much of anything. She was some sort of social media influencer—whatever that meant. But they were nice enough, they were wealthy, and they were incredibly kind and friendly to Rosa…something that a lot of her other clients were not.
She stepped inside the large foyer and glanced around at the spacious living room, the open floor plan and the attached kitchen, separated only by a floating bar. The house was, in her opinion, far too big for a couple with no kids—a couple where the husband was gone about a week or so out of every month.
Taking a look around, Rosa figured this would be one of those weeks where she was going to feel as if she wasn’t truly earning her money. The Fairchilds were quite neat, leaving the house mostly clean. Rosa would go through the motions, scrubbing and vacuuming and cleaning windows, but it really wasn’t much of a chore in the Fairchild house.
She went to the laundry room and the adjoining mudroom, where she filled the utility sink with water, dumping a bit of lavender-scented Pine Sol into it. She figured she’d get the kitchen floors, as it seemed to be the most-used room in the house. While she was waiting for the floors to dry, she’d vacuum the upstairs rooms, all of which were carpeted. She hated to feel as if she was getting one over on such a nice couple, but she figured if she could make it appear that she had truly gotten all of the most important areas, the Fairchilds would consider it a job well done. Besides, it wasn’t her fault that they were leaving practically nothing to clean up.
As she waited for the sink to fill halfway, Rosa walked through the kitchen and to the stairway. The vacuum was in the upstairs linen closet because it was the only area in the house with carpet. She figured it might need a new filter and wanted to check now before she started mopping and forgot.
She found the vacuum in its usual place and checked the filter, finding that she had another few uses before it needed to be changed. While she had the vacuum out, she decided to roll it into the master bedroom. It was a huge room, complete with a fireplace, built-in bookshelves, and an adjoining bathroom that was larger than the living room in Rosa’s apartment.
The bedroom door was open, so she stepped in without knocking. She often didn’t know whether Mrs. Fairchild was home or not but had learned to knock whenever there was a closed door in the Fairchild home. She rolled the vacuum in but stopped after she took three steps into the room.
Mrs. Fairchild was on the bed, sleeping. This felt odd, as she was pretty sure Mrs. Fairchild woke up early and went for a run on most days. She nearly left the room, not wanting to wake her. But then she noticed two peculiar things at once.
First, Mrs. Fairchild was dressed in her running attire. Second, she was lying on top of the sheets, the bed freshly made.
Alarm bells started sounding in Rosa’s head and instead of backing out of the room as she had originally intended, she felt herself stepping forward as if pushed by an invisible hand.
“Mrs. Fairchild?” she asked.
There was no answer. Mrs. Fairchild didn’t even move in response.
Call the police, Rosa thought. Call nine-one-one. This is not good…she’s not just sleeping, and you know it.
But she had to know. She took two more steps forward until Mrs. Fairchild’s face came into view.
Her eyes were staring open, looking toward the window—unblinking. Her mouth was partially open. A pool of blood, still relatively fresh, stained the sheet just above her head. A grotesque slash mark was plainly visible along her neck.
Rose felt a little moan rise up in her throat. Her knees buckled a bit, but she managed to take a few steps backward. When she collided with the vacuum, she let out a shriek.
It took a considerable amount of effort to tear her eyes away from Mrs. Fairchild, but when she did, she quickly ran out of the room. She went to the kitchen bar where she had set down her phone, and called 911. As the dispatcher answered, Rosa was so horrified by what she had seen that she didn’t stop to think about the utility sink in the mudroom, filling and filling by the second, close to overflowing.
CHAPTER ONE
Chloe had heard many cautionary tales about trying to keep a very broad fence between her personal life and her career. As a federal agent, things tended to get very sticky when the two worlds collided. But honestly, she had been living with the constant collision of those two worlds ever since she had graduated from the academy—thanks to her father’s mental cat-and-mouse games.
She knew she spent far too much time speculating on her father and what he may or may not have done to her mother nearly eighteen years ago. Thanks to Danielle’s discovery of her mother’s journal, Chloe had been living the past few weeks in a haze of confusion. She now felt fairly confident that their father had killed their mother all those years ago. She had given him every benefit of the doubt up to this point—going so far as to try pinning her mother’s murder on a scapegoat, Ruthanne Carwile.
But now she had it written in her mother’s handwriting. Now she had more than enough evidence to truly feel her father was not only a killer—but that he had killed her mother.
It had hit her quite hard. While Chloe had done her best not to let it affect her work, it had consumed almost every free moment she had. She’d spent the first two weekends after the discovery dodging calls from everyone—from Danielle, from her partner, Agent Rhodes, and from her father.
All I have to do is make it public, she thought to herself time and time again. Just go public, take it to the bureau, and take him down. Wrap up this sordid chapter of my life and put the bastard back behind bars.
But that was risky. It could affect her own career. And, more than that, there was the little girl still defiant inside of her, a younger version of herself who insisted maybe there was something she was missing…that there was no way her father was really a murderer.
It was an internal fight that had her going into work with a hangover a few times. It had been just twenty days since she’d made the discovery in the journal. And even at work, though she remained professional and did not let her own personal demons interfere with her job, entries from the journal would pop up in her head.
He strangled me tonight… and he slapped me in the face. Before I knew what had happened, he pushed me against the wall and strangled me. He said if I ever disrespected him again, he’d kill me. He said he had something better lined up, some better woman and some better life…
The journal was on her coffee table. She left it there so she would always be reminded…and so she could not give herself the convenience of having it out of her sight. She kept it there as a reminder that she had been a fool—and that her father had been pulling the wool over her eyes for a very long time.
It was twenty days in, almost three whole weeks since she and Danielle had finally come together to the conclusion that their father had killed their mother, when Chloe considered just going to his apartment and killing him. It was a Saturday. She’d started drinking at eleven that morning, staring out of her apartment window as DC traffic trickled by beneath her.
She knew enough about how the system worked to make it look like a suicide. Or, if nothing else, she knew how to hide her tracks well. She could make sure he died without having anything traced back to her.
She had thought it out quite carefully. She had the stirring of a plan in her head, most of which was solid.
But that’s lunacy, isn’t it? she asked herself.
But then she thought of how thoroughly he’d had
