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Back The Sorority Murder Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  29. Twenty-Two
  30. Twenty-Three
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. Thirty
  38. Thirty-One
  39. Thirty-Two
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. From the Journal of Candace Swain
  48. Thirty-Nine
  49. Forty
  50. Forty-One
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Letter Found in the Journal of Candace Swain
  58. Forty-Eight
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Booklist
  61. Excerpt

I stumbled on that quote while scrolling through my Instagram feed, and it stuck with me. For weeks, I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours. I couldn’t eat more than a few bites. Because as the quote dug deeper into my soul—if I still even have a soul—I realized that I couldn’t fix my life. I can’t make a different choice. I can’t go back in time and say no. I can’t go back in time and stand up. Fear? So easy to blame fear. Fear for my life? Maybe. Not my physical life, but my future. Because what life would I have if people knew the truth?

As time marches on, as my choice torments me, I realize that it wasn’t fear that drove my decision.

It was selfishness.

Six

As Lucas sat in his bedroom trying to focus on his homework, he kept thinking about his conversation with Regan Merritt. He figured it was fifty-fifty that she would come on his podcast. Maybe sixty-forty: she had seemed interested and hadn’t dismissed him flat out like Detective Young. Jerk.

He hadn’t admitted to her that he was stuck. He hadn’t even talked to his advisor about it. On paper, the podcast had seemed like a brilliant way to find out the truth about what happened to the victim. But he hadn’t received the feedback like he’d thought he would. He’d been so excited about the caller who saw Candace in Kingman, but then...crickets. No emails, no follow-up calls, no other contributors. Was he asking the wrong questions? Had he structured the show wrong? Should he have led off with his big reveal the Candace didn’t drown in the lake?

Lizzy kept telling him to stop second-guessing himself, reminding him that he’d structured the show to end with a cliff-hanger to entice people to talk about the show and tune in next time. The stats from the last episode showed a twenty-percent increase in people livestreaming, and they were getting steady subscribers to the podcast.

Some of the emails bothered him—people accusing him of exploiting Candace’s murder. No one in Sigma Rho would talk to him. He’d reached out twice to Annie Johnston, Candace’s roommate who was now a pediatric nurse in Phoenix, and she’d ignored him.

While the caller on Friday had been anonymous on air, Lizzy got her name and an email when she first called in. Her name was Abby and she currently lived ten minutes off campus in a large apartment complex near the interstate. A lot of college students lived there because it was cheaper than places closer to campus, and the city bus was free for students. He’d emailed her on Friday, thanking her for her call, and asked if he could ask follow-up questions. She hadn’t responded yet.