Prologue

PROLOGUE

AGE ELEVEN

Dad pulled a card from the pile, studying it like an archeologist trying to determine if it was some ancient artifact or just a knockoff. Mom and I shared a look, our own determining going on. He slid the card into the fan he held and reached for another, pausing.

Looking up, he glanced first at Mom and then me. His dark brown hair was just a little rumpled, not the perfect, slicked-back look he wore to court each day. And he was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt instead of one of those fancy suits. But it was the mischief in his green eyes that I loved—the kind that said he was up to no good and enjoying every moment of it. I hadn’t seen it much lately. Not with how busy he’d been with case after case, stressed to the max. And maybe not seeing it as often made me love it more.

Dad held up the card, fluttering it for a second before discarding it face down. “Gin.”

“He cheats,” my mom accused, but there was only humor in her words, and the way she looked at him spoke of nothing but love.

“I do not,” he shot back, stiffening his spine in mock affront. He laid his hand down for us to see.

He’d smoked us. Three aces. Three nines. And a four-card straight in hearts.

I slumped back in the overstuffed leather chair, tossing my cards onto the coffee table. “Definitely a cheater. That’s three in a row.”

My dad chuckled as he gathered the cards to shuffle. “Maybe this is the hand you’ll trounce me in.”

“At least you’ve won once,” Mom said to me. “I haven’t won a single hand.”

“We could always switch to Scrabble. You’d kick all our as—” I halted at the look from my mom. “All our butts.”

Mom’s warning expression softened, a hint of humor playing around her eyes. “Nice save. And I say Scrabble after this hand.”

This was always the way it went. Gin rummy, where Dad would win. Then Scrabble, where Mom would take us both. It was no surprise, given all the time she spent surrounded by books. Everyone who lived in our suburb outside of Boston seemed to have some charity they were hooked up with. Mom’s was the library.

It was her favorite place to spend time, just like the one in our house was her favorite room. Which was why we always held game night in here. To me, it was too stuffy—all the dark wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling shelves. At least during the day, sunlight from the garden and surrounding woods poured in through the windows. But at night? It felt a little stifling. Like the walls and all the books were closing in around me.

“How about…if I win this next hand, I get to go call Claire?” I asked hopefully.

Mom sent me a look that told me my chances of that were slim to none. “Sheridan, it’s family night. Give your poor mom her one win.”

Dad chuckled. “She’s eleven. She’s getting too cool for us.”

“Don’t remind me,” Mom said, sniffing exaggeratedly. “We’ll be dropping her off at college before we know it.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled my knees to my chest. “I think you’re safe for a while. I gotta get through middle and high school first.”

A phone rang. My dad shifted and pulled the device from his pocket. Mom sent him a look that would’ve had me rethinking what I was about to do, but Dad just went right ahead and answered. “Hey, Nolan.” A pause. “Sure. I’ve got it here.” Another silence. “Let me pull it up, and I’ll call you back.” Dad moved the phone away from his ear and pushed to his feet.

“Robbie,” my mom said, her voice managing to somehow be both soft and hard at the same time. “It’s family night. You promised.” Her gray-violet eyes—a color she’d passed on to me—pleaded with him.

“Nolan just needs some information about a case. It’ll take five minutes.”

But it was never five minutes. Dad would hole up in his office for hours when he got a call or someone stopped by. I got it. He loved being a judge and took it seriously. But the meetings and late nights seemed to be happening more and more.

“Five minutes,” Mom muttered, shoving her blond hair back from her face.

“Blythe,” Dad said, his voice going hard. “Don’t start.” And then he was striding out of the room.

I could picture the path he would take. Down the hallway and then the stairs, stopping in his office with its massive fireplace and more dark wood. When I had a house someday, it would be all light and windows—no stuffy rooms with wood paneling and wallpaper.

I glanced at my mom. She sat in a leather chair that matched mine, staring at the spot on the sofa where my dad had been as if it could give her the answers she needed.

Dropping my focus to my jeans, I wrapped a fraying thread around my finger. Mom hated these jeans. Hated that I wanted a pair with tears and rips in them. I pulled the string tight, cutting off blood flow to my pointer finger. “Are you and Dad gonna get a divorce?”

My gaze flicked up, wanting to see her reaction. I was pretty good at knowing when she was lying—her mouth would flatten out, and little lines would appear like parentheses around it.

Her eyes flared in surprise. “No. Of course not. Why would you think that?”

I pulled the string a little tighter. “You guys fight a lot now. And Dad isn’t home as much.”

Mom sighed, leaning forward and taking my hand. She quickly unwound the string from my finger and rubbed blood flow back into it. “He’s had a lot going on with work lately. But he’s trying to fix that. To be home more.”

I nodded, not completely convinced. “Are you okay?”

Her entire face changed, her expression gentling. “My sweet girl.” She pressed a kiss to my temple. “I’m just fine.”

I knew that was a lie. She wasn’t herself. Tonight was the first glimpse I’d gotten in a long time of how things used to be. But maybe she’d meant that she knew we’d get back there—to how things had been.

I couldn’t imagine being with someone for as long as my mom and dad had been together. They’d met her first year at Yale when Dad was a junior. They’d gotten together then and had never broken up. When Dad graduated from law school, he’d proposed. There had to be ups and downs when you were with someone for that long. The only problem was that I had plenty of friends whose parents had decided the downs were reason enough to split.

The doorbell rang, the chimes’ three-toned noise echoing through the old house. I couldn’t help but stiffen. If another of Dad’s colleagues interrupted game night, I knew Mom would be pissed.

She squeezed my hand. “Sheridan. We’re fine. I promise. Nothing is going to change.”

God, I wanted to believe her.

Dad’s muffled voice sounded from downstairs, but an unfamiliar sound cut it off. It was somewhere between a crack and a pop, like a firecracker. But I highly doubted Dad was setting those off in a foyer full of priceless art.

As my mind tried to put the pieces together, I watched the blood drain from Mom’s already pale face. I’d always been a mix of them. I had Dad’s dark brown hair, and my skin had just a hint of tanned olive in it like his. But my eyes were all Mom, that gray-violet that could go stormy when I was mad or upset.

Mom’s skin was like ivory silk, the kind that meant she always had to wear sunscreen. But it almost looked gray now. Another firecracker sounded, and Mom leapt to her feet, running for the phone discreetly tucked into a corner of the library. She lifted it to her ear, finger already punching a key on the pad. But then she stilled.

“Dead.” She patted her pocket and cursed, a word she never used flying from her lips. “I left my cell in the kitchen…” Her words trailed off as she stood frozen for a moment. A beat of one passed. Then two. Three. When she moved again, she flew across the room, grabbed my arm, and yanked me up.

“Wha—?”

Mom clamped a hand over my mouth, cutting off my words. She lifted the pointer finger of her other hand to her lips in a shhh motion. Panic flared to life, zinging through my muscles like some sort of foreign energy.

She grabbed my arm again and hurried into the hallway. I heard voices below. Footsteps.

“Where the hell are they?” a voice snarled.

Mom’s fingers trembled around my wrist.

“You’ve been paying him too much. This house is too big,” another voice said, a hint of humor lacing the words.

“Well, I won’t have to do that anymore, will I?” the first voice asked.

Mom hurried down the hall, abruptly stopping at one of the panels. Her fingers ran over the seam until she found the spot she was looking for. She pushed on the wood, and the panel popped open.

There were hidey-holes like this all over the house. Everything from secret closets to a dumbwaiter. It had made for the best games of hide-and-seek growing up, but this was something else. Something bad.

Mom pushed me into the space, where a tall duster and some other cleaning supplies were stashed for our housekeeper. The space was so shallow I didn’t think she’d be able to close the panel with me inside. I grabbed her arm. “Mom, what are you?—?”

“Stay here. No matter what you hear, do not come out. Do you understand me?”

“Mom—”

She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. “Love you to the ends of the Earth.”

I gripped her sweater, fisting the soft cashmere. “Get in with me.”

Mom peeled my fingers from her arm and shook her head. “I can’t.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“Mom,” I croaked.

“Not a word.” She quickly closed the panel.

The space was so tight it felt like I could barely breathe. It didn’t smell like the rest of the house; in here, the scents of dust and cleaning supplies filled my nose. And it was dark. Pitch-black except for the tiny sliver of light from the seam in the wood.

“Blythe,” a voice greeted. There was a smoothness to it that felt like a lie—the same way the lines around my mom’s mouth gave her away.

I pressed my face to the wood, trying to see, and could just make out the hallway right in front of the panel: the antique rug that lined the gleaming hardwood floor, the oil painting opposite me.

I stared at the brushstrokes as I waited. Some looked angry and forceful, while others were peaceful and calm. It wasn’t something I’d ever noticed before, even though I’d passed the painting every day for my entire life.

“What are you doing here?” My mom tried to keep her voice calm, but it had a shrill edge. “Where’s Robert?”

A tsking noise sounded. “Now, Blythe. Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t suit you.”

My mom went quiet for a moment before speaking again. “What do you want? Whatever you need, I’ll gladly give it to you.”

“I’m so happy to hear you feel that way. What I wanted was for your husband to do what he was instructed. Instead, he tried to renege on his promises. And, Blythe, I don’t like it when people go back on their word.”

I could hear my mom’s breaths—short, ragged pants just a few steps from me. She was so close I should’ve been able to reach out and touch her. Squeeze her hand in the secret way we used to silently tell each other: I love you . But I couldn’t. Not now. It was as if an ocean lay between us.

“Whatever he took from you, I’ll make sure you get it. If we go to the computer, I can transfer it now.”

“Blythe,” the voice cooed. “That’s so kind of you to offer. Truly. You always were so much classier than your other half.”

The man spoke as if he knew my parents, but his voice was completely unfamiliar. I searched my memory for something— anything —that would pull a name free. A face. But there was nothing.

“Please,” my mom begged. “Don’t hurt us. We have a daughter.”

A few steps sounded, muted as if the man were moving closer on the carpet. “And where is that daughter now?”

My whole body began to tremble. It was like I’d been struck by lightning, and these were the aftershocks.

“She’s at a sleepover. A couple of girlfriends from school,” my mom said, her voice trembling like my body.

No one spoke for a beat or two. “You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you, Blythe? I don’t take kindly to liars.”

Tears tracked down my cheeks as I again reached for that loose thread on my jeans. I wrapped it so tightly around my finger that I knew it likely drew blood.

“I’m not lying,” Mom whispered.

The man made a humming noise, and a shadow covered my mother. I pressed my face harder against the door’s seam, trying to see better. The tip of a single shoe moved into the frame. I couldn’t take my eyes off that sliver of an image.

Leather. Dark brown with intricate stitching. It formed a shield of sorts with a lion. Words in Latin were above it, but I couldn’t make out the exact phrase.

“You know? I believe you,” the man said. “You always were more respectful than Robbie. But I’m afraid it’s too late. What he owes me is a blood debt. But that’s been paid. Unfortunately, because of your traitor of a husband, you’ll need to pay, too.”

The shoe disappeared from view, and another of those firecrackers sounded. Only now, I knew it wasn’t that. It was something so much worse.

My mom jerked, disappearing from my line of sight for a moment before stumbling back into the frame. She clutched her chest and then crumpled to the floor, blood spreading and seeping through her light purple cashmere sweater—the one that had felt so soft beneath my fingers.

Black spots danced in front of my vision. Breathe. I needed to breathe.

I sucked in short bursts of air. It was all I could manage.

My mom’s gray-violet eyes— our eyes—went wide and then froze, unblinking. Her hands went limp against the antique carpet—the one she always told me to be careful not to spill on.

But she was the one spilling now, her life force draining onto the dark mix of woven colors.

A shadow slid over her body again, and then a man moved into the frame. He looked like he belonged. Like someone who lived at one of the properties a few acres away. Someone we’d see at the club or church. He wore khakis and a button-down shirt, his light brown hair just a little shaggy and unkempt.

But his hands showed he was different: the black gloves he wore, the gun in the hand closest to me.

My whole body trembled, and I felt liquid sliding down my legs, soaking my jeans.

“Check her,” the other voice said—the one that had taunted my mother. The one who’d ordered the spilling of her blood. The one with the Latin lion shoe.

The man in front of me crouched, careful not to step in the blood—Mom’s blood. He pressed two gloved fingers to her neck and then turned, looking at the man I couldn’t see. “She’s gone.”

My knees nearly gave way. Gone. My mom. The black dots were back, almost taking me under.

“Good riddance,” the other man spat. “Search every room in this house. I want to make sure that brat really is at a sleepover. If not, she’s dead.” His voice began to fade as he stomped down the hall, but his words reverberated in my ears.

Sleepover … My mom’s story was saving me, telling the beautiful lie that I was gone.

Only it wasn’t the gone my mom was. Or my dad. My chest burned as I slid to the floor, my body contorting to fit the space. But I couldn’t stay upright anymore.

All I wanted was to slip into that gone right along with my parents.