Dedication

  For Lauren Blakely. Thank you for being amazing.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  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

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for The Five Year Lie

  Also by Sarina Bowen

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  “Soap and water,” the woman says, watching her son wash his hands in the grimy bus station sink. She catches herself hoping he won’t touch anything on his way out of the bathroom. A month ago, this sort of garden-variety worry was the only kind she had in her life.

  It isn’t anymore.

  “Dry your hands on your jeans,” she says when he’s done.

  Her son looks up at her in confusion. In all four of his years on this earth, that was never the plan. There’s always a towel. And dinner at the table, and clean pajamas at nighttime.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers, even though nothing is okay. She swipes his hands on her own jeans and then clamps one of his damp hands into hers. “Stay close.” She nudges the bathroom door open with a knee—because germs are still bad even when you’re running for your life—and guides him back into the busy terminal.

  She makes a beeline for Bay 24. She’s thirtyish with light brown hair that skims her shoulders as she moves. Her clothes are well cut, because she comes from money. But her expression is pinched with anxiety.

  “We’ll wait here,” she says, lifting him onto the last available seat on the end of a bench. “Hold on tight to your shark.”

  The boy clutches his stuffed toy and asks, “Can we get on the bus now?”

  “Soon,” she says, hoping it isn’t a lie.

  So far, she’s sold this trip to him as an adventure. You can’t tell a four-year-old that you’re running scared. That you know too much, and that others who knew too much have already been killed for it.

  This bus trip is her best chance at anonymity. She plants herself in front of his small body, and avoids eye contact with anyone but him.

  It’s possible that she and her child have already been reported missing.

  A hundred yards away, in the security office, a stocky guard drinks a cup of Dunkin’ coffee in front of a bank of monitors. With one finger on the smudged keyboard, he flips from camera to camera.

  In Bay 16, he spots a man pacing erratically and talking to himself. The other passengers are clumped together on the other end of the platform, giving him space. Mick’ll have to deal with that dude before his dinner break.

  He pokes the arrow key again and flips to the next set of images. He’s got forty-eight feeds to monitor, but only two eyes. So he devotes exactly 1.8 seconds to the camera focused on Bay 24.

  His gaze snags on the woman and the little boy right away. He sees her anxiety. She’s fidgety, but so are a lot of people. And single moms aren’t exactly on top of his list of problems. Not unless they get pickpocketed.

  He flicks to the next group of monitors, already forgetting her.

  Out in Bay 24, the loudspeaker crackles to life. The young woman straightens up as they announce her bus. Her nervous fingers move instinctively to the pocket where she’s tucked two tickets issued to names that don’t match her own.

  The little boy slides off the bench, and they both turn toward the security camera.

  In the olden days—like 2015—unmonitored surveillance cameras were stupid creatures, with the unblinking gaze of a toddler in need of a nap. But times have changed. The overworked security guard isn’t the only one watching.

  The camera in Bay 24 feeds its images to the cloud, where a piece of AI software triangulates each face in its focal range. All those eyes and noses and scowls. More data for its endlessly hungry maw. The system sees it all.

  And now it sees her, too.

  Even as the young woman shuffles toward the door, breathing diesel fumes, the software is measuring the geometry of her face. On a distant, humming server, the precise distance between her intelligent brown eyes is compared against the angle of her wry mouth. In a fraction of a second, the configuration is charted and checked against the database.

  A match is made.

  The location noted.

  A few more electrons smash together, and a message pings across the ether, lighting up a distant phone.

  Subject identified.

  1

  ARIEL

  “Oh, Ariel! Have you signed up for the picnic yet?” This question is lobbed at me even before I can extract my son from his bike seat.

  Even so, I take my sweet time removing Buzz’s helmet and hoisting him down to the ground. When I finally turn around and acknowledge Maddy—one of the preschool’s pushiest PTO mothers—she offers me a clipboard with a dangling pen disguised as a daisy.

  Reluctantly, I take it from her. GRADUATION DAY PICNIC SIGN-UP SHEET! it reads. PLEASE TAKE ONE SLOT FOR YOU, AND ONE SLOT FOR YOUR PARTNER!

  That’s a lot of exclamation points for a Monday morning. The list of jobs is numbered from one to thirty-six. That’s two for each of the eighteen kids in Buzz’s class. The choices range from baking two dozen cookies to running the sack race.

  The whole thing makes me feel salty. First of all—since when do preschoolers graduate? And then there’s the careful use of the word partner. Some of Buzz’s classmates have two mommies or two daddies. So that was thoughtful—but only up to a point.

  “What if I don’t have a partner?” I ask Maddy. “Am I still supposed to take two slots?”

  “Oh.” Her smile fades by one or two notches, and her eyes reflect genuine puzzlement, as if the existence of single mothers has never occurred to her. “Just do the best you can.”

  So I scan the list. The easiest options—napkins, compostable paper plates, and drinking water—have already been nabbed. I scribble my name beside the request for ten watermelons and a chef’s knife to cut them up. Then I note the date—three weeks from now. Somebody’s an overachiever. I hand back the clipboard.

  She glances at it, and I brace myself to hear her say something about my half-hearted volunteerism. “Pro tip,” she says instead. “You can use folded cardboard to make a guard for the knife. That’s how I avoid slicing the lining of my bag.” She pats the Tory Burch tote under her arm and smiles.

  “Good idea,” I say with the closest thing I can muster to a smile. Then I take Buzz’s hand and walk him into the old brick building.

  In Buzz’s classroom, several children are already ransacking the dress-up box, pulling out velvet cloaks and outlandish hats. Buzz pastes himself to my thigh, though, and doesn’t move to join them. He always takes a couple of minutes to warm up to the chaos of preschool.

  “He’s a quiet child,” my mother, Imogen, always says. “Watchful.”

  Just like his father, I’m always tempted to add. But I never talk about Buzz’s dad.

  Buzz likes school, though, so I just ruffle his hair and wait him out. And sure enough, after he watches the action for a minute, his grip on my hand loosens.

  His teacher—the wise and kind Miss Betty—approaches us. “Good morning, Buzz. I have some new hats to try on today. And I got the sand table out this morning. See?” She points toward a quiet corner of the room.

  My son’s eyes shift to the sand table, and he drops my hand.

  I lean over and plant a kiss on his sweet-smelling head. “See you after lunch.”

  He flashes me a quick smile before heading over to the sand table.

  “There we go,” Betty says. “Good weekend?”

  “Absolutely. We helped my mother with some gardening. There was lots of whistling. Sorry.” Buzz is the only kid in his preschool class who can whistle, and he does it constantly. Sometimes it’s tuneful. Sometimes it’s not.

  Betty’s eyes crinkle in the corners when she smiles. “I don’t think he even knows when he’s doing it,” she says. “And there are worse habits. Enjoy the day.”

  I take one more glance at my child. He’s already holding a tiny rake and smoothing the sa
nd, his lips pursed in a whistle.

  Sometimes when I look at him, I just ache.

  After drop-off, I pedal slowly toward the office. It’s a warm spring day, and let’s be honest—no one is going to fire me from my lowly job in the family empire for being a couple minutes late.

  Seagulls screech overhead as I navigate the twisty brick streets. I never imagined I’d live in New England forever. I always assumed I’d be off making art in Dublin or Prague. Or at least Brooklyn.

  Then life happened. Namely Buzz. But there are worse places than Portland, Maine, especially with ample babysitting and a free place to live.

  My setup is just about as cushy as a single mother could ever expect. I work part-time for my family’s tech company. That paycheck, combined with my trust fund, keeps me flush with enough cash to afford all the things that privileged four-year-olds enjoy—private preschool, day camps in the summer, and trips to the children’s museum.

  It also allows me to spend three afternoons a week pursuing my real passion in the studio—creating blown glass.

  Even as I walk my bike into the office building, my mind shifts to a series of flasks I’ve been making. Their sides are flattened and blocky. Like the facets of jewels. I’m experimenting with an ombré effect, where the bottom of the vessel is made from colored glass that slowly gives way to clear at the neck . . .

  “Careful, Ariel.”

  I lift my head and find Hester, my uncle’s assistant, right in my path. She’s an attractive middle-aged woman with a sleek gray pixie cut and a noticeable addiction to wrap dresses.

  She’s also grumpy as hell. My uncle and I are both a little afraid of her. “Sorry,” I say quickly.

  Scowling, she trots up the open stairway to the second floor, which is the nerve center of Chime Co.

  It takes me a moment to lock my bike to the rack under the stairs before I follow her up to the second floor, where I step into a vast office space that’s already mostly full of computer programmers, managers and support staff.

  This is Chime Co., the largest tech company in Maine and the number two manufacturer of doorbell cameras in the country. Years ago, my father and his brother founded the company in my uncle’s basement. But now there are hundreds of employees—so many that Uncle Ray just bought the office building so that we could expand to two more floors.

  I’m the office manager. My hours are flexible, and the work isn’t very taxing. I don’t mind it, but I’ll never be Chime Co.’s employee of the month, either.

  Case in point—the conference room is already filling up with programmers for the Monday meeting, but there’s no way I’m going in there without coffee. So I head for the coffee counter on the far wall.

  Skilled programmers are always in short supply, and must be wooed by perks like good coffee and snacks. The job of stocking these goodies falls to me, which means the coffee is excellent, and there’s a bevy of complements in the mini fridge, including hipster choices like oat milk and flavored creams.

  I make myself a latte before heading into the meeting. The only open seat in the conference room is next to Hester, who gives me a fresh scowl as I sit down.

  In return, I beam at her. She hates that.

  At the head of the table, my uncle is already opening the meeting. Without breaking his cadence, he nods hello to me, his expression friendly, in spite of my tardiness.

  It’s a cushy job. I’ll own my privilege.

  I dig into my shoulder bag for my planner and a pen. Usually the content of these meetings has little to do with me, but we’re in the middle of an office move, so I have to at least feign attention.

  Then, as one of the programmers launches into a lengthy update, my phone chimes loudly with a text.

  Oops.

  I could ignore it and pretend that intrusion came from someone else’s phone. As one does. But I never ignore texts when Buzz is at school. Emergencies are rare, but there was a stomach bug last year and—even worse—a head lice incident this fall.

  Lord in heaven, let it not be lice again.

  Under Hester’s judgmental gaze, I pull out my phone and check the message.

  But it’s not the school. In fact, the name on the screen stops me in my tracks.

  Drew Miller.

  I blink. But when my vision clears, his picture is still there—a photo I took of the two of us at sunset in Fort Allen Park. And when I read the text message, I stop breathing.

  Drew: There’s trouble. I need to see you. Meet me in one hour under the candelabra tree. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.

  That message would rattle me coming from anyone. But coming from Drew, it’s heart-stopping.

  Because Drew Miller, the only man I ever loved, and the father of my child, is dead.

  2

  FIVE YEARS AGO, JUNE

  The girl across the aisle looks up suddenly, forcing Drew to flick his eyes back onto his own monitor.

  Way to be smooth, he chides himself.

  He drags his eyes back to his work. He’s struggling to concentrate on the lines of code on his screen, and for all the wrong reasons.

  People-watching is part of his mission at Chime Co. He needs to learn every single thing about the way this place works. He wants all the office gossip. And he needs to understand how deeply the feud between the two founders runs.

  Staring at the boss’s daughter is not part of the plan. It’s just that Ariel Cafferty is so damn distracting.

  The cursor blinks expectantly on his screen, but he can still see her out of his peripheral vision as she bends toward her sketchbook again, her brow creased in concentration as her pencil meets the page.

  He edits the last command he’s written and waits for the compiler to update. Ariel twirls a lock of her hair around a finger, and he holds back a sigh.

  He’s not above chatting up a girl for information. But what would this girl know? Probably nothing. The whisper network says she’s just filling in while the office manager is out on maternity leave. And only because her daddy makes her.

  Still, she probably lived with that asshole for most of her life. There could be something there. Maybe she knows why her father and her uncle hate each other so much.

  Unbidden, his glance finds her again. That keeps happening. Partly because she’s ridiculously attractive, with shiny hair in a rich shade of brown and eyes that flash like she knows a secret. She’s wearing a sleeveless dress that shows off tanned shoulders. If she were any other girl, he’d like to test their smoothness under his palms.

  The really fascinating thing about her, though, is her obvious disdain for this whole place, and particularly for her father. It’s fair to say that she’s the only one in this room—besides Drew—who isn’t afraid of that man.

  If she were afraid, she wouldn’t take those long lunches. And she wouldn’t answer the phone with an expression that implies its existence offends her. And she definitely wouldn’t sit there sketching at her desk, the pencil case propped open in front of her.

  Maybe he’ll ask her out for drinks. Just once. So he can find out what she knows.

  As he watches, she taps a blue pencil against her lip, eyeing her work with a critical stare.

  From this angle, he can’t see the drawing. But he’s not about to invent a trip to the espresso machine or the men’s room just to look. Even if the curiosity is burning him up inside.

  Absolutely not.

  Nope.

  “It’s not you,” a low voice says from nearby.

  It takes Drew a beat to realize which guy at an adjacent workspace is speaking to him. “Sorry?”

  “She’s not drawing you,” his neighbor continues without looking up. The guy’s name is Zain, and he’s barely said ten words since Drew started this job. “There are cameras all over this room, by the way. If you spend a lot of time staring at her, somebody will notice.”

  Well, fuck. “Good tip. Much appreciated.”

  Zain is silent for another long beat. “She draws glass,” he continues eventually. “If you’re so curious.”

  “Glass,” he repeats like a dummy. “Like, things you drink out of?”

  Zain smirks. He’s a thirtyish guy with a thin face, outrageous eyebrows and wildly curling hair. And his skin has the pallor of someone who never goes outdoors.

  He doesn’t fit the Chime Co. mold. At all. The office favors a frat boy vibe that Drew has been trying to mirror—clean-shaven faces, nice shirts and foul mouths.

  “She’s an artisan,” Zain adds. “Think vases and candleholders. Some of it is pretty great.”