Dead Secret by Ava McCarthy - Extract

8/20/2019 Dead Secret by Ava McCarthy - Extract

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HarperAn imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge StreetLondon SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

A paperback original 20161

Copyright © Aiveen McCarthy 2016

Aiveen McCarthy asserts the moral right tobe identi ed as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-00-736391-9

This novel is entirely a work of ction.The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance toactual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Set in Sabon LT Std by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain byClays Ltd, St Ives plc

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1

Jodie loaded the gun the way she’d seen Ethan do it:

nger-checking the rounds so they were lined up ush,then smacking the magazine up into the grip.

Her jittery hands almost fumbled the manoeuvre. Sheclenched them steady, then racked the slider back tochamber the rst round.

Clack-snap .Nine bullets loaded, but she’d only need two.One for Ethan.The other one for herself.She ashed on her husband’s face; on his xed stare,

and the twisted mind-games shape-shifting behind it.Sweat prickled down her spine. Maybe she was wrong.Maybe it would take more than one bullet to kill Ethan.

Fireworks hissed and crackled outside the car, andthe sky exploded into a weeping willow of light. Jodie


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peered through the windscreen, scanning the strobe-litcrowds that lined the lake perimeter. Ethan was out theresomewhere, masquerading tonight as Mister Nice Guy,a back-slapper and hand-shaker for the Fourth of Julycelebrations.

She slid the gun into her bag, then reached out to thedrawing pad that lay on the seat beside her, lifting itonto her lap to leaf through it one last time.

The paintings were childlike but imaginative, showing

uncomplicated feelings rather than copies of objects: thetangle of scribbly black for the cranky family cat;the sunshine-yellow splodge for the spring picnic; burstsof colour splattered from a height, paint squeezed straightfrom the tubes to the page.

‘Look what I can do, Mommy! ’ Jodie brushed her ngertips across the rounded

letters marking the bottom of every page: Abby McCallAge 3 .

Her throat constricted. She swallowed against it, butthe ache intensi ed, crushing her chest, choking her,smothering her, sending her spinning.

Breathe!She bowed her head, took deep, shuddery breaths.

Found a dead, at place somewhere inside her and invitedthe numbness back in.

Slowly, Jodie straightened up. Touched a hand to thedrawing pad. Turned a page.

Blob- gures. The family unit. Abby holding Badger,the black snarl of a cat, anked by Jodie and Ethan.


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around the same time, Jodie as Ethan’s Irish bride, Nancyas the new proprietor of Attic Corner, a quirky little cafétucked into an art gallery in Peterborough. It was Nancywho’d pitched Jodie’s paintings to the gallery and madethem see her potential.

‘Us blow-ins got to stick together in this godforsakenplace,’ Nancy had said once, hefting a pan of cinnamonrolls from her oven. ‘Especially in the winter. All theseblizzards and power outages, snowdrifts barricading your

front door. Talk about isolated. Drive you ve kindsof crazy.’ She’d given Jodie a probing look, the scent ofbrown spices billowing from her in waves. ‘Especiallyway out in the wilderness where you are.’

Jodie had smiled, shrugging off the concern, her mind

skittering away from her own growing misgivings. It wasonly later she’d admit that the backwoods had turnedoppressive.

The whirr of crickets pulsed from the lakefront.Slowly, she pulled away from Nancy, angling wide along

the embankment, still scouring the crowds for Ethan.‘Didn’t expect to see you here, Jodie.’She whipped around. A blocky, compact gure was

stalking towards her, dark eyes pinned to hers. Her heart-beat tripped.

Zach Caruso, Sheriff of Hillsborough County.She slipped a hand inside her bag. Touched the gun

like a talisman.Caruso halted in front of her, his solid bulk blocking

her path. ‘You sure being here is such a good idea?’


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‘I’m just looking at the reworks, Zach. Like every-body else.’

His eyes were watchful. ‘Ethan didn’t mention you’dbe along.’

‘Ethan doesn’t know.’Fireworks exploded overhead, spotlighting Caruso in

the dark. His expression was hard and at with suspicion.He had to be in his fties, over twenty years Jodie’ssenior, but his hair was still thick and dark. That and

the high-bridged nose spoke of Italian lineage, but theaccent was pure, abrasive Boston.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe I should let him know.You don’t look too good.’

‘I’m okay.’

Jodie knew how she looked: rail-thin in jeans and T-shirt;skin stretched taut, bare of makeup; up-slanted eyes dulland vacant; straight dark hair unkempt and shoved backbehind her ears. Her world had been annihilated. Madedesolate. Her appearance was nothing.

Caruso stepped closer. ‘You had a chance to reconsiderthings since this morning?’

Jodie felt her jaw clench as she recalled their earlierencounter, when she’d made the mistake of thinking thatthe law might be on her side.

Caruso went on. ‘You were overwrought, I can under-stand that. After all you’ve been through.’ The sympathywas a mismatch for the guarded look on his face. ‘Ethansays you’re trying to work through it together. I told him,if I can help, he just has to ask.’


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‘I’m sure he’s glad to know you’ve got his back.’‘You got to understand, making groundless accusations

is rash. People can get hurt.’His closeness was suffocating. Jodie touched her

bag.‘I’m not here to make trouble, Zach. There’s just some-

thing I need to give to Ethan.’Caruso shot her a wary look. Jodie made her face

bland, breezed on.

‘He’s catching a ten-thirty ight after the reworks.’‘I know. He told me.’‘Did he tell you he forgot his passport?’His gaze dug into hers, looking for the lie. The explo-

sions paused overhead, and a mosquito whined next to

Jodie’s ear. Caruso’s stare was unblinking.‘Not like Ethan to screw up on details,’ he said. ‘Usually

has everything under control.’‘I guess everyone slips up once in a while.’Caruso dropped his eyes to her bag. She groped for a

distraction, gestured at the lake.‘You’re a little way off your turf, aren’t you, Zach?’He darted a look out across the water that geograph-

ically resided in Cheshire County, close neighbour to hisown jurisdiction. He shrugged.

‘Doesn’t hurt to broaden your horizons, does it?’ Jodie eyed the crowd, a new batch of voters for Caruso

to get his hooks into. Whatever scheme he was cooking,Ethan was probably involved. She used to wonder whatkind of backscratching they had in place to make Ethan


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align with such a crook. But none of that mattered anymore.

Caruso held out a hand. ‘Why don’t I take him hispassport? You get on home, get some rest.’

She gripped her bag, her heart rate climbing. ‘Thanks,but I want to do it myself.’

She edged away, sidestepping his bulk.‘I want a chance to say goodbye.’

Jodie hiked along the lakefront. By now, she’d combedmost of the northern shore, and she still hadn’t foundEthan.

She checked her watch. He was scheduled to leave forthe airport any time now. Maybe he’d already gone.

A rush of dizziness ooded her head. Her encounterwith Caruso had left her shaky, but worse was the thoughtthat she’d missed her chance. That Ethan had slippedaway. She blundered onwards along the embankment.

The weight of the gun dragged at her bag. She’d onlyused it once before, six months earlier. Her rst time everhandling a rearm.

She’d been alone in the house, nishing up anotherpainting for the gallery. She could still recall the graveyardsilence of the rooms, deadened further by the waist-highsnowdrifts outside. Jodie shivered.

When she’d rst come to New Hampshire ve yearsearlier, Ethan’s house had charmed her. The Irish placenames had charmed her too, lulling her with a false senseof the familiar: Kilkenny, Antrim, Dublin Lake.


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She’d never had a home of her own. She’d grown upon the move in Irish foster care, twelve moves in all overeighteen years, to places where nothing was ever reallyhers. And each time, she was told she’d be safe with thenext family. She wasn’t.

But Ethan had seemed safe. He’d wooed her with anold-fashioned attentiveness, and his secluded Colonialhome had reinforced the gallant image. Maybe she’d

nally found a home.

But the truth was, it was all a fake.Fireworks burst into bloom overhead, brilliant red

chrysanthemums of light. Jodie stumbled through thecheering crowds, out of whack with normal life.

She ashed again on Ethan’s house in the backwoods:

six miles from the nearest town; no neighbours, noboundaries; the garden blending without warning intodark, dense forest. Not forest like she knew it, but vast,primeval hinterland that besieged three sides of the house.

Incarceration.She could still hear Ethan’s voice echoing in the

banquet-sized rooms.‘If Mommy wants to work, it means she doesn’t love

you, Abby. ’‘It’s Mommy’s fault you don’t have any brothers or sisters. ’‘If Mommy leaves, we can’t be a happy family any

more. ’ Jodie’s throat closed over. She clenched her ngers

around the gun in her bag, re-living the day she’d lastred it, six months earlier.


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She’d been painting for three hours straight, her spinecrunching with the backache she always got fromstanding for too long. She stepped back from the easelto eye her work, a vigorous landscape of the localContoocook River. Like all the paintings she sold, itoffered plenty of wild, improbable colour but almostnothing of herself.

She wiped her hands on a turps-soaked rag, stirringup a pungent, piney scent. Then she selected a ne rigger

brush and signed the canvas: Jodie Garrett .She eyed her signature with misgiving. Another battle-

ground with Ethan. She still used her maiden name,signing her work with it the way she’d done ever sinceshe was a child. Ethan railed at her to switch to his, as

though the other was some kind of veiled threat; someact of de ance.

Maybe it was.She tossed the brush aside, got ready to clean up. Then

an eerie screech tore through the silence.Raucous, inhuman.

Jodie raced to the window. Stopped dead when shesaw the malevolent forest animal skulking in her backyard.

Black as the devil against the snow. Dense, glossy pelt,humpbacked like a rodent, haunches high and round.Maybe four feet long from nose to bushy tail, about thesize of a family dog.

A giant sher cat.That was the local name, though there was nothing


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feline about it. A gigantic member of the weasel family,to Jodie it was furtive and diabolical-looking.

The sher froze, its eyes trained high on the birch treeby the back door. Jodie’s stomach lurched. Abby’s cat,Badger, was clinging to one of the branches.

Jodie yelled, and pounded on the glass. The sherignored her, twitched its tail. Then it streaked up the treeand wrestled Badger to the ground.

The sher’s high-pitched shrieks were blood-curdling.

Badger yowled, staggered free. Jodie cried out, bolted tothe study. Couldn’t bear to think of Abby’s face if herbeloved cat was killed.

She wrenched open drawers, scrabbled for keys,unlocked the cabinet where Ethan kept his gun. Loading

it with shaking ngers, praying she was doing it right,she sprinted to the back porch.

The sher had a jaw-lock on Badger’s neck, and wasthrashing him against the snow. The cat emitted a keeningsound. Jodie red into the air, but the sher ignored her.By now Badger was silent, his throat ripped open. Shetook aim this time, red at the sher, knowing it wastoo late. Kept on ring, round after round in a frenzy ofbullets, until the sher lay still over Badger’s limp body.

That night, Abby was inconsolable. The cat had beenher ally in the silent house, his robust crankiness a matchfor her own wilful, tomboy spirit. Jodie sat on the bed,rocking her on her lap. Ethan glared at Jodie, his eyesfull of dark reproach. Eyes that looked so much likeAbby’s.


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‘You let the cat outside? What the hell were youthinking? You know those goddamn shers attack petsaround here.’

Jodie stared in disbelief. From the start, she’d wantedto safeguard Badger in the house. It was Ethan who’dinsisted the cat be allowed to roam; who’d scoffed at hercaution, dismissing the threat of shers as old wives’tales. After all, he’d argued, it was his home country, heshould damn well know.

His eyes challenged her to contradict him, the faintsneer betraying his certainty that no one would believeher if she did. Her gut turned cold as she realized some-thing else: Ethan had wanted something bad to happento Badger.

Dazed, she watched him lift Abby into his arms,watched his head bend to hers, the two so alike. Samedark hair, same strong brows; same stubborn set to themouth. Ethan kissed Abby’s plump, damp cheek.

‘It’s Mommy’s fault poor old Badger is dead.’

A reball of colour exploded over the lake.The ash de ned a knot of spectators on the shore,

and Jodie’s heart double-thudded. Backlit in their midstwas Ethan’s sculpted pro le.

She edged forward. He was less than two hundredyards away. Close enough to make out the faint VanDyke beard, its thin vertical line carefully etched fromlower lip to chin. As a beard, it was barely there; just awhispered suggestion of maleness, pirate-style.


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A pulse hammered high in her throat. Behind Ethan,Dublin Lake seemed on re, the blazing sky twinned inthe water like paint pressed from a centrefold. A dramaticbackdrop to Ethan’s buccaneer looks, as though he’dstaged it with that in mind. Then again, maybe he had.

She inched closer, eyeing his group of companions.They were mostly men, their body language proclaimingEthan as the dominant gure. She saw it all the time;that potent sway he had over people.

She watched as one of the men leaned in to make acomment, saw the other low-rankers all peek at Ethan,gauging his reaction before committing to theirs. Jodienoticed Ethan appeared a head taller than the rest, andguessed it was no accident he’d ended up on higher ground

than they had.Power and control: his motivation for everything.

Jodie clutched her bag, felt the hard outline of theweapon inside. She tried to picture the moment when itwas done. When Ethan was dead, and the time nallycame to turn the gun on herself.

Would she hesitate?Would it hurt?She probed her psyche, plumbed deep. Took an honest

pulse-check of her soul.Found no fear.Pain would be cathartic. A nal scream of release.She took a deep breath, scanned her surroundings. Felt

a twist of unease. The lakefront should have emptied outby now, but the shore was still lined with people. She


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and back. A travel rug lay folded in the foot well besideher, and she shook it out, covering herself head to toe.Then she slipped the gun out of her bag and hugged itto her chest.

She lay there, cramped, her nostrils lled with the scentof leather upholstery. From outside, the rug and tintedwindows would hide her. By the time Ethan knew shewas there, it would be too late.

Fatigue pressed down on her like a dead weight. Maybe

it was the horizontal position, but suddenly the worldseemed to tilt, as though she was losing her grip on it.Her mind scrabbled for a foothold. Fastened on Abby:all rough-and-tumble in her dungarees, frowning as shebrushed a squirming Badger; never crying when he scratched

and ran away, just wrestling him back.A faint hum started up in Jodie’s throat, and she

clenched her teeth to shut it off.Her head buzzed with tiredness. She’d been ghting

Ethan for so long now. Fighting for freedom. Freedom towork and be independent; freedom for Abby to makefriends outside the house; freedom for herself to do thesame; freedom to sell her paintings; to paint at all.

And more recently, the freedom to leave. Jodie closed her eyes. Felt herself drift.None of that mattered any more. Tonight would be

the last battle. After this, there was nothing left toght for.

Not now that Abby was dead.

* * *


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The door clunked , cracking open the vacuum in the car. Jodie’s eyes ared wide.Cool air seeped around her, washing in with it the

thrum of night insects.She tried not to breathe.Leather stretched and creaked. The door slammed shut.

Jodie’s heart pounded, too loud in her own ears.Something light opped onto the back seat. Ethan’s jacket.

Jodie took shallow breaths, the rug trapping her respir-

ation, turning it hot against her face.She strained for sounds. Heard the friction of running

fabric. Pictured him whipping off his tie, looseninghis collar; his preferred style, since it played better to hisdaredevil looks.

Jodie listened for more.Heard nothing.

Just a hold-your-breath stillness.Ethan wasn’t moving.She stiffened, every skin cell on high alert, waiting for

a hand to snatch the rug away. Then his keys jingled, theengine red, and she felt herself being dragged backwardsagainst the seat as the car pulled out onto the road.

A tremor started up in her limbs. She fought againstit, tried to keep track of their route. She’d wait a fewminutes, just long enough to get further down the unlitroad where no one else was around.

He switched on the radio, scratching through thestations till he hit on a cheesy talk show. The chit-chatwas banal, but he chuckled along, turning up the volume.


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The grieving father. Jodie’s grip tightened around the gun.He hadn’t mourned Abby; he’d just cleaned house.

The week after she’d died, he’d boxed up all her stuffand got rid of it without asking Jodie. He wouldn’t tellher where he’d sent it. Just said they’d no more need ofit and her railing at him wouldn’t change a thing. All

Jodie had left of Abby was the drawing pad.She twitched the rug down from her face, breathing

in cool air. Dense trees whipped past the window. Shepictured the dark, narrow road: tall birches lining bothsides, the grassy verge rising to the left, sloping down-wards to the lake on the right.

As good a place as any.

She eased out of her crouched position, slid quietlyonto the back seat, keeping the gun out of sight till shewas good and ready.

‘Hello, Ethan.’


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The car swerved.

‘Jesus, Jodie, what the hell—’Ethan yanked the Bentley back on course, and Jodie

grabbed at his seat to steady herself. His eyes locked onhers through the rear-view mirror.

‘What the fuck are you doing here? You scared the

shit out of me.’Her ngers dug into the soft leather. ‘We’ve un nishedbusiness.’

‘It can’t wait till I get back from New York?’‘You’re not going to New York. Not any more.’‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Jodie’s mouth felt parched.Lift up the gun.The weapon was suddenly heavy. Her arm wouldn’t

move.


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Ethan jerked up his chin to survey her in the mirror.‘Look at you, you’re a mess.’

She closed her eyes.Lift up the damn gun!‘You’re not well, Jodie, I’ve been telling you that for

weeks. You need help.’Her muscles were rigid. She opened her eyes, squinted

against a blaze of oncoming headlights. Then she staredat the back of Ethan’s head, at the longish hair waving

in S-bends down to his collar. She gripped the gun. Triedto picture herself touching the barrel to his skull.

She failed.Do it! What are you waiting for?She knew she was stalling. Told herself she was waiting

for the road to clear, so no one else got hurt. Was shelosing her nerve? Maybe she just needed to hear him sayit one last time.

She swallowed hard. ‘I talked to Zach.’Ethan’s gaze shot to hers in the mirror. ‘I told you not

to do that.’‘I don’t do everything you say, Ethan, you should know

that by now.’‘You’re crazy. Zach’s not going to believe your far-

fetched story, I told you that.’‘You were right. He didn’t.’The Bentley glided around a bend, its headlights

sweeping across the trees and over water lacquered blackby the dark. She clasped both hands around the gun,keeping it low.


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‘So I wrote it all down in a letter,’ she went on.‘Everything you did, everything you told me. I wrotedown what I was going to do now, so there’d be noconfusion later. So no one else could get blamed bymistake.’

He half-turned towards her, the shadows catching theangles of his jaw and the trademark, barely there beard.

‘You’re not making any sense, Jodie.’‘I couldn’t trust Zach not to bury it. The letter, I mean.

So I posted it to the District Attorney’s of ce.’There was a hitch in the Bentley’s cruising motion.‘Jesus Christ.’‘By the time they get it, it’ll all be over.’‘What the hell have you done?’

‘They need to know why I’m doing this. They need toknow what you are.’

‘My God, listen to yourself. Do you hear what you’resaying?’

His knuckles were taut against the wheel. He shookhis head, dragged a hand over his shadowy stubble. Inthe mirror, his eyes looked tired and strained. He wasonly thirty-nine, ten years older than Jodie, but now andthen his face seemed haggard.

‘You’ve brought this all on yourself, Jodie. I hopeyou’re happy.’

Her insides turned stony. Ethan’s eyes icked to themirror.

‘Don’t give me that look, you know I’m right. If itwasn’t for you, Abby would still be alive.’


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Something tore at her breath. ‘You were the one whotook her out in the boat, Ethan.’

She ashed on that day six weeks earlier: Ethan holdingAbby’s hand, demanding time alone with his daughter;their voices drifting off as he closed the door behindthem.

‘I want Mommy to come. ’‘Mommy prefers her silly old paints to spending time

with us. ’

Then the call from Zach saying Abby had fallen over-board; Jodie’s world crashing, hurtling down; helicoptersthudding over the Contoocook River; the frantic wait;and nally, darkness calling off the search, and Zachkneeling down beside her to say her precious Abby was

gone.After that, nothing.A black hole.Then a heart-slamming grief that snatched her up, day

after day, ung her around and ripped her apart like asher cat.

‘I had to get Abby away,’ Ethan was saying. ‘I explainedall this.’

Headlights bore down on them, burning holes in thedark. Ethan’s eyes drilled into hers.

‘You were the one who wanted to leave, to take heraway from me. Imagine how that would’ve hurt Abby.We had a close bond, everyone noticed it.’

Jodie’s chest constricted. It was true. Abby had lovedEthan, and he had loved her back. It was why Jodie had


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stayed so long in the marriage, trying to make it work.It was why everything else that had happened was sodiabolical.

‘I warned you over and over,’ Ethan went on. ‘I said,if you try to keep her from me, I’ll take her away. I’lltake her some place where you’ll never see her again.’

Nausea stirred in Jodie’s gut, her body rejecting thetruth all over again. Ethan was still talking.

‘I picked a pretty spot. That shing place she likes,

down by the covered railroad bridge.’ Jodie stared at the insects whirling in the headlights,

resisting the urge to block her ears. She needed to hearhim say it again.

‘I made sure she was asleep,’ he said. ‘The water wasn’t

cold, she didn’t wake up once.’The queasiness spurted into Jodie’s bowels, churning

pinpricks of sweat out through her pores. Ethan kepttalking.

‘I stayed there in the boat until it was all over. Sheknew I’d never leave her alone out there in the water.’

Jodie swallowed, aware of tears streaming down hercheeks. She didn’t know how long she’d been crying.

‘I had to do it, Jodie, you were going to break thefamily up. I had to protect her.’

‘Dear sweet Jesus.’ Jodie’s voice was a whisper.His eyes darted to hers in the mirror. Watchful, assessing.

As though checking to make sure she was in pain.Her ngers clenched around the gun. She took in his

ne-hewn pro le, the dark hair that brushed his collar.


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He looked so charming, so normal. That was what madehim so terrifying.

‘Why didn’t you just kill me, Ethan? I was the onewho was leaving, Abby did nothing.’ She was sobbingnow. ‘For the love of God, why didn’t you just kill me?’

His eyes turned shrewd, and he didn’t answer. His gazeslid back to the road.

‘No one can prove anything.’But Jodie didn’t need his answer. She knew why he’d

done it. He’d killed his little girl because he wanted topunish Jodie.

Retribution.A twisted revenge for a broken marriage; a last

monstrous act of control, knowing she’d suffer for the

rest of her life if he killed Abby and left her alive.Her gut heaved, spasms of revulsion spreading to her

chest, her bowels, her throat, her brain, in a torrent sooverwhelming she felt it might bury her.

She inhaled deeply. Sought again that dead, at place.Then she raised the gun and put it against his head.

Ethan went still. His eyes ew to the mirror, wide,dilated.

‘Jodie? My God.’She two-handed the gun, to be sure of her aim.‘Wait! Jodie!’Pull the trigger!Ethan slammed his foot on the accelerator. The

Bentley roared, took off, and she felt herself being suckedbackwards.


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Dead Secret by Ava McCarthy - Extract