AN EMPTY COFFIN NOVEL
Betrayal
BY GREGG OLSEN
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trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
© 2012 by Gregg Olsen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4027-9010-2
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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For Jamie Morris, the girl who opened the creaky door of an abandoned house in the dark, dark woods.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
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
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Postmortem
TRUTH IN FICTION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
LIKE SOME OF THIS STORY, the following is absolutely true: trust doesn’t come in shades of gray. It’s absolute and filled with power. When trust is broken, it’s often not the act of betrayal that’s most surprising. The real shocker is who in your innermost circle betrayed you—a best friend? A boyfriend? A sister? A parent?
Betrayal can appear small, like a little white lie, the whisper of a long-held secret in the hall at school, or the posting of a private confession on Facebook. Or it can be colossal and far darker, like a pretty young lacrosse player savagely murdered by her ex-boyfriend, or the mother with haunted eyes who drowned her babies in the bathroom tub. The truth is that big or small, betrayal cuts quite like no other evil. And when it comes for you, it finds its way quietly in the night like the slip of a knife at the base of the spine. As life fades to black, you ask over and over: What did I do to deserve this?
—Gregg Olsen
Chapter 1
OLIVIA GRANT WASN’T EXACTLY SURE what she’d expected America to be like, but Port Gamble, Washington, most certainly wasn’t it. As the sixteen-year-old foreign-exchange student had boarded the late summer flight from London Heathrow to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and plunked herself down next to a smelly man and his chubby little boy, she daydreamed of palm trees and movie stars. The travel magazine in the seat pocket in front of her all but confirmed the glamour awaiting the redheaded teen in just a few short hours: the cover featured a big splashy photo of beautiful people living in sunny, USA splendor. She was almost giddy, but she held it inside. British reserve, of course.
Olivia immersed herself in American TV the entire way over the polar ice cap to Seattle and wondered if the little boy to her left was going to be a kid contestant on The Biggest Loser. His father definitely was destined for some kind of makeover show. He not only smelled vaguely bad—garlic—but his mustache hung over his lip like an inverted vacuum cleaner attachment. The stylist who cut his hair had apparently used a saucepan for the template. When he looked over, she simply smiled. Olivia Grant was always very, very polite.
As it had turned out, Port Gamble wasn’t sunny Southern California. Not by a long shot. Instead, even in late August when she’d arrived, it was about as soggy and dismal as Dorchester was in the middle of winter. Gray. Wet. Windy. The people who lived there were average teachers, cooks, millworkers, nurses.
So not movie stars with golden hair and perfectly straight teeth.
OLIVIA PONDERED THIS WHILE SITTING in the living room of her first American party. Olivia conceded that her first American beer wasn’t what she thought it would be either. Brianna Connors, her new best friend, had promised that her dad’s favorite craft brew was no big deal, even at 11 percent alcohol content. Tonight at Brianna’s Halloween party, Olivia—in full costume—had sucked down the amber liquid like water and at first felt great. Then all of a sudden, somewhere between fending off some geeky, eye-linered, pirate boy’s cringe-worthy come-on (“Hey hot wench, you lookin’ for a first mate?”), arguing with her host roommate Beth Lee, and trying to cozy up to Jason Deveraux, the hottest guy at Kingston High, a wave of nausea hit her like a mini-tsunami. With the party still in eardrum-splitting full swing, Olivia went upstairs and sought refuge in Brianna’s acre-sized bed.
Olivia curled up for an hour, maybe two. If she’d been able to recount it later, it would have been hard to say exactly how long. Time came and went in the way that it does in a dream. Vapors. Mist. She wondered if she’d been drugged. She had only had one beer, two at most. She ran the scenario in her head. It was true that she had felt a little sick that morning. Maybe it was nerves? Maybe it was the onset of the bug that had been going around school? She hadn’t really eaten a thing since breakfast. Could it be just the combination of really bad American beer and no food?
Where was Brianna? Olivia thought, feeling sicker by the minute as the room started to spin. Was the party still going on? She could hear loud music and some teen slasher DVD blasting from the TV downstairs. The bass from the two competing subwoofers pumped up through the gleaming, dark, walnut floorboards.
Slowly, slowly, and with great effort, Olivia sat up, pulled off the scratchy, sparkly costume, exposing her thin white Calvin Klein slip underneath, and looked at herself in the mirror across the room. Even in the dark and through her late-night drunken haze, she could see her red hair, her flawless pale skin, and her green eyes. Boasting was so tacky, but even then, sick as she was, she thought she looked pretty good. It was ridiculous that she had worn not one, but two silly costumes during the party. Yet it was her first Halloween in America, a country that apparently reveled in the weird, macabre, and cheesy. She wondered why every boy’s costume was that of a superhero and every girl was dressed up as a naughty or sexy something.