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Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow: A gripping new thriller for 2018 with killer twists and turns
Sidney Sheldon
Tilly Bagshawe
New York Times Bestselling AuthorSweeping from Mexico City to the dark underbelly of LA, The Silent Widow has all the trademark glamour, suspense and unexpected twists of a classic Sidney Sheldon novel.A young American au pair, Charlotte Clancy, vanishes without a trace in Mexico City. The case is left cold, but its legacy will be devastating.A decade later, LA is shaken by a spate of violent murders. Psychologist Nikki Roberts is the common link between the victims, her patients at the heart of this treacherous web. When someone makes an attempt on Nikki’s life, it’s clear she is a marked woman.Nikki makes a living out of reading people, drawing out their secrets, but the key to this shocking pattern eludes her. With the police at a dead end Nikki drafts in Derek Williams, a PI who isn’t afraid to put his hand into the hornet’s nest. Williams was thwarted in the notorious Charlotte Clancy case all those years ago, but what he unearths in LA – and the mention of one name in particular – leaves him cold, and takes him on a dangerous path into the past.A shadowy manipulator has brought his deadly game to the streets of LA. In a crime spanning generations, it seems Nikki Roberts knows all too much – and a ruthless killer knows the price of her silence.In this crooked city, where enemies and friends are one and the same, Nikki must be the master of her own escape . . .
Copyright (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
Published by 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 2018
Copyright © Sheldon Family Limited Partnership 2018
Cover photograph © Robert Jones/Arcangel Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (skyscrapers)
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Tilly Bagshawe 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008229634
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008229665
Version: 2018-05-21
Dedication (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
For Alice, with love.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u8a33b6c2-689a-53cb-83df-17839efa2f6e)
Title Page (#udebf6092-bcfd-5461-afe1-49321cdb1107)
Copyright (#u8416708d-7bd9-52b6-8ab9-5d5769977e9d)
Dedication (#ue4616d13-1ca5-5f0d-9c03-701a0c955cdc)
Prologue (#u7222dc45-dccf-5e59-b8a3-e18672952d80)
Part One (#u0434792b-89d6-5433-865d-cd5ca69ccfdb)
Chapter One (#u510eb08f-9038-52de-83cc-388d6cf4d26c)
Chapter Two (#u6853c6a4-7b13-548d-b69c-f5115ef101fb)
Chapter Three (#u6fb2aeb3-f880-5765-91b3-3e1039734f40)
Chapter Four (#u3717e547-94ed-53db-836a-ede2f3f4af09)
Chapter Five (#u2bcb2242-fae9-5b69-adad-46eb325661a0)
Chapter Six (#uf25f3c40-797f-58ad-b074-8511a2db73ec)
Chapter Seven (#ue228c1c2-1a35-5a88-909d-8b71c0740bdd)
Chapter Eight (#ud227a188-c358-5302-b4b8-94998e08c0b6)
Chapter Nine (#u41c45f11-e644-57f7-b45a-932f1763354f)
Chapter Ten (#u0731001e-3b4e-57ae-a7e8-453e0ff6fc6b)
Chapter Eleven (#u6f931bc0-7137-50dc-8ec5-5adbee5a52eb)
Chapter Twelve (#u0c9a60f0-7aa9-51fd-8dfc-690622b7e6f0)
Chapter Thirteen (#u3b9bd3d5-cd35-51eb-b70a-b7b0014b949c)
Chapter Fourteen (#u6d4480d3-8663-545a-8b88-96002788694d)
Chapter Fifteen (#u4911e592-f6bd-5f36-9719-1b69840e8ba3)
Chapter Sixteen (#u62bc5a8c-aebc-5a53-96b9-c93aed680d6f)
Chapter Seventeen (#ubfb02333-2c52-55c0-b8fc-97a9d3ec5c84)
Chapter Eighteen (#u4296cc6e-de9c-587d-9fff-d24b00ff7120)
Chapter Nineteen (#uc37dfcc1-5665-5f83-89a2-887a487cb469)
Chapter Twenty (#u121ecc6d-5458-5851-8445-ff38cf322a0f)
Part Two (#u699a58d1-ba96-501d-86a0-6917b518afe2)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u24c5738b-dca9-5c87-ac84-306ea6e6a8b1)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u4409d7ff-0569-5da8-b3d1-daa9b3a76e94)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u0fde8af9-cac7-597a-8f61-a6912dc9d84e)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u88aa372c-3a09-50f6-9693-dd2283fc4a81)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u5ae2eec6-fdb4-54e2-b697-22be704559b2)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#uc7a16dd7-0bd7-5dd8-8982-c003f39f96b9)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u100c668f-ce74-551f-971a-ea2402f5f935)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u10b10d9b-dbfb-5bd6-866f-3d2337549b17)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#uc4708fa5-150c-5d5e-a3f4-a764c2faa560)
Chapter Thirty (#u5ae6266b-e936-57f9-9e7e-949219c14869)
Chapter Thirty-One (#ud90803a2-6cba-50cd-a3e9-ebd978f7b41b)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u0440440a-3831-5947-a50e-5426c40036dc)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#uce5abd5c-da98-538e-9910-c569ebbf4d3b)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#u33d168f7-b977-58f7-af76-fbb77b9edeef)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#u03c4ff3f-8c58-5bd3-8701-15cc33b377f7)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#ue42f89cb-9551-5384-9788-edc0ffc1a1e4)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u99e68131-a2be-5415-b73e-2dcf690f7e2b)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#u29b0c4e0-6295-5e2a-b492-cfe4afe3b8b0)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#u44d7c40b-8b6b-509d-9c22-2411a47bb57e)
Chapter Forty (#ubb986b05-b775-5c3d-b2fe-e7ffe1be0645)
Chapter Forty-One (#u4882ac1c-470f-5a27-8cfa-c40d82fc14e3)
Acknowledgements (#ub8ef7395-aea6-5ec2-9ab9-de14d72a770f)
Keep Reading … (#u5ddfaa7f-fa19-58d4-a3e1-ad72d9cfc870)
About the Author (#ufa1f4be3-73f7-547b-b297-9536c4bfef30)
Also by Sidney Sheldon (#u24983016-2e55-5e20-801e-f6a52f20b0c6)
Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#uc00f99c8-fff5-5e2d-be6d-84bcdde70016)
About the Publisher (#u0f491e34-d99b-5682-8100-d48f152ca1cb)
PROLOGUE (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
‘No! Please no! I can’t …’
The old man’s eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that bound him. He imagined the spiral metal bit grinding into his flesh, splintering his bones like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden beam.
As they crucified him.
Surely they knew he was good for the money? He would give them what they wanted – everything they wanted! He was no good to them dead.
How long had he been in the warehouse now? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he’d lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screaming burns on his skin, thin and creased with age like crepe paper. The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips. The tiny razor cuts to his genitals. They had tortured and humiliated him in every sadistic way imaginable, while the young woman stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone. Hateful bitch. He despised her most of all, more even than his tormentors.
They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, some sort of grand finale with the drill. Or at least he did. Their boss. The ringmaster at this circus of terror.
The man with the brown eyes.
The devil incarnate.
‘Please!’
The old man’s sobs turned to screams as his torturers switched on the drill, passing it laughingly between them as they revved it louder and louder.
‘I’ll do anything! Oh God, no!’ A warm river of liquid excrement exploded out of his bowels and streamed down his shaking legs.
The man with the brown eyes smiled.
‘What’s that you say?’ he taunted, cupping a manicured hand to his ear. ‘I’m sorry, my friend, with the sound of that drill I can’t hear you.’
He looked on as his men did his bidding, aroused as always by the pleading and the shrieks and the blood, and finally by the silence, once the show was over. Aroused too by the young woman dutifully filming it all for his pleasure, as he’d commanded her to do. He preferred killing women. But ending a life, any life, was a high like no other. The ultimate expression of power.
Once, the battered old man hanging lifelessly from the beam in front of him had been rich and powerful. More powerful than him. Or so he’d thought.
But look at him now. Like a carcass in an abattoir.
‘Should we cut him down, boss?’ one of the goons asked his master.
‘No.’ The man with the brown eyes stepped forward. ‘Leave him there.’ Pulling a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket, he stuffed them violently into the corpse’s mouth.
The stupid old man had never understood.
It was never about the money …
PART ONE (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue9eb76ed-e118-5cc6-b80d-c21874c6174a)
DR NIKKI ROBERTS
