Influenced by Eva Robinson (best free ebook reader TXT) 📗

“I can’t stop thinking about it. A few days ago, a young woman showed up at the station, a PhD candidate at Harvard. She was panicking. Her laptop had been stolen from her office, and she said there was something very important on it. Some kind of secret information she thought people might want, but she was unwilling to tell me what it was. She said she didn’t know who to trust, and she was sure people were after her. She wanted police protection. She was crying. I hate when women cry. But it was so vague, and she was unwilling to tell me anything else, so there wasn’t really anything I could do. Laptops are stolen all the time. I didn’t realize she was actually in danger. Not without any real details.”

“So what happened?”

“Yesterday morning, she ended up in the hospital—stomach pain, vomiting excessively, unable to breathe.”

“Any diagnosis?”

Michael pushed through the door into a large room with dark blue carpet and sleek rows of ivory desks, dividers demarcating the work spaces and computers. Fluorescent lights flickered above them.

Michael said in a low voice, “The ER doctor I spoke to said he was baffled at first. Her symptoms were progressing too fast for a viral illness. But when her hair started falling out, and her limbs went numb, he was certain she’d been poisoned. Apparently it matched an accidental poisoning case he’d seen while working in Russia. Thallium poisoning, specifically. He was certain of it.”

“Any chance it was an accident?” asked Ciara.

He led her over to an empty desk. “It’s found in rat poison in some countries, but it’s very strictly controlled in the United States. The lieutenant doesn’t necessarily think this should be a priority until we have the autopsy results and toxicology reports. But I can’t get my mind off it.”

Ciara knew why—he was probably wondering if he should have done something more. He couldn’t have, really—not if all he’d had to go on was a stolen laptop. But if someone came to you for help, and ended up dead—well, it would be hard not to ruminate on it.

“Arabella Green. Beautiful name, really,” he added. “Dead at twenty-six. And I want to find out exactly what happened.”

Nine

Rowan sat cross-legged on the bench on her balcony, which looked out over Memorial Drive to the Charles. From here, she had a view of everyone running along the river. She’d taken a million photos of this balcony, and the glass doors that opened into her apartment.

Now she wondered if, somewhere out there, her terrifying clown friend was wandering the streets. Any one of her online stalkers would easily be able to find where she lived.

A shiver of fear crawled up her nape, and she had a sudden and overwhelming desire to run back into her apartment and lock the balcony doors.

But that was what they wanted, of course. Her commenters wanted her to lose her mind.

She turned back to her open-plan apartment, cringing a little at the mess. One half looked picture-perfect—a stairwell that swept up to her loft bed, the wooden walls that had been painted a rustic and faded grey. Watercolors and pencil drawings festooned the brick walls, and the shiny wood floor had been cleared beneath her bed, with an antique olive-green chaise longue.

But the other half—by the kitchen—was cluttered with empty wine bottles, dirty dishes, Amazon boxes, and wet towels.

She pulled her laptop out of her bag. She had announced that she’d finished a draft, so now she actually had to do it. She’d hoped that the announcement would force her to focus.

And yet even now, as soon as her laptop was open, she still found herself scrolling through Facebook and Instagram instead of writing.

Her travel memoir, Fairytale Wanderings, had been a huge success, a book club favorite. She’d given people what they wanted—enchantment. And granted, along with the attention had come a tidal wave of negativity. But there were still tens of thousands of people out there who wanted to read her follow-up book.

Assuming she could ever actually write it.

A breeze rushed off the Charles, and she took a sip of wine.

“Okay, Rowan, time to write. But for real this time.” She pulled her laptop into her lap and opened it. The book was supposed to be called Ceci n'est pas un dating book—A Guide to Living a Life of Glamour, and Getting any Guy you Wanted. Despite the title, it literally was a dating book.

And Rowan was the expert, right? After all, people could see in her photos that she was always surrounded by hot guys with chiseled cheekbones and preppy clothes. Of course she was an expert.

And she’d managed to date Marc Holmes, the brilliant Anglo-French novelist with the sweep of sandy-blond waves and two-day-old stubble. Marc, the ex whom she still thought of nearly every waking moment. Marc, who still had no idea he’d be appearing in her book.

She had to charm him completely before they had that conversation—only it seemed she’d run out of ways to do that. No amount of pouting for the camera or sending him snippets of poetry was sparking a flame these days.

Every one of her followers had a theory about why their relationship had ended, and they all blamed her. They said she’d cheated on him, or that she was a cokehead and had driven him mad with her rages. They said he’d realized how dumb and shallow she was.

And they were right that it had been her fault. But none of them knew what she’d really done.

She closed her eyes, savoring another sip of wine. She’d skipped dinner, which meant the buzz was coming on a bit faster.

Exactly how much wine would it take to stop thinking about Marc?

A lot, considering that she hadn’t been happy once since their relationship ended a year ago. When they were together, it had been the kind of happiness where you want the moment to stretch on and on forever, where the memory seems drenched in honey… Like that