Each year, Lily Lennox returns to a Caribbean wellness resort to secretly avenge her fiancé Jessica’s death by killing those she deems most deserving. Enter Daniel: a mysterious (and infuriatingly hot) journalist with a hidden agenda. To throw him off, Lily keeps her enemy close — maybe too close as they slowly fall for each other.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Sienna Sharpe’s A Killer Getaway, which is out now.
No one in Lily Lennox’s life can understand why, for each of the past five summers, she has left her successful business behind to work a lifeguarding job at the exclusive Riovan Wellness Resort on a sun-soaked Caribbean Island.
Fortunately for her, they also aren’t aware of the mysterious deaths that occur on the island every time she’s there. You see, Lily has a secret. She’s determined to make toxic people pay for the damage they do – and she’s very good at getting away with it.
But this summer, there’s a problem in the form of a very attractive guest, Daniel Black, who is asking a few too many inconvenient questions. Hoping to lead him off her trail, Lily decides to keep her enemy close, but as their attraction grows into something much deeper, Lily’s plans start to unravel. Because Daniel is set on finding the murderer – and Lily plans to get away with it – no matter what.
PROLOGUE
I BLINK SLOWLY, WATCHING THE WORLD FUZZ IN AND OUT IN THE CLEAR honey light falling on us through your apartment window. The window is dirty; you’re not very good at housekeeping, but I don’t care, and after last night I’ve found out how good you are at other things.
Even though we just had our first night together, I’ve already planned in my head that after we get married, you’ll be in charge of the cooking and I’ll be in charge of the cleaning. We’ll play to our strengths. If you always leave your laundry strewn around, I’ll think it’s cute. Promise. Each imperfection will be one more reason to love you, and we will never, ever resent each other.
I’m only half awake. The scene is like a dream—you’re a dream, one I never even dared have. But last night, you changed that.
The jut of your hip under white sheets, the drape of your arm, the tremble of your breath fluttering the edge of the coverlet. All so easy, and I never thought love would be easy.
Your voice is deep in these early, tender hours as your eyes take me in and you murmur, “Beautiful.”
You say it like it moves you. Like there’s something sacred about the mathematics that wove my proportions together when I was nothing but a blob of cells. When you speak that single word with all the certainty of an officiant blessing a sacrament, some old, broken place in my heart begins to mend. All my life, beauty has felt like a liability, but at that word from you (and I know it sounds crazy, but…), I heal.
Do you believe that healing can happen in a single moment? I do. I experienced it with you that morning in your Cincinnati apartment above the bakery, with the smell of yeast and sugar in the air around us and the muted grumble of city traffic leaking through the windowpanes.
“Want coffee?” you murmur.
“In a minute,” I murmur back, because I don’t want either of us to move yet. I want to live in this moment for ever.
Your fingers trail slowly over the line of my jaw, sending shivers like currents of wordless music into my bones. This morning, your touch is as delicate as smoke, but I remember your touch last night. The ferocious urgency that drove us together, tumbling backward on to your unmade bed as you whispered, Are we doing this? and I groaned, Yes, and our beings cracked open in each other’s arms.
That was before.
But of course, there’s another scene after.
A darker scene to bookend the light, the sheets now washed in shadows in the hush of a hospital. Still, the jut of a hip. The drape of an arm. The flutter of breath on sheets. A beeping monitor and quiet, muffled sobs that wrench and yank as they come out—my own.
Then, later, me alone in the apartment, with the smell of the bakery in the air and the muted traffic and the sunlight slanting, sitting on the unmade bed alone, not wanting to move. Not because I want this moment to last for ever, but because I’m afraid of what the next moment will bring, and the next after that, and maybe if I stay still enough, I won’t have to face a future without you.
It’ll get easier, my friends tell me. Just be patient with yourself.
But they never held that kind of love in their hands, or felt its perfection and fragility.
They never felt the slick, viscous slide of an entire future slipping away through the cracked shell of a life. In that single moment, I shattered.
I’ve always hated that old children’s rhyme. You know the one—Humpty Dumpty. But it’s true, isn’t it?
That there are some breakages that go beyond healing.
That sometimes, a single fall can break you for ever.
CHAPTER 1
“A BEVERAGE, MA’AM?” LIKE A FISHHOOK, THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT’S whisper yanks me out of the meditative zone I’d just achieved, back into the chilly, dry atmosphere of the airplane.
“Tomato juice, please.” My nerves are fizzing like live wires, but I force what I believe to be a calm smile and close my book. Crime and Punishment. Ambitious, isn’t it? I have yet to read a word. As Mom always said, go big or go home. God love her, she had no patience for mediocrity of any kind.
The flight attendant rummages in the depths of her cart for a can of V8, and I glance at my seatmate, passed out with an action thriller movie still playing on his seatback screen. Light flickers over his slack face. The plane is full of sleepers. It’s a lonely feeling to be
the only passenger awake, and more than once since boarding, I’ve wished I wasn’t making this trip. Any minute now, we should see the sunrise burning red on the horizon. The beginning of a day I’ve been anticipating and dreading for a year.
“Ice with that?”
“Yes, please.”
As the flight attendant scoops a noisy volley of ice into a small clear plastic cup, I resettle my restless legs, angled toward the window to avoid my sleeping seatmate’s truly heroic case of manspreading.
“Thanks,” I tell the flight attendant, as she reaches over him with my can and the cup of ice. He twitches, then his eyes blink awake and he lowers his Bose headphones so they encircle his neck.
“You don’t want some vodka in that?” he says as he eyes my drink selection, stretching his muscled arms behind his head in a V shape and giving me an engaging half-grin. “Make it a Bloody Mary? My treat, since I was probably snoring or drooling.”
His accent is New Jersey all the way. I put his age around fifty. Successful businessman. Gym-obsessed. Probably drives a Tesla. Divorced? I glance down at his hand and sure enough, there’s a pale mark where a wedding band recently moved out. I like to figure out
people as quickly as I can. I’m not always right, but I do have an instinct. Which, right now, is screaming yes to the vodka.
“Why not.”
I’m not a big drinker. But right now, I could use some help relaxing.
“Get the nice lady some vodka,” he says, straining into the pocket of his jeans, presumably for a credit card. “Get me some too while you’re at it.”
“No card needed, sir,” says the flight attendant smoothly. “We’ve gone contactless. We’ll charge it to your seat.” She smiles at me. “I’ll be right back with your vodka.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Reading anything good?” he says, already leaning in to read the back cover copy. “Dostoevsky!” He leans back and gives me an exaggerated up and down. “She’s the whole package, ladies and gentlemen! The body and the brains.”
I’m not usually one to engage in anger fantasies. It’s a waste of both time and emotional energy. Still, something about this guy makes it really easy for me to envision pounding my fist into his crotch. Instead, I tighten my grip on my plastic cup, stare at him, and take a long, savory gulp of tomato juice. I shiver as it goes down.
“OK, woman of mystery,” he says appreciatively. The plane gives a sudden shudder, and since I have to divert all my attention to balancing my tomato juice, my violent little vision pops.
“What a tin can,” my seatmate murmurs, stretching his thighs out further to the side and grunting. “No space for a big guy like me.”
Emasculation, of course, might create more room…
Stop!
“I never fly coach,” he continues, “but their first class section filled up. What the fuck, you know? I’m Kyle, by the way.”
I force a smile but don’t try to make it reach my eyes, as the flight attendant returns with four tiny plastic bottles of vodka and hands us two each. I pour the first into my V8 and swish the ice around to mix it. Is it technically day drinking if the sun isn’t up yet?
“Cheers,” Kyle says, knocking the tiny bottle in his massive hand against my cup. I sip; he downs his straight away. “You traveling for business or for pleasure?”
“Business.”
“Pleasure,” says Kyle, twisting the cap off bottle number two. “Well, more like a reset. After the divorce.” He waggles his fingers in the air. “You married?”
“No.”
“Cheers to that.” He clinks my cup again. “Not worth it.” He downs his second bottle in a few swift gulps, then calls, “Miss? Miss?” toward the flight attendant, jiggling his two empty bottles before resuming his chat with me. “I’m the CEO of a really, really success-
ful company, and that comes with sacrifices. She didn’t get it. She wanted the goods, you know—the luxury bags, the chef’s kitchen, all that shit—but she didn’t want to pay the piper. She said I was addicted to my phone, and I’m like, I’m running a company here,
sweetheart. You want your five-hundred-dollar extensions, your spa days, your personal trainer, your Swedish au pair—Daddy’s gotta run his business, you know? She didn’t fucking get it, if you’ll pardon my French…” For a moment, his eyes stray to his screen, where a car
has burst into flames. He laughs and nudges my arm—ugh—but I’m wedged between him and the window and there’s no escape route. “Fuck, look, I love this scene, it’s a classic.”
Some gangster type is standing on the flaming, overturned car, shooting into a line of police officers. Uniformed bodies dance and twitch in the air as the cops burst back like human confetti before falling. I look away. I can’t abide violence on screen. After you experience the real thing, the true significance of those final moments of someone’s life, you lose your taste for the fantasy.
“So you’re not married,” Kyle says, turning his attention back to me. “Any interest in grabbing drinks when we land? Don’t tell me you have a boyfriend.” He laughs, holding up both palms. “Literally, don’t tell me, because I don’t care. Beautiful woman flying alone? His loss, my gain. We can talk Dostoevsky, maybe you can class me up a little.” He shifts in his seat, leaning closer so his breath tickles my skin. “You’re a very attractive woman—I hope you don’t mind my candor. What’s your name, by the way?”
The flight attendant hands him two more bottles of vodka and takes his empties. Her eyes skim over both of us and briefly catch mine. I watch her hesitate, then I nod ever so slightly. It’s OK. I got this.
“Cat got your tongue?” says Kyle. “What’s your name?”
“Lily,” I say.
“So, what do you say, Lily? Airport mimosa when we land?”
“I’m going to have to pass.”
“And I’m going to have to insist. C’mon. Mimosas as the sun rises. If you’re good, I’ll toss in some breakfast too. Can’t beat that.”
“Let’s not, and say we did.” This time my forced smile is truly more of a grimace, but I’m not sure Kyle is the kind to tell the difference.
“OK, OK,” he says, nodding, leaning back a little, his eyes appraising me. “Playing hard to get, I’ve seen it before.” He’s still smiling, but I can feel the tension. He’s not used to being turned down.
“I’m just not looking for a relationship right now. I hope you don’t mind my candor,” I say
“This isn’t a marriage proposal.” His voice is louder, overly jocular. “Just drinks.”
I can see a vein pulsing in his neck, and you know, Kyle, at this point, there are a few veins pulsing in my body, too—and it’s not the ones you might hope for.
I’m generally coolheaded. I grew up in a trailer park with a mom whose nickname was the Slut of Calumet Heights—no mediocre insults for our family—so I had to learn early on how to manage my emotions. That didn’t mean I never let my fists fly. But I chose when to do it. Not my feelings.
“It’s not personal,” I say with a shrug. “I’m just not that into it, Kyle.”
His neck flushes. “Into what? Drinks?” His laugh is short, aggressive. “Because you had no problem guzzling the one I just bought you.” Then he mutters, “What a bitch,” so quietly, I could almost imagine it didn’t happen. He pushes his headphones over his ears and leans back in his seat, his thighs pressing out even wider.
Not ideal, Kyle. Not ideal.
I discreetly send a wish into the universe that his ex-wife is finding her absolute happiness. That she’s having multiple orgasms at this very moment, why not.
Then I gently nudge Kyle’s arm. He lowers his headphones and gives me a stony look.
“Sorry—random question—you don’t happen to be headed to the Riovan, do you?” My voice is perfectly light, perfectly friendly.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he says gruffly.
I figured. The main reason to come to Saint Lisieux is the Riovan, the sprawling, luxurious and exclusive resort where I also happen to be going. I imagine most people on this plane are headed there, too, if not to one of the neighboring islands connected by ferry. Still, it’s a good feeling to stick a pin in Kyle and attach him to my mental map. And I know just where I’d stick that pin, too.
An image enters my brain of a mini, butterfly-sized Kyle pinned in a display frame. The label underneath: homo sapiens assholiens.
“Why?” Kyle adds, with an uneasy edge like he can see what’s in my brain.
“I just wondered,” I say with a sweet smile. If he has any sort of survivor instinct, it should be blaring an alarm right about now. Lucky for me, he doesn’t. “But please—don’t let me interrupt your movie.”
He casts one more glance at me as he slides his headphones back on, and soon he’s chuckling at a car chase scene. Already moving on. It’s always the jerks who move on first. Have you noticed that? You may think I’m bitter, but this is strictly an observation.
As I see how easily Kyle moves between calling me a bitch and laughing at his gratuitously violent movie, something in me clicks.
It’s a sensation as physical as my ears popping as I flip from one Lily to another. From Cincinnati Lily—the “30 under 30” business-woman who’s revitalizing the city; the fun friend who’s always up for karaoke; the “happily single” girl who’s a great shoulder for everyone else to cry on—to the other Lily, the one I become for four weeks every summer. I don’t think it’s strange to have multiple parts to myself; most people do. They’re both me.
I down the remainder of my drink in one final swallow, relishing the spice and the burn in my mouth. The restlessness is gone. The booze helped.
The flight attendant is back, collecting trash.
“Everything all right?” she whispers as she holds out the white bag, with a glance at me that says she heard more between Kyle and me than she’s letting on, and I appreciate her concern. Really. More of us should be looking out for one another. But she needn’t be concerned for me.
I know how to take care of myself.
“Just dandy,” I say, as I toss the cup and can into her bag.
