Known to the Victim, page 1
Praise for Kelley Armstrong
“Armstrong is a talented and evocative writer who knows well how to balance the elements of good, suspenseful fiction, and her stories evoke poignancy, action, humor and suspense.”
The Globe and Mail
* * *
“[A] master of crime thrillers.”
Kirkus
* * *
“Kelley Armstrong is one of the purest storytellers Canada has produced in a long while.”
National Post
* * *
“Armstrong is a talented and original writer whose inventiveness and sense of the bizarre is arresting.”
London Free Press
* * *
“Kelley Armstrong has long been a favorite of mine.”
Charlaine Harris
* * *
“Armstrong’s name is synonymous with great storytelling.”
Suspense Magazine
* * *
“Like Stephen King, who manages an under-the-covers, flashlight-in-face kind of storytelling without sounding ridiculous, Armstrong not only writes interesting page-turners, she has also achieved that unlikely goal, what all writers strive for: a genre of her own.”
The Walrus
Known to the Victim
K. L. Armstrong
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the written permission of the Author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
* * *
Copyright © 2024 K.L.A. Fricke Inc.
All rights reserved.
* * *
Cover Design by The Killion Group
* * *
ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-1-989046-85-2
Also by Kelley Armstrong
A Rip Through Time mystery series
A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner’s Ring
Disturbing the Dead
* * *
Haven’s Rock mystery series
Murder at Haven’s Rock
The Boy Who Cried Bear
* * *
Standalone Horror
Hemlock Island
* * *
Standalone Romantic Comedy
Finding Mr. Write
* * *
A Stitch in Time time-travel gothic series
A Stitch in Time
A Twist of Fate
A Turn of the Tide
A Castle in the Air
* * *
Past Series
Rockton mystery series
Cursed Luck contemporary fantasy duology
Cainsville paranormal mystery series
Otherworld urban fantasy series
Nadia Stafford mystery trilogy
* * *
Standalone Thrillers
The Life She Had
Wherever She Goes / Every Step She Takes
* * *
Young Adult
Aftermath / Missing / The Masked Truth
Otherworld: Kate & Logan paranormal duology
Darkest Powers/Darkness Rising paranormal trilogies
Age of Legends fantasy trilogy
* * *
Middle Grade
A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying fantasy series
The Blackwell Pages trilogy (with Melissa Marr)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Wherever She Goes excerpt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Every Step She Takes excerpt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
The Life She Had excerpt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About the Author
Prologue
The day my mother was murdered wasn’t the worst day of my life. I didn’t even find out she was dead for twenty-nine hours. Sometimes, the guilt over that crushes me, as if I should have heard the sonic boom of my life exploding. Instead, I’d gone to classes and then hung out with friends that night while we tossed back shots and moaned about midterms. Some nights I’ll jolt up in a cold sweat, remembering myself perched on a campus barstool, saying that if I didn’t get a B in chem, my life would be over.
No, my life was not over. My mother’s was. And I had no idea.
I’d texted her that morning, as I always did, and she’d popped back a quick “Good morning, sunshine!” and “Busy day. Talk tomorrow?”
I’d sent a thumbs-up, pocketed my phone and moved on with my day. As I’d learn soon enough, she hadn’t sent those texts. She couldn’t. She was already dead, stuffed into her killer’s trunk. He’d flipped through her messages to see how she talked to me and replied with something that would buy him time to dispose of her corpse and possibly even buy him an alibi.
Why no, she couldn’t have been dead already—she was texting her daughter.
Those texts didn’t raise any red flags. Nor did the ones she sent her law partner, Dinah, saying she had “some kind of bug” and would be “sleeping it off.” The red flags were noticed by a trucker who spotted a car down a side road, the driver struggling with something in the trunk.
Struggling with my mother’s body.
The next day, the police showed up at my dorm to tell me Mom was dead. But that wasn’t the worst day of my life, either, because I was too numb to react. I spent the next few days in shock, propelled along only by Dinah, who led me through all the appropriate steps because there was no one else to do it. My parents had split before I was born, my father remarrying within the year and exiting from my life. I had half siblings on my father’s side, and I’d never met them. My mother was an only child, so I had no aunts, uncles or cousins on her side. By the time I was in college, both her parents were gone, and I’d never had any contact with my father’s side of the family.
It was just the two of us. Kim and Amy. “The Gibson Girls,” Dinah always joked, and it wasn’t until I was nearly twenty that I realized that was a reference to an old TV show. When I watched it, I understood the allusion: a mother and daughter who adored each other, just them against the world. Of course, in our version, Mom wasn’t nearly so flighty, and I wasn’t nearly so sensible, but it was a cute name, nonetheless.
Dinah guided me through the funeral arrangements, but after that, I insisted on going back to school, and when I took her daily calls, I pretended everything was okay. Eventually, I answered her calls less and less often, but I always texted saying I was just busy. She took me at my word. I was back to school, immersing myself in it, and I didn’t need my mom’s friend hovering.
That was a lie. I needed Dinah. I needed someone. But I didn’t know how to ask for help, and I didn’t want to be a burden, so I played the role of a young woman who was grieving but okay.
I was not okay.
The worst day of my life wasn’t the day I had to choose my mother’s casket. It wasn’t the day I buried her. It wasn’t the day I cleaned out her closet for charity. It wasn’t the day I returned to school and had to explain my mother’s death to classmates who wondered where I’d been. With each passing marker, people swore things would get better. They lied. It got worse.
The truth was, there was no “worst day”—just an unending blur of worse. I stopped going to classes and spent my days locked up in my dorm room, watching that damn mother-and-daughter TV show as I cried.
My father didn’t come to the funeral because I hadn’t bothered to let him know that Mom died. He’d never been part of our lives, so screw him. I did, however, make one inexcusable mistake: I didn’t tell my brother.
Oliver was ten years older than me. His parents had split when he was five, and our father got custody of him. That meant, for the three years of my parents’ marriage, he’d been my mom’s child.
Mom had always hoped that Oliver and I would have some kind of relationship once I was old enough to stop letting my anger at my father spill onto my half brother. For the few years that she’d been part of his life, she’d loved him like a son, and she always said that losing Oliver had been the worst part of the divorce. Not being his mother by blood or adoption, she’d had no right to see him, and she never had again. I should have called and let him know she was gone.
Oliver reached out a few weeks after Mom’s death. He must have read about her murder in the news, which was a shitty way to learn it. Oliver asked whether we could talk, and I dodged and weaved until he sent me an invitation to a video chat.
It took me three days to prepare. I spent the first one working up to showering, which I did on day two, and then on day three, I finally left my dorm room and washed the clothing I’d been wearing since Mom’s funeral.
Right up until the moment of the call, I had to fight myself not to cancel it. I wrote the email three times. Wrote the text a dozen. But I didn’t send them, and when the call came, I took it, and it was . . .
It was wonderful. And it was horrible because it was wonderful. Does that make any sense? For years, I’d had this mental image of Oliver. I knew he’d taken over our father’s business—some company whose exact purpose was so dull I couldn’t keep it in my mind longer than it took him to explain it—and I knew that the business was one of the leading employers in Grand Forks, where they lived. I also knew that my father was one of those assholes who could afford to pay the bills for a thousand underprivileged kids but didn’t even pay child support for his own daughter.
I can hear Mom’s patient sigh at that. I’m not saying I was deprived by my father’s neglect—emotional or financial. I was a loved and privileged kid with a mother who’d decided to raise me on her own significant income. My point is that’s the kind of guy James Harding is—he’d once bought a yacht and let it rot in the marina for a tax deduction. I assumed that Oliver would be Dad 2.0. In other words, Corporate Asshole 2.0.
Except he wasn’t. The guy on that video call reminded me of my mom. He was sweet and patient, and he never once said “I’m sorry for your loss,” because that was obvious. Instead, he talked about her.
“I have so many good memories of your mom,” he said. “She was so much fun. That’s what I remember most. Hey, did she still make those cheesecake brownies?”
My eyes teared up, and all I could do was nod.
“I love those brownies,” he said. “One time, she put them out to cool, and I asked if I could have a piece . . .”
“And you took a whole row and blamed the dog.”
“She remembered?” His smile is surprised, but also pleased.
Of course. She remembered everything about you. You’d been her child, once upon a time.
But I didn’t say that. I could only imagine what stories our father had told him about Mom.
“Your mom was awesome,” he said. Then he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that makes me sound about twelve, but she really was. I remember, one night Dad was working late, as usual, and I had a math test the next day. I was freaking out. Your mom spent hours working with me, and then we went for ice cream. That’s who she was. Work hard, play hard, and I really . . .” He cleared his throat. “She was awesome.”
Pain stabbed through me, but for the first time in weeks, it didn’t feel like a fatal blow.
“She was,” I said.
“And I’d say my dad made a huge mistake leaving her, but honestly, I always figured she dodged a bullet there.”
I choked on a laugh.
Oliver’s voice lowered. “Our dad is an asshole, Amy. I hate what he did to you and your mom.”
“What he did to all of us,” I said before I could stop myself.
His voice cracked then. “I used to beg to see your mom again, and he said she didn’t want to see me.” Before I can protest, he hurries on. “Which is a lie. A few years ago, she reached out, now that I was an adult, and my father couldn’t interfere. She probably never mentioned that.”
“She didn’t.” I wasn’t surprised, though. Now that I think about it, I’d have been more surprised if she let him go and never contacted him again.
“We even had lunch a couple of years ago. You were in your senior year, and she was so proud of you, Amy.” He was quiet for a moment, then he said softly, “I know you weren’t ready for a relationship with me. You were understandably angry with our dad. So your mom and I decided to wait a bit. And then . . .”
My eyes filled. “I’m sorry. She was right. I was angry with him, and I shouldn’t have let that spill onto you.”
“I understood. Our father—” He cut himself short abruptly. “Enough about him. He doesn’t deserve it. Let’s talk about her. Is that okay?”
Was it okay? God, it was so okay. Talking about Mom and sharing good memories was exactly what I needed, and that video call was the best thing to happen to me since the “before” times.
That should have turned everything around for me, right? Back on my feet, determined to start the uphill climb and find my new normal?
No. In fact, it was the opposite.
I’d psyched myself up for the call with Oliver, and it had gone better than I could have dreamed, and somehow that sent me crashing even deeper into the pit. I became racked with guilt for not contacting Oliver when Mom died. Guilt for letting him see it in the news. Guilt for presuming he’d be an asshole. Guilt for not telling him, during that call, that Mom had loved him. That’s what depression does: people think you just need something to cheer you up, and sometimes, your brain takes that “good” thing and weaponizes it against you.
I bottomed out after that. At least before the call, I’d been forcing myself to eat and finding temporary solace in that TV show. After the call, I stopped both.
And no one noticed. Dinah presumed if I ducked her calls with texts, I was just busy. My back-home friends all presumed I was drowning my grief in schoolwork, and they didn’t want to interfere. My new college friends presumed I’d gone home after I’d dropped out. No one wanted to bother me, and that only made me feel more alone.
I won’t say I was ever suicidal. That would require action. I just . . . stopped. It was as if I shut down, and even the most fundamental parts of life seemed like too much effort. I had to force myself to eat and drink, and otherwise, I lay in bed and existed. I existed, and that took all the energy I had, with days where even that seemed like too much effort.
Mom was gone. Dead. Murdered. With her went the center of my universe, the only person who truly cared about me.
Then came the knock at my dorm door.
“Amy?” a man’s voice said. “It’s me. Oliver.” A pause. “Your brother.”
I didn’t move. I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling. Even processing what I was hearing seemed like too much effort. My brain was empty.
The knock came firmer. “I know you’re in there, Amy. I know you dropped out of college, and I know you didn’t go home. You haven’t been returning my texts, so I got worried and made some calls. No one’s seen you in weeks.”
Another pause. Then he said, “Maybe I should be breaking this door down, presuming the worst, but I’m hoping I don’t need to do that. I realize you don’t know me from a stranger, and I’m sorry for that. I misunderstood the situation. I realize that now, and I want to make up for it.”
