Page 1 of Justified Lies

Prologue

A suburb of Vancouver, BC

October

Not again. Lianna Bennett sat up in bed, her heart beating painfully in her chest. The phone had stopped ringing, but she knew it was only a matter of time before it began again. She resisted the urge to flick on the lamp. It put a spotlight on her, as if whoever was insistently calling her night after night was watching. Instead, she unstuck a tendril of hair from her cheek and willed her pulse to slow.

Swinging her feet over the side, Lianna crept from her bed. Tiptoeing through the darkness, she made her way over to the doors of her balcony. Ever so slightly, she parted the blinds and peered into the night. Thanks to a cloudless sky, the grounds of her property were aglow from the moonlight. All was still, yet it did little to calm her nerves.

Ring.Ring. Lianna knew it was coming yet the sound still made her heart leap. Striding over to her nightstand, she quickly snatched up her cell phone before the sound could wake the kids. Digging deep for bravery she didn’t feel, she tried to sound unbothered.

“What?”

Breathing. It was always the same, slow, and steady breathing. The calm composure of the sound unnerved her.Click. And that was it. On script, the caller disconnected.

Standing in the darkness, phone in hand, she struggled not to drown in the depths of her loneliness. The churning in her stomach now a familiar ache. For the past few weeks, she had the nagging sensation of being watched. The feeling was unsettling, and the nightly calls were starting to take their toll. The number calling her mirrored her own, or as the cell phone company called it, a spoof, which prevented her from blocking it. She could turn her phone off but then she was cut off from the outside world. The idea of no text messages from her best friends, no calls from her in-laws getting through all night was just as unsettling.

Replacing the phone, she sluggishly climbed back into bed. There was no way she would fall back to sleep anytime soon, but Lianna was too tired to do anything else. She closed her eyes to avoid watching the shadows. Against her will her thoughts drifted. It had been two weeks to the day that the calls started. Coincidentally, it had been two months to the day that the single mother from down the street had gone missing.

Chapter One

Lianna had just zipped up the lunchbox and stored it in the refrigerator when the doorbell rang.

“Annie, please start cleaning up that Play-Doh,” she called out to her almost four-year-old who was keeping herself busy, and messy, at the dining table.

Hustling down the hall, she pulled the door open just as a hurried knock sounded. A pair of big blue eyes twinkled up at her. Jacob Williamson, her son’s best friend, stood there expectantly.

“Is Harris ready for practice?” the boy asked.

Lianna had lost track of time. Turning, she hollered up to the second floor.

“Harris, Jacob is here, are you ready for football practice?” She hoped one of them was responsible.

“Mom, I can’t find my jockstrap.”

Lianna smiled, it was flag football. Harris barely needed any equipment, especially a jockstrap, but he loved to play the part.

“Did you look in your underwear drawer?” Lianna asked, knowing he didn’t.

Her answer was in the form of two heavy feet bounding down the stairs.

“Got it!” Harris exclaimed as the one-man stampede made it to the bottom.

“Do you have your water bottle?”

“Yep,” the boy replied, holding it up.

“Is it full?”

“No…”

“Okay, put on your cleats. I’ll be right back.”

Lianna sprinted down the hall and into the kitchen, filling up the bottle at record speed. She got it to Harris as he finished the laces on his cleats.

“Ask Gabe to double knot those when you get to the field.”

A deep blush crept up Harris’s face. “I can tie my own shoes, Mom,” he said bashfully, looking to see if his best friend had overheard.

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