PRAISE FOR JENNIFER JAYNES
“. . . intricately plotted . . . The action builds to a jaw-dropping conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Stranger Inside
“Impressively original . . . Jennifer Jaynes has proven herself to be a consummate and consistently entertaining novelist.”
—Midwest Book Review on The Stranger Inside
“Great mystery writing at its best.”
—Fresh Fiction on The Stranger Inside
“Talented Jennifer Jaynes turns up the intensity with her first stand-alone thriller: The Stranger Inside, an edge-of-your-seat crime thriller solidifying her place alongside the best of female crime writers out today!”
—Judith D. Collins Must Read Books Blog
“Jennifer Jaynes has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Her stories are deep, dark, and twisted . . . I can never turn the pages fast enough.”
—Minka Kent, international bestselling author of The Thinnest Air
“Jennifer Jaynes writes a smart and twisty thriller that’s guaranteed to keep you reading well past bedtime . . . I am anxiously awaiting the next book.”
—Gregg Olsen, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of A Wicked Snow (on Don’t Say a Word)
“Jennifer Jaynes serves up pulse-pounding suspense with a large helping of heart . . . She’s an author to be reckoned with.”
—J. Carson Black, New York Times bestselling author of Darkness on the Edge of Town
“Jaynes dazzles with shocking twists and turns that will keep you riveted to the very last page.”
—Lisa Regan, award-winning author of Finding Claire Fletcher
“The ending was mind-blowing. There were so many shocking twists and turns one right after another, I was truly left speechless when I finished this one . . . Can’t wait to read more from this amazing author!”
—The Princess of Everything on The Stranger Inside
OTHER TITLES BY JENNIFER JAYNES
The Stranger Inside
Disturbed
Strangers Series
Never Smile at Strangers
Ugly Young Thing
Don’t Say a Word
Children’s Books
I Care About Me
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Jaynes
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503903913
ISBN-10: 1503903915
Cover design by Scott Biel
For Colton Berrett
A beautiful soul gone way too soon.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1 BARBARA AND MADDIE
CHAPTER 2 DANIEL
CHAPTER 3 RACHEL
CHAPTER 4 DANIEL
CHAPTER 5 DANIEL
CHAPTER 6 RACHEL
CHAPTER 7 DANIEL
CHAPTER 8 DANIEL
CHAPTER 9 RACHEL
CHAPTER 10 MIA
CHAPTER 11 DANIEL
CHAPTER 12 ANDY
CHAPTER 13 RACHEL
CHAPTER 14 DANIEL
CHAPTER 15 RACHEL
CHAPTER 16 MIA
CHAPTER 17 DANIEL
CHAPTER 18 MIA
CHAPTER 19 RACHEL
CHAPTER 20 DANIEL
CHAPTER 21 RACHEL
CHAPTER 22 DANIEL
CHAPTER 23 DANIEL
CHAPTER 24 MIA
CHAPTER 25 DANIEL
CHAPTER 26 MIA
CHAPTER 27 DANIEL
CHAPTER 28 MIA
CHAPTER 29 DANIEL
CHAPTER 30 DANIEL
CHAPTER 31 DANIEL
CHAPTER 32 MIA
CHAPTER 33 DANIEL
CHAPTER 34 RACHEL
CHAPTER 35 DANIEL
CHAPTER 36 MIA
CHAPTER 37 RACHEL
CHAPTER 38 DANIEL
CHAPTER 39 DANIEL
CHAPTER 40 MIA
CHAPTER 41 DANIEL
CHAPTER 42 MIA
CHAPTER 43 RACHEL
CHAPTER 44 MIA
CHAPTER 45 DANIEL
CHAPTER 46 DANIEL
CHAPTER 47 MIA
CHAPTER 48 DANIEL
CHAPTER 49 MIA
CHAPTER 50 TEDDY
CHAPTER 51 MIA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
GOOSEFLESH DIMPLED DR. Daniel Winters’s arms as he lay in bed, trying to get his bearings. The room was cool and dark except for a narrow slice of light glowing from the bottom of a door on the other side of the room. But the door was in the wrong place.
What the—? He wasn’t in his bedroom.
The room slanted a little as he sat up. Rubbing the goose bumps from his arms, he listened and could hear the pounding water of a shower. Then an air-conditioning unit shuddered on and began blasting more chilled air. Slowly, it all flooded back to him: He and his boss, Teddy, at the hotel bar. Teddy leaving. A woman approaching him, asking if she could sit in the seat Teddy had vacated.
She hadn’t been his type.
She’d been far too attractive.
Daniel had never trusted women who were over-the-top beautiful because as a child, he’d seen several of them slowly and systematically destroy his father. In his experience, exceptionally beautiful women also had inferior personalities and intelligence compared to women of average physical beauty. He theorized that was because the beautiful never had to try very hard. People were seduced, even hypnotized, by superficial beauty, no matter what was—or more important, wasn’t—on the inside. But Daniel wasn’t one of those people.
He recalled the woman’s long chestnut hair, her blue eyes, and full, heart-shaped lips. Her syrupy voice and the confident way she carried herself.
“Another chardonnay, please,” she’d called to the young bartender. Then she’d pointed to Daniel. “And another drink for this gentleman.”
“No, thank you. That’s unnecessary,” Daniel said, a bit surprised. He couldn’t remember a woman, especially one he didn’t know, ever offering to buy him a drink before.
“I know.” She smiled, a dimple dotting her cheek.
“Another ginger ale, sir?” the bartender asked.
“Ginger ale, huh? Wild night on the town, I see,” the woman remarked.
She was witty.
Pay the tab and go, the little voice—the one that had talked sense into him his entire adult life, that had protected him and kept him from serious harm—had whispered.
Although he usually listened to the voice without pause, he decided to ignore it this time. He convinced himself that one drink wouldn’t hurt. After all, it was within the rules he’d set for himself: three drinks maximum while out and never, ever at home.
He was curious about the woman. Of what she wanted from him. He had no expectations, so what the hell. He had nothing to lose.
“Make it a whiskey on the rocks, please,” he said. “Jameson.”
Bad things, Daniel, the voice warned. Alcohol always leads to bad things. You know that.
Again, he ignored the intrusion. He turned to the woman. “Thanks for the drink.”
She gave him a little nod.
He noticed that despite her nearly perfect exterior, the nails at the ends of her slender fingers were bitten to the quicks.
“Here you go,” the bartender said, sliding Daniel’s drink in front of him. He picked up the glass and took a long sip, the whiskey burning a fiery path down his throat.
Oh, how he missed that feeling.
And didn’t miss it.
He took another sip.
“So . . . how long have you been a doctor?” the woman asked.
Daniel almost choked on his liquor. Surprised, he turned to her. “What makes you think I’m a doctor?”
She tilted her head toward him, her glossy hair falling like a curtain against her left shoulder. “Well, I’m guessing you came here from work, so the way you’re dressed tells me you’re a professional, but you’re not wearing a suit, so that rules out finance,” she said, her eyes sharp, intelligent. “You ordered a middle-of-the-road drink—nothing pretentious—so you’re not in the movie business. And you don’t seem to have the arrogance of a lawyer.”
He felt his brow crease. “That’s . . . amazing.”
Her lips twitched with amusement. “Also, I overheard someone saying hello to you earlier. He called you Dr. Winters.”
Daniel grinned. Witty and funny. Despite himself, his interest was piqued.
“So, what is it that you do?” he asked.
“I’m a cocktail waitress. I work at Jiminy’s, just outside Malibu.”
“Cocktail waitress, huh?”
They proceeded to talk for hours. He learned that her name was Mia, that she was staying in one of the hotel rooms upstairs because her apartment was being fumigated. That she had been born and raised in Arizona but had been living in Los Angeles for the last two years. That she wasn’t a big people person and considered herself a homebody. She was very articulate and Daniel was surprised to find her to be highly intelligent, despite her looks. She’d also been a bit philosophical, at one point asking him if he thought he was destined for happiness.
The question had seemed to come from left field. “That’s pretty random,” he said, studying her, searching for signs that she’d had too much to drink. In his experience, that was the only time people broached such subjects. But she seemed fine.
“It’s just something I think about from time to time,” she said, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “You don’t?”
“No, never,” he lied. “How about you? Do you think you were destined for happiness?”
She shook her head. “Actually, no. I don’t.”
Her answer had surprised him. Up to this point, she’d seemed pretty upbeat.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, then her eyes slid away and she seemed to focus on something on the other side of the bar. “I just have this sort of knowing. Deep down,” she said. “Plus, my experiences so far . . . they’ve really been shit.”
Her eyes returned to his, and she watched him for a beat. Then her lovely lips curved into a smile and she changed the subject. As they continued to talk, he studied her closely. He also kept ordering more whiskey and far exceeded his three-drink maximum. He’d gotten drunk. So drunk that he also blacked out at some point. It was something he hadn’t done in years.
I warned you, Daniel. But you kept ignoring me.
Blinking himself back to reality, he now felt for the bedside lamp and flipped it on. He looked around the dimly lit room for his clothes and found them neatly folded at the foot of the bed. The air-conditioning unit shuddered loudly again, then went quiet and he could hear the sound of water running again.
The woman was in the shower.
Grab your clothes, and get the hell out of here, the voice instructed.
It was right, as usual. If he left now, before she emerged from the shower, he could avoid the awkwardness that would undoubtedly ensue. He could just drive home and forget last night ever happened. That he’d ever even met her.
But he didn’t move.
He heard the faucet squeak as she turned off the shower. Seconds later, the bathroom door opened. A cloud of coconut-scented steam drifted out and the woman appeared with a fluffy white towel wrapped around her body.
“You’re awake,” she said, sauntering toward him, her hair damp.
“I am,” he said. His voice was gravelly from dehydration. “May I?” he asked, pointing to the glass of water on the bedside table.
She nodded.
He reached for the glass and drank half of its contents. His head pulsing from last night’s alcohol, he turned his attention back to her. “Good morning, by the way.”
“Good morning,” she said, smiling. “I had a really great time last night.”
“Me too,” he said, setting the glass back on the table and scratching his elbow. And he was pretty sure he had, even though he couldn’t remember it all.
Staring mischievously at him, she casually let her towel drop to the floor, then crawled onto the bed and slid beneath the covers with him. When she pressed her soft lips against his mouth, his entire body relaxed.
The voice began protesting again, but he forced it to the back of his mind. He was exactly where he wanted to be. He was also blissfully unaware that his life was about to change in every way imaginable—and within a year’s time, one of them would be dead and the other would be on the run.
CHAPTER 1
BARBARA AND MADDIE
Ten Months Later
BARBARA HEMSWORTH WAS roused from a deep sleep a little before 1:00 a.m.
Had she heard something downstairs?
Or had she only been dreaming?
The bedroom was quiet. All she could hear was the gentle ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
She rolled over and reached to touch her husband, Sean, but his side of the bed was empty. He must have fallen asleep on the couch again, she thought.
Frowning, she peeled back the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Then she pulled on her robe and stepped into the dark hallway, the hardwood floor cold beneath her bare feet.
Downstairs, she found Sean in the living room on the larger of their two bisque-colored couches. He was fast asleep, still wearing a shirt and tie. His laptop was on the coffee table. A manila folder lay beside it, but half of its contents had spilled to the floor.
Her husband was a pediatrician and often stayed up late charting, reviewing labs, and responding to patient emails. So, finding him collapsed on the couch wasn’t odd.
Especially lately.
Things were tense both at work and at home. Yesterday, Sean had told her that he’d received a death threat because he’d spoken out about his concerns about a new drug they were giving kids at his clinic. He’d been instructed to recant his concerns publicly, but Sean hadn’t been willing to do so. He’d gone to both the police and the FBI with the threat, but neither had seemed to take him very seriously.
Earlier that day, Barbara had upgraded their home security system and instructed their teenage children, Justin, sixteen, and Maddie, fourteen, to stay inside the house until further notice. There was to be no going out with friends. Not even school. No going anywhere period unless they were accompanied by either Sean or Barbara.
Barbara stared at her husband. His mouth was slightly agape, and he was snoring softly, rhythmically. She was reaching out to wake him, to ask him to come up to bed with her, when she heard a rustling sound in the kitchen.
She froze.
Was it one of the kids?
“Justin?” she called. “Maddie?”
Silence.
Had one of them snuck out of the house tonight and was slipping back in? Could that be what had woken her a few minutes ago? Justin had been grounded a month ago for doing that very thing. But she’d caught him sneaking back into his bedroom window upstairs. Not a door or a window down here. Plus, now that the security system—
She spun in the direction of the security system panel and saw that the system had been disarmed. Every muscle in h
er body went rigid. She remembered Sean engaging it earlier that evening. She’d watched him do it. Who would have turned it off?
A shadow darkened the other side of the room, and a man stepped in, holding a gun. A bolt of terror shooting through her, Barbara screamed for Sean to wake up.
Fourteen-year-old Maddie was lying upstairs in bed, texting her boyfriend and listening to the band Fall Out Boy when her door swung open, and her older brother, Justin, came bursting into her bedroom.
She jerked to a sitting position and yanked the earbuds from her ears. She was about to yell at him—to ask him why the hell he was barging in without knocking—but stopped when she got a good look at him. His face was pale, and his eyes were round as saucers.
Her heart stuttered. Something was wrong. “What is it?”
“You didn’t hear that?” he whispered, his breath ragged.
“Hear what?”
He glanced nervously at the doorway. “I think it was Mom. It sounded like she screamed, but . . .”
The hair rose on the back of Maddie’s neck. “Seriously?”
A shadow of doubt crossed his face. “I . . . I’m not sure.”
The way Justin was acting was creeping her out. He was usually so calm and relaxed. Maybe even too relaxed. She recalled how weird their parents had been behaving earlier. How they’d been whispering between themselves and how insistent they’d been about her and Justin not leaving the house. About keeping the doors locked. Not opening them for strangers. Some guy from a home security company had even been at the house this morning. Their mom said their dad had received some kind of threat at work.
She watched Justin step into her doorway and peer out into the dark hallway. “It’s probably nothing, but just in case, stay in here, and lock your door,” he said, his voice low. “I’m going to go see what’s going on.”
Maddie scrambled off her bed. “But I don’t—”
“Just do it, Maddie!”
Justin disappeared into the hallway.
As Maddie shut and locked the door, an odor filled her nostrils. A foreign one she couldn’t place. But it smelled dangerous.
Could someone be in the house? she wondered. She slowly backed away from the door and grabbed her cell phone from her bed. Her thumbs flying across the keypad, she shot a text to her boyfriend: Something weird is going on here.
Malice Page 1