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Chapters (45)
  1. I know you'll never forgive me...
  2. Part One - Your Father
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Part Two - Your Mother
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. About the Author

“I just got back to the house. I’ve been away ever since—well, since the incident with the pig’s blood. I went to visit my parents.”

“All right.”

“The thing is, I can’t find Gordon,” she went on. “I couldn’t reach him on the phone last night, and he’s not in the house. His son, Jay, hasn’t seen him either. His car is here, all of his things are here, but he’s missing. I’m worried that something has happened to him.”

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Erica Brink met me at the highway, where a dirt road led to the house they’d been renting for the last four months. She had a flashlight in her hand to signal me, because it was easy to miss the break in the trees on a snowy, pitch-black night. I pulled onto the shoulder, and Erica climbed into the passenger seat beside me.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said.

“Of course.”

I drove slowly toward the house. Erica and I didn’t speak, but I could feel tension radiating from her. Not that anyone could tell by how she looked. When I shot a quick glance across the seat, I saw that her wheat-field curls looked as fluffy as if she’d just come from the salon. She was nestled inside a fur coat that probably cost what I made in a month. We were the same age, twenty-six years old, but she made me feel much younger and out of her league. Her face had a perfect symmetry, and her cool-blue eyes didn’t hide the superiority she felt when she looked at someone like me. I was the girl at the Tanya Tucker concert, and Erica was Symphony Ball all the way.

But don’t mistake her for a squeaky-voiced blond toy. Erica was also savvy and tough, which you probably have to be to steal a corporate attorney away from his wife of fifteen years. It’s one thing to be the mistress. That’s easy work. But to get the ring? That takes a ruthless cunning you can’t help but respect.

I’d met Erica once before, a week earlier, when she was dripping with pig’s blood swiped from a local butcher. Somebody had jerry-rigged a bucket and rope over the front door and waited in the woods to douse whoever came outside. I assumed that Gordon had been the intended target, but Erica wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that she didn’t go to pieces told me a lot about her. I’d interviewed both of them together, and Erica didn’t freak out or shed a single tear. She sat on the front steps, covered in animal blood that had begun to freeze, and told me the story with a kind of frigid, furious calm.