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Like, Follow, Kill
Carissa Ann Lynch
What if your stalker could become your saviour… The USA Today Bestseller ‘One word of advice when reading this book—trust no one’ Wendy Heard, author of Hunting Annabelle and Kill Club Badly scarred after the accident that killed her husband, Camilla Brown locks herself away from the world. Her only friendships are online, where everyone lives picture-perfect lives. In private Camilla can follow anyone she likes. And Camilla likes a lot. Especially her old school friend Valerie Hutchens. Camilla is obsessed with Valerie’s posts, her sickening joy for life, her horribly beautiful face. But then Camilla spots something strange in one of Valerie’s posts – a man’s face looking through her window, watching, waiting… And then Valerie goes missing. This suspenseful and intoxicating psychological thriller is perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins, Black Mirror and Killing Eve. Readers are loving Like, Follow, Kill… ‘GO GET THIS BOOK!!!! This one was a definite page turner for me. The characters were developed perfectly and the plot just got more twisted page after page!’ Cheyenne, Netgalley reviewer ‘Wow what a ride this book was!!’ Misty, Netgalley reviewer ‘Loved it very much, fast paced and unexpected!’ K, Netgalley reviewer
Like, Follow, Kill
CARISSA ANN LYNCH
One More Chapter
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Carissa Ann Lynch 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Emoji © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Carissa Ann Lynch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008362638
Version: 2019-08-08
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud17e799c-b9c7-5987-85b7-60f2ed31fa59)
Title Page (#u4dcc40fc-09d6-532b-8ab8-f21af3ab2df0)
Copyright (#u70155232-4d8d-592d-a926-68629b1b83f8)
Dedication (#u379e8b1c-42a6-578c-a689-27234770cb2a)
Epigraph (#u0eda0fb3-0b28-5de2-a23c-645de4deebaf)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
The One Night Stand – Coming in 2020
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
This book is dedicated to my editor, Charlotte Ledger, and my agent, Katie Shea Boutillier. Thank you both for believing in my stories and making me a better writer.
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except for the cubic centimeters in your skull.
George Orwell, 1984
Prologue (#u02a3787b-5bf4-5ec4-b320-25b6bc340344)
I was born with a scream inside me. Lodged between my heart and throat. Can’t swallow it; can’t choke it down. Can’t spit that motherfucker out. It’s stuck, like me … anchored to the in-between, slowly rotting in the core of me. It festers like a sore, oozing through my bloodstream, sending seeping shocks of silent fury to every nerve ending in my body.
Like an IV, it drip, drip, drips, but there’s never a release.
One of these days, I’ll open my mouth and the world will rumble from the roar.
Chapter 1 (#u02a3787b-5bf4-5ec4-b320-25b6bc340344)
My body is broken.
Arms like dying, desperate fish, they flop on the seat beside me. Hips yanked from their sockets. Red-rose gashes on my chest and neck.
A deep dark hole where my nose once was.
And my teeth … these teeth don’t belong to me. Like broken eggshells, they stab the roof of my mouth, pricking my cheek and gums.
Are they Chris’s teeth?
If so, how did Chris’s pearly white, now-broken teeth end up in my mouth? Did I kiss him?
No, not a kiss.
I can’t remember the last time I kissed him … but I can taste his blood in my mouth.
Chris with the cocoa-colored eyes and hair like silk on my skin. Chris with the lips, soft as falling feathers on a windy day …
Chris: the love of my life.
Chris: who is dead.
One minute we were laughing … or were we shouting? Discussing our plans for the day … although now I’ve forgotten what those plans were.
And the next … the next … we’re upside-down, strapped in our seats like a rollercoaster, only we can’t get off, we’re stuck, suspended in mid-air. The roof of my Buick becomes the sky. I’m mesmerized as it swirls like one of those psychedelic spinning tunnels, like they have at the county fair.
Oh, the fair. That’s where we were going, weren’t we?
Chris promised me a deep-fried Snickers bar.
And I promised him I’d stay sober.
Chris: The Love Of My Life and Chris: The Headless Man On The Seat Beside Me are one and the same.
This is my fault.
Chris is dead.
I did this.
I. Did. This.
***
I stopped answering my phone months ago, but that didn’t stop my sister from calling. Every day, at five past noon—a phantom phone call, followed by a buzzing barrage of texts.
Hannah is calling … read my phone screen.
But Hannah was always calling. And I, her less attractive, less successful, less stable sister, was always ignoring those calls.
As predicted, the texts came next:
Hannah: How are you today? Want to go out to lunch? Need me to stop by?
Translation: Are you alive? When are you going to do normal things again? Don’t tell me I need to come over there and drag you out of bed again.
Me: Busy. Can’t. No.
My sister is more than my sister. She practically raised me after the death of our mother.
I would love nothing more than to answer her calls, to have her beside me—but not this version of her. Not the sister that tiptoes around me like I’m a melting chunk of ice in the center of a deep, black sea.
I’m a sinking ship she wants to save … but she’s too afraid to come aboard. Because, deep down, she knows I’ll suck her into the murky black hole, too, just like I did with Chris.
Wiggling my jaw, I tried to ease the phantom tooth pains as I pulled myself out of my twin-sized bed. The sheets and comforter lay tangled at my feet. Angry red numbers blinked at me from the clock on my bedside table. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, the time when most normal people were working.
Everything hurt: my arms, legs, chest, and back. My teeth.
Traces of the dream still lingered and would stay there for most of the day, the way they always did.
My nightstand was covered in pill bottles. I twisted the caps off, one by one, and swiped out two pills of each. Pain pills. Anxiety meds. Leftover antibiotics. Another med to counter the side-effects of the first two. I washed them down with an ashy can of Mountain Dew. Grimaced.
