Her Best Friend's Lie

by Laura Wolfe

  I nodded, pulling her to her feet. “I’ll explain everything, but first, we need to get out of here. Can you walk?”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  I leaned close to Jenna as she draped her arm around me. Her hand touched mine, her skin cold. She was shivering, and I realized how freezing she must have been exposed to the rain for most of the night with no coat. I unzipped my windbreaker and gave it to her. It was a size too small for her, but she thanked me and put it on.

  With the rifle strap on my opposite shoulder, we hobbled away from the cabin at a decent pace, aware that Charlotte could regain consciousness at any minute and surprise us. At least this time, I had the gun.

  “Can you make it back to the camp? I think there might be a road leading out behind the staff cabins.”

  “Okay. Yeah.”

  Jenna winced with every other step she took but never complained. I told her everything I’d learned about Charlotte and why she’d snapped. My words spilled out jumbled and in no particular order. Jenna gasped at each new revelation—Charlotte’s beliefs that Sam had stolen her business and Kaitlyn had swept away the man she was supposed to marry; Kaitlyn spotting Charlotte in the woods. Breathlessly, I explained that Frida King had been the owner of Camp Eventide, Charlotte had accidentally killed Frida back in June because she wouldn’t provide Charlotte with a job recommendation, and Frida’s death had set off the current string of events. Then I told Jenna what happened to Charlotte at the party twenty years earlier.

  Jenna stopped walking and buried her face in her hands. “Oh no. I had no idea.”

  “Me neither.”

  “We left her there.”

  “Yeah.”

  We stood next to each other, the weight of our mistake cementing my feet to the ground. Jenna began to cry.

  I touched her arm. “We didn’t know. She never said anything. And we couldn’t have known it would lead to this.” I motioned in the direction of the cabin. “She’s had some bad stuff happen recently. She didn’t tell anyone she’d been fired from her job, even her family. Now Reed is cheating on her. She convinced herself that everything was our fault.”

  Jenna blinked at me. “Everyone has a breaking point.”

  I nodded, again remembering tidbits of stories Charlotte had relayed to me over the years. Charlotte had been so relieved when she’d escaped to college, safely away from her abusive parents. But I knew from my studies that childhood trauma was one of the main predictors of future violence. Ingrained patterns were difficult to break. I’d missed the warning signs.

  I swallowed against my parched throat and nodded toward the path. “We should keep moving.” Jenna slung her arm over me again, and we continued the trek.

  It took us over an hour to reach the camp. We found a bench in the clearing near the zip line and sat on it. My shoulder ached from supporting Jenna’s weight. We hadn’t even reached the private camp road yet, and it seemed less and less likely we’d make it out. I remembered my backpack. Charlotte had taken my knife, but my pack was still sitting in the cabin where I’d slept the night before, filled with power bars, a water bottle, and dry socks.

  I turned to Jenna. “I have an idea. My backpack is in one of the cabins. How about we get it so you can eat and drink something? Then you can hide in one of the staff cabins. You keep the gun and I’ll run to the highway for help.”

  Jenna pressed her lips tight like she was trying not to cry. “I wish I could come with you. I’m sorry. It’s such a long way, and my ankle hurts so much.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll move faster on my own. You’ll be safe with the gun.”

  “Yeah. It’s the best plan we have.”

  I stood up, and Jenna tugged my arm.

  “Megan, thank you.”

  I turned toward her. “For what?”

  “For not leaving me tied to that tree. You could have run out on your own by now, but you didn’t.” Jenna nudged me with her elbow. “You’re a good friend, no matter what Charlotte said.”

  I nodded, my eyelashes blocking my tears. I debated whether to confess to kissing Pete at the Mexican restaurant all those years ago but I bit my tongue. Revealing another painful betrayal now wouldn’t serve a purpose.

  “Thanks,” I said instead. “You’re a good friend too.”

  We made our way past the mess hall and the office and toward the row of tiny cabins, entering the middle one where my backpack lay atop the bare mattress. I collected it, giving Jenna three power bars and my water. I took off my shoes, affixed a new Band-Aid, and replaced my wet socks with the dry ones from the bag. Jenna devoured the bar and gulped half the water, handing the bottle back to me.

  “You should take this.”

  I nodded, stashing the water in the side pocket of my pack. I handed Jenna the rifle, and she positioned the strap over her shoulder. It took another ten minutes to trek over to the staff cabins. Jenna pointed toward the one closest to the woods. It stood next to the cabin encircled by yellow police tape.

  I followed Jenna inside the dim and dusty room, making sure she had a comfortable place to sit. “Don’t leave. If Charlotte shows up, shoot her in the leg if you have to.”

  Jenna nodded.

  “I’ll be back soon. With help.”

  “Good luck.”

  We hugged. I clutched the straps of my pack against my chest as I headed out the door and jogged down a narrow path through the woods. Just as I suspected, it led to a gravel parking lot. I followed the road, my legs stretching farther now. I remembered my breathing tricks from my marathon training days, pulling air into my lungs in measured breaths.

  The road curved through the trees, stretching on and on. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Then thirty. My legs were weak and shaky, but I never slowed my pace even as I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked for bars. Still there was no reception.

  At last, I reached a wooden sign suspended between two trees: Welcome to Camp Eventide it read. I coughed out a laugh at the marker. I’d reached a public road. I continued running down the barren dirt road, listening for the sound of a distant motor, but only the plodding of my running shoes against the muddy gravel echoed back at me. I stayed near the edge of the road so that I could dart behind the trees if I needed to. It would be devastating to have Marlene and Ed spot me after I’d made it this far. I kept going, Marnie and Wyatt’s faces dangling in front of me like carrots. A cramp stabbed my side, but I ran through it. I estimated my pace at ten-minute miles. If I kept up the pace, I’d be close to the two-lane highway in a little over two hours. There’d been cell-phone reception there.

  The miles passed, slowly but steadily. There were no cars on the craggy road leading to the abandoned camp. Only trees surrounded me. They were pine trees, mostly, but occasionally maple or oak trees grew between the evergreens, their leaves changing to shades of brown, orange, and yellow. Once in a while, the faded, peeling bark of a birch tree would pop from the others. After an hour of running past the endless forest, my breath heaved. I squeezed the cramp in my side and walked until I could jog again. Every mile was a step closer to kissing my kids’ pink cheeks, to repairing my marriage with the good man I’d married, to getting Jenna and myself to safety. One, two, one, two. I only focused on the sound of each step, and on the distance covered. The road unspooled in front of me, never-ending. But I pressed forward. More trees appeared around every bend, a repeating landscape I’d thought I’d passed already. I searched for hidden driveways and remote cottages but did not find any. I remembered Kaitlyn telling us about the land trust. No one lived in this enormous expanse of wilderness because it was a nature reserve.

  After I’d been running for nearly three hours, my feet were blistered, and my insides were twisted and breathless. At last, the dirt road met up with a paved road. My feet stopped. I yelped and blinked my eyes, confirming I’d reached the two-lane highway and feeling like I’d discovered a drinking fountain in the middle of the desert. This road was my lifeline. I craned my neck, searching
for a car. I ran south, in the direction of the laughably small town we’d passed a few days earlier. That’s when I heard it—the rumble of a motor. I hopped up and down and waved my arms.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  It was an SUV, silver and battered. It whizzed past me. My knees buckled and I slumped over, despair flooding my body. I’d been so close to finding help. The vehicle disappeared around the bend.

  Something vibrated against my hip. My hand pressed against my pocket, feeling the phone beneath. Afraid of getting my hopes up, I removed the cold object and stared at the screen. Three bars appeared where there had previously been none. I threw my head back as a stream of text messages and missed call notifications filled the screen. I resisted the urge to respond to them, especially the ones from Andrew. That would have to wait. My trembling fingers swiped past the main screen, and I finally pressed the numbers I’d been yearning to dial for four days: 911.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Several minutes later, I huddled under a Mylar blanket in the back seat of a police car. It was the first time I’d felt safe in days. My 911 call had been a vague and urgent cry for help. Now I filled in the details for the officer who had rescued me, a heavyset, forty-something man with graying sideburns named Officer Hopke. My thoughts were frantic and scattered, my story told in a random order.

  The officer wanted to call an ambulance, but I refused. We had to go back for Jenna first. I told him about Jenna’s ankle injury and how she’d been tied to a tree all night. I urged him to send another police car and an ambulance to the rental cabin where Charlotte was injured and possibly dangerous. I told him about Marlene and how she might have a gun—or several.

  The officer studied me with a furrowed brow as I described how Charlotte had murdered Sam and Kaitlyn, and how we were quick to blame the deaths on Travis—because of his tattoo and creepy demeanor—and on his friends because of their association with him. I told the officer that I knew who killed Frida King, the director of Camp Eventide. It hadn’t been one of the campers. Charlotte had been responsible for Frida’s death, too. His eyebrows raised at the information.

  More of the story flooded from my mouth. The officer tilted his head and widened his eyes when I told him Travis’s body was in the root cellar. I didn’t care what he thought of us. We’d feared for our lives. We’d done what we had to do to survive. Besides, I wasn’t the one who’d pulled the trigger.

  “Can you direct me to Jenna’s location?” he asked.

  “Yes. She’s hiding at Camp Eventide. In the cabin next to the one where Frida King died. Please hurry.” The siren beeped above my head, lights flashing across the pavement as the car did a U-turn on the highway. I fumbled through the texts, gathering my energy to call Andrew and talk to the kids without falling apart. I needed to make sure Jenna was safe first.

  Carried by the speeding police car, it only took a few minutes to lose my phone reception again and reach the parking lot behind the staff cabins. The policeman drove through the opening in the trees and pulled next to Jenna’s hideout.

  I doubled over with relief when the cabin door flung open, and Jenna stumbled outside. She squinted, stunned, into the flashing lights, offering an uneasy smile in my direction. Officer Hopke exited the car, carrying another Mylar blanket, which he wrapped around her as he escorted her into the car next to me.

  He leaned through the window into the back seat. “I’ve got two more officers heading to the rental cabin. I’m taking you both to the hospital now.”

  Jenna squeezed my hand. “Did you tell him what happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  She rested her head against the seat cushion and released a breath, followed by a hiccup and tears. I let my eyelids close as the car rumbled over potholes and loose gravel. Several minutes later, we were back on the highway, the movement over the smooth pavement nearly lulling me to sleep.

  My phone dinged with a new text. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, hoping to see Andrew’s name, but it wasn’t him on my screen. The message was from the other man, the one with whom I’d been having an affair. The thought of him sickened me. I never wanted to see him again.

  “Is that Andrew?” Jenna asked.

  “Yeah.” I averted my eyes as I lied. I angled the screen away from Jenna and read the text:

  I’ve been so lonely without you. When can I see you again?

  My jaw clenched, anger surging through me. I didn’t recognize my former self, the version of me that would have been excited by this illicit invitation. This man’s words disgusted me. I disgusted myself. I’d betrayed my husband and my kids. Charlotte’s haunting pronouncement echoed in my ears: “Your actions have consequences.” Charlotte should have killed me when she had the chance because she was right. I wasn’t a good friend. I hadn’t only betrayed Andrew. I’d betrayed her, too.

  I squeezed the phone, my fingers shaking as I typed my reply: I’m sorry, Reed. It’s over.

  If you were gripped by Her Best Friend's Lie and can’t wait to read more by Laura Wolfe, get Two Widows here now—a totally compelling suspense novel you won’t be able to put down!

  Get it here!

  Two Widows

  I’d grown desperate for company since the discovery of the dead woman in town.

  Gloria is used to solitude. Widowed and still grieving her late husband, she spends her days with only her faded photographs for company. But when a young woman is murdered nearby, Gloria grows anxious. Living alone in an old farmhouse, surrounded by empty woods, there’s no one for miles who would hear her scream.

  When freelance travel writer Beth arrives with her trailer to live on Gloria’s land, Gloria is relieved not to be alone. The police have no suspects in the murder and fearless Beth makes Gloria feel safe. Then Gloria discovers Beth is a widow too: the women become closer and begin to share their secrets.

  But soon Gloria starts to wonder… what does she actually know about Beth? About what brought her to this isolated spot? About how her husband really died? Is it a coincidence that she’s arrived just as this small town has seen its first murder in decades?

  Gloria thought that Beth had told her all her secrets. She was wrong.

  An utterly compelling suspense novel that will have you hooked, Two Widows is a gripping thriller that will keep you up all night. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, The Couple Next Door and The Woman in the Window.

  Get it here!

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  Books by Laura Wolfe

  Her Best Friend's Lie

  She Lies Alone

  Two Widows

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  She Lies Alone (Available in the UK and the US)

  Two Widows (Available in the UK and the US)

  A Letter from Laura

  Dear reader,

  I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read Her Best Friend's Lie. If you enjoyed it and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  Sign up here!

  My novel takes place in pre-pandemic 2019, but I started writing the first draft in the spring of 2020 when we were a few weeks into quarantine/lockdown. At the same time, I received notification that my kids’ summer sleepaway camp had been canceled. I thought about the sprawling camps sitting empty in the woods. How strange to have cabins, dining halls, climbing walls, and beaches with no one to enjoy them. It was an eerie vision and I thought it would be perfect to somehow work it into my story. Suddenly, the idea for Camp Eventide was born.

  False friendship is an especially sinister concept to me, and I wanted to explore this idea by writing about a reunion weekend gone wrong as plenty of long-buried secrets rose to the surface. While all the characters and circumstances in my
novel are purely fictional, the happy sentiments in the story (and the spreadsheet) were inspired by my own annual reunion weekends with a group of college friends from the University of Michigan. Thankfully, nothing nearly as traumatizing as the events in my novel have ever happened during any of our reunion weekends. I hope after reading this novel my friends will continue to include me on future invitations (and spreadsheets!).

  I hope you loved Her Best Friend's Lie, and if you did, I would be very grateful if you could write a review. Reviews make such a difference in helping new readers discover one of my books for the first time.

  I love hearing from my readers—you can get in touch on my Facebook page, Goodreads, Instagram, or my website.

  Thanks,

  Laura Wolfe

  www.LauraWolfeBooks.com

  She Lies Alone

  News spreads fast. Gossip spreads faster. Deadly secrets spread fastest of all.

  Jane Bryson obeys the rules. A long-standing science teacher at Ravenswood High School, she lives a simple life with her husband Craig and Moose the black Labrador. When free-spirited new English teacher Elena Mayfield joins Ravenswood, Jane’s excited to have a friend who is ready to challenge authority, and Elena’s soon shaking things up.

  When Elena starts a controversial club, Jane is ready to support her. When Elena begins an illicit romance with a colleague, Jane is there to help her shield her secret. When people begin asking questions about Elena, Jane backs her all the way.