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| Audiobook |
After witnessing her husband’s murder, Madeleine Schier
becomes a killer’s target. She flees her upscale New York life to become a name
on a tombstone, relying on her wits and imagination to survive in a world where
danger is everywhere. One wrong move could be her last. Should she trust the
damaged recluse who’s always near? Before long, her new life turns into her old
nightmare when crimes that were once distant horrors on the nightly news turn
up on her doorstep.
Excerpt from Chapter One
The door chime rang, followed by
a sharp rap.
Madeleine jerked toward the
living room. She saw Frank freeze. She didn’t think it possible, but his face
turned whiter. What is it?
Knocks sounded again, harder,
more insistent.
He seemed to wake up. “Hide! Get
under the bed. Call 9-1-1,” he whispered. Frank started for the door, his steps
stiff, jerky. “Who’s there?” he said into the intercom.
“Hey, Frankie. It’s me. Open up.
We need to talk.”
Madeleine squeezed under the bed,
then remembered her purse. She snatched the strap and pulled it close. The long
vowels, the New England accent—Gerry Buhler’s voice. Through the open bedroom
door she could see her husband, one hand on his chest, starting toward the
apartment door. Before he reached it, it burst open.
No. In her fright, she hadn’t locked it.
She inched further back toward
the wall, barely breathing. Lint balls from the thick carpet tickled her nose.
A youngish man, his unruly blond
hair at odds with his gray suit, entered. Madeleine didn’t recognize him, but in
his shadow stood Gerry Buhler. He kicked the door shut.
Awkwardly, she slipped her cell
phone from her purse. Her shaking fingers barely hit the numbers, but she
punched in 911, then focused on the narrow view from under the bed. Oh, God.
Buhler shook his long forefinger
in Frank’s face. “I thought I could trust you, Frankie. You shouldn’t have done
it.” He shoved Frank back into the room.
The 911 operator answered.
“Help me,” Madeleine whispered
into the phone. “Two men broke into my apartment. Help me.” She gave her
address but had to repeat it when the operator couldn’t hear her. “Hurry,
hurry. They—oh, God, a gun.”
Buhler poked Frank’s chest with
stiff fingers. “Tell me what you’ve done, who you’ve been talking to. Aaron saw
you. Who were the guys in the parking garage? IRS? FBI? What have you done to
me, Frankie?”
“I didn’t tell them anything. It
wasn’t—”
The younger man stepped in and
slapped him, snapping Frank’s head back.
“You got a wife, don’t you? Where
is she?”
