THE SILENT WIFE
Karin Slaughter
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Karin Slaughter 2020
Will Trent is a trademark of Karin Slaughter Publishing LLC.
TROUBLE ME Written by Natalie Merchant and Dennis Drew ©1989 Christian Burial Music (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. International Copyright Secured.
Lyrics from:
“Whistle” (written by Flo Rida, David Edward Glass, Marcus Killian, Justin Franks, Breyan Isaac, Antonio Mobley, Arthur Pingrey and Joshua Ralph)
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio)
“The Girl from Ipanema” (written by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes, English lyrics by Norman Gimbel)
“My Kind of Town” (written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn)
“Funky Cold Medina” (written by Young MC, Matt Dike and Michael Ross)
“Into the Unknown” (written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez)
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photograph © Ildiko Neer/Trevillion Images
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: 9780008303440
Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008303464
Version: 2020-05-13
Dedication
For Wednesday
Epigraph
Speak to me.
Let me have a look inside these eyes while I’m learning.
Please don’t hide them just because of tears.
Let me send you off to sleep with a “There, there, now stop your turning and tossing.”
Let me know where the hurt is and how to heal.
Spare me? Don’t spare me anything troubling.
Trouble me, disturb me with all your cares and your worries.
Speak to me and let our words build a shelter from the storm.
Trouble Me
by Natalie Merchant and Dennis Drew,
10,000 Maniacs
Please note that this is a work of fiction. I have taken some liberties with the timeline.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1. Atlanta
Chapter 2
Chapter 3. Grant County—Tuesday
Chapter 4. Atlanta
Chapter 5. Grant County—Tuesday
Chapter 6. Atlanta
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10. Grant County—Wednesday
Chapter 11. Atlanta
Chapter 12. Grant County—Wednesday
Chapter 13. Atlanta
Chapter 14. Grant County—Wednesday
Chapter 15. Atlanta
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18. Grant County—Thursday
Chapter 19. Atlanta
Chapter 20
Chapter 21. Grant County—Thursday
Chapter 22. Atlanta
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25. Grant County—Thursday
Chapter 26. Atlanta
Chapter 27. Grant County—Thursday—One Week Later
Chapter 28. Atlanta
Chapter 29
Chapter 30. One week later
Author’s Note
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Karin Slaughter
About the Publisher
Prologue
Beckey Caterino stared into the darkest corners of the dorm refrigerator. She angrily scanned the food labels, searching for her scrawled initials on anything—cottage cheese, Lunchables, bagel bites, vegan hot dogs, even carrot sticks.
KP, Kayleigh Pierce. DL, Deneshia Lachland. VS, Vanessa Sutter.
“Bitches.” Beckey slammed the fridge door hard enough to make the beer bottles rattle. She kicked the closest thing she could find, which happened to be the trashcan.
Empty yogurt containers tumbled out across the floor. Crumpled bags of Skinny Girl popcorn. Diet Coke-swilled bottles. All with two letters written in black magic marker across the front.
BC.
Beckey stared at the depleted packages of food that she had bought with her precious little money that her asshole roommates had eaten while she’d spent the night at the library working on a paper that was fifty percent of her Organic Chemistry grade. She was supposed to meet with her professor at seven to make sure she was on the right track.
Her eyes flicked to the clock.
4:57 a.m.
“You fucking bitches!” she screamed up at the ceiling. She turned on every light she could find. Her bare feet burned a track across the hall carpet. She was exhausted. She could barely stand up straight. The bag of Doritos and two giant cinnamon rolls from the library vending machine had turned into concrete inside her stomach. The only thing that had propelled her from the library to the dorm was the promise of nutrition.
“Get up, you thieving bitch!” She banged her fist so hard on Kayleigh’s door that it popped open.
Pot smoke curtained the ceiling. Kayleigh blinked from beneath the sheets. The guy next to her rolled over.
Markus Powell, Vanessa’s boyfriend.
“Shit!” Kayleigh jumped out of bed, naked but for one sock on her left foot.
Beckey banged her fists against the walls as she made her way to her own bedroom. The smallest bedroom, which she had volunteered to take because she was a doormat who didn’t know how to stand up to three girls who were her same age but had double her bank account.
“You can’t tell Nessa!” Kayleigh rushed in behind her, still naked. “It was nothing, Beck. We got drunk and—”
We got drunk and.
Every freaking story these bitches told started with those same four words. When Vanessa had been caught blowing Deneshia’s boyfriend. When Kayleigh’s brother had accidentally peed in the closet. When Deneshia had “borrowed” her underwear. They were always drunk or stoned or screwing around or screwing each other, because this wasn’t college, this was Big Brother where no one could be evicted and everyone got gonorrhea.
“Beck, come on.” Kayleigh rubbed her bare arms. “She was going to break up with him anyway.”
Beckey could either start screaming and never stop or get out of here as fast as possible.
“Beck—”
“I’m going for a run.” She yanked open a drawer. She looked for her socks, but of course none of her socks matched. Her favorite sports bra was wadded up under
