress said. “They’re on their way. They said to begin—”

  “CPR,” I interrupted, my arms locked and hands linked on the center of Bev’s chest, one on top of the other. I started the compressions, counting them in my head as I went. Bev had a thin gold chain with a cross on it, the necklace tangled and bunched in her dingy yellow curls. She looked to be my age—but a much harder thirty-five than me. Her face was a sea of sun damage, with a layer of extra fat that underlined her round chin. I hadn’t gotten much from my mother, but I had inherited her expressive brown eyes, slightly upturned nose, and oval face. The crooked smile and emotional damage, I got from my father.

  Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. I stopped and pinched the woman’s nostrils shut, noting the chip in my forefinger’s polish. I should call first thing in the morning and make an appointment at the salon. I placed my lips on hers and tried not to recoil at the contact. I inhaled and pushed my breath into her mouth, then repeated the action. Thirty compressions, two breaths. Easy, yet everyone was gawking at me as if I were performing miracles.

  I loved it.

  I pulled off and returned my hands to her chest, resuming the compressions. I was on the seventeenth of the second set when her body shuddered beneath my palms.

  “What was that?” Bev’s friend still knelt beside me, and I glanced over at her while I continued, annoyed at her proximity. I shifted away from her, my pale-gray slacks rubbing against the floor. I’d have to throw them away after all this.

  Bev was coming back to life. I could feel it, and the power rush was intoxicating. I smiled and continued my work. Twenty-five . . . twenty-eight . . . thirty. I pinched her nose and repeated the breaths, no longer fixating on the fleshy feel of her lips or the emerging zit staring at me from the center of her forehead.

  “Come on,” I muttered, restarting the compressions, my own heart seeming to sync with the counts as I forced the life back into her.

  She coughed, and something flew from her mouth and hit my shoulder. I cursed and stopped the work, rolling her away from me as she coughed again, spittle spraying out.

  “Bev!” the friend yelped. “Oh my God, Bev!”

  Faint sirens sounded, and I raised my gaze from the woman to my family. My daughter bounced on her toes, grinning at me with pride as the entire restaurant broke into conversation and applause. Someone offered me their hand and I took it, heaving to my feet. Smiling at the room, I raised a hand in acknowledgment of their recognition. Everyone was beaming—everyone except for my husband, who glared at me, his face dark with anger.

  CHAPTER 2

  JOURNAL OF SOPHIE WULTZ

  Hi. I’m Sophie Wultz. I’m eleven, almost twelve. This is the first entry for my summer writing project. We’re supposed to write every day for at least fifteen minutes. On the first day of school, we’re going to turn in our entries, and this really seems like an attempt for Mr. Alford to spy on the inner thoughts of his sixth-grade students. Bridget says Mr. Alford is a pervert, and I’m withholding judgment for now, but this assignment seems to support her opinion.

  For that reason, I won’t be turning in these pages. I’ll be writing different, boring entries that will seem like they took fifteen minutes, but actually I’ll whip through them in five. I’m a very fast writer. Or typer. Both. We took typing tests in class, and I was one of the fastest in the class. 67 WPM, that’s how fast I was. At that speed, I could be a stenographer. Those are the people in court that type while people talk. I’d like that job, though I’d be tempted to make up things as I typed. Sometimes people say the stupidest things. When I watch Court TV, I can immediately spot the liars. Sometimes the lawyers can too, and they trip them up with questions, but a lot of the time, they don’t. They just finish their questions and walk back to their seat, even though the person is clearly hiding something.

  Dad says I’d be a good lawyer, but I don’t know if that’s what I want in life. Sitting in a courtroom all day long seems boring. I’d rather be an actress. Flying all over the world to act in movies with famous stars . . . that seems way better. Plus, you get training in things like martial arts and accents and horseback riding.

  Dad said I can be anything I want to be, but Mom hates the idea of me being an actress. She wants all of the attention for herself, and I want all of the attention for myself. The only difference is that I’m a kid—and an only child—so I’m supposed to get all of the attention, and she’s supposed to fix my lunches and buy me the right clothes, and take me and my friends to the mall, and if she doesn’t like that—too bad. That was the deal she signed up for when she had a kid.

  Plus, if she didn’t want me to act, she shouldn’t put on a show so much. I can see how much she enjoys acting—but it’s not really acting. Like Dad says, it’s lying. She lies and I like to lie too, so why not get paid for it and become famous and marry a movie star while you’re at it?

  I’m never going to have kids. No stretch marks, or baby vomit on my clothes, or packs of diapers in my purse. I’m going to be tall and gorgeous and sip champagne in dark bars while hot guys whisper in my ear and tell me that I’m beautiful.

  I’m not beautiful now. Or tall. Or anything other than a decent soccer player with above-average typing skills and a flat chest.

  That’s me. Sophie Wultz. Normal with a capital N. But not for long. One day, I’ll be famous.

  CHAPTER 3

  PERLA

  I flipped down the passenger-side visor and opened the mirror, studying my makeup and reviewing the damage. My lipstick was shot to hell, so I opened my purse and withdrew the spare tube I kept there for emergencies.

  Grant, who hadn’t said a word since we left the diner, gunned my SUV up the highway’s on-ramp.

  I glanced at his handsome profile. “Okay, what? You just going to punish me with silence? You clearly have something you want to say.”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Saved someone’s life? I know, terrible of me.” I twisted the bottom of the tube, pushing out the pale-mauve color.

  “I thought it was supercool,” Sophie chimed in from the back seat. “I’m going to tell all my friends and put it in my journal.”

  “You are not going to tell all of your friends,” Grant instructed. “What your mother did was wrong.”

  “Oh, please.” I rolled the color onto my lips. “It was a necessary evil.”

  “It wasn’t. You could have done all of that without telling anyone you were a doctor.”

  “I didn’t tell them that. They assumed.”

  “You raised your hand when they asked if anyone was a doctor. And then, when the ambulance arrived, you were giving them instructions! You told them you were a neurosurgeon from Green Bay.”

  “Whatever. I was having some fun. She was in the clear by then. Why does it matter if I fibbed a little?”

  “‘A little’? Perla, you don’t know jack about medicine outside of that medical drama you watch.”

  I pressed my lips together, setting the color.

  “If you want to pretend to be a lawyer and argue with a stranger about constitutional rights, fine—but this is taking your games too far. What if she had died, Perla? Or what if there had been a real health professional there? Someone who had called you on your bullcrap?”