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Back The Favor Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
  77. Also by Nicci French
  78. About the Publisher

Two crimes. Two mirror images.

Liam had been killed at the exact spot where Danny always passed, every Saturday except for that Saturday. He was waiting for her there, but he had met Dermot instead, Dermot with a knife in his hand.

Dermot had done it for Danny.

Or no: he had done it at Danny’s bidding. And then Danny had told him it was over between them, on the night of Liam’s funeral. He was a murderer and he was also a poor, stupid, self-pitying sap.

Danny had planned it but Dermot had executed it, and now he was going to be punished while she would smile serenely and go free.

Then Jude thought: Vin. Of course.

Danny and Vin had planned it together.

Vin and Danny. Vin with his booming laugh and his hairy hands, his gargantuan appetites.

There were herons on the marshes. One of them stood a few yards from her, so still at first she thought it was made of stone. Only its eye moved.

There was the riding school, the skating rink. Jude lurched on, jolts of pain spiking through her and her hand throbbing so hard it made her feel sick—but it didn’t matter. She needed to stand in front of Danny and say, I know what you did. I know what you are.

She briefly considered calling Leila to tell her what she had, in a flash, understood. But Leila was busy finding Dermot, and Dermot would surely confess everything: how he’d been played by his brother’s lover to kill his brother. How he’d been in love with a woman who’d used him as deftly as a carpenter uses a saw.

Jude didn’t want to think about Vin, but he crowded his way into her mind, broad-shouldered, white-toothed, fleshy, grinning Vin. She realized—or at least her squirming, horrified body realized—that he must have taken her to bed as a kind of gratifying strategy. He’d thought to make sure she really had nothing against them, or maybe he’d believed that sex with him would wipe away any suspicions and make her docile and compliant, part of the family.

A violent shudder ran through the length of her.

Was that their plan? Danny would have sex with Dermot, while Vin would have sex with Jude.

She came to the end of the marshes and stepped onto tarmac. Her foot would barely hold her weight now. She hobbled along the road, turned into the street she had thought never to walk down again, stopped in her tracks.

Sixty-Six