The Hollow Husband: a gripping psychological thriller

by Cole Baxter

Genres: Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

Stella has finally met her dream man. But is David too good to be true?

Stella Greene has finally met her dream man. David is wealthy, successful, polished, and seductive. He’s got her back when an angry ex comes to call. He shares her taste in everything from wine to music. Her parents love him.

The couple are thrilled when Stella falls pregnant. David has always been attentive, but now that Stella is carrying his child, he becomes downright controlling. He claims he’s only worried about her and the baby. But Stella becomes fearful. How well does she really know her husband?

Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer loose in their small resort town, murdering young, attractive men. A fan of true crime stories, Stella takes a keen interest in the killings and soon finds herself drawn into a darker world than she ever imagined.

When men linked to Stella are the next victims, she begins to fear that someone close to her might be the killer. Could it be her beloved husband?

Her doubts only grow when she sees a sketch of the killer. He looks a lot like David.

Shocked and disbelieving, she hides her fears from David. As she goes hunting for the truth, she begins to suspect David more and more. Will Stella’s worst fears be realized? Is she married to a serial killer and carrying his child?

The Hollow Husband – the gripping psychological thriller perfect for fans of Freida McFadden, Daniel Hurst, and K L Slater.

 

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Release date: December 6, 2023

Publisher: Inkubator Books

Print pages: 309

Sample

I checked my watch. David was due home in around half an hour, so I went through to the kitchen and switched the oven on, ready to put dinner in when David arrived.

I went back to my open laptop in the living room, but I found myself staring at the screen, my mind wandering. As much as Lonnie didn’t like us taking work home, I wasn’t satisfied with what I’d done for the Wally’s Chocolates proposal. I just couldn’t get what I wanted to come together, so I thought I’d look it over to see what I was missing. But I was distracted.

I kept thinking about Cory’s murder, and then Andrew’s stalkerish phone calls began to bug me, and that led to David’s hurt reaction and that damn sweet tea that had tasted so awful. I hated that he thought I didn’t trust him. I did. That didn’t mean I wasn’t still pissed off about Andrew contacting me. It didn’t mean he wasn’t still doing that shit. I also hated that I had to defend those feelings to David and stroke his ego over the whole sorry situation.

I shouldn’t have had to drink that tea. I wasn’t hysterical or in shock, and even if I were, sweet tea certainly wasn’t going to help. But I’d been unable to tell him I didn’t want it. I’d feared he’d get angry at me over it, and I really hadn’t wanted to fight with him, so I just gulped the disgusting brew. It bothered me that I hadn’t stood up for myself.

David was my husband. I shouldn’t have to worry about upsetting him over something like whether or not I’d drink some stupid tea he brewed if I didn’t like it. It was ridiculous. As much as I loved him, I was coming to see that David had a bit of a controlling streak, and that bothered me. I wanted to be a supportive wife and all that, but I didn’t want to be afraid of what he’d do if he couldn’t control my actions.

A knock on the front door startled me out of my thoughts, and I jumped up, checking the time. Had I drifted off into a world of my own for so long that David was home? No. Barely five minutes had passed since I switched the oven on. David must have finished work early and forgotten his keys. I was forever telling him to keep a spare key in the car in case I was ever working later than he was, but it seemed he hadn’t listened. I couldn’t imagine who else it could be if it wasn’t David. I hadn’t ordered anything, and we weren’t expecting any guests.

I was halfway down the hallway when the knock came again, more insistent this time. I opened my mouth to shout out to David to hold his damned horses, but the person on the other side of the door spoke first.

“Stella? Come on, open up,” the person said through the door. “We need to talk.”

I felt my stomach turn ice cold, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck and my arms stood up on end at the sound of the voice. It wasn’t David. It was Andrew, and the way he was knocking again, it didn’t sound like he was in any hurry to give up and leave without talking to me.

“I know you’re in there. Please talk to me, baby. I love you,” Andrew shouted.

Yeah, sure. He loved me so much that he cheated on me. Wasn’t I just the luckiest girl in the world?

I was debating whether to tell him to go away or whether to just slink away quietly and ignore the pounding on the door, but then the knocking changed in its intensity, and the door rattled slightly in its frame. I realized that Andrew was no longer just knocking loudly. No, now he was kicking the door. That made me angry, and before I could think through whether it was a good idea or not, I was yelling at him.

“Stop that right now, you fucking lunatic,” I yelled.

The kicking stopped, and there was silence for a moment.

“Stella? Open the door,” Andrew said finally.

His voice was quieter now, more reasonable, but I still wasn’t going to open that door. That wasn’t going to happen.

“No. I have nothing to say to you,” I said.

“Then just listen to me. I know I fucked up, but I love you, and I know that you love me too,” he said.

“Are you insane?” I shouted, shocked that he could even think such a thing. “Any love I felt for you died the moment you fucked that whore. I’m married now, Andrew. I want you to leave me alone.”

“Married?” Andrew said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“You got married?” he repeated, louder this time. “Are you shitting me? Who the fuck is he? What right does he have to be touching my woman?”

I opened my mouth to respond, to tell him that I was not his woman and he needed to leave, but he started to kick the door so hard I was genuinely afraid he was going to kick it down.

I snatched my cell phone from my pocket. “I’m calling nine-one-one if you don’t leave by the count of three,” I said in a moment’s pause between kicks. I dialed the number and waited, my thumb hovering over the call icon. “One … two … three.”

I waited, listening. Andrew was no longer kicking the door, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he had gone. I moved closer to the door, hardly daring to breathe, and I peered out through the peephole. The area in front of the door was clear. I looked further afield and saw that the garden and the driveway were clear too. I breathed a sigh of relief. He had gone. At least for now.

I backed away from the front door, but I stayed in the hallway. I knew it was stupid, but I felt like if I stayed there, Andrew wouldn’t come back. On the flip side, I thought if I moved, I would be letting him creep back without my knowledge.

The relief I felt at seeing that Andrew had gone was short lived. It was soon replaced by a dark, foreboding feeling that ate away at me. I didn’t like this new development one little bit. Andrew coming to the house meant that he knew where I lived even after I’d moved from my old address. And if he had turned up here once, I knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. A shiver went through me at the thought of that, and I knew I would have to tell David what had happened. He would be so angry, but I couldn’t keep this from him, not now that Andrew knew where we lived.

There was always a chance that David would find out some other way, that Andrew himself might come back and say he had been here before. If that happened, I would look guilty simply because I had kept the visit from David. I also knew I had no other way of explaining the damage to the front door – there had to be marks where Andrew had been kicking it.