She was broken inside, broken in three parts now. She’d been whole once. Then she’d been torn in two, and she’d barely recovered. And now she’d been torn again, and there was no way to repair the rent. There was simply no way to go on like this. One minute upset, the next happy. Swinging from the branches of her once-perfect life, to and fro, completely unable to control her emotions.

No, she couldn’t continue living this way at all.

She stalked back to her office. Pulled up her Facebook page. Sometimes, when she got herself distracted, a few minutes reading nice things people said to her about her work could get her back on track.

The comment was on the top of her page.

I can’t believe I wasted my money on this trash. Sutton Montclair should be shot. Don’t get me near a gun, ha ha.

Shocked, she read the message over and over again. It had fifty likes, though the vast majority of the comments expressed absolute outrage.

She looked at the username, didn’t recognize it. Clicked on to the page. It was anonymous—no profile picture, no photos or albums, no status updates, only one like to its credit, Sutton’s fan page. Without a second thought, she deleted the comment and blocked the user. She had absolutely no problem with people not liking her work—she had expressed that on many a panel and blog—but there was something ominous about the comment that made her uneasy.

She shouldn’t have done it. She should have told someone, made a note of the username and the comment itself. Hitting the delete button was a very big mistake. When the police tried to track who she claimed was the real stalker, that was the only clue to their true identity. She couldn’t defend herself.

But that morning, so long ago, after drinking her delicious tea and having mixed feelings toward her slightly estranged husband, Sutton had no idea where it was all going to go.

Murder, She Wrote

MURDER, SHE WROTE

Now

That night, the evening of the afternoon Sutton took a stranger home to her bed, there was a murder.

A double murder.

On the steps of Sacré-Coeur.

A young American couple was stabbed to death. They were visiting from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, both blond as sin and blockily built. College students on a year abroad, they were studying at Oxford, in England, but had come to Paris for a mini break. They were boyfriend and girlfriend.