Sutton waits for the snick of the door, then opens her laptop to the blue-and-white banners of the social media giant that destroyed the world’s anonymity.

The photograph is thumbnail-size, but a quick click opens it to fill the screen.

A young woman, standing on a beach, silhouetted by the sun.

Her legs are long, still coltish, her hair a soft shade of strawberry. Her nose seems carved from ivory; she has the profile of a Botticelli angel.

She is unaware of the camera, a hand shading eyes Sutton knows are blue.

She seems so hopeful, Sutton thinks, smiling at the photo. Hopeful, as if a new world awaits her.

It does. Oh, it does.

Sutton traces the outline of the young woman’s jaw, her fingers barely touching the screen. This girl, this goddess, hers as surely as if she reached out into the heavens and stamped her from a cloud.

No one needs to know. This is her secret. And she’ll take it to the grave.

“Hello, Josie.”

* * * * *

Author Note

AUTHOR NOTE

Paris, France
May 2014

An author sits at a café in Montparnasse, drinking champagne, thinking about murder.

Over the course of the week, in cafés and restaurants, from the hills of Sacré-Coeur to the bowels of the Metro, from Versailles to the swanky streets off L’Arc de Triomphe, after miles upon miles of walks along the Seine, to the shadow of the sparkling Tour Eiffel, a book is born. A story of betrayal and danger. A story of need and desire. A story born in a homely black notebook, the kind Hemingway used, because the writer is a romantic who likes the old ways when it comes to storytelling.

* * *

I went to Paris looking for inspiration, but didn’t know I’d return with a real story. I had page after page of notes on the idea of a woman obsessed by a stranger’s murder at Sacré-Coeur, and how her life derails when she can’t leave it alone. The idea grew from day to day. It was an in-between story, the one I couldn’t let go, even though I had other book responsibilities. I worked on it every free moment, then dedicated last summer to it, until the idea became a story, and the story became a novel.

Which, for the first fifteen months of its life was called, aptly, if not uncreatively, The Paris Novel. Eventually, it became more vicious, more visceral, more real: Lie to Me. A much more evocative title, don’t you think? It’s certainly more fitting to the story.