When an anonymous neighborhood forum gets hacked, the darkest secrets of New York’s wealthiest residents come to light--including some worth killing for--in this gripping suspense novel from the author of “ UrbanMyth: It was lauded as an alternative to the performative, show-your-best-self platforms--an anonymous discussion board grouped by zip code. The residents of Manhattan’s exclusive Upper East Side disclosed it all, things they would never share with their friends or their spouses: secret bank accounts, steamy affairs, tidbits of juicy gossip. The same people who, as parents, go to astonishing lengths to ensure that their children gain admission to the most prestigious boarding schools and universities. So when a “hacktivist” group breaks into the forum and exposes the real identity of each poster, the repercussions echo down Park Avenue with a force that none could have anticipated. And someone ends up dead. Is the murderer Heather, the outsider who would do anything to get her daughter into the elite’s good graces and into their even better schools? Norah, the high-powered executive failing to balance work with the emotional responsibilities of motherhood? Or Poppy, whose perfect-on-the-outside façade conceals more than her share of secrets? Each of them has something to hide. Each of them will do anything to keep secrets hidden. And each of them just might kill to protect their own.

Autorentext

Lindsay Cameron

Leseprobe
Chapter One

February

Heather

As the black Escalade inched down Park Avenue, Heather had the feeling she was being slowly marched off a cliff. She imagined a loud, male voice behind her bellowing out the orders—left, right, left, right—until she plunged blindly over the edge. Was it her husband’s voice she was hearing in her mind or some generic movie voice, like Morgan Freeman’s? It had to be the latter. If her husband had his way, she wouldn’t be sitting in this car right now. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Oliver had repeated, as she’d pushed her feet into the ballet flats beside the door, his brow crinkled with concern.

Yes, she was sure.

So why wouldn’t Morgan Freeman shut the hell up?

Heather leaned her head between the seats, peering out the windshield at the river of illuminated red taillights. A mocking reminder of how little control she had over the evening.

“Can you take Lexington instead? This doesn’t look like it’s moving.” If she was going to be marched off a cliff, it should at least be efficient.

The driver tapped the dirty iPhone mounted on the dashboard. “Waze says Park is better, but whatever you say.” The car swung left and she slid back on the seat. She could already see the traffic was lighter on Lex. The knot in her stomach uncoiled a bit.

A good omen—she could use one of those.

She put her hand on her daughter’s arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be more fun than you think. I promise.”

“You and I have very different definitions of fun,” Violet muttered, not bothering to raise her eyes from her phone.

Heather’s jaw clenched. There were kids right now who were weeping to their parents because they couldn’t get a ticket to this event, yet here her daughter sat, acting like she was about to spend the evening being waterboarded.

The driver jammed his brakes at the light, and an expensively clad woman holding the hand of a curly haired toddler stepped off the curb, lifting up an open palm to the cars, as if she had the power to stop traffic. Heather followed them with her eyes, feeling a pinch of nostalgia for when Violet was that age. Always at arm’s reach. How easy it was to guide her through life back then. Organic food, music classes to stimulate her brain, teaching her to go down a slide rather than walk up it—there was a playbook, a comprehensive step-by-step guide that made perfect sense to Heather. “It’s easy to feel like a good parent when you have an easy child,” the director of Violet’s preschool had told a roomful of eager parents, but Heather wholeheartedly disagreed. It wasn’t genetic luck. Heather had prepared for being a mother the same way she’d prepared for the SATs—meticulously. And it had paid off. Violet could read an entire chapter book before she’d finished kindergarten, had a shelf full of squash trophies, and was a regular winner of the service award at her competitive Upper East Side private school. This type of success didn’t happen by accident. Heather was a good mother.

Violet was proof of concept.

She tucked a stray strand of Violet’s cinnamon-colored hair behind her ear. “I know this isn’t what you want to be doing tonight, but you need to keep your eye on the prize.”

Violet groaned. “You don’t even know if she’ll be there, Mom. I mean, where did you even hear she was coming? You said yourself it wasn’t public knowledge.” Violet tore at a cuticle with her teeth, and Heather gently moved her hand away from her mouth. Violet looked like she might protest, but she let her hand fall into her lap.

“Eye on the prize,” Heather repeated, ignoring the question. Again.

“Whatever,” Violet mumbled, plucking a peppermint candy from the pile in the cup holder, twisting open the wrapper, and popping it into her mouth before Heather could protest. Heather pressed her lips together. She hated when Violet ate anything offered in an Uber. Who knew where those dirty little candies had been? Some pervert might find it humorous to unwrap them, lick, and rewrap, waiting for some unsuspecting rider to partake. Why wasn’t her daughter more suspicious of candy from strangers? A suburban, poison-in-Halloween-candy-style paranoia had been drilled into Heather as a child, but she’d somehow failed to pass on a healthy sense of caution to her daughter. She added that to her mental list of things to teach Violet. But not tonight.

Heather checked the time on her phone. 6:55 p.m. Dammit.

“We’ll get out here,” she said, tapping a fingernail against the window.

“We’re still five blocks away,” Violet whined as she unpeeled herself from the leather bucket seat. “And these shoes you made me wear are really uncomfortable.” She gestured to her sensible but fashionable one-inch-heeled pumps, the ones Heather had purchased last week after reading a study claiming people attribute significantly greater intelligence to taller children. While it might not be a fair assessment, who was she to argue with psychology?

“You’ll be fine.” Heather waved her out of the car impatiently. “The walk will be good for both of us.”

By the time they swept through the brass doors and into the elegant foyer, most of the children had already descended the scarlet carpeted staircase. They weren’t children anymore, Heather supposed. They were teenagers now, all dressed up and ready for their first Teen Night at The Doubles Club, the private dining club that catered to the elite social set, which Heather had spent years strategizing her way into. “It’s so overwhelming, isn’t it?” Heather could remember a perky southern blonde lamenting as she shook a small maraca over her three-month-old in their Music Babies class at Diller-Quaile. “New York City parenting, I mean. Like, we have to do all these classes to get them into the right preschools and we have to know about all this stuff, like, years in advance or our child is shut out. And apparently it only gets worse.” She’d leaned in conspiratorially. “Have you heard about …