She looked beautiful, her hair drifting freely in the water, a small locket floating by her face, attached to her neck with a silver chain. Her red lips were gently parted, as if to let her final breath escape…
When Detective Kay Sharp first left Mount Chester—population 3,823—in her rear-view mirror, she promised never to look back. The town only contained bad memories and dark secrets. But when a brutal crime surfaces, she finds herself home once more, and this time she’s not going anywhere.
Kay is called to Blackwater River, where the body of a seventeen-year-old girl has been found. Surrounded by snowy peaks and a forest alive with the colors of fall, the victim floats in the water, a hand-carved locket around her neck.
The locket seems strangely familiar. Digging into cold cases, Kay discovers that three-year-old Rose Harrelson was wearing it when she vanished fourteen years ago. In the middle of the night, the little girl’s bedroom—with Mickey Mouse on the wall and a hanging baby mobile—was suddenly empty. The unsolved case still haunts the town.
But the teenager they have found has been dead for only a few hours. If the girl in the river is Rose, where has she been, and who has been hiding her all this time? If she is someone else, why is she wearing the locket, and what happened to the missing child from all those years ago?
Kay knows she must solve the kidnapping in order to untangle the mystery of the dead body. As she unearths a web of lies and deceit spun for decades, the close-knit community will never be the same. And Kay will find herself facing a truly terrifying killer…
A totally gripping page-turner that should come with a health warning! Be warned: you’ll lose sleep and your heart will race like crazy as you read twist after twist. Perfect for fans of Lisa Regan, Robert Dugoni and Kendra Elliot.
Excerpt
1
FALLS
Malia wore a flower in her hair.
Not just any kind of flower; she’d gone through online shopping hell to get the plumeria blossom delivered to the hotel that morning, just in time for her planned trip to Blackwater River Falls. She’d paid a fortune for it, worth every cent.
She wore the scented bloom over her left ear, a Hawaiian custom that told the entire world her heart was taken. By a twenty-seven-year-old, good-looking, and slightly awkward computer nerd from San Francisco named Tobias Grabowsky, who’d probably miss the symbolic meaning of the plumeria, and that was if he even noticed it in the first place.
She didn’t care. She still wanted the flower to be just right, her hair perfectly shiny, the scent of the petals surrounding her like a mist from heaven, bringer of love and good fortune. But she wished she could’ve worn something else for that special occasion. She cringed at the thought of being proposed to in cream-colored stretch shorts and a red tank top instead of a breezy, white, ruffled gown that bared her shoulders. But if Toby wanted to take her to Blackwater River Falls that morning, she had to pretend she didn’t know why and wear the appropriate attire for hiking.
But she knew, and the excitement had overwhelmed her since she’d first found the diamond ring in his jacket pocket.
She’d been worried about his strange behavior the night they’d arrived in Mount Chester. Soon after dinner, expertly served by a blond with cleavage so deep it should’ve been restricted to adult audiences only, she’d noticed that Toby kept touching his right pocket as if to make sure something precious was still in there, tucked safely. That pocket was where he’d shoved the change and check from dinner, and Malia feared that Miss Cleavage might’ve sneaked in her phone number. Anxious for the rest of the evening, Malia could barely wait to get back to their hotel room. There, she lingered with the patience of a hungry spider for Toby to get into the shower, then plunged her hand into the pocket and found it.
That 1-carat beauty was definitely not for Miss Boobs.
Before Toby had come out of the shower, she had her plan in place. She’d make sure it was one to remember, and even if she had to wear shorts, at least everything else would be perfect.
Blackwater River Falls was a one-hour hike from their hotel, climbing at a gentle rate on the western versant of Mount Chester through a stunningly beautiful, fall-tinged forest. As they gained elevation, oaks and maples gave way to a variety of pines and firs, their cones littering the paths. They held hands and hiked with enthusiasm, her impatience causing Toby to ask, “Why the rush?” a couple of times. She’d just smiled in response and slowed down a little, even stopped to press her lips against his for a quick moment, before rushing uphill again.
They were a good ten minutes away when the whooshing sound of the falls started to be heard, faint and distant, yet precise, melodious, echoing against the rocky slopes of the mountain.
“I can see it,” Malia announced cheerfully, letting go of Toby’s hand and sprinting ahead. “We’re there.”
“All right,” Toby replied, panting heavily. “It will still be there in a few minutes, you know,” he quipped, stopping for a moment and looking around.
She rushed back to him and grabbed his hand, then pulled him ahead on the trail.
“Come on, you’ll rest when we get there,” she said, and he followed her with a resigned sigh. “You need to work out more,” she added. She was barely out of breath, the fresh air filling her lungs with pure energy. “All day long you sit in front of a screen,” she started, then bit her lip. Maybe she should wait until after the wedding to start criticizing him. She burst into laughter instead, imagining herself as a nagging wife, hands propped on her hips, tapping the tip of her slipper against the gleaming hardwood floors in their future home.
“What?” he asked.
“Ah, nothing, I’m just happy,” she replied, lifting her arms in the air and turning in place like a dervish. “Whoo-hoo,” she cried, and the mountain promptly echoed back. “Did you hear it?”
“Yeah, and so did half the state of California.”
A punch to his side was quick to follow, and she burst into crystalline laughter as he feigned injury and collapsed to the ground, holding his side and groaning as if he were about to die a wretched death. Now he would have dirt and pine needles on the white T-shirt he was going to propose in, but she didn’t care as much as she thought she would. She just loved hearing him laugh.
When he stood, he touched his pocket briefly, and then brushed some dirt off his shoulders. She ran her hands over his back, wiping away whatever stuck to the cotton fabric, then they joined hands again and sprinted ahead.
In a few minutes, they cleared the forest and stopped, hand in hand, to admire the tall, narrow falls against the blue sky, flanked by rocks tinged rusty red. Still panting, Toby gave her a long, loving look, as if trying to figure out what to do next, and then crouched to undo his laces and remove his shoes.
“What are you doing?” Malia asked, her voice filled with disappointment, after her heart had promptly stopped thinking he was going to take a knee and propose in front of the majestic falls, only to see him preoccupied with the entangled shoelaces on his left sneaker.
He kicked off both his shoes, then invited her to do the same. “Let’s go in there,” he pointed at the waterfall, “behind that water curtain. I read there’s a cave, not too big, and the water’s only a few inches deep.”
She hesitated as she imagined dipping her bare feet into the freezing water. She forced a smile and took off her shoes and socks, then tiptoed, faltering on the sharp-edged gravel that littered the path to the fall’s basin.
He jumped in first, without hesitation. “Yup, it’s freezing, but you won’t feel it,” he reassured her, once he had caught his breath. “Come on.” He tugged gently at her hand. “Take the leap with me.”
Her face lit up in a beaming smile. She was ready to take a leap with him, the biggest leap of all, for the rest of her life. She put one hesitant foot into the icy water, then the next. He was right. After a few moments, she stopped feeling the cold as badly.
They splashed toward the water curtain, and she winced at the thought of wading through a shower of freezing water to get to the cave, but that wasn’t the case. There was a narrow opening to the side, enough to allow them to sneak in. Inside the almost dark space, the loud sound of the waterfall was dimmed and seemed distant, as if the silence of the cave absorbed the screams of the crashing cascade. Filtered and powerless, the light that came through the torrent barely touched the glistening walls.
She studied her surroundings for a quick moment. The walls were stained in hues of green and rusty red, with off-white blotches here and there, where calcareous stone interlaced with the granite. She dipped her hand in the freezing water, and cupped her palm to collect some. She wanted to taste it, but Toby stopped her hand before it reached her lips.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “You never know what’s in it.”
She looked at the water still pooled in the cup of her hand. “It looks like it has a pink hue, or is that just the light?”
“Could be what stained these walls.” He looked around briefly, then smiled widely, visibly nervous. “But I’m not here for spelunking.” He lowered himself on a bent knee, dipping it in the freezing water, while his hand revealed the ring nestled in its black velvet box. “I wanted it to be just you and me, my lovely Malia, when I ask you, will you marry me?”
Her eyes widened in feigned surprise and sincere delight, while her smile broadened. She clasped her hands together in excitement, then extended her left hand toward Toby. He took out the ring from its box and slid it onto her finger. She looked at him grinning, sealing every detail of the image in her memory, to always remember, till death did them part.
Then she screamed, a long, searing shriek of pure terror.
A pale hand with long, narrow fingers grazed Toby’s calf, shifting slowly into the rippling water.
Toby jumped to his feet and rushed to her, grabbing her shoulders. “What? What is it?”
Speechless, she pointed at the body moving slowly back and forth under the water surface, barely visible in the dim light.
In the flashlight coming from Toby’s phone, she saw a large boulder held the girl’s body in place, pinning it to the bottom of the cave. Her long black hair and her right arm had surfaced, the water only a foot deep, brought forward by the constant pounding of the cascade.
She looked alive, her hair drifting freely in the water as if flowing in the wind, her beautiful face pristine, her red lips gently parted, as if to let her final breath escape. Her eyes seemed to stare at them, surprised, aghast, the terror of her last moments still alive in her irises. A small red locket floated right by her face, still attached to her neck with a silver chain.
She couldn’t’ve been more than seventeen years old.
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