Chapter 1 Lynnel feels the sun cutting into her skin, a harsh reminder of her own mortality. She rolls forward onto her toes and holds her hand up against the sun. The motion puts an old scar on her forearm in her direct line of sight. Her stomach clenches and she steps back into the…
I was loading a week’s worth of water, energy bars, and fatty snacks into the trunk of my car when Battlin’ Bob Blazinsky, a small-time thug with a plus-sized appetite, phoned me with a last-minute request to break someone’s legs. I still wasn’t used to taking requests from a tiny fish like Bob, whose criminal…
The party kicked off at Skateland, where the neon marquee regularly malfunctioned, so that it read SKAT or ATE. The roller rink sat at the eastern edge of Waukesha, Wisconsin, a city of 70,000 people, with an average income of $70,000, and a murder rate of about one person per year. In Skateland’s carpeted lobby,…
Chapter 1 The problem with perfection is that it doesn’t exist. Somewhere, deep down, I knew this. But in the high-end hotel kitchens and Michelin-starred restaurants where I honed my cooking skills, the name of the game was churning out perfection on a plate. Dish after dish, night after night. No mistakes. Ever. I opened…
CHAPTER ONE Joe Gunther crested the hill overlooking a small cluster of flashing, multihued vehicles below. They made him think of a swarm of fireflies, settled untidily by the side of the road, but in fact were a group of cruisers and unmarked cars much like his own. They appeared randomly scattered, as if abruptly…
Chapter 1 I was born with a broken heart. The day I arrived into this lonely little world was also the first time I died. Nobody spotted the heart condition back then. Things weren’t as sophisticated in 1975 as they might be now, and my blue coloring was blamed on my traumatic birth. I was…
Chapter 1 After spending ten hours on my feet at the ice cream shop, I longed for a hot bath and a few hours curled up with an Agatha Christie paperback, a glass of pinot noir, and a cuddle with my cat, Rocky. But as the old New England saying goes, there’s no rest for…
Chapter 2 Donnie Donnie wakes to loud thuds on his cabin door. Each pound reverberates through his head like an explosion. He’s on the floor of the tiny room in the belly of the cruise ship. Twenty years ago, he and the band would have been in the coveted concierge suites. He pushes himself away…
Ronnie FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2001 That last Friday afternoon in November, the day Esther went missing, I was supposed to be doing my homework at the desk in my bedroom. We finished early on Fridays—at two thirty—and Mum liked me to get all my work done before the weekend. Everyone in the class had to…
PROLOGUE Every night, no matter how many drinks he’d had or joints he’d smoked, he would awaken to the screams of birds. For an instant, he would think he was back on the island. Then his hand would find the lamp beside the bed and the light would expose the messiness of his dorm room.…
