Ava McCarthy - Dead Secret

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Ava McCarthy 2016

Ava McCarthy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Cover photographs © Joyce Vincent/Arcangel Images (woman);

Shutterstock.com(all other images)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007363933

Version 2015-09-16

For the family unit; more important than anything: Tom, Mark, Megan, Duffy and Goldy.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part Two

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part Three

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Part Four

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Jodie loaded the gun the way she’d seen Ethan do it: finger-checking the rounds so they were lined up flush, then smacking the magazine up into the grip.

Her jittery hands almost fumbled the manoeuvre. She clenched them steady, then racked the slider back to chamber the first round.

Clack-snap .

Nine bullets loaded, but she’d only need two.

One for Ethan.

The other one for herself.

She flashed on her husband’s face; on his fixed stare, and the twisted mind-games shape-shifting behind it. Sweat prickled down her spine. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it would take more than one bullet to kill Ethan.

Fireworks hissed and crackled outside the car, and the sky exploded into a weeping willow of light. Jodie peered through the windscreen, scanning the strobe-lit crowds that lined the lake perimeter. Ethan was out there somewhere, masquerading tonight as Mister Nice Guy, a back-slapper and hand-shaker for the Fourth of July celebrations.

She slid the gun into her bag, then reached out to the drawing pad that lay on the seat beside her, lifting it onto her lap to leaf through it one last time.

The paintings were childlike but imaginative, showing uncomplicated feelings rather than copies of objects: the tangle of scribbly black for the cranky family cat; the sunshine-yellow splodge for the spring picnic; bursts of colour splattered from a height, paint squeezed straight from the tubes to the page.

‘ Look what I can do, Mommy! ’

Jodie brushed her fingertips across the rounded letters marking the bottom of every page: Abby McCall Age 3 .

Her throat constricted. She swallowed against it, but the ache intensified, crushing her chest, choking her, smothering her, sending her spinning.

Breathe!

She bowed her head, took deep, shuddery breaths. Found a dead, flat place somewhere inside her and invited the numbness back in.

Slowly, Jodie straightened up. Touched a hand to the drawing pad. Turned a page.

Blob-figures. The family unit. Abby holding Badger, the black snarl of a cat, flanked by Jodie and Ethan. Wide curves for mouths, vibrant red and yellow clothes. Finger-daubed by Abby.

The next few pages were the same. But by the last set of drawings, the colours had muted: faded blues, dull browns. With each painting, Ethan’s blob-figure stood further apart from the others, the mouth growing straighter, the features fainter, until finally he had no face at all.

Jodie shivered. Even little Abby had seen it.

She closed the pad, cradling it in her lap before setting it back on the seat. Then she lifted her chin, shouldered her bag and clambered out of the car.

The night air was cool against her skin. Volleys of rockets sizzled skywards, erupting into starbursts over the lake. Her eyes raked the spectators by the water’s edge, hunting for her husband’s lean, elegant frame.

She threaded through the crowds, the air dry and flinty with the smell of burned-out fireworks. She pushed closer to the shoreline, where the water, normally tea-coloured, looked black and oily in the dark.

Up ahead, her gaze snagged on a familiar figure: the plump silhouette of Nancy Adams. Jodie went still. For an instant, she caught the other woman’s eye, then Nancy glanced away.

Something small tugged at Jodie’s chest. Even Nancy was avoiding her now. But she wasn’t surprised. People had been talking, saying Jodie had gone over the edge. For ‘people’, read Ethan.

She and Nancy had settled in Hillsborough County around the same time, Jodie as Ethan’s Irish bride, Nancy as the new proprietor of Attic Corner, a quirky little café tucked into an art gallery in Peterborough. It was Nancy who’d pitched Jodie’s paintings to the gallery and made them see her potential.

‘Us blow-ins got to stick together in this godforsaken place,’ Nancy had said once, hefting a pan of cinnamon rolls from her oven. ‘Especially in the winter. All these blizzards and power outages, snowdrifts barricading your front door. Talk about isolated. Drive you five kinds of crazy.’ She’d given Jodie a probing look, the scent of brown spices billowing from her in waves. ‘Especially way out in the wilderness where you are.’

Jodie had smiled, shrugging off the concern, her mind skittering away from her own growing misgivings. It was only later she’d admit that the backwoods had turned oppressive.

The whirr of crickets pulsed from the lakefront.

Slowly, she pulled away from Nancy, angling wide along the embankment, still scouring the crowds for Ethan.

‘Didn’t expect to see you here, Jodie.’

She whipped around. A blocky, compact figure was stalking towards her, dark eyes pinned to hers. Her heartbeat tripped.