by Julia Derek
Her sister looked uncertain. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yes, I do. We have all done things we aren’t proud of in the past. No one is perfect. And you will pay for what you did now. When you stand trial. I do hope you won’t spend any time in jail. It’s not like you tried to kill her after all, just scare her, right?”
“Right.” She sighed deeply again, looking away. “But I was a really mean girl. I deserve whatever punishment I’ll get.”
“Maybe. Even so, I hope you won’t spend much time, if any, in jail.”
Kate’s twin smiled at her. “That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you.”
Kate smiled back. “Well, you’re family, right, so how can I not? Besides, I want to go meet our real dad soon. And I’d prefer it if you came along when I do that.”
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Chapter 48
It was two days before Christmas when Wil’s cell phone rang as she was having dinner at her house. It had been a long day and she couldn’t wait until she got to crash. She pressed the Talk button.
“Hey, Larry, what’s up?”
“Hey, Wil. I have some good news!”
Wil smiled; Larry sounded like a kid on Christmas morning, which told her it must be some very good news. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Natasha agreed to let me have Tiffany for Christmas Day.”
“Really? That’s great news, Larry! I’m so happy for you.”
“Me, too, Wil. Me too. I can hardly believe it. Hey, what are you doing for Christmas?”
Wil cleared her throat. “Oh, you know how I hate the holidays. I’ll just sleep all day, maybe watch a movie with some take-out at night. Not sure yet.”
“Wil.” Larry sounded very serious.
“Yes?”
“I’m not gonna let you sit alone on Christmas this year as well. You’re coming over to my mother’s house and spending it with us. My daughter thinks you’re the coolest person ever. She wants to hang with you on Christmas. She’ll be very disappointed if you say no.”
Wil closed her eyes and shook her head slowly; Larry really knew which buttons to push to make her agree to his suggestions. “Fine,” she said and sighed lightly. “I’ll be there.”
“Awesome. Tiffany is gonna be stoked. We’ll have a great time.”
“You’re probably right about that, Larry.”
“Ha. Of course I am. Am I ever wrong?”
Wil thought it best not to answer that, and instead just chuckled at her smartass partner; he sure was something else. Besides, he might be right. Maybe she would enjoy spending Christmas with other people for once.
Thank you for reading SINS OF THE PAST. The next book in the series, DEADLY DREAMS, is now available. Click HERE to get it (or read the beginning of the book on the next page followed by book description). If you want to receive notices about my book releases, click HERE to join my mailing list. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed this story, please review it on Amazon. Even if it's just a sentence or two. It would be very much appreciated. Click HERE to leave a brief review.
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Prologue
Lily Hartman gazed at Annie across the dinner table. It took all she had not to glare at the other woman, spit in her beautiful face, she hated her so much. For now, though, she couldn’t stop herself from staring at her for a while at least. Staring at those rich, dark tresses that reached Annie’s mid back. Staring at her delicate features and those annoyingly pretty, large, blue eyes. Staring at the full breasts the bitch hadn’t even bothered to cover. If she had any sense at all, she would have worn something that reached her neck instead of that tight top with the low-cut neckline. It was almost as if Annie wanted to rub it in Lily’s face: See what I’ve got that you don’t?
Annie and Rick, Lily’s husband, were busy discussing the effects of last year’s presidential election, neither of them noticing all the jealousy brewing inside Lily. She herself had long since zoned out from the political debate. As drunk as they were, she didn’t think they would notice anything off with Lily even if she let all her black feelings hang out the way Annie let her giant boobs do.
That would never happen of course. She wasn’t a coarse slut like Annie. She had class and she refused to stoop to Annie’s levels.
Lily licked her lips and reached for her wine glass. She was quite drunk herself, she realized then. Even so, she had another large sip of the red wine. And another.
Rick suddenly turned to her and smiled.
“How are you doing, honey?” he asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately. Everything okay?’
No, she wanted to scream at both him and Annie. I hate that trashy thing beside you. I want to take my fork and stick it in those pretty eyes of hers, then take my steak knife and cut off those disgusting boobs. I want to hurt her as much as she has hurt me, see her suffer as much as I have. How could you bring her into our home? How could you do such a thing to me? Don’t you realize I know everything? I know you’ve been sleeping with her for years behind my back. You need to stop. I can’t take it much longer. I love you too much.
But Lily couldn’t say any of that, do any of that. Even in her intoxicated state, she knew that she needed to act as cool as always. Keep the painful jealousy under wraps forever. So all she did was smile back at her husband and say, “Yes, I’ve never been better, darling.”
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Chapter 1
“Hey, Annie,” Lily called out after having knocked on the guest bedroom door several times without getting an answer. “It’s past noon. It’s beautiful out. Wanna come with me to a café for something to eat?”
Lily frowned at the white door. Still no answer. Hmm. She had tried to get Annie’s attention for at least a minute now. Annie couldn’t still be sleeping, could she? Lily doubted it; they had all been rather drunk last night, but they went to bed way before midnight. Should she open the door and see what was going on, or would that be rude? She did not want to make their guest uncomfortable.
She placed a hand on the doorknob, hesitating only for a moment before she squeezed it and opened the door. It slid open, revealing a large bedroom shrouded in darkness. The black shades before the big window were still down, and Annie lay in bed, looking like she was passed out.
Hmm, Lily thought again. So she was still sleeping then? The poor woman must have been exhausted, in addition to being drunk.
Pausing in the doorway, Lily screwed up her face, pondering whether she should let Annie be and just head to the café herself. No, she decided; Annie needed company. That was why she had come to stay with Lily and Rick in the first place. Lily couldn’t imagine that Annie would be happy when she woke up and found the apartment all empty.
Nodding to herself, Lily walked into the bedroom and over to the window where she rolled up the shades. The bedroom was suddenly bathing in warm sunlight. She wrinkled her nose; the funky smell of something sour had entered her nostrils. She cracked open the big window to get some fresh air in. When she was done, she turned back toward Annie. She lay face-up on the queen-sized bed, arms spread out to the sides over the pillows, her face looking away from the window. Her long, dark hair fanned out around her head like the tentacles of an octopus.
Lily contemplated her in silence for a moment. She couldn’t help but think that the position of Annie’s head didn’t look comfortable at all. How could someone sleep like that? She must be a very deep sleeper indeed.
Lily walked around the bed to get a view of her face, and to see if the petite woman was really sleeping still. She was, and her mouth was gaping, making her look like a fish, belonging in the sea herself. Lily didn’t think she had ever seen anyone sleeping as soundly. Maybe the faint stench in the room was due to her having really bad breath, Lily mused cattily. Annie must have forgotten to brush her teeth before passing out from all the wine they had drunk at dinner. Wait, was it even possible to have bad breath that potent? A more plausible scenario occurred to Lily;
maybe Annie had thrown up somewhere in the room? The thought made her stomach turn.
She looked around and couldn’t spot evidence of sickness anywhere, thankfully. Must be the breath then. She returned to Annie. It was time for her to wake up now.
“Hey, Annie, wake up,” she said as she leaned over the other woman’s face, bracing herself for an onslaught of bad breath. But it never came. That’s weird, Lily thought, but she kept talking. “It’s gorgeous out. You don’t want to spend all day in bed!”
Annie didn’t react. Lily repeated what she had just said and gently shook the other woman. Instead of waking up, however, Annie remained unresponsive.
Scowling now, Lily stared at Annie for a moment, then grabbed the woman’s shoulder and shook her harder.
“Annie, wake up!”
But Annie stayed as still as before.
Lily felt a shiver of cold rush over her skin, like an icy wind, as she realized it looked very much like Annie wasn’t breathing then. She leaned forward, placing a hand near Annie’s mouth and nose. She couldn’t feel the heat of breath coming out, nor could she see Annie’s silk-clad, voluptuous chest rise up and down the way it should when she looked down at Annie’s body. The covers reached her bellybutton only.
What the…
Grabbing Annie firmly by the shoulder, she shook the woman with force.
“Annie! Annie!”
It was to no avail; Annie didn’t wake up. As Lily felt how cold the skin on the woman’s neck was, not to mention the extremely odd angle it was in, terror expanded inside her. What the hell is going on here? Why does she look like she is… dead? Like her neck’s broken?
Goosebumps formed on Lily’s bare arms despite the comfortable temperature in the room. She placed a couple of fingers to the side of Annie’s neck the way she had seen the cops do on Law & Order to check for a pulse.
She couldn’t find a pulse no matter how hard she tried.
Gasping, she removed her fingers and ran out of the bedroom to find her cell phone; she had to call 911. Get some help. Maybe there was a pulse still, but Lily had been unable to find it; she wasn’t exactly experienced when it came to those kinds of things. Maybe Annie was still alive and only seemed dead. Maybe she was even breathing, but just barely.
Lily’s phone lay on the coffee table in the living room where she had left it. She grabbed it and punched the three numbers with trembling fingers, nearly dropping the phone in the process. Her heart hammered in her chest as she placed the phone to her ear.
“911, what’s your emergency,” a female voice on the other end answered.
“My friend is unconscious and not responding,” Lily stuttered. “It doesn’t look like she’s breathing and I can’t find her pulse, but I don’t really know how to find it. She might have a pulse still. I’m not sure.”
“Are you sure your friend isn’t breathing?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she isn’t. It doesn’t look like it.”
“Do you have an AED that you can use?”
“What’s an AED?” Lily knew she had heard it before, should know what it was, but she was too frazzled to remember.
“It’s an automated external defibrillator to jumpstart the heart if it’s not beating.”
“Oh, right. I think my doorman has one of those. We don’t.”
“Okay. Do you have someone with you?”
“No, I’m alone,” Lily answered, wishing that her husband was with her. He always knew what to do in moments like this. Lily didn’t cope well with emergencies.
“What’s the address?”
Lily rattled off their address, then asked, “Will you send an ambulance?”
“Yes, one is on the way. It’ll arrive within ten minutes. You mentioned your doorman might have an AED. Can you access it? If her heart has stopped, the sooner you can make it work again, the bigger the chance your friend’s life can be saved. And you probably need to give her CPR. Do you know how to perform CPR?”
“Um, not really,” Lily muttered. “But maybe my doorman does. I’ll call him and check.”
“Do that. I’ll stay on the line and walk you through it if he can’t. It’s very important that she gets oxygen into her system as soon as possible. Help is on the way.”
“Okay, hold on,” Lily said and put the phone down. She ran over to the intercom phone on the wall in the hallway and picked it up. After a couple of rings, a familiar voice spoke in her ear:
“This is Wilson.”
“Hey, Wilson, it’s Lily in 31 C. Do we have an AED in the building? It’s a machine to jumpstart a heart that’s stopped.” The words rushed out of her.
“We should have one of those in the office. Let me check and get back to you.”
“I need it now, Wilson. My friend’s passed out and I think her heart has stopped. We need to give her CPR, too.”
“Oh, dear. Let me find the AED and come up to your apartment with it.”
“Thanks, Wilson. Please hurry. Every second counts.”
WHAT IF YOU KILLED SOMEONE IN YOUR SLEEP?
When Lily Hartman goes to wake Annie, a visiting family friend, she discovers to her horror that the woman isn't sleeping in the guestroom. She's dead. Someone suffocated her the night before.
Detectives Cooper and White are called in to solve the murder. They soon learn that beautiful Annie was really Lily's husband Rick's friend. Lily's DNA is all over the pillow used to smother Annie and there are no signs of a break-in to their apartment. Coupled with the fact that the detectives sense Lily was jealous of Annie, she becomes their main suspect.
Lily, who is a sleepwalker, herself wonders if she is guilty of killing Annie in her sleep. She recently discovered that Rick and Annie were having an affair, so she secretly resents Annie. Is Lily the killer or is someone setting her up? The truth is worse than she can imagine.
Click HERE to get DEADLY DREAMS.
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MORE JULIA DEREK BOOKS
THE DIARY (Psychological Thriller)
The Diary
THE GIRL UNDERCOVER SERIAL (The Adler Conspiracy)
Parts One, Two and Three
Parts Four and Five
Parts Six and Seven
Parts Eight and Nine
Parts Ten and Eleven
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Part Twelve
The Meta-Human Series (Sci-Fi Thriller)
Friending the Devil
Joker's Wild
Crossfire
DUPLICITY (Prequel to the Girl Undercover Serial)
Duplicity
THE SMILEY KILLER (Companion book to the Girl Undercover Serial)
The Smiley Killer
The Celeste Jones Paranormal Mystery Series (Cozy mysteries)
Haunted Hardbodies
Spooky Hardbodies
Ghostly Hardbodies
