Chapter 3
CHAPTER
Jordyn
Present
YOU COULD WIND up dead.
Jordyn stared at the most recent text message on her screen.
Enveloped in the scents of eucalyptus and lavender wafting from the nearby spa, she stood at a guest locker in the swanky gym that Kaitlin had recommended.
The Ascent was owned by Destiny Griffin, so Jordyn had hoped she’d see Destiny or one of the other book clubbers during a morning yoga session.
So far, no luck, but at least the yoga class had been great.
Although her grounded-and-centered vibes were fading fast as she reread the message on her phone.
A threat? Nope. Just the latest in a frantic string of eight texts from Ezra, her ex-boyfriend.
Scrolling back to the beginning, she tipped her forehead against the cool wood of the open locker door and scanned the content of the thread, if only to determine whether or not she needed to block him.
She’d tried her best to end things on an amicable note.
It had been his choice to give her an ultimatum, throwing his weight around to coerce her into staying put in Texas.
Which only revealed how little he understood her after two years of dating.
Why are you sacrificing everything we’ve built to meddle in a police investigation? Leave the case to the experts.
Her spine snapped straighter as she read the words, hearing the dismissive tone he would have used if they were having an actual conversation.
Around her, three women entered the locker area, wrapped in white spa robes and engaged in a heated discussion about whether or not someone they knew was pregnant.
Jordyn glanced at them just long enough to determine if they looked familiar from the block party.
She was on a mission to meet as many book club members as possible before the next meeting.
When she didn’t recognize any faces—or overhear any names that Tara had mentioned when she talked about her friends—Jordyn returned to the text thread.
She skipped through a few pleas for her to come back “home” even though he’d kicked her out.
It was much too late to salvage the relationship.
But she wanted to compose a thoughtful response before she blocked Ezra for good.
After a childhood full of abrupt goodbyes she had no control over—addict parents who’d lost custody, leaving one foster home for another, losing temporary foster siblings—Jordyn preferred to have agency in how her relationships ended these days.
And even though she’d been taken aback by their sudden breakup, she recognized now that it had been for the best. She might miss the comfort and predictability of their life together, but it had been almost six weeks since she’d left Austin, and she didn’t miss Ezra.
That had shaken her up more than anything.
The realization that she’d been going through the motions of a relationship because it had been uncomplicated. Safe.
When had she turned into that person who did things just because they were easy?
Do you honestly believe Tara would want you to risk your life to find her killer? What if she really was mowed down by someone from her book club the way you seem to think?
The more she read, the more she heard the panic behind his words.
She regretted sharing her fears with him now that she’d committed to this path of retracing the last weeks of Tara’s life.
What if Ezra followed Jordyn to Saratoga?
Revealed her intentions to the book group in some misguided effort to save her?
One year ago, someone had struck and killed her former foster sister after a book club meeting with the very same group Jordyn hoped to infiltrate.
The hit-and-run was unsolved, and Tara’s rich adoptive family had been more concerned with protecting their privacy than in pushing the cops for answers.
But Jordyn would figure out what happened, if it was the last thing she did. No matter what Ezra believed.
You could be in a lot of danger yourself if someone from that book club finds out who you are and what you’re really doing there.
Her anxiety spiked. She’d faced plenty of danger in the six years she’d spent in the foster system.
Some homes had been welcoming enough, but others had been fraught with complicated interpersonal dynamics that had been tough to navigate as a kid.
She’d grown accustomed to being in fight-or-flight mode twenty-four hours a day.
But it had been over a decade since she’d had to be on guard all the time.
The ensuing years had taken away her edge.
Besides, she’d never faced the kind of peril that she felt in this town.
The threat was more subtle with this group of people who pretended to be friends and hid their true faces. How would she navigate that?
She was seized with the need to simply delete the messages and forget all about Ezra, but that might not make him go away.
Maybe she should call him. Explain one last time that she did not accept the police investigation into her foster sister’s death going inactive after a year of zero results. It was unconscionable.
Of course, this was hardly the place for a private call. Her conversation with her ex would have to wait.
“Look who’s here,” a familiar voice sounded behind her. “Welcome to The Ascent, Jordyn.”
Hurrying to hide her phone screen, she dropped it into her duffel bag hanging on a hook inside the locker before turning to see Destiny. Had the other woman seen anything? Jordyn couldn’t recall exactly which message had been open. Something about book club? Or Tara specifically?
But Destiny only smiled, her expression impossible to read.
The gym owner looked different today. The platinum hair swoop had been traded in for a posh pixie cut, with precisely curled baby hairs framing her face.
She was dressed in garnet-colored workout gear, a bra top and high waisted leggings that showed off lean muscle.
“Thank you. It’s a beautiful facility.” Her words came out too quickly, her nerves showing. She forced herself to slow down. “I just took an amazing yoga class.”
The cost of the trial membership had been eye-poppingly expensive, but Jordyn considered it necessary if she wanted to uncover the truth about what happened to Tara.
People dished in places like this. Well, wealthy, privileged women dished in places like this. So Jordyn planned to spend plenty of time here until she figured out what had really happened the night Tara was killed.
“We were lucky to find Niesha. Everyone raves about the quality of her instruction.” Destiny lifted her forearm to scan the face of her smartwatch before scowling.
“Everything okay?” Jordyn asked, discreetly glancing at the smartwatch before tugging her duffel out of the locker.
She hitched the straps over one shoulder, needing to shower before she visited a nearby coffee shop Tara had frequented after her workouts.
Jordyn hoped that if she walked in her foster sister’s shoes long enough, she’d learn about her life in the weeks leading up to her death.
“Just someone not showing up for work today.” Destiny waved off the concern while two women entered the locker room behind her, their hair wrapped in towels, skin glowing. “But it’s no big deal, I can lead a spin class.”
“Excuse me, Destiny, darling,” one of the newcomers called.
She had wideset dark eyes and plump lips that were either model-perfect or expertly injected.
She gestured with black-painted fingernails as she spoke, a diamond on her left hand as big as a disco ball.
“You should check the steam room temperature. Your thermostat feels like it’s off a few degrees from the steam room at our house. ”
Destiny didn’t turn toward the woman right away, allowing Jordyn to see her eye roll before she spoke. “Nice to see you too, Fatima. I’ll get right on that after you meet Jordyn, our new book club member.”
There was a leap of speculative interest in Fatima’s dark eyes. The friend she’d entered the locker room with, a petite blonde who was already busy combing out her damp hair, turned to assess Jordyn as well.
“I’m just being a good friend,” Fatima assured Destiny, all the while looking at Jordyn.
“You know how picky some of your clients can be.” Then she extended her hand toward Jordyn.
“I’m Fatima Chamoun, by the way. And this is Gina Vallot.
We took the train into the city to shop for a couple of days, or we would have been at the block party. ”
So the news of Jordyn’s invitation had travelled quickly through the ranks. She could just imagine the group texts that had gone out in the wake of Kaitlin’s party.
“Nice to meet you.” Jordyn shook Fatima’s hand and exchanged nods with Gina, racking her brain for what Tara had to say about these two. “I hope you don’t mind me crashing your next book club meeting.”
She could recall a couple of mentions of Fatima, the highly educated mother of two who taught at a local private university and was married to an aerospace engineer.
According to Tara, Fatima and Sophie were in perpetual competition with one another through their high-school aged daughters, each determined their offspring be the most accomplished.
But Jordyn didn’t remember Tara ever mentioning Gina’s name.
“You will be a welcome addition,” Fatima declared as she pulled her towel off her head and shook out shoulder-length dark hair. “We lost a member last year—”
“Fatima, honestly?” Destiny interjected. “Don’t go there.”
Jordyn’s investigative antennae twitched at the reference to Tara.
Who else could it be? Interestingly, Destiny had been the one to shut down the conversation about Tara’s death at the block party too, even though she’d done so a bit more subtly when Kaitlin had referenced being “down a member” in their book club.
Destiny had artfully redirected the conversation by challenging Kaitlin to say as much to Sophie’s face.
And now, judging by the withering glare she gave Fatima, Destiny wasn’t pleased to have the dead book club member referenced again.
“I thought I was Tara’s replacement?” Gina piped in as she worked a silver pick through the ends of her tangled waves. She seemed to be studying Destiny and Fatima as curiously as Jordyn was.
“No, honey, you were Kit’s replacement,” Fatima explained. “Remember, your time in book club overlapped with Tara’s.”
“Only for that one meeting.” Gina dropped her robe like getting naked in front of friends was no big deal. Then she reached for a printed wrap dress inside her locker and slid her arms into the sleeves.
But the unexpected peep show failed to distract Jordyn from this first overt reference to her dead friend.
“Who is Tara?” she asked, heart beating harder, silently daring any of these women to speak ill of her friend even as she willed herself to maintain outward composure.
“Sophie’s best friend,” Destiny explained succinctly. “She died last year, but it really hurts Sophie to talk about it, so we try not to bring it up.”
Fatima huffed as she tossed her hair towel in a collection basket near the door. Her spa flip-flops slapped against her heels as she walked. “Do you see Sophie here?”
Nearby a hair dryer switched on, the mechanical hum drowning out everything but their conversation.
“What happened to her?” Jordyn pressed, wishing she could observe all of their faces at the same time. She needed to see and dissect each of their reactions.
Could one of them be responsible?
“There was a hit-and-run incident one night after a book club meeting,” Gina explained quietly. “It happened the first month I joined.”
“The police aren’t sure what happened,” Destiny cautioned. “It could have just been a terrible accident.”
Because she refused to believe anyone she knew was capable of murder? Or because of a need to deflect attention from her role in it?
Fatima picked up the story. Her face showed only concern. Sadness. “Tara was jogging between Sophie’s house and her own a little after eleven PM. We never figured out why she’d be out running at that hour. A driver struck and killed her.”
Gina tossed her hairbrush into a miniature Gucci backpack before withdrawing her gym bag from her locker. “She seemed like a sweet person,” she observed lightly. “I wish I’d gotten to know her.”
The words were a gut punch to Jordyn, taking her back in time to when she’d first met Tara, a vulnerable twelve-year-old whose terror of her new foster home was palpable.
Jordyn didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to protect the scared kid who’d fallen from life circumstances far nicer than her own, but something about her called to Jordyn from day one.
Within the first hour of Tara’s arrival, Jordyn had gotten two black eyes taking on an older boy who wanted to mess with the new girl.
For her efforts, Tara had slid a bracelet into Jordyn’s hand that night, just before Jordyn fell asleep.
They didn’t talk that day. Really didn’t speak the whole first week.
But Jordyn had kept the twine bracelet with a saint medallion, tucking it into a secret place in the wall behind a broken chair molding where she kept things she didn’t want anyone else to see.
These days, she didn’t need to hide St. Rita. Jordyn wore her on a leather thong around her neck, a reminder of the friendship that took root that day.
The memory caused Jordyn to miss her chance to ask for more details about the hit-and-run, if only to further ferret out how this group viewed the events of that night. Because a moment later, Destiny pivoted away from them.
“I can’t do this now.” She held up both hands in protest, calling an end to the conversation and spurring both Fatima and Gina to finish up at their lockers.
“I have to honor my own grief, okay? Besides, I’ve got personnel problems to deal with.
” She tapped her digital watch as her eyes met Jordyn’s, as if she wanted to remind her of the message that had upset her earlier.
Too bad Jordyn had seen with her own eyes that the message on Destiny’s watch screen had been from a regional bank, so she seriously doubted the bad news had been in regard to a personnel problem at the gym.
But then, she already knew that Tara’s book club had been full of liars. She just needed to figure out which one of them was lying about what happened to Tara.