Cul de Sac (A Chloe Fine Psychological Suspense Mystery—Book 3)

PROLOGUE

Jerry Hilyard pulled his Mercedes Benz into his driveway just after one o’clock on a Monday afternoon and smiled wide. There was nothing better than owning your own business and being rich enough to call it a day whenever you wanted.

Jerry looked forward to the look of surprise on his wife’s face when he told her he was taking her out for a surprise lunch. He wanted to make it a brunch, but he knew Lauren would still be nursing a hangover from the night before. She had stayed out way too late, going, for reasons he still did not understand, to her twenty-year high school reunion. By lunchtime, she should be less cranky—and maybe even up for joining him for a Bloody Mary or two.

He smiled when he thought of the good news that he would be sharing with her: he was planning a two-week getaway to Greece. Just him and her, without the kids. They’d be leaving next month.

Jerry walked to the door, briefcase in hand, excited about how the afternoon might turn out. He found the door locked, which wasn’t unusual. She had never been a trusting sort of woman, even in a neighborhood as well-to-do as theirs.

As he unlocked the door and made his way into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine, he realized that he could not hear the bedroom television. The house was just as quiet as when he had left. Maybe the hangover had not yet run its course.

He wondered how the reunion had gone last night. She hadn’t really spoken about it that morning. He had been in her same graduating class but he

loathed

sentimental nonsense like high school reunions. All it was at its core was an excuse for classmates to get together ten or twenty years later to see who was doing better than everyone else. But once Lauren’s friends had convinced her to go, she’d gotten almost excited about seeing some of her old classmates. Or so it had seemed. The intake of alcohol last night indicated that it might have been a rough night all around.

These thoughts were parading through Jerry’s head as he made his way through the upstairs hallway toward their bedroom. But as he neared the doorway, he stopped.

It was very quiet.

Sure, this was to be expected if Lauren was indeed taking a nap and had not put on Netflix to finish binging whichever show had been her fancy for the week. But this was a different kind of quiet…a total lack of movement or motion that seemed out of place. It was like a silence he could hear—a silence he could literally

feel.

Something’s wrong,

he thought.

It was a frightening thought but still, he moved toward the door quickly. He had to know, had to make sure…

Make sure what?

All he saw at first was red. On the bedsheets, on the walls, a dark red so thick and dark that it was almost black in places.

A scream pushed itself up through his lungs and out of his mouth. He didn’t know if he should go running to her or downstairs to the phone.

In the end, he did neither. His legs gave out and the weight of his gut-wrenching screams took him to the floor, where he pounded his fists, where he tried to make sense of the horrific sight in front of him.