by Zoe Carter
Exonerated for the murder of her boss and mentor, reporter Lauren Riley takes over the Townsend Report—and uncovers the secrets buried under the idyllic facade of Thornwood Heights.
Thankful her sister, an NYPD detective, came home to investigate and free her, Lauren is determined to start fresh. She has a bad history with the wrong men, making the wrong decisions, and this is her chance to start fresh—to help others. Especially the strong, sexy Trevor Gallagher. The former soldier is desperate to find his sister—a young woman who has disappeared just like so many before her. Lauren is the only one who cares. Together they stand up to the powerful families and the police in Thornwood Heights. But when danger threatens Lauren, they realize secrets will kill...
Enjoy the LMN movie Deadly Secrets by the Lake for Jennifer Riley’s story at thornwoodheights.com.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Thornwood Heights, an idyllic lakeside town hiding deep secrets for twenty years that are now coming to light. Welcome also to a very special collaboration between Harlequin and LMN.
Harlequin editors, LMN producers and our writers plotted the Thornwood Heights mysteries together. Rather than the typical book/television collaboration where one retells the story of the other—the TV movie is made from the book, or the book retells the movie—we decided to develop an idea and characters we loved with enough scope that writers could weave multiple stories. The LMN movie Deadly Secrets by the Lake is a very suspenseful mystery with NYPD detective Jennifer Riley returning to the hometown she’d fled in order to help her sister Lauren, who has been arrested for murder. The book you are holding in your hands tells Lauren’s story and romance.
The TV movie and the book are stand-alones, but they complement each other. When Secrets Kill starts where Deadly Secrets by the Lake ended.
There’s more! Rounding out the Thornwood Heights Mystery series is thornwoodheights.com, a rich, immersive site with lots of extras you won’t want to miss, including:
a 360-degree virtual-reality experience that lets you explore the crime scenes and solve the mystery
a series of videos by Lauren Riley about her ongoing investigation
articles from the Townsend Report
backstories on the main characters and their rivalries
an interactive storytelling app
I hope you visit thornwoodheights.com for all the juicy behind-the-scenes scoop.
Happy reading (and TV watching and thornwoodheights.com exploring)!
Malle Vallik
Editorial Director
When Secrets Kill
Zoe Carter
Published by Harlequin Books
In Association with LMN
Also available from Zoe Carter
and Harlequin Books
TAKE IT TO THE GRAVE
June 2017
“I know your secret. I’m going to tell.” As Sarah Taylor-Cox stares at the anonymous letter, her body starts to shake with dread. She has everything to lose—a gorgeous husband, a beautiful baby and a picture-perfect house in the Hamptons. And now the lies she’s built her life on are starting to crumble, one by deadly one...
A six-part psychological thriller
Contents
The Story So Far...
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Photos (inset)
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Excerpt from Take It to the Grave by Zoe Carter
The Story So Far...
The Thornwood Heights mysteries begin in the LMN television movie Deadly Secrets by the Lake, which tells Jennifer Riley’s story. The prodigal daughter returns home to Thornwood Heights to prove her sister’s innocence of murder, but is met by her first love, dark family secrets and a longstanding family rivalry fueled by the disappearance of her childhood best friend.
Now Lauren Riley is free and clear and helping Trevor Gallagher find out what happened to his sister.
Rounding out the Thornwood Heights Mystery series is thornwoodheights.com, a rich, immersive site with lots of extras you won’t want to miss, including:
a 360-degree virtual-reality experience that lets you explore the crime scenes and solve the mystery
a series of videos by Lauren Riley about her ongoing investigation
articles from the Townsend Report
backstories on the main characters and their rivalries
an interactive storytelling app
Visit www.thornwoodheights.com for all the juicy behind-the-scenes scoop.
Chapter One
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: MY SISTER IS MISSING
Ms. Riley,
I read your recent article in the Townsend Report about young women going missing from Thornwood Heights. My sister—she’s only eighteen—disappeared a couple of weeks ago, and I’m worried sick. The police won’t help; they say she’s an adult. I’m a combat soldier with a week left of my tour in Afghanistan. I’ll be arriving home in Thornwood Heights on June 26. Can we meet? PLEASE.
Trevor Gallagher
Lauren Riley stood in front of Sunnyside Coffee and reread Trevor Gallagher’s email, then glanced at the photo he’d sent so she’d recognize him. If there was a six foot two muscular soldier with slightly grown-in military-cut dark hair, intense blue eyes and a dimple undermining the seriousness of his expression anywhere in the vicinity, she’d have spotted him. She glanced at her watch, then peered in the coffee shop’s window again. He wasn’t in there. Or out here. And he was ten minutes late.
She took another look at his photo and clicked off her email so she’d stop ogling his face and those shoulders. With everything that had happened the past month, with everything she had to prove, she couldn’t get sidetracked by a handsome face and a body that had been honed by the US Army. The new and improved take-me-seriously Lauren Riley would focus only on her job.
That job—as an investigative reporter for the Townsend Report—meant she poked her nose places, asked questions, bothered people. Ever since she’d gotten Trevor Gallagher’s email with the attached photo of Tammy, she’d shown it to people around town. No one recognized Tammy. A few thought there was something familiar about her, but couldn’t recall when or where they’d seen her.
Lauren too. She’d swear she’d seen Tammy Gallagher somewhere. Maybe a week or so before Lauren’s life had fallen to absolute crap and obliterated all thought. Where had she seen Tammy? Fresh-scrubbed—not a stitch of makeup. Light brown eyes. Freckles on the nose. Ash-brown, shoulder-length hair. Petite with boobs. All-American meets...something else, which Lauren also couldn’t put her finger on. Maybe if you hadn’t been drinking so much last month you’d remember where you saw her, she thought, ever great at bitching herself out. Who needed her family or the holier-than-thou residents of Thornwood Heights to wag their fingers when she did it best herself?
Stop it. That’s done. Two stints in rehab might not have made you quit drinking and
acting like an idiot—but waking up covered in blood next to the body of your boss with absolutely no recollection of how you got there? Being accused of murder? Locked in a jail cell? Hell yeah, that would do it.
A chill ran up Lauren’s spine. She had that weird feeling that someone was watching her.
A little girl, around nine or ten, was pointing at her, eyes and mouth wide-open in the kind of gawking stare that Lauren had become very used to. Crap.
“Look, Mommy,” the girl said to the woman holding her hand. “There’s the killer!”
“Don’t point, sweetie,” the mother whispered and pulled the girl close, making such a wide swath past Lauren that they almost fell off the curb.
I was exonerated! Lauren wanted to yell from the rooftop of Blake Mining and Exploration, the tallest building in Thornwood Heights. Fully, 100 percent exonerated!
“The real killer is behind bars,” Lauren couldn’t help saying to no one as she put on her big, black, face-obscuring sunglasses.
A middle-aged woman who worked at the library gave Lauren the usual judgmental once-over as she passed by, but at least she didn’t stop to do what most people had since Lauren had been released from jail a week ago: ask nosy, point-diminishing questions about who her cell mate had been and what she was in for, how the food was and if jail was anything like it was on TV.
What no one ever asked was: How did it feel to know that people thought you capable of murder? Your boss’s murder. A man you admired and respected. The first person to give you a chance at making something of yourself.
It felt awful. Stomach-dropping, ugly-cry awful. For the three weeks that Lauren had been in the Thornwood Heights jail, refused bail because she’d been deemed a flight risk, she’d realized that everyone had thought her capable of killing Victor Townsend. Her family, which included the chief of police, had rallied and supported her and told her they knew she had to be innocent. But the evidence had been so startlingly stacked against her that the look in her father’s and sisters’ eyes had given them away.
Oh, Lauren’s in jail? Quelle surprise. Of course she is! What did she do this time?
In fact, her sister Jennifer, a New York City homicide detective, had said exactly that when Lauren had called her from jail, scared out of her mind. What did you do this time?
Lauren had always been the screwup of the three Riley sisters, despite how hard she’d worked to change during the past couple of years since she started working for Victor. But it had all been small-potatoes stuff—partying a bit too much, getting fired or quitting dull jobs and “burning bridges” as her sister Nova would say. Looking for love in places she’d never find it. And yes, last year she’d had one margarita too many at Nova’s annual Memorial Day barbecue and had drunkenly staggered over to her latest “boyfriend’s” apartment building and screeched up at his second-floor window all the ways he’d done her wrong, tears streaming down her face. Instead of calling her dad or Nova, who also worked for the Thornwood Heights PD, jerk deputy chief Pat Lewton had arrested her for disorderly conduct. Her family had been furious with Lewton but had hissed at Lauren to get her damned act together.
For the past year, she truly had. She had a great job at the Townsend Report, the popular online newsblog that Victor Townsend had founded. Everyone read the Report, whether they admitted it or not. The newsblog had even won two regional awards for investigative journalism. But now the Report was barely hanging on in the aftermath of Victor’s murder. The story she was working on, the story that Victor had been working on, was going to be the story at the Townsend Report. I’ll continue what you started, Victor, she promised her late boss, friend and mentor. To expose the secrets of this town. To report the truth. To find justice for those who no one else will help.
Trevor Gallagher’s sister clearly needed help. So did Trevor.
Lauren looked up and down Main Street, but there was no sign of him. She had hoped to catch him as he arrived so she could suggest talking at a more private location. Sunnyside Coffee was packed and she didn’t want to be stared at—or have their conversation eavesdropped on.
There was a sidewalk sale going on today, so the streets of Thornwood Heights were even more crowded than usual in the picture-perfect New York state lakeshore tourist town nestled against the woods. And given the fact that photos of Lauren had been plastered all over the news for weeks, a pair of black sunglasses wasn’t enough to make a tall, auburn-haired ex-jailbird incognito. Everyone had assumed Lauren had killed Victor Townsend because they’d been having an affair and he’d dumped her. With every gawk and point and whisper, it was clear that the people of Thornwood Heights didn’t care that the real killer, the real spurned lover, was finally behind bars. The gossip and rumors, the murder charge, the jail time, the taint left over from being front page news herself wasn’t going away any time soon.
Lauren glanced at the time on her phone. Trevor Gallagher was now twenty minutes late. Where the hell was he? He’d mentioned that he was from Thornwood Heights, so he couldn’t be lost. Maybe his plane had been delayed. She checked the email he’d sent her a week ago—no phone number. Would his military email address still work? Only one way to find out.
At the sound of her least favorite voice, belonging to asshole deputy chief Pat Lewton, booming from down the street, Lauren froze, remembering how he’d accused her. Guilty. You killed him. Murderer! She could hear Lewton’s mouth-frothing judgments echoing in her head like it had all happened this morning. She’d tried so hard to move on. Wasn’t that what the shrink her sister Nova had made her go to had said? Move on. Right.
One month ago
Lauren kicked back her third vodka tonic, keeping one eye both on her fourth drink and the “oh, hello there” hot stranger next to her when Victor finally walked through the door of The Fraser bar. She was pissed. Literally. Figuratively. He’d been shutting her out for a couple weeks, refusing to bring her in on whatever he was working on. Suddenly, her mentor, the only person on the friggen earth who’d given her a chance to show she could be more than a screwup or a good time and an easy lay (though Victor himself had never come on to her), had closed her out.
Why? She didn’t get it. She was Victor’s right hand. So she’d snooped. Sneaking into the Townsend Report offices late last night, she’d accessed his computer files and found the photographs. At least ten of them. Of girls and women who’d gone missing from Thornwood Heights over the past twenty years. Including Abby Blake, the reason her family was shit deep in this mess.
Victor was investigating the missing girls. But why secretly?
So Lauren had freaked. And gotten sloshed—in the middle of the day—even though she’d promised Nova no more drinking. Promised her father. And here she was tossing back her fourth vodka, waiting to confront Victor, who always came to Fraser’s for lunch.
She weaved to his table, ignoring the bar full of people eating burgers and drinking beer. “I know, damn you. I know.” And she spilled it all: the late-night meetings. The photos on his computer. The missing girls.
Anger radiated off him. “You want to know what it’s about? Abby Blake. That’s what it’s about. I can’t tell you more. And you know why.”
She did know why. But it wasn’t fair. Yeah, yeah, family connection. Potential conflict of interest. So what?
He told her to go home. That he didn’t work with drunks.
And the last thing Lauren ever said to Victor Townsend?
“You’re going to regret this!” With a finger pointed at him.
After he stormed out of the bar, she finished her next drink. And another.
Then she woke up.
With a bloody knife in her hand. Blood all over her. Victor’s body beside her against the filing cabinets in the Townsend Report office.
Guilty. You’re guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
She could still hear that dickwad Lewton’
s voice echoing in her head.
Scariest part? For a really crappy hour or two, she’d wondered if she had killed Victor.
* * *
Man, the killer had gone through a lot of trouble to set her up and frame her. It had taken a few weeks, but thanks to her sister Jennifer, the New York City police detective who’d rushed home to help with her case, Victor Townsend’s actual killer had been caught: his lover, Jamie Chen. It turned out there was a lot about her boss that Lauren hadn’t known—like that the supposedly happily married man who’d wed his way into one of Thornwood Heights’s wealthiest families, was secretly gay. Why couldn’t he have told her? Lauren had thought they were close. But he hadn’t trusted her with the story of the missing girls. And he hadn’t trusted her with his personal life.
Like the song said. One step up and two steps back.
Screw it. She had to get away from Lewton’s voice. She was going inside Sunnyside Coffee, head held high, whether anyone in this town liked it or not, and looking up Trevor Gallagher’s phone number. Her future depended on her following up this case. And Trevor was part of it.
Whoa. Hand on the doorknob, Lauren stilled.
Did she just hear Lewton say the name Gallagher? She headed in the direction of Lewton’s snake voice, careful to stay behind a very large man until she found a doorway she could pop in unobserved. Lewton and two other men, one of whom was her father, stood in front of the walkway to the police station. The third guy had his back to Lauren. A very muscular back. Strong neck. And thick, dark hair, military cut.
“I’m going to say it one more time, Mr. Gallagher,” Lewton said with his usual condescension. “Your sister is eighteen. You said she had a bad living situation. She took off. That doesn’t make her missing. It means she’s an adult making her own choices.”
Lauren inched closer, grateful for the leafy tree that blocked her from their view. God, she hated Lewton. The man had been top cop during her arrest for Victor’s murder since her father had been taken off the case due to conflict of interest. If Lewton or her father saw her, they’d move inside the station to keep “the press” from overhearing them.
