The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller

she’d always been too stressed out to open. There was that book she’d put off reading, the one everyone was talking about. She could download that book. She could read it like a person who reads books. She could burn the midnight oil and get her presentation for Beijing finished ahead of time. She would power through this unsettling freak-out by eating healthy meals, keeping herself fit, reading, sleeping and doing all of the self-care that was clearly lacking in her life.

Sunlight!

That was what she needed. Her mother used to chide her when she was a little girl.

Get your nose out of that book and go outside!

Gina could bring the outside in. She opened the blinds in the living room. She looked out into the street, which was a normal street without a scary man watching her house. She opened the curtains in her bedroom. She went back into the kitchen and opened the door for some fresh air. She leaned over the sink to unlock the window.

What she really needed to do was call Nancy. Her sister would shake her out of this. And she would remember the pink scrunchie, and she would hopefully not tell her daughter that Gina had stolen it because right now, Gina could not handle a screeching howler monkey telling her she was the worst aunt on the planet.

She felt her bubble burst.

Nancy was her older sister, a natural-born, bossy busybody. Worse, she wanted to be her daughter’s best friend, which had worked out just as awesomely as you’d expect.

Gina tried to refill the bubble.

Nancy would not tell her daughter about the scrunchie. She would come over with a bottle of wine and they would laugh about how stupid Gina had been and they would watch home remodeling shows on TV where twenty-five-year-old Canadians had saved a $100,000 down-payment to buy a house while a recent item in Gina’s search history was, Is it safe to eat the part of the bread that does not have mold on it?

She looked down at the empty bowl on the windowsill.

The scrunchie had been there.

And now it wasn’t.

Gina knew that she had not misplaced it, because she was not a misplacer. She was an exact placer, as in she was highly organized, methodical, and tidy. Which was why, according to one quiz, she would be a really good candidate for working from home.

“Fuck me.”

Gina’s fingers twisted the window lock back into place. She would not call Nancy. She would not tell her sister any of this because, legally, it only took two people to get another person committed for a twenty-four-hour psychiatric observation and Gina could not think of one reason right now why her sister and mother would not lock her up in a rubber room.

She reversed course through the house, bolting the doors, drawing the curtains, closing the blinds. The house got dark again. She sat on the couch. She opened up a new Google search. Her fingers rested above the keyboard. She shivered. Either someone was walking over her grave, or her body was telling her that she was about to pass the point of no return.

Gina stared at the cursor on the tablet. She looked around the room. The remote control was lined up to the edge of the coffee table where she always left it. The blanket was neatly folded in its usual spot over the back of the chair. Her gym bag waited by the kitchen door. The keys were on the console table just inside the hallway. Her purse hung from the back of the kitchen chair.

The bowl where she always kept her pink scrunchie with the white daisies was still empty.

Gina typed on the iPad—

Can I buy a gun and have it delivered to my house in Atlanta, Georgia?

17

Sara jotted down some notes from the briefing as she sat at her desk. She stared at Rebecca Caterino’s name. She found herself silently listing the same what ifs that she had asked herself eight years ago. What if Lena had found a pulse? What if Sara had gotten to the woods more quickly? What if those lost thirty minutes had meant the difference between a victim who could identify her attacker and a young woman sentenced to a life of unknown suffering?

Leslie Truong might still be alive. Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister. All of those stolen lives could’ve been returned if only they had found Beckey Caterino’s real attacker.

Or Tommi Humphrey’s.

Sara felt her stomach tighten at the thought of Tommi. She had been wrong to agree to Amanda’s request to reach out to the girl. Every time Sara thought about locating Tommi, her mind flashed up the image of the broken young woman chain-smoking in the backyard of her parents’ home. Sara had been gripping together her hands under the picnic table. Jeffrey had been silently listening, oblivious to the shared trauma of the two women sitting across from him.

Sara returned to her notes.

Heath Caterino. Almost eight years old. He would begin experiencing growing pains. His permanent teeth would push through. His critical thinking would begin to hone. He would start to use language to express humor.

He would ask questions—

Who am I? Where did I come from? How did I get here?

Perhaps not soon, but eventually, the boy might uncover the devastating circumstances of his birth. The internet could offer answers his mother could not give and his grandfather refused to provide. Heath could read about his mother’s attack. He could do the same math that Sara had done, make the same observations as Faith, and find himself forced to shoulder a burden no child should ever have to carry.

So many lives damningly altered by a multitude of what ifs.

Sara could not let herself drown in the past again. She pulled up Faith’s scanned notes on her laptop. She focused her thoughts on the women in front of her.

Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister.

Faith had clearly gotten a head start on the