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Pineview, Montana

It was the es—Vivian Stewart as of two years ago—heard about it, everything she’d been through, everything she’d done to escape her past, ca back at her And it happened at a place where she’d felt cohts put in her hair at Claire’s Salon, which wasn’t much of a salon, just an add-on to her friend’s small home

Although Claire had grown up here, Vivian had lived in Pineview only since she’d assumed her most recent identity She’d chosen this town because it had an extremely low crime rate, it was so far from where she’d been before and it was on the backside of nowhere She’d never drea her for four years would think to look here And it’d been a long enough stretch of peace and quiet to believe the terrible years were over She’d left her old self behind, adjusted, established her fledgling purse-design business and begun to live again She and her two children—Mia, seven, and Jake, nine—were finally starting to belong

And now, in the blink of an eye, everything they’d created here felt threatened

“What’d you say?” Lifting the hood of the commercial hair dryer, she leaned out so she could hear The posth the doors Claire had flung wide so they could enjoy the breezy Junechemicals

“Pat Stueben’s dead,” he repeated, handing Claire her mail “He’s been murdered” His face, drained of its usual ruddy color, made hie—fifty-five—because she’d attended his birthday party last roup

Claire, only five foot three or so, leaned on the broo to sweep up hair Vivian had wanted a sassy cut to signify the freedo so often of late She’d also gone back to being a blonde, which was her natural color But going so short was a big change Now she couldn’t help staring at the dark brown locks lying on the floor, feeling as if she’d just shed her skin

“How? When?” Claire brought a hand to her chest George’s words had obviously shocked her as much as they had Vivian With the disappearance of her o and the death of her husband after only a few years of e, Claire had had more than her share of bad news And now this… “Leanne and I saw hiht,” she said “They were in the booth next to ours”

Tall and bony, George rese a baby when he carried his bulgingdown Claire’s little dead-end street, and the shorts that ith his eather unifors with knobby knees and varicose veins But he alore a smile

Except today

“So to rent one of those cabins he owns over on the north shore So after breakfast he drove around the lake to show the property—and never came back”

If he’d said that Pat had died of a heart attack, Vivian wouldn’t have found it difficult to believe Pat was no longer as svelte as the picture posted on his real-estate signs But…murdered? That couldn’t be They still didn’t knohat’d happened to Claire’s mother, but no one had ever been killed in this tranquil place, not in recent ht If the community had more deaths than some, that was because it had more seniors

The old cloying fear welled up,it hard for Vivian to breathe, let alone talk After two atteed to find her voice “Who discovered him?”