This is why we lied, p.1
This is Why We Lied, page 1
THIS IS WHY WE LIED
Karin Slaughter
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2024
Copyright © Karin Slaughter 2024
Cover design by Claire Ward/HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Cover photographs © Ute Klaphake/Trevillion Images (figures’ reflections) and © Jarno Saren/Arcangel Images (water ripples)
Karin Slaughter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008625825
Ebook Edition © June 2024 ISBN: 9780008625849
Version: 2024-06-04
Dedication
To David – for his unending kindness and patience
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1: Twelve Hours Before the Murder
Chapter 2: Ten Hours Before the Murder
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Six Hours Before the Murder
Chapter 6: Five Hours Before the Murder
Chapter 7: One Hour Before the Murder
Chapter 8
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
Thirty-Seven Minutes Before the Murder
One Month After the Murder
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Karin Slaughter
About the Publisher
Map
PROLOGUE
Will Trent sat down at the edge of the lake to take off his hiking boots. The numbers on his watch glowed in the darkness. An hour away from midnight. He could hear an owl in the distance. A gentle breeze whispered through the trees. The moon was a perfect circle in the night sky, light bouncing off the figure in the water. Sara Linton was swimming toward the floating dock. A cool blue light bathed her body as she cut through the gently rolling waves. Then she turned, doing a lazy backstroke as she smiled at Will.
“Are you coming in?”
Will couldn’t answer. He knew that Sara was accustomed to his awkward silences, but this wasn’t one of those times. He felt speechless just looking at her. All he could think was the same thing everybody thought when they saw them together: what the hell was she doing with him? She was so damn clever and funny and beautiful and he couldn’t even get the knot out of his shoelace in the dark.
He forced off the boot as she swam back toward him. Her long auburn hair was sleek to her head. Her bare shoulders were peeking out from the blackness of the water. She had stripped off her clothes before diving in, laughing at his observation that it seemed like a bad idea to jump into something you couldn’t see in the middle of the night when no one knew where you were.
But it seemed like a worse idea not to follow the wishes of a naked woman asking you to join her.
Will took off his socks, then stood so that he could unbutton his pants. Sara let out a low, appreciative whistle as he started to undress.
“Whoa,” she said. “A little more slowly, please.”
He laughed, but he didn’t know what to do with the feeling of lightness inside his chest. Will had never experienced this type of prolonged happiness. Sure, there were times that he’d known bursts of joy—his first kiss, his first sexual encounter, his first sexual encounter that had lasted more than three seconds, graduating from college, cashing an actual paycheck, the day he had finally managed to divorce his hateful ex-wife.
This was different.
Will and Sara were two days out from their wedding, and the euphoria he had experienced during the ceremony hadn’t subsided. If anything, the feeling was heightened with every passing hour. She would smile at him, or laugh at one of his stupid jokes, and it was like his heart turned into a butterfly. Which he understood wasn’t a manly thing to think, but there were things you thought and things you shared, and this was one of the many reasons he preferred an awkward silence.
Sara gave a whoop when Will made a show of peeling off his shirt before he stepped into the lake. He wasn’t used to walking around naked, especially outdoors, so he ducked under a lot more quickly than he should’ve. The water was cold, even for mid-summer. Chills prickled his skin. He could feel mud unpleasantly sucking around his feet. Then Sara wrapped her body around his and Will had no complaints.
He said, “Hey.”
“Hey.” She stroked back his hair. “Have you ever been in a lake before?”
“Not by choice,” he admitted. “Are you sure the water’s safe?”
She thought about it. “Copperheads are usually more active at dusk. We’re probably too far north for cottonmouths.”
Will hadn’t considered snakes. He had grown up in downtown Atlanta, surrounded by dirty concrete and used syringes. Sara had grown up in a college town in rural South Georgia, surrounded by nature.
And snakes, apparently.
“I have a confession,” she said. “I told Mercy we lied to her.”
“I figured,” Will said. The incident between Mercy and her family tonight had been intense. “Is she gonna be okay?”
“Probably. Jon seems like a good kid.” Sara shook her head over the futility of it all. “It’s hard being a teenager.”
Will tried to lighten things up. “There’s something to be said for growing up in an orphanage.”
She pressed her finger to his lips, which he guessed was her way of saying not funny. “Look up.”
Will looked up. Then he let his head drop back as a sense of awe washed over him. He had never seen actual stars in the sky. Not stars like these, at least. Bright, individual pinpricks in the velvety black expanse of night. Not flattened out by light pollution. Not dulled by smog or haze. He took in a deep breath. Felt his heartbeat start to slow. The only sound was literal crickets. The only man-made light was a distant twinkle coming from the wrap-around porch on the main house.
He kind of loved it here.
They’d hiked five miles through rocky terrain to get to the McAlpine Family Lodge. The place had been around so long that Will had heard about it when he was a kid. He had dreamed about going one day. Canoeing, paddle boarding, mountain bike riding, hiking, eating s’mores by a campfire. That he had made the trip with Sara, that he was a happily married man on his honeymoon, was a fact that brought him more wonder than every star in the sky.
Sara said, “Places like this, you scratch a little bit under the surface and all sorts of bad things come out.”
Will knew that she was still thinking about Mercy. The brutal argument with her son. The cold response from her parents. Her pitiful brother. Her total dick of an ex-husband. Her eccentric aunt. Then there were the other guests with their problems, which had been amplified by the liberal amount of alcohol poured at the communal dinner. Which reminded Will again that when he’d dreamed about this place as a kid, he hadn’t anticipated that other people would be here. Especially one asshole in particular.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Sara told him. “This is why we lied.”
That wasn’t exactly what he was going to say, but it was close.
Will was a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Sara had trained as a pediatrician and was currently serving as a medical examiner with the GBI. Both occupations tended to elicit long conversations from strangers, not all of them good and some of them very bad. Concealing their jobs had felt like a better way to enjoy their honeymoon.
Then again, saying you were one thing didn’t stop you from being the other. They were both the kind of people who worried about other people. Particularly Mercy. She seemed to have the entire world against her right now. Will knew how much strength it took to keep your head up, to keep moving forward, when everyone else in your life was trying to pull you down.
“Hey.” Sara hugged him closer, wrapping her legs around his waist. “I have another confession.”
Will smiled because she was smiling. The butterfly in his chest started to stir. Then other things stirred because he could feel the heat of her pressing against his body.
He asked, “What’s your confession?”
“I can’t get enough of you.” Sara kissed her way up the side of his neck, using her teeth to tease out a response. The chills came back. The feel of her breath in his ear flooded his brain with need. He let his hand slowly travel down. Her breath caught when he touched her. He could feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his bare chest.
Then a sharp, loud scream pierced the night air.
“Will.” Sara’s body had tensed. “What was that?”
He had no idea. He couldn’t tell if it was human or animal. The scream had been high-pitched, blood-curdling. Not a word or a cry for help, but a sound of unrestrained terror. The kind of noise that made the primal part of your brain kick into fight or flight.
Will wasn’t built for flight.
He held onto Sara’s hand as they quickly made their way toward shore. He picked up his clothes, gave Sara her things. Will looked out over the water as he put on his shirt. He knew from the map that the lake spread out like a slumbering snowman. The swimming area was at the head. The shoreline disappeared into the darkness around the curve of the abdomen. Sound was hard to pin down. The obvious source of the scream was where the people were. Four other couples and a single man were staying at the lodge. The McAlpine family was in the main house. Leaving out Will and Sara, the guests were in five of the ten cottages that fanned away from the dining hall. That brought the total number to eighteen people on the compound.
Any one of them could’ve screamed.
“The fighting couple at dinner.” Sara worked the buttons on her dress. “The dentist was wasted. The IT guy was—”
“What about the single guy?” Will’s cargo pants skidded up his wet legs. “The one who kept needling Mercy?”
“Chuck,” Sara provided. “The lawyer was obnoxious. How did he get on the Wi-Fi?”
“His horse-obsessed wife annoyed everybody.” Will shoved his bare feet into his boots. His socks went into his pocket. “The lying app guys are up to something.”
“What about the Jackal?”
Will looked up from tying his bootlace.
“Babe?” Sara kicked over her sandals so she could slide them on. “Are you—”
He left the lace untied. He didn’t want to talk about the Jackal. “Ready?”
They started up the path. Will felt the urge to move, picking up the pace until Sara started to lag. She was incredibly athletic, but her shoes were made for strolling, not running.
He stopped, turning to her. “Is it okay if—”
“Go,” she said. “I’ll catch up.”
Will left the path, taking a straight line through the woods. He used the porch light as his guide, his hands pushing away limbs and prickly vines that caught at his shirt sleeves. His wet feet were rubbing inside his boots. It had been a mistake to leave the one lace untied. He thought about stopping, but the wind shifted, carrying an odor like copper pennies in the air. Will couldn’t tell if he was smelling blood or if his cop brain was throwing out sense memories of past crime scenes.
The scream could’ve come from an animal.
Even Sara hadn’t been sure. Will’s only certainty was the thing that had made the sound was in fear of its life. Coyote. Bobcat. Bear. There were a lot of creatures in the woods that could make other creatures feel that way.
Was this an overreaction?
He stopped trudging through the overgrowth, turning around to locate the path. He could tell where Sara was, not by sight but by the sound of her shoes on the gravel. She was halfway between the main house and the lake. Their cottage was on the far end of the compound. She was probably trying to form a plan. Were there any lights on in the other cottages? Should she start knocking on doors? Or was she thinking the same as Will, that they were being overly vigilant considering what they both did for a living, and this was going to be a really funny story to tell her sister about how they heard an animal give a death cry and rushed off to investigate rather than having hot lake sex.
Will could not appreciate the humor right now. Sweat had pasted his hair to his head. A blister was rubbing on the back of his heel. Blood trickled from his forehead where a vine had ripped open the skin. He listened to the silence in the woods. Not even the crickets were chirping now. He slapped at an insect that bit him on the side of his neck. Something scurried in the trees overhead.
Maybe he didn’t love this place after all.
Worse, at a very deep level, he blamed the Jackal for this misery. Nothing had ever gone right in Will’s life when that asshole was around, dating back to when they were kids. The sadistic prick had always been a walking bad luck charm.
Will rubbed his face with his hands like he could erase any thoughts of the Jackal from his brain. They weren’t kids anymore. Will was a grown man on his honeymoon.
He headed back toward Sara. Or at least in the direction he thought Sara had gone. Will had lost all sense of time and direction in the dark. There was no telling how long he’d run through the forest like he was tackling a Ninja Warrior set. Walking through the overgrowth was a lot harder without the adrenaline pushing him to run face-first into hanging vines. Will silently formed his own plan. Once he reached the path, he would put on his socks and tie his bootlace so he wasn’t limping through the rest of the week. He would locate his beautiful wife. He would take her back to the cottage and they could pick up where they had left off.
“Help!”
Will froze.
There wasn’t any uncertainty this time. The scream was so pronounced that he knew it had come from the mouth of a woman.
Then she screamed again—
“Please!”
Will bolted away from the path, running toward the lake. The sound had come from the opposite side of the swimming area, toward the bottom of the snowman. He kept his head down. Legs pumping. He could hear the blood rushing through his ears alongside the echo of the screams. The woods quickly turned into a dense forest. Low-hanging limbs slashed at his arms. Gnats swarmed around his face. The terrain suddenly dropped. He landed sideways on his foot. His ankle rolled.
He ignored the sharp pain, forcing himself to keep going. Will tried to get his adrenaline in check. He had to slow his pace. The compound was at a higher elevation than the lake. There was a steep drop-off near the dining hall. He found the back end of the Loop Trail, then followed another zig-zagging path down. His heart was still pumping. His brain was still reeling with recriminations. He should’ve paid attention to his instincts the first time. He should’ve figured this out. He felt sick about what he was going to find, because the woman had screamed for her life, and there was no predator more vicious than a human being.
He coughed as the air turned thick with smoke. The moonlight broke through the trees just in time for him to see the ground was terraced. Will stumbled into a clearing. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the ground. Tools were everywhere. Will kept his head on a swivel as he jogged past sawhorses and extension cords and a generator that had been turned on its side. There were three more cottages, all of them in various stages of repair. A tarp covered one roof. Windows were boarded up in the next. The last cabin was on fire. Flames licked out between the log siding. The door was half-open. Smoke ribboned from a busted side window. The roof wasn’t going to hold for much longer.
The screams for help. The fire.
Someone had to be inside.
Will took a deep breath before he ran up the porch stairs. Kicked the door wide open. A blast of heat snatched the moisture from his eyes. All but one of the windows was boarded up. The only light was from the fire. He crouched down, keeping himself below the smoke as he made his way through the living room. Into the tiny kitchen. The bathroom with space for a soaking tub. The small closet. His lungs started to ache. He was running out of breath. He inhaled a mouthful of black smoke as he headed toward the bedroom. No door. No fixtures. No closet. The back wall of the cottage had been stripped to the studs.
They were too narrow for him to fit through.
Will heard a loud creak over the roar of the fire. He jogged back into the living room. The ceiling was fully engulfed. Flames were chewing away the support beams. The roof was collapsing. Chunks of burning wood rained down. Will could barely see for the smoke.
The front door was too far away. He ran toward the busted window, jumping at the last minute, hurtling past falling debris. He rolled to the ground. Coughs racked his body. His skin was tight, as though it wanted to boil from the heat. He tried to stand up, but could only make it to his hands and knees before he coughed out a wad of black soot. His nose was running. Sweat poured from his face. He coughed again. His lungs felt like shattered glass. He pressed his forehead to the ground. Mud smacked at his singed eyebrows. He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose.
