CHAPTER 1
Pippa Holliday bade farewell to the last of her guests and switched off the porch light, pleased her hosting duties had come to an end. She crossed the living room and stepped onto the back deck, pausing to breathe in a lungful of cool coastal air. Nights like this were Pippa’s favorite. Nights where she sat with a blanket draped across her legs, listening to the waves slapping against the rocks on the shore below.
Four months earlier Pippa had purchased the oceanfront home in Cambria, California, at a cost of two and a half million dollars, her first big splurge since landing a major acting role on the Netflix series, A Murderous Affair. The show was two seasons in, and she’d already been bumped up from supporting actress to lead actress after one of her co-stars entered rehab.
For as long as Pippa could remember, all she had ever wanted was to become a star. Now, at age twenty-seven, her dreams had become a reality. Life was good, and it seemed to just keep getting better.
With her dinner party at an end, Pippa’s thoughts turned to her four-year-old son Cooper. It had been a while since she last peeked in on him. She walked to his room, pulled the blanket over his tiny frame, and brushed a lock of his dark-brown hair out of his face. Leaning down, she planted a kiss on his forehead, and then she watched him sleep, reminiscing about the day she’d discovered she was pregnant.
Back then, Pippa was a broke, out-of-work actress, crashing at friends’ apartments and scraping pennies together to get by. She remembered how scared she’d been and how ill-equipped she’d felt about becoming a mother. At the time, she wasn’t sure she could manage it. Then her sister Greer swooped in, and everything changed. Greer moved Pippa into her house and looked after Cooper while Pippa pursued a future in Hollywood.
A lifetime ago, and sometimes it still didn’t seem real. But it was real. At long last, life was the way she’d always imagined it could be.
Pippa tiptoed out of Cooper’s room, catching a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror. Her eyeliner was smudged, and the curls she’d rolled into her long, blond hair had flattened. At some point during the night, she’d also managed to spill a dime-size dollop of tomato sauce on the sleeve of her shirt.
Nice.
Hoping the stain hadn’t set, she headed for the laundry room, stopping when she heard a strange noise on the back deck. It sounded like footsteps, like someone was walking around out there, but when she poked her head out to check, she saw no one.
“Hello? Is anyone out here?”
Of course, no one’s out there.
You’re two stories up, and everyone’s gone.
Don’t be silly.
Pippa’s cat brushed across her leg, and she picked him up, turning him around to face her. “Was it you, hmm? Are you the one making a racket out here, Percy?”
The cat meowed in response, and Pippa smiled, stroking his fur before putting him back down again. Percy trotted off toward Cooper’s room, perhaps to jump on the bed and snuggle next to him like he always did.
Pippa removed her shirt, dabbed it with stain remover, and then set it on the counter, leaving it to marinate until morning. Then she wiped her makeup off with a washcloth and slipped into a bikini.
Entering the kitchen a few minutes later, she grabbed a bottle of chardonnay out of the refrigerator. Every night since she’d moved into the new place, Pippa’s ritual was the same. She poured herself a glass of wine, got into the pool, and watched the moonlight dance across the ocean. But tonight was different than other nights. The sky had been impregnated with a foggy haze, shielding the moon from view.
Pippa sipped her wine, drifting to one end of the pool and back again. Minutes passed, the fog began to clear, and Pippa’s gaze fell upon a dark shape next to the sliding glass door. She could have sworn the shape had moved at first, but not so much now. She swam over to get a closer look, squinting at the area in question. She saw nothing and decided her exhausted mind was playing tricks on her. It had been a long night, and she was beyond tired. Maybe all she needed was a good night’s rest.
She tipped the last bit of wine into her mouth and reached for the metal bar to pull herself out of the pool but struggled when her muscles failed her. She tried again, feeling paralyzed, like she was about to collapse.
On her third try, Pippa managed to pull herself onto the cement. She tried to stand and couldn’t. Hunched over on all fours, she began crawling toward the house. If she could get to her cell phone, she could call for help. But her cell phone was at least thirty feet away, and with each passing moment, she felt weaker, her stream of consciousness wavering.
Just stop, rest a minute, and try again.
Pippa rolled onto her back and stared up the sky, wondering why her body was so feeble. The sensations she was experiencing were unfamiliar, and she couldn’t recall a time when she’d lost control of her body and mind the way she was now.
The wind whistled a faint melody through the air. Pippa listened to it for a moment, and then something dawned on her—it wasn’t the wind at all.
Someone was whistling a familiar tune.
Someone close by.
“Relax, Pippa. Close your eyes and relax,” a voice said.
She attempted to turn her head toward the voice but couldn’t.
Footsteps approached, fast and heavy, and then a blur of a person leaned over her body, blinking at her and smiling. “Don’t worry, Pippa. This will all be over in a few minutes.”
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