PRAISE FOR VICTOR METHOS

  The Secret Witness

  “A red-hot suspenser aimed at readers for whom a single serial killer just isn’t enough.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  An Unreliable Truth

  “A straight-A legal thriller with a final scene as satisfying as it is disturbing.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  A Killer’s Wife

  An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

  “A Killer’s Wife is a high-stakes legal thriller loaded with intense courtroom drama, compelling characters, and surprising twists that will keep you turning the pages at breakneck speed.”

  —T. R. Ragan, New York Times bestselling author

  “Exquisitely paced and skillfully crafted, A Killer’s Wife delivers a wicked psychological suspense wrapped around a hypnotic legal thriller. One cleverly designed twist after another kept me saying, ‘I did not see that coming.’”

  —Steven Konkoly, Wall Street Journal bestselling author

  “A gripping thriller that doesn’t let up for a single page. Surprising twists with a hero you care about. I read the whole book in one sitting!”

  —Chad Zunker, bestselling author of An Equal Justice

  OTHER TITLES BY VICTOR METHOS

  Shepard & Gray Series

  The Secret Witness

  Desert Plains Series

  A Killer’s Wife

  Crimson Lake Road

  An Unreliable Truth

  Other Titles

  The Hallows

  The Shotgun Lawyer

  A Gambler’s Jury

  An Invisible Client

  Neon Lawyer Series

  Mercy

  The Neon Lawyer

  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 © 2023 by Methos Inc.

  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: 9781662507809 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781662507816 (digital)

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Molly von Borstel

  Cover images: © Stephen Mulcahey / Arcangel; © Abstractor / Shutterstock; © Ravindra37 / Shutterstock

  CONTENTS

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  Mark felt the shattered glass cut his face as he was thrown through the upstairs window.

  He landed with a thud on his snow-covered driveway. It knocked the wind out of him, and he felt cracks in his ribs. His hips were on fire, every joint radiating pain. His face, already bloodied from the beating he took, had left an imprint in the snow, ringed with blood.

  He groaned, one hand holding his shattered wrist in place. He slowly rolled onto his back and took deep breaths—the exhalations like smoke in the cold winter air. The sky was black as oil, and flakes of snow, remnants of the day’s storm, drifted quietly to the earth.

  The double doors of his palatial home opened, and a man in black slacks and a black button-up shirt appeared. The man was a giant. Taller than Mark by at least a foot and huge. Like an NFL linebacker. The man was bald with the beginnings of a beard and brown skin the color of caramel, a mix of his Afghan father’s and Cuban mother’s heritage.

  Even at night, he wore oversize black sunglasses.

  He sauntered to Mark and stood over him. The man dipped into his pocket and came out with a cigar. He lit it with a solid gold lighter, the smell of tobacco swirling with the icy breeze.

  He offered him the cigar. “Cuban.”

  Mark spit out a glob of blood and tongued a loose tooth. “Go to hell, Alonso,” he said.

  Mark was used to getting his way. Wealth could do that: bring a sense of power. He wasn’t the insecure small-time hustler anymore like when Alonso got locked up. He was different now. He was a big-time player in the community, with the bank account to back it up.

  “You’ve been gone eleven years. It’s too long. You’re out of the game. You don’t know how it works. It’s all lawsuits and lawyers now. A thug like you is a dinosaur in this game. Find some other sucker to play.”

  Alonso watched a car that drove past as he sucked on his cigar. He waved to the driver, who sped off.

  “Eleven years . . . the thing about being inside is the time, Markie Mark. Time’s your enemy, but I used my time. Studied law and philosophy and psychology. Everything that gives you power. Power, homie. That’s what it’s about. Men are animals when they’re locked up, and you gotta be more than a man to survive. That’s what I am to you. I’m a man, and you’re a cockroach.”

  He squatted down, his fists covered in cuts and blood from Mark’s teeth, and said, “Know what hurts the most? You didn’t visit me once. I got locked up, and you pretended like you didn’t know me.”

  With a deep groan and burning in his hips, Mark sat up. His mouth was filled with blood, and he spit it out into the white snow.

  “When you ever visit anybody in the can?”

  He chuckled. “Good point.” He looked back at the home. “I lent you a hundred Gs in good faith. I find out you made it big and forgot about your friend Alonso. It’s hurtful, Markie Mark.”

  “I’ll get you a hundred grand.”

  “No, my man, you didn’t pay a cent in vig for eleven years, and I was gonna use that money to make money. Compounding vig at twenty percent a month over eleven years is, what? ’Bout nine hundred Gs?”

  Mark chuckled mirthlessly. “No way I’m paying you nine hundred. You’ll get your hundred, that’s it. No matter how many windows you throw me out of.”

  “Come on now, don’t be like that. You got this fancy house, apartment buildings, that sleek Mercedes, the hot little filly with all that plastic in her face . . . you done pretty good for yourself.” He sucked for a second on the cigar. “More than a cockroach deserves making with my money.”

  “Your money? I did this on my own. Yeah, you got me the down payment on my first building, but everything else is because of me. I did this.”

  Mark grimaced as he tried to stand. He got to his knees before he had to spit again so he could breathe and said, “You’ll get your hundred grand and that’s it. Write the rest off on your taxes, I don’t care.”

  Alonso laughed. “Tax write-off. That’s good, homie.” He sucked a massive hit off the cigar before letting smoke stream out of his nostrils. “I’m not gonna lie; I’m saddened to hear that.”

  “Then do what you gotta do.”

  Alonso nodded. “What I could do is sue you.”

  Mark laughed, but the motion sent a shock of pain through his ribs, and he grimaced and stopped. “That’s what Alonso Hafeez has come to, huh? Just another little punk going to the cops.”

  Alonso tossed the cigar into the snow. “You have yourself a good night, Mr. Webb.”

  Mark didn’t move until Alonso was entirely out of view. Then, when he turned a corner and was gone, Mark breathed deeply with relief. He’d taken a risk being defiant, but sometimes that was the only thing that worked with thugs.

  Alonso had never killed anyone as far as Mark knew. You kill someone that owes you money, you never get your money. He might still come around, but next time Mark would have his gun, and it wouldn’t go down the same.

  Prison affected everyone differently. Some men got out and didn’t care anymore about anything, and others got out and acted like they’d rather die than ever go back. Alonso had mentioned filing a lawsuit, and Mark wondered if that’s what happened to him. Alonso never thought of going through the system to get money owed him before he went to prison. Being locked up must’ve frightened him so bad it broke him.

  Mark painfully rose and couldn’t put much weight on his right foot. His hip was probably fractured. He took out his cell phone to call his girlfriend to take him to the hospital. The screen had cracked from the fall.

  He started limping toward the house as he dia
led her number. He got about halfway when he heard a car driving by on the street and glanced at it. An old Chevy. He ignored it as he focused on his legs. His knees ached, and one felt loose: like it was connected by spaghetti. When he was better, maybe he should be the one to go to court, except of course Alonso didn’t have anything to take anymore.

  The car roared as it made a sudden turn. Tires spinning in slush and the impact of rubber and rims against the curb made Mark look back right before Alonso slammed the Chevy into him, catching him midhip. Mark flew off his feet and thumped onto the hood of the car. His legs dangled over the hood, scraping against the driveway and lawn.

  Mark felt the full force of the car as Alonso gunned it. Then deafening sounds and white flashes, but no pain. He thought maybe he’d fallen off the car. When his vision stopped spinning, he found he couldn’t breathe but was somehow standing upright.

  He looked down at the mass of metal smashed into him and felt the brick wall of the house behind him. He was caught in between the two.

  The car had slammed with so much power it nearly cut him in half, and it looked like the twisted metal was growing out of him. The shock kept the pain away, but he felt the warmth of blood bathing his legs. He couldn’t pull in any breath because there was nowhere to pull it into.

  Alonso got out of the car and tossed the keys into the driver’s seat. Blood cascaded down his forehead from a massive cut. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at it.

  “I don’t know, Markie Mark. Suing you just didn’t sound like fun. That’s all life is, my friend, fun. That’s what I learned inside, what I thought about for eleven years. Because for eleven years, I had the grim reaper whispering in my ear. You wanna know what he was saying?”

  Alonso leaned close.

  “He said, ‘Have fun now, ’cause I’m comin’.’”

  2

  Solomon Shepard thought the defendant’s attorney had made a mistake letting him take the stand.

  The defendant, Charles Hill, was slim and mild mannered and wore glasses today. Over the past twelve days of testimony, the jury hadn’t heard from him, so it was difficult to gauge whether they liked him. But anybody accused of murdering their wife while she slept would have to work hard at getting a jury to like them. It was a risk for the defense to have him testify and a stroke of luck for the prosecution.

  “Anything further?” the judge asked.

  The defense attorney, an elderly man in a tweed jacket, said, “No, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Shepard, the floor is yours.”

  “Thank you, Judge.”

  Solomon used his cane to push himself up from the table. He went to the lectern but chose to stand in front of it, leaning on his cane and looking Charles in the eyes.

  “Charles, you loved your wife, didn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Been married almost twenty years, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “In your version of events, you were lying in bed asleep when an intruder burst in and opened fire. Probably the most horrifying thing that could happen to someone, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, glancing down.

  Solomon waited until the man was looking at him again. Eye contact during cross-examination, he believed, created almost a mind-to-mind connection and made people more malleable.

  “I have here the statement you wrote to the police introduced during your attorney’s direct examination. You wrote this the night your wife was murdered, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your memory of the incident when you wrote this was still fresh, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “You state here that you and Wendy heard a noise, and you got up to get your gun from the safe, and that’s when someone started firing shots that missed you and hit her, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Nowhere in the statement does it say you and Wendy talked?”

  “Talked?”

  Solomon nodded casually, as though speaking with a friend. “Yeah, talked. You didn’t say anything to her.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “So you heard the testimony of your two neighbors, right? Mr. and Mrs. Craft?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “They heard noises that night. Gunshots.”

  He nodded again and glanced to his attorney. “Yes, that’s what they said.”

  “And the first thing that Mrs. Craft did was ask Mr. Craft if he heard something, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But according to your testimony today and the statement you wrote that night, you didn’t ask your wife if she heard anything, and she didn’t ask you if you heard anything when you woke up.”

  “We might’ve said something. I don’t remember. It was last year.”

  “Again, your memory was better the night this happened than a year later, isn’t it?”

  Charles didn’t answer.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hill, is there something you don’t wish the jury to hear? We’d appreciate it if you answered my question.”

  “Yes, my memory was better that night.”

  “And nowhere in your statement you wrote that night does it say you and your wife exchanged any words. Is that right?”

  He glanced at his attorney again. “Yes. But . . . but I was told to write that statement hours after my wife was murdered. You can’t expect me to—”

  “To be accurate?”

  “I wasn’t going to say accurate. I was going to say detailed. I was a mess. I was very nearly killed, too.”

  “How many gunshot wounds did you have?”

  He flexed his jaw. “None. The bullets missed me by inches.”

  “Yeah, that’s amazing. We heard the ballistics expert testify that Mrs. Hill was shot from a range of twelve feet and that the doorway, where you say you were, was about half that distance. So someone shot at you from six feet and missed every single time. That’s either the worst shot in the world, or you seriously pulled some Matrix-style moves to dodge the bullets.”

  “Objection,” his defense attorney said.

  “Sustained,” the judge said without looking up from writing a note.

  Solomon stepped around the lectern and leaned against it with one hand, his other holding the lion’s head handle of the cane. “I don’t want to get off topic, though, Charles. Let’s talk some more about right before the shooting happened. Your neighbors heard the shots, rose, and conversed with each other. They talked. You claim you didn’t talk to your wife right before the shooting.”

  “I heard something that woke me up. I didn’t think I needed to confirm anything with her.”

  “But you just said you don’t remember.”

  “What I said was—”

  “Let’s assume that your second statement that you didn’t need to confirm the noise with her is true. You hear something loud enough in the middle of the night to wake you up. You’re lying right next to her. As close as two people can be. You hear something that alerts you that there might be danger. So much so that you get out of bed to get your gun. She’s lying right next to you and potentially in danger, but you didn’t take a few seconds to say anything and warn her?”

  He folded his arms. “I thought someone was in our hallway. My only goal was to get my gun from the gun safe.”

  “A rational person who wanted to protect his wife would have ensured she was safe, right? If she was scared or panicking?”

  “I don’t agree with—”

  “You didn’t establish if she was scared?”

  He sighed as though dealing with an annoying child. “No, I did not.”

  “You didn’t establish if she heard anything in the hallway?”

  He unfolded his arms and put them on his lap. He appeared to be fidgeting with his fingers, though Solomon couldn’t really see because of how high the witness box was.

  “No, I did not.”

  “You wanted to arm yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  Solomon took a step closer to him. “That was the first thought you had, right?”

  “When I thought someone was in my home, yes. I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “Well, that’s not true, is it? There were a lot of other steps you could’ve taken if you had talked with Wendy, right? You guys could’ve escaped to the balcony, for example.”

  “The balcony was ten feet off the ground. We would’ve had to jump and risk hurting ourselves.”

  “So confronting an unknown number of people in your hallway seemed like the safer option?”