Anna Mercer knows Daniel Cole was not in her house the night his wife was killed.
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Daniel says he was.
At first, Anna assumes he is lying to save himself. Then other people begin backing him up. A neighbor remembers seeing him near her porch. A security log places his car nearby. A delivery photo seems to support the same story. Even Anna’s own camera system was switched off during the exact period Daniel claims he was there.
The more evidence appears, the less certain everyone becomes about Anna.
Including Anna herself.
As police pull apart that night minute by minute, she starts noticing something else about Hawthorn Ridge. This is not the first time several neighbors have remembered the same convenient version of events.
For years, people on the street have quietly protected one another. A favor here. A changed story there. A detail left out because somebody needed help. Most of the secrets were small enough to excuse.
Until one of them helped bury the truth about a death.
Rachel had started asking questions before she was murdered. She had found old records, old lies, and a pattern that connected people Anna had trusted for years.
Now Anna has to work out why Daniel was given an alibi he never earned, why her house was chosen for it, and who was so afraid of Rachel’s questions that keeping the neighborhood’s secrets became worth killing for.
Because on Hawthorn Ridge, a lie does not become dangerous when one person tells it.
It becomes dangerous when everyone remembers it the same way.