“Welcome, Blaire.” Pointing to the beautiful girl, the teacher continued. “Go and take a seat next to Kate Michaels.” Kate smiled at Blaire and patted the top of the empty desk next to her.

Later, at lunch, Kate introduced Blaire to her circle of friends. They’d all followed Kate’s lead and been friendly and warm. Selby was nice enough, but the first thing she said when she introduced herself was “I’m Selby, Kate’s best friend.” Blaire had smiled at her. Not for long, she thought. And it hadn’t been. She and Kate were soon inseparable.

It took a little longer for the other girls at the school to completely accept her. At first she was naive enough to believe that money was the great equalizer. Her father had made plenty of it, but he earned it selling tires at a dealership he’d founded twenty years before. Back in New Hampshire, they’d been one of the wealthiest families in their town, sponsoring Little League teams and the school backpack program. But here in Baltimore, she wasn’t a big fish anymore. It hadn’t taken her long to understand that there was a difference between old and new money, breeding and upbringing. But Blaire was a quick study; within a few years, no one who met her would have guessed she hadn’t been born into that world.

Despite the somber reason for her return, she couldn’t deny that it felt good—damn good—to have all of them looking at her differently. She was no longer the nobody from the boondocks who didn’t know what a cotillion was. Thanks to the Megan Mahooney detective series that she’d created with Daniel, she was more famous than she ever could have hoped. She’d always had dreams of becoming a writer, and so she’d majored in English at Columbia and interned every summer for various publishing houses. When she graduated, she was hired as a publicity assistant at one of the major houses—the same one that published Daniel Barrington. With nine best sellers under his belt, he was not only well known but well loved. He’d written twelve thrillers in the serial killer genre. Blaire had read all of them and seen him interviewed on network talk shows. Assigned as Daniel’s publicist’s assistant, she had been delighted to realize how friendly and unassuming he was despite his success. She got to know him better when her boss was out on maternity leave, and she was able to fill in on two of his tour stops.