The Two Lila Bennetts

by Fenton, Liz

  PRAISE FOR GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT

  “Girls’ Night Out is a heart-stopper of a thriller, rippling with suspense from its opening pages. But it’s also much more: Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke plumb the intricacies of female friendship with skill and depth and heart. It’s a deeply satisfying read, and one you won’t want to miss.”

  —Megan Abbott, national bestselling author of You Will Know Me

  “It’s trouble in paradise for three best friends struggling to make amends in the latest thriller from the dynamic writing duo of Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke. Girls’ Night Out is a chilling page-turner full of secrets and hostility that will leave readers shocked again and again . . . and again. I loved it.”

  —Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl and Every Last Lie

  “A wild ride into a high-powered girls’ trip to Mexico. Suspense at its best. Liz and Lisa have taken their writing partnership to a new level!”

  —Kaira Rouda, USA Today bestselling author of Best Day Ever

  “This suspenseful novel is full of twists and turns and makes clever use of chronology. It will make you think twice about going on a girls’ night out!”

  —Jane Corry, bestselling author of My Husband’s Wife and Blood Sisters

  “In Girls’ Night Out, Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke guide readers on a suspenseful international tour of friendship at its best and worst. As enviable fun takes a turn through suspicion toward pure fear, you’ll find out just how wrong a trip to paradise can go.”

  —Jessica Strawser, author of Almost Missed You and Not That I Could Tell

  “Set against the idyllic backdrop of tropical Mexico, Girls’ Night Out twists its way through the dark recesses of friendship, proving that nothing is ever uncomplicated or quite as shiny as it seems. An exciting new thriller from a proven team.”

  —Roz Nay, author of Our Little Secret

  “Girls’ Night Out is an utterly enthralling read that is impossible to put down. The dual timelines are captivating, just days apart, as they unfold both the frantic search for a missing friend and the circumstances that led to her disappearance. This is a book that makes you question how well you truly know even your closest friends and also what you yourself might be capable of doing.”

  —Kathleen Barber, author of Are You Sleeping

  “Liz and Lisa’s Girls’ Night Out is a strong follow-up to the bestselling The Good Widow. Three friends go on a girls’ trip to Mexico to try to repair their friendship. But when one of them goes missing after a night out drinking—and fighting—they’re left trying to puzzle out what happened the night before. Sparkling characters, real friendships, and a fast-paced mystery: What more could you ask for in your next read?”

  —Catherine McKenzie, international bestselling author of Hidden

  “Lisa Steinke and Liz Fenton have conjured up the tropical vacation of your nightmares. After reading the unsettling Girls’ Night Out, you’ll never look at a tequila shot the same way again.”

  —Janelle Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear

  PRAISE FOR THE GOOD WIDOW

  A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST SUMMER BOOKS 2017 SELECTION, MYSTERY/THRILLER

  “Fenton and Steinke deliver a complicated tale of love, loss, intrigue, and disaster . . . This drama keeps the pages turning with shocking twists until the bitter end. A great read; recommended for admirers of Jennifer Weiner and Rainbow Rowell.”

  —Library Journal

  “Fans of Joy Fielding will appreciate the story’s fast pacing and sympathetic main character . . . [a] solid psychological thriller . . .”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fenton and Steinke’s talent for domestic drama comes through . . . For readers who enjoy suspense writers like Nicci French.”

  —Booklist

  “A fantastic thriller that will keep you on your toes.”

  —PopSugar

  “Accomplished authors Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke make their suspense debut with great skill and assurance in this enthralling novel of marital secrets and lies, grief and revelation. The Good Widow led me along a winding, treacherous road and made a sharp, startling turn that I didn’t see coming. Unputdownable!”

  —A. J. Banner, #1 Amazon bestselling author of The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife

  “Liz Fenton’s and Lisa Steinke’s The Good Widow begins by asking what you would do if your spouse died in a place he wasn’t supposed to be in with a woman he wasn’t supposed to be with. What follows is a gut-wrenching thriller, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes darkly funny, but always a page-turner. And as you read it late into the night you’ll look over at the person in bed next to you and wonder how well you really know him. A wild, skillfully written ride!”

  —David Bell, author of Since She Went Away

  “An irresistible and twisty page-turner, The Good Widow should come with a delicious warning: this is not the story you think it is.”

  —Deb Caletti, author of He’s Gone

  “The Good Widow is both heartrending and suspenseful, deftly navigating Jacks’s mourning and the loss of her less-than-perfect marriage. The writing is sharp and evocative, the Hawaiian setting is spectacular, and the ending was a wonderful, twisty surprise. A quintessential summer beach read!”

  —Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year

  “The Good Widow is a fresh take on your worst nightmare—your husband dies, and he isn’t where, or with whom, he said he was. I ripped through these pages to see where Fenton and Steinke would take me, which ended up being somewhere unexpected in the best kind of way. You will not be sorry you read this!”

  —Catherine McKenzie, bestselling author of Fractured and Hidden

  ALSO BY

  LIZ FENTON & LISA STEINKE:

  Girls’ Night Out

  The Good Widow

  The Year We Turned Forty

  The Status of All Things

  Your Perfect Life

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke

  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 Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542093712

  ISBN-10: 1542093716

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Lindy Martin

  To Riley, who sparked the idea for this book

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TH
REE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  PROLOGUE

  Wake up! Wake the hell up!

  The sound of my own voice shakes me out of my deep slumber, and my stomach lurches. I’ve lost track of time.

  I’d been doing so well, counting the minutes. Second by second. Focusing on the rhythm of the numbers rather than the tightness of the bonds around my wrists and ankles, the way darkness bleeds into blackness behind my blindfold, my hair haphazardly trapped underneath, my bangs tickling my forehead like a feather every thirteen seconds or so.

  I attempt to assess how long I was asleep. The pain in my ass, which has been pressed against the rock-hard floor, has magnified, but only slightly. The crick in my neck feels about the same as it did before I lost myself to my exhaustion. I release a quick breath. I was probably out for only a few minutes—at least that’s what I hope. I need to keep track of how long I’ve been in here—it’s the only thing keeping me sane, reminding me I’m still alive. I resume my count, this time out loud, my voice quietly echoing off the walls that I may never see.

  But in between the numbers, the counting, in that space where seconds turn to minutes, my life haunts me. Because you don’t end up blindfolded and restrained if you’ve made the best choices. My mind begins to drift, not back to sleep, but to every fork in the road that brought me here.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MONDAY

  “On the count of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant, Jeremiah Taylor, not guilty,” a slender woman says softly. I know her only as juror number eight—but she looks like a Gwendolyn to me, and based on her age, I imagine her to be someone’s grandmother, baking heart-shaped sugar cookies when she’s not reading a verdict in a murder trial. Her silver hair is pulled into a bun, her reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. She fidgets with them as she waits for the judge to respond, and I wonder if she doesn’t agree, if she voted to convict initially and was eventually swayed by another juror—number ten, most likely, his strong chin and confident stature probably giving him power in the jury room. I caught him watching me while the first officer on the scene testified. Juror ten stared right into my eyes. I held his gaze for a long moment before turning back and pulling out the jury sheet, making a small mark near his number. At that point, I calculated ten voting not guilty.

  I can picture the bottle of red I’ll open tonight—ironically called the Prisoner. It’s waiting for me in the wine fridge. The plump red blend from Napa is a postcourt case-win ritual. The first glass will give me a subtle buzz. The second will settle me. And if I allow myself glass number three—actually, scratch that, when I allow myself glass number three, because who am I kidding, it’s two fifteen, and I’m already thinking about it—I’ll get all warm and fuzzy inside and probably break into some Scotchmallows from See’s Candies. Around glass four I’ll be sure to text someone something regrettable that will likely involve some dumb emoji no one uses anymore, like the dancing woman in the red dress, which is highly underrated, if you ask me. She’s in a red dress! She’s dancing! So many different ways that one can be interpreted. But most important, as I reach the bottom of the bottle, I’ll forget how it feels to be Lila Bennett at this moment.

  Despite my better judgment, I look for Stephanie in the courtroom. She’s wiping tears from her dark-green eyes and hugging her mother. She looks up, maybe sensing me, and locks her stare onto mine. We remain there for what feels like a minute. Me, expressionless. Her, scowling. It’s because she hates me. And I don’t blame her. I would probably hate me too. In her mind I helped her dead sister’s husband get away with murder.

  And it’s possible I did. But it’s not my job to know the truth; it’s my duty to give my clients the defense they are legally entitled to. In my mind I see my husband rolling his dark-brown eyes, his thick brows raised in mockery. Because Ethan knows that’s not necessarily how I really feel. That’s my dinner party shtick. But behind closed doors, in my weaker, Prisoner-inspired moments, I have confessed that oftentimes my gut knows the difference. But Ethan says there’s no way I could know if they are lying. That I have to believe them if I represent them. Oh, how I love that he doesn’t judge me. That he can look away from my flaws when I need him to, much in the same way I do for my clients.

  Stephanie grabs her mother’s hand, and they storm out of the courtroom. At the same moment, Jeremiah grabs me and hugs me hard, picking me up off the floor in the process. He whispers “Thank you” in my ear before he is escorted out of the courtroom.

  Call me Jerry, Jer, shit, call me anything as long as you get me off, he said when we first met: him out on bail, having fired his first attorney because he was an idiot—his words, not mine—cruising into my office in downtown Los Angeles as if he were picking me up for lunch instead of attempting to hire me to defend him for murder. He doesn’t look like someone who could kill, but my clientele often doesn’t. They are distinguished, rich, powerful, their slick suits and expensive ties or couture dresses and Louboutins distractions from the anger dancing in their pupils—if you look close enough to see it. Jeremiah’s lips part slightly as he pushes his blond hair away from his eyes before shaking my hand vigorously. I wonder if he is like many of the others—a sociopath who charmed his way through life all while hiding his cruel, unstable, and often dangerous side from the outside world.

  I make my way out of the courtroom and into the hallway, my assistant, Chase, squeezing my arm, his silent way of saying, You did it again. I can’t help but think of Jeremiah’s wife. I should call her by her name—Vivian—although it’s often easier when I don’t. When I imagine the victims simply as the deceased. Because, dammit, the bad guys never get murdered. It’s always good people—like Vivian—who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or in her case, the right place at the wrong time. She’d come home early from her yoga class and stumbled upon an intruder. The prosecution argued that Jeremiah killed her in cold blood, then staged the scene to look like it had been a burglary in progress. In the end, because of a lack of evidence—no murder weapon and no eyewitnesses—they couldn’t convict. I won. But as I push the doors open to exit the building and squint into the glaring afternoon sun, that little voice inside me whispers, Did you really win, Lila?

  I slide my sunglasses on, blow my bangs out of my eyes, and vow to get a haircut this week, my hair an inch too long, covering my shoulder blades and probably making me appear more like a collegiate than a professional. And I already look younger than my thirty-eight years, am still carded regularly. Often given a once-over when a client first sees me in person. Their expression is always the same—Aren’t you a little young to be representing me? But my track record speaks for itself. I’ve won far more cases than I’ve lost. I have a reputation for being a ballbuster in the courtroom. My clients almost always walk away as free men or women, their burdens lifted off their shoulders, transferred slightly onto mine.

  “You!”

  I swivel my head in the direction of Stephanie’s voice. I take a deep breath and brace myself. She’s storming toward me, her ankles wobbling slightly in her heels. But still, she doesn’t slow. In fact, she increases her momentum as if she plans to run me down.

  Chase tries to pull me away, but I stop him. “No, it’s okay. I’m going to let her say whatever she has to say.” He gives me a concerned look, but I shake my head. “I’ve
got this.”

  But whether I really do or not remains to be seen. My heart is pounding. I hate confrontation. And I know how that sounds—a defense attorney who doesn’t like conflict? I can hear all the bad jokes now. In the courtroom I feel protected, like the law is my shield. But now, as Stephanie points her finger at me, her nostrils flaring, I feel much smaller than my five-foot-seven frame.

  “How are you going to live with yourself? You know he did it. You know he killed her.” Stephanie’s voice is shaking slightly. Her eyes are swollen, and she’s biting her lower lip as if to keep from crying. I almost reach out to touch her arm, to console her, but I know that would be ludicrous. “What? Nothing to say? You had plenty to spew in there.” She points to the courthouse. “Character witnesses testifying to what a good guy Jeremiah is—how he donates to charities, volunteers his time.” She laughs, a high-pitched, clipped sound. “It’s all an act. Don’t you get it? He’s a monster, a murderer!” she screams. “And my sister is never coming back.”

  I do get it, I want to say. I do understand that he probably hides who he really is. But if he murdered your sister, he didn’t make any mistakes in the process. He crossed every t, he dotted every i. She was killed in her own home, so his fingerprints were everywhere—because he lived there. Not because he killed her. The fact that he was arrested and charged still shocks me, as the DA didn’t have anything more than circumstantial evidence at best. But Jeremiah didn’t have an alibi that could be corroborated—he said he’d left a meeting at 6:45 p.m. that multiple people from his staff confirmed had happened. But he couldn’t prove what time he’d arrived home. He said it was after eight o’clock. That he’d stopped to watch the sunset, as he’d been known to do before continuing to his house. This means he wasn’t at home at the time of the murder. But no one saw him watching the sun disappear into the Pacific Ocean, and no one had seen him pull into his driveway at the time he claimed. There was also the domestic dispute three months before her death when Vivian had called the police. The DA had ballooned it into a much bigger story than it was. But it still wasn’t enough to get him convicted. Even juror number eight probably knew it.