This is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)

by Karin Slaughter

All he could think was the same thing everybody thought when they saw them together: what the hell was she doing with him? She was so damn clever and funny and beautiful and he couldn’t even get the knot out of his shoelace in the dark.

There were secrets that would destroy Dave. Revelations that would tear Fish apart. Crimes that could send Bitty to prison. And the sheer evil that Papa had committed to keep this place in his violent, greedy hands. None of them were going to take the lodge away from Mercy. They would have to kill her first.

He’d danced with his boss, Amanda, because she was more like a mother to Will, if your mother was the type of person who would shoot you in the leg so the bad guys would get to you first while she sprinted away.

Strangulation was a giant red flag. At least that was what Mercy had read online. When a man put his hands around a woman’s neck, that woman was six times more likely to suffer serious violence or die by homicide.

“Wagner? Is that her name?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “She offered to send some of her field agents to take over, but I told her to cool her jets. Dave will show up eventually.” Amanda didn’t have a cool setting on her jets.

“Boy’s about as popular as a snake in a sleeping bag.

This was the frustrating part of an investigation. People lied. They hid things. They kept their secrets. They shared others. And sometimes none of it had anything to do with the crime you were trying to solve.

No one was answering the phone at the McAlpine Family Lodge. According to their website, the only way into the place was to hike up a mountain, which sounded like a punishment that was meted out to the Von Trapp children before Maria showed up with her guitar.

She also knew Georgia would be Mississippi without metro Atlanta’s tax dollars. Everybody romanticized country living until they needed internet and healthcare.

Faith started grinning. “How did I get an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery with a VC Andrews twist?”