The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

by Ally Carter

Ms. Chase: Of course, I’m not offended that you’d accuse me of murder. I’m offended you’d think I’d be bad at it.

“You’re a leather jacket guy.” He was currently the Leather Jacket Guy, but Maggie didn’t say so. “You write leather jacket books.”

As if he didn’t know. “They are books with car chases and gunfights and back covers that are nothing but giant author photos of dudes who are always—always—wearing a leather jacket.”

He started to rise, but stopped midway when he realized Maggie was staring. “You know, some women think I’m chivalrous.” “Some women think the earth is flat.” “Oh.” He bit back that million-dollar grin. “You wound me.” Maggie smirked. “Is that an offer?” A thousand scenarios flashed across his face when he said, “Maybe later.” And then he winked and slammed the door and Maggie tried to stop herself from smiling.

“Oh, we’re here, ma’am.” Here? Where? Maggie saw a lake shimmering in the distance, but there wasn’t a town or a house in sight. “The estate is over twenty thousand acres. And it abuts a national park.”

The dream

She picked up the cane and twisted and then, click, out popped a dagger. Even on the overcast day it glistened in the sun. “I have another one that will shoot a tranquilizer dart twenty feet if you press the rose on the handle.” There was pure mischief in the older woman’s eyes. And sheer adoration in Ethan’s. “I love you,” he said. “Will you marry me? Or adopt me? I’m happy either way. Totally your call.”

If the look on Eleanor’s face was any indication, she and Cece had very different definitions of the word fun, but there was something else in her eyes, too: patience and curiosity—like someone who was working on a plot and pulling at strings, not sure which ones would make a knot and which would make them all unravel.

“That’s Eleanor Ashley,” she mumbled numbly. “We’re . . . we’re spending Christmas with Eleanor Ashley.” She kept waiting for Ethan to tell her she was crazy, that she was wrong. But he just kept looking down at her with something like fondness in his eyes. And when he said, “Let’s get you to your room, Maggie,” her name sounded just right on his lips.

“I’m . . .” She was twelve years older, but Maggie would always be the girl who had woken up one Christmas morning in a mansion where there wasn’t a single present for her under the tree. “I’m just honored to be here.” It seemed like the safest answer. “I’m glad. Because you’re one of my favorite authors.” And then Maggie died. The End.

She needed to know if it was okay to hope because Maggie had learned a long time ago that hope was the most dangerous emotion. It had been ripped from her and used against her. It had torn her to shreds a dozen times and she wasn’t going to do that to herself if she could help it. She wouldn’t survive it.

She hated him because he was handsome and charming and they lived in a world where a man didn’t have to be anything else.

And then the sound came back at ten times the volume, loud and almost violent in his ears as she asked, “Is Eleanor here?” There was so much hope in her voice, but the husband, Colin, just shook his head, bewildered. “Who? How should I know? What did you do to your hair?” Ethan had never seen someone shrink right in front of his eyes, but that’s what happened as her husband looked her up and down. She tried to smooth her hair again. “It’s snowing, remember? You didn’t want to get your shoes wet so I parked the car?” He’d made her park the car, then walk in heels in a blizzard. Her husband. “They’re suede,” the asshole said, and then the anger Ethan was feeling turned to rage. It was the first time he’d ever really felt like murdering someone, and right then—right there—he knew he’d found his true profession.

But what no one—least of all twenty-one-year-old Maggie—had realized at the time was that Colin and Emily liked her exactly where she was: somewhere between charity case and mascot. Someone who had no other options. Who was equal parts needy and independent, who could go anywhere anytime but who could only do it with them. Because of them. She was the ultimate foil—only there to reflect their light.

“No.” The word was so jagged it could have sliced her throat to shreds. “He got fifty percent of my copyrights.”

Are you freaking kisding??

She nodded slowly. “I wrote under four new names until I could buy him out—which I did.”

Hell yeah, girl!

“Did you know someone locked Eleanor in the greenhouse and set it on fire, Inspector?” Maggie didn’t recognize her own voice. She didn’t smile or soften the words or do any of a million things she’d been trained to do to keep a man from feeling threatened. No. She just stood there, feeling the heat from the fireplace and trying not to think about a room full of flames and smoky poison. “Did you?” Maggie asked again, louder now, and Dobson practically shivered. Guilty. He did know. Maggie could tell before he even opened his mouth.

She smiled into his chest. “When I was twenty-one, my fiancé and my best friend sent me to get more wine, but the cellar door slammed shut behind me and I got locked in for a day and a half.”

What. The. Fuck.

“Any douchebag rich enough to have a wine cellar can cover the hospital bills of the girl who got locked inside it and almost died.” “I didn’t almost die.” But she could have, and that’s the part Maggie never let herself think about. She could have died—not because she got locked in but because no one had bothered to come looking.

Ethan wasn’t who people wanted him to be. He was who he needed to be to survive: someone charming and easy and cool. Someone who makes friends and keeps the peace. The life of the party. The guy who gets invited back.

His voice was too soft—too gentle and kind. She wanted him to chide or taunt or tease. Even one of Colin’s mumbled insults or backhanded jabs she could have handled, but Maggie no longer knew what to do with kindness. She didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust him. But the streetlights were blurry overhead, and when she closed her eyes, the tears spilled over. Her face was wet and her eyes were shut tight. She couldn’t see. Didn’t want to. And when the strongest arms she’d ever felt wrapped around her, she let them. When his big hand cupped the back of her head, fingers weaving through her hair and pressing her cheek against soft, warm leather, she didn’t try to pull away. She just cried harder. Gasping, ugly tears that were soundless and desperate and cruel. It was the sound that hope makes when it leaves the human body, but Ethan didn’t say a thing. He just held her tighter.

“You know, if mankind has one universal superpower, it’s gaslighting women into thinking they’re the problem.”

“It’s about a young woman who walked five miles in the rain on a broken leg before collapsing on Eleanor’s doorstep. It’s about a girl who was so poor and a boy whose family was so powerful that no one would ever believe their golden son had beaten her unconscious and left her for dead. It’s about a young woman who was so terrified she decided to just be dead—change her appearance and her name and disappear—because, sometimes, being dead is the only way to stay alive.”