Fractured Promise (Where Promises Lie #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

SYLVIE

Don’t leave us hanging, Sylvie — when is the next season coming out?

Istared down at the comment on the post for the latest episode of my podcast, my finger hovering over the screen on my phone.

I debated whether to respond. I loved talking to my listeners on social media, but I hated letting them down.

And the truth was, there was one episode left of my current season, and I had no idea when the next season was coming out.

I’d thought I had a plan, had felt the story taking shape in my mind, but the more I investigated the murder of Emily Shaw, the more questions I had.

So far, I’d found very few answers. I scrolled away from the comment, removing the temptation to give a vague promise about soon.

Usually, I loved nothing more than diving into a cold case, hoping I could uncover something new and find answers for the dead and their families.

I’d been intrigued by the first reports I’d found of Emily Shaw’s murder—a car bomb in suburban Knoxville—and further interested by the way she’d disappeared from the news as quickly as the unusual story had hit. Too quickly.

Murder was my bread and butter. I paid attention to the rhythms of the media. You could learn a lot from the way things were reported, and this one was pinging my radar. I’d dug in—and was getting nowhere.

I sat back in my chair, feeling unusually claustrophobic in my van.

Normally, the compact living and working space felt snug and comforting.

Today, everything felt like it fit too tight.

I got like this when I was frustrated. Restless.

I’d come to Atlanta following a lead, and that lead had thrown up a stone wall.

Another message illuminated the screen of my phone: Only one more episode left of this season. I can’t take the suspense.

That one made me grin. I led a solitary life, pretty much a one-woman show, but my listeners always made me feel like I was part of something bigger.

Maybe because I’d started out as one of them.

I’d been a true crime junkie since I was a kid, sneaking books off the shelf at the library.

Aside from hiding my reading material from my mother, I’d been a rule follower back then.

A good girl fascinated by darkness, by serial killers and criminals.

In my real life, I dotted every I and crossed every T, got straight A’s, and was respectful to my elders, but I couldn’t quench my curiosity about those who walked outside the lines—and those who tracked them down and brought them to justice.

The second I discovered podcasting, I’d given up my books for endless episodes, digging into the minutiae of unsolved crimes, listening to shows that followed the crime all the way to conviction.

I was captivated, but had the single worst day of my life not happened, I probably would have spent my entire life being the good girl, listening to my murder podcasts, and not doing anything about the stories that haunted me.

Being a good girl couldn’t save me from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A life shoved brutally off course had turned into something new.

I hadn’t planned to spend my life in a camper van chasing justice for murdered women, but the woman I’d become didn’t see any other path.

I’d never get the justice I needed for myself, but I had a shot at getting it for someone else.

Even then, filled with grief and a need for justice, I never thought about taking up the microphone myself.

Not until Carol Stevens.

Five years ago, I’d come across her case in a compilation episode of one of my favorite podcasts.

Carol Stevens had been working the dinner shift in a restaurant; she’d had the job for a few years, knew most of the customers, was close with the staff.

One night, she picked up her purse, changed her shoes, and walked out through the kitchen, waving good-bye to the line cook still cleaning the grill.

The door was propped open to the parking lot, lit by a single streetlight that Carol had carefully parked beneath.

The line cook had watched her open the door to her car and lean down to get in before he’d turned back to the grill.

When he looked up again a few minutes later, Carol’s car was still there, the door hanging open, her purse on the ground beside it.

Carol was nowhere to be seen. Her body was found three weeks later, less than a quarter mile away, in a drainage ditch.

I didn’t know what it was about Carol Stevens’s case that got to me.

Maybe it was that I’d waited tables to put myself through college and I knew what that was like—feet aching at the end of a long day, sweaty, the grease of the kitchen on my skin, my stomach growling, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and an equally hot meal, desperate to put my feet up and not feel obligated to smile at anyone for at least a few hours.

I remembered what it was like to walk into that empty, dark parking lot.

The way I, too, had always been careful to park under a light, as if that would protect me.

The way the scuff of a foot on asphalt would have me spinning around in alarm.

The world was quiet in those empty places in the night, stairwells and parking lots.

And I couldn’t get what happened to her out of my head.

Had someone been waiting in the car? Had they come up behind her?

Did they have a gun or a knife? I could guess at what they’d threatened her with, given what we knew of the condition of her body when she was found.

Barely understanding why I was doing it, I’d taken the day off work and driven to the restaurant where Carol had worked.

I didn’t know why her coworkers talked to me, what they saw in me that made them want to share what they knew, when I could tell they were tired of the media, of the endless questions.

But they’d shared Carol’s story, and I’d found what I was put on this earth to do.

I didn’t find answers for Carol. In my frustration, I recorded what would end up being the first episode of my podcast—the first step into a new life.

Episode one was a mess, mostly stream-of-consciousness ranting.

No structure, no polish; I had no clue what I was doing, recording my thoughts only to get the frustration out, so I didn’t feel like I was carrying it alone.

I posted it for the same reason. And it felt so good to get everything out of my head and into words that I did it again. And again.

It didn’t occur to me that anyone might be listening.

Not really. But someone did, and then someone else.

By the time I posted episode five, I had an audience—a small one, but they were there.

I got a little more organized and posted a few more episodes.

I never found Carol’s killer. But the renewed interest in the case—and a few pieces of evidence I uncovered—had caused the local police to reopen the investigation.

That felt better than anything I’d done in my life thus far.

There was no guarantee they’d find whoever did it, but they were looking, in part because of me. They hadn’t given up on Carol. And it was an awakening. I’d done as much as I could for Carol Stevens. But there were other victims, other killers who’d gotten away. Maybe I could help someone else.

It didn’t take long before another case popped up on my radar. And I was off, investigating, for what would become season two of Evidence a guidance counselor who mentioned anger management issues.

But no one had any evidence to tie him to the crime.

Until me.

It was part good luck, and part dogged determination to tie the smug asshole to the girl he’d murdered.

I got him to talk to me—though of course he admitted nothing—but looking in his flat blue eyes, I knew he’d done it.

And he knew I knew he’d done it, but we were both aware there wasn’t any proof.

He’d laughed as I’d walked away, recorder in hand, knowing I had nothing, and more determined than ever to nail his ass to the wall.