Fight or Flight

by Fern Michaels

Genres: Women's Fiction; Domestic Thrillers; Siblings

Synopsis

In this season's must-read for fans of Nora Roberts, Danielle Steel, and Janet Evanovich, a woman imprisoned by her painful past faces a crisis that might just set her free to claim the life she deserves.

From the comfort of her beautiful mountain-top retreat, Katherine Winston creates her bestselling young adult series, Girls with Unusual Powers. No one in the nearby small town has any idea of her true identity. To them, she’s just the reclusive woman on the mountain, and Katherine is grateful to be left alone.
 
It wasn’t always this way. Though her parents were as neglectful as they were wealthy, Katherine built up a busy, full life. Then tragedy struck and she retreated, panic-stricken at the idea of engaging with anyone again. Aside from her two faithful dogs who provide companionship and security, Katherine mostly interacts with people anonymously online through reader fan pages. 
 
Now one of those fans appears to be in danger, and Katherine desperately wants to help. But that means moving beyond her isolated world for the first time in years. More and more, Katherine can’t shake the feeling that some of her fears may be justified. Someone is watching her, she’s sure of it, and they’re getting closer all the time. And only by leaving her self-imposed exile can she hope to find the answers she needs, the courage to trust again, and an unexpected new beginning . . .

Release date: March 25, 2025

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

Seven years later

Katherine logged onto the Friendlink fan page for readers of her bestselling young adult series, “Girls with Unusual Powers.” She wanted to see if her current work-in-progress, Second Sight, had generated any responses yet from her readers, who had seen the teasers on her website. She used the name Bigfan216, the numbers signifying the date she’d sold her first manuscript. Her identity had never been made public as far as she knew, so she felt safe enough using the numbers as part of her online handle.

This was her favorite time of the evening after a long day spent creating the series that had catapulted her pseudonym into bestseller status. K.C. Winston was a name she’d created for herself at the Burgess Hill Girls’ School in Spain many years ago, when her parents no longer wanted her in the way of their world travels. Only twelve, she had been so frightened traveling alone, then spending almost five years of her life with girls who tormented her because she had a Southern drawl, teasing her to the point that her only refuge was at night when they slept. She wrote stories about strong girls with superpowers who were never made fun of or picked on. Girls she wanted to be, girls from Texas, girls from Louisiana who spoke as she did, and no one poked fun at them. She hid her spiral notebooks beneath her mattress, just like she had at home. She was always fearful they would be found while she attended class.

Katherine had been lucky. No one, not even nosy headmistress Griffith, had known of her secret stories. She knew many other girls complained to their parents about the headmistress sneaking in to look at their private possessions when they went home during holiday breaks. Katherine rarely went home during the breaks, so she knew for a fact the old woman did indeed prowl through their belongings. But she kept quiet for fear the mean headmistress would focus her wrath on her.

To Katherine, her years in Spain were a bad memory, but her entire childhood was dreadful. She’d spent her formative years with parents who ignored her and then the five years before college with classmates who bullied her. It had taken years of reading self-help books and online therapy to accept that she was lovable and kind. Katherine was grateful that part of her life was behind her, and her current lifestyle was not for the faint of heart. Extreme to most, it’d been her normal for more than seven years.

All those years ago, she’d waited for word of Adam during the chaos at the Boston Marathon. Sadly, he’d been one of the three killed by the homemade bombs. It was senseless—several people lost limbs, and lives were changed forever. She remembered when her phone rang and a police officer asked her to come to Massachusetts General Hospital. She had identified Adam’s body, contacted his family members, and then, in a daze of grief and shock, she’d caught a taxi to take her to her apartment.

At home, she’d packed a few essentials and hit the road. She hadn’t even attended Adam’s funeral. It was all too much. She’d spent several days driving through states she’d never been to, not caring that she’d left her job at The Boston Globe and her apartment without a word. She owned the apartment and didn’t need the job, though it was unlike her to act so irrationally. Eventually Katherine had needed to stop. She didn’t care where, just that she had to find a safe place where no one would get hurt, where she could heal.

That place was Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Here, she’d finally had an emotional breakdown. She checked into a motel and just cried for three days. On the fourth day, emotionally exhausted, she decided Blowing Rock was as good a place as any to stay and try to start a new life. She’d contacted a real estate agent, told them exactly what she wanted, would accept nothing less, and that the price wasn’t an issue. For once in her adult life, she was thankful to her parents for leaving her a fortune that would continue for as long as their company, Winston Refineries, located in Texas and Louisiana, continued to process the millions and millions of barrels of oil as it had for four generations before her. She could live in luxury and never want for anything. Katherine found her haven two days later—or so she thought. Once she’d unpacked her few possessions and opened her laptop to check her email, her face turned a ghostly white. It was him—the guy with the dark hair and eyes.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

He and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev had planted the bombs, injuring hundreds and killing three. How could she have known it was him that she’d glimpsed that day? At the time, she’d only wanted to find Adam. But now his face would haunt her forever.

The estate she now called home sat atop a small, private mountain overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. It had six bedrooms, five full baths, and a luxurious master suite with amenities fit for royalty. Her kitchen was massive, with a giant rock fireplace in the casual dining area. There also was a formal dining room with a ridiculously ugly table that would seat at least twenty or more, if desired. She’d immediately fallen in love with her new home, even the furniture it came with—minus the hideous dining room table. She’d made the house her home. The solid oak floors were buffed to a warm golden shade. She added colorful throw rugs throughout the downstairs and in the kitchen, where she spent most of her time. The large kitchen windows gave her a fabulous view of the vast mountain range. She’d purposely left all the downstairs windows unadorned, as she needed to see the view, the trees, the curve of the roads, and the outside world. She’d painted the kitchen cabinets a creamy antique white and added touches of green, with her various plants and herbs scattered on the many windowsills throughout her enormous kitchen. In the dining room and living area, she’d added personal touches here and there. A favorite blanket she’d had since childhood was tossed over the plush gray sofa.

Gardenia-scented candles she’d ordered from a local candlemaker filled the downstairs with the intoxicating scent when she lit them. On her desk was an eyeglass holder shaped like a dachshund, a gift from her editor at the Globe. She kept her computer glasses there when she wasn’t working. She had no photos of her family or of Adam scattered around, as she’d put that part of her life behind her.

She loved her large home, which could’ve housed a big family. It was befitting a wealthy entrepreneur or even a president. It was private, the security system equal to that of the White House, or so she’d been told by the realtor when she’d purchased the mansion. She didn’t believe her for a minute and had her new system installed immediately after she moved in.

Now her only family was Sam and Sophie, her two adopted German shepherds. They were siblings, abandoned by their mother, according to a post she’d run across during her nighttime chats on Friendlink. She’d taken down the number to call, and, sight unseen, she’d had the two pups delivered to her doorstep. That was four years ago. The brother and sister were better than a security system; plus they loved her unconditionally. Katherine returned their love tenfold. Wishing she’d had them when she’d first moved into the large home for both protection and companionship, she was grateful she’d read that ad, and now she couldn’t imagine her life without them. She’d had nightmares for months after the bombing, and they continued to haunt her occasionally. But their intensity had lessened not long after Sam and Sophie entered her life.

When she bought her house, also sight unseen, she’d had the real estate agent outfit her new home with essential supplies that would last for at least a few weeks. The refrigerator was stocked with everything from Perrier mineral water to a dozen meal kits. Local wines were shipped in from the Biltmore Estate. Cheeses and jams were a lifesaver. When her supplies ran low, she prepared for her first visit to a locally owned grocery, the Apple Blossom Gourmet Market, another tidbit of information the realtor provided. She’d been down to three cans of lobster bisque soup and a few crackers. Craving something more substantial, Katherine decided it was time for a trip to the market. She could meet some locals and see where this new life journey had led her.

She’d made a list and checked her wallet to ensure she had enough cash on hand, as she didn’t want to use a credit card with her birth name engraved on it for all to see. As she prepared to leave, she reached for the doorknob. Katherine turned the knob, and broke out in a cold sweat. Her heart rate increased, and it was hard to breathe. With the sound of blood rushing through her ears, her vision changed, narrowing as if she were looking through a pinhole, and then everything around her faded to black. When she came to, she was slumped on the floor and didn’t know how long she had been out.

She was frightened by the experience, but that had been just the beginning. The feeling of impending doom and the rapid change in her ability to breathe became an almost daily event. Now Katherine understood the trigger. Each time she prepared to leave her home, intense fear prevented her from stepping over the threshold. She would get lightheaded, her arms and legs tingling. She’d been sure it was a heart problem. She’d scoured the Internet, searching for her symptoms. After hours of research, she concluded she was having anxiety attacks.

She’d tried joining an online therapy group but found that when others discussed their symptoms, she’d start to have them herself. Katherine tried talking with a therapist via Skype, but discontinued the sessions when he insisted that she had to face her fears and walk out of the house. She just wasn’t ready for that. She’d tried yoga, hoping it would help her relax, but the attacks were so debilitating that she didn’t have the physical strength to perform even the most basic yoga moves. Meditation helped relax her somewhat when she wasn’t in the throes of panic. But she had no way to calm herself during an attack, and nothing helped. She resigned herself to living her life inside until she could control the attacks. They became less frequent once she made this decision. Stay away from the damned door became a mental mantra. She didn’t venture out of the house since. Her ten-year-old Nissan remained in the garage to this day, untouched. And she’d never bothered to maintain it; she couldn’t imagine herself using it. She should’ve had the car towed to a junkyard years ago.

For seven years, she’d lived as normally as anyone could, given her situation. She’d managed to purchase almost everything she needed on the Internet. She obtained a fake ID under a fake name: Kristine Cynthia Wingate. Because she used her initials on her books, only somewhat of a pseudonym, she’d convinced her accountant to set up a checking account in that name, though he was aware of her true identity. Kristine Wingate was the name any locals who delivered goods directly to her house knew her by. She used the fake name for the post office, UPS, and FedEx.

She could order her groceries at the Apple Blossom Gourmet Market and have them delivered within two hours. All of her clothes were ordered online. Sam and Sophie’s needs were taken care of courtesy of Doc Baker, whom Katherine considered an old-time country vet, since he still made house calls. He never once questioned her lifestyle or why she never brought the dogs in to the clinic. His focus was always on the dogs, though Katherine suspected he knew she had issues.

One of the few people she had contact with, Doc Baker would text her his expected arrival time, so she knew when she heard a car that it was him. Not that Sam and Sophie didn’t warn her with their excitement as they ran in circles around the house. They were so smart that she often thought they were humans disguised as dogs. They were smarter than many of the people she’d known throughout her life, which, sadly, weren’t that many.

When she’d lived in Texas with her mother and father, they’d rarely had visitors other than her father’s occasional business colleagues, including his assistant Helen, whom Katherine remembered because her mother didn’t like her, and she made that clear to Katherine’s father every time Helen came to their home. Most of the time, Katherine’s parents had traveled the world using the seemingly unlimited fortune left to her father by his family.

Katherine remembered a series of nannies and housekeepers who took care of her. Audrey, her favorite housekeeper, had a daughter close to Katherine’s age, and she brought her to work with her often enough that they became good friends. Katherine and Tracie played together and pretended they were sisters. She’d been around five or six then. Audrey would tell them they were close as two peas in a pod. Then Katherine was sent away to that horrid school in Spain. Tracie had been her only friend. She often wondered what had become of her and had tried to locate her, but her efforts proved fruitless, without having a surname to work with.

She had hated boarding school with a passion; the only positive from that time in Katherine’s life were the stories she’d written and the success she’d achieved after spending all those years alone with her spiral notebooks. Sometimes she wished her parents had lived long enough to see what she’d made of herself. Audrey had been at their funeral, but without Tracie. Audrey and Katherine had spoken only briefly. Audrey had told her how proud she was, and that Katherine’s parents would’ve been, as well, had they survived.

Katherine didn’t believe that. She suspected they wouldn’t have cared one way or another, because they were so self-absorbed. Their lives ended suddenly in a tragic accident. Katherine remembered getting the phone call from Audrey. Her parents were on safari in South Africa when a pride of lions attacked them and their guide. She was told her parents hadn’t suffered during the attack, but to this day, she didn’t believe that, given the way they’d died. Of course they had suffered. Only one person in their group had survived, and her understanding was that they were maimed so horribly, they barely looked human. Katherine didn’t know who the other person on the tour was, and was never told anything else about this survivor, so Katherine had eventually put it out of her mind. She didn’t like to think about her parents’ ending. She had so many emotions, yet she put them in separate spaces and only occasionally did she allow herself to feel them. Katherine had experienced plenty of tragedies in her life. Some she’d never spoken of and never would. That was the past. Done and over with; she would not go there, though the images often plagued her when sleep wouldn’t come.

A month after her parents’ deaths, their attorney contacted her. Every single thing they’d owned was now hers. Cars, homes, investments, the Winston Refineries, all of it—lock, stock, and oil barrels. She wanted absolutely nothing from them, but knowing her father had hundreds of employees, she couldn’t let the business collapse. She hired an attorney of her own to oversee everything. Lisa Pratt-Stevens knew the law upside down and backward, and Katherine trusted her. Lisa also knew publishing laws, and when Katherine was offered a contract for a second book, she asked Lisa to represent her. So far, she’d been a dream in promoting her writing career. She’d also placed a team of oil experts in Texas and Louisiana. The Winston Refineries were making millions daily. It was so much money that it boggled Katherine’s mind.

Focusing on the present, she now directed her attention to the comments on her Friendlink fan page. Skimming through the few posts, she saw that the group was pretty quiet tonight.

Katherine was not comfortable with Walter’s comments. His reference to Texas and Louisiana alarmed her. Was it just a coincidence that he named the two states where Winston Refineries were located? Was he a fan, or some weirdo getting his kicks off trying to scare her? She couldn’t let her Friendlink fans scare her.

Katherine reminded herself that her online handle said she was only sixteen. A sophomore in high school. She couldn’t tell them she knew there would be more books in the future because she’d recently signed another contract for four more books. Which would be published as fast as she turned them out. Lucky for her fans, she had absolutely nothing else in her life besides Sam and Sophie. The series could continue until the characters were married with their own children. She read on.

If they only knew how fast she cranked out the stories, it would whet their appetites for more. And then she’d have to write even faster.

The Friendlink fan page Katherine had created required approval before anyone could join. Aware that people might not be who they claimed to be, she had a list of criteria to be met before she accepted their request to join the fan club. They had to know at least two characters’ names in the series and their special powers, and they had to have a second social media account with the same name they’d used to request to join her fan page. She knew it was silly. It wasn’t a foolproof system, and it wouldn’t be that difficult for anyone to join, but this attempt at security actually comforted her.

When Katherine created the Friendlink group, she’d posted her book covers, arranged in a collage, and added a photo of herself in the lower left corner of the fan page. She’d had the photo taken during her years at the Boston Globe when her hair was cut very short, and she’d been in her “blondes have more fun” stage. The photo was much too old and looked nothing like her now, which was perfect, since she did not want anyone to recognize her. Her publisher used the same photo on the books, and although they were wary when Katherine said she wouldn’t do any media or events to promote the books, once the series proved successful, they gladly accommodated Katherine’s special stipulations.

Her online persona was just as carefully created. Searching the web, Katherine had found a cutesy stock photo of a girl who looked around fifteen or sixteen, the average age of her readers, according to the demographics. The girl’s face was turned slightly away from the camera, so it wasn’t exactly a full-face shot, but enough to match the description she’d created for herself. Short blond hair, a heart-shaped face. Eye color could be blue, maybe hazel, as it was difficult to tell. Average-looking. Nothing like herself, as her hair was long and dark now, with streaks of silver throughout. Her light green eyes were her best feature. Katherine was tall, her features angular and sharp, courtesy of her father. The opposite of her online photo. When choosing this photo for her online persona, she made sure there were no funky-looking shirts, tattoos, piercings, or anything that could identify the girl as a stock image—at least Katherine hoped that was the case.

She’d created a simple profile that wouldn’t be questioned. She’d added an Instagram account with the same profile picture and information, in case anyone chose to search the phony name she’d used, Darby Marie Whitton. According to her profile, Darby lived in . . .