Witness 8 (Eddie Flynn) - Hardcover

Buch 8 von 10: Eddie Flynn

Cavanagh, Steve

 
9781668049372: Witness 8 (Eddie Flynn)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1668049376 ISBN 13: 9781668049372
Verlag: Atria Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

This riveting psychological thriller from Steve Cavanagh, author of the “twisty” (The New York Times) Kill for Me, Kill for You, asks: What if the witness was more dangerous than the killer?

Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson.

A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth.

Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head.

Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Megan Miranda, Witness 8 is a fresh knockout page-turner from an author who is “the real deal” (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Steve Cavanagh is the bestselling and award-winning author of several books, including the Eddie Flynn series and Kill for Me, Kill for You. A former lawyer, he was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he still lives. Find out more at SteveCavanaghAuthor.com.

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Prologue: Ruby PROLOGUE Ruby
There’s something wrong with Ruby Johnson.

That’s what her grandma used to say.

These days, Ruby often thought about what her grandmother had said. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was twenty-two now. Older, definitely wiser, and perhaps more self-aware. It often occurred to Ruby that she was not like other people. It happened in moments such as this.

It was coming up on midnight. Ruby was at the counter, stirring a cup of coffee, in a kitchen almost twice the size of her apartment. The kitchen belonged to a thirty-five-million-dollar town house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Chad and Lara Puller were due to return any time now. They were one of Ruby’s newer clients. She’d been sitting for them for just a few months. Upstairs, Clara, six, and Zara, recently turned three, were fast asleep in their large and expensively decorated bedrooms. Babysitting made up about forty percent of Ruby’s little enterprise. Mostly she worked as a maid and/or cleaner for most of the high-class residents of West Seventy-Fourth Street. To buy a house here you had to be seriously rich. Throw a nickel in any direction and you’d hit a successful Broadway producer, a plastic surgeon, a CEO of a high-end tech company, or anyone on the board of a Fortune 500 behemoth. At any time, there could be between twelve million and thirty million dollars’ worth of cars parked by the curbs.

The long-term residents grew up here. Old money from New York real estate, not the two-bit slumlords who pretended to be millionaires. These people were rich.

Crazy rich.

And what allowed Ruby into their homes to look after their children, clean their floors, and do their laundry was that some of them remembered that Ruby was one of them.

Or at least she used to be.

She wasn’t an outsider. She was their kind of people.

Or so they thought.

Ruby’s family had had money once.

Or that was what her father would have had people believe.

Ruby certainly thought that she belonged with these people.

Only Ruby’s grandma knew differently.

Ruby stirred the coffee and gazed into the dark liquid, her reflection lost in a swirling spiral of foam crema in the center of the cup.

She thought about her grandmother.

As a young child, Ruby would sit on the cold tiles in the grand hallway of her grandparents’ house and eavesdrop as the adults talked in the lounge.

“There is something wrong with Ruby,” said her grandmother. Smart lady.

“What do you mean? She’s quiet. Shy, maybe. But there’s nothing wrong with her,” said her mother.

Even as she spoke, Ruby could detect the tone of denial in her mother’s voice. A slight quiver in the throat. Ruby knew, deep down, at the age of ten, that Grandma’s statement hit a lot deeper than her mother would ever reveal. Ruby’s memories of her grandmother were probably all mixed up by her youthful gaze and innocent perspective, but they were still clear enough. Grandma always wore fine gold chains that got caught in the sagging folds of skin that hung around her neck. She always dressed in black, as if in mourning for someone, somewhere, all the time. Her false teeth were loose, giving a clacking, hissing, and sometimes gummy sound to her words.

But her eyes…

Grandma had huge blue eyes that seemed to take up most of her face. They were misty with age, as if they gazed out behind a thick fog, but those eyes saw everything. And they always seemed to fix on Ruby whenever she entered her grandma’s living room. Those old, dusty sapphire eyes came to life for Ruby. There was no affection in that stare. No curiosity. No love. It was more like… watchfulness. As someone might look upon a stray coyote that had wandered into their backyard.

There is something wrong with Ruby.

Ruby knew, even then, her grandma was right.

The sound of the front door opening brought Ruby’s mind back to the present.

She took the spoon from the coffee cup, quickly opened the dishwasher and dropped it into the cutlery rack, then closed it and spun around just as Chad and Lara walked in. She flashed a smile.

“Hi, how was your evening?” asked Ruby brightly.

“Insufferable. Bad food, too much small talk. These galas are all the same. But it’s for a good cause,” said Lara as she held on to the doorframe and slipped off her Jimmy Choo heels.

Ruby took a moment to admire Lara’s dress. Sleek, black, cut to fit her slim frame while accentuating everything that could bear it.

“How are the kids?” asked Chad as he took off his bow tie and popped open the top button on his dress shirt.

“Sound asleep. They’re little angels. I just made you some coffee. You two are always right on time,” she said, handing Chad the cup. “Lara, can I get you a nightcap?”

“Just water would be fine. I don’t know how the hell Chad can drink coffee at this hour and still sleep like a log.”

“Good genes, I guess,” said Chad.

Ruby got some ice from the dispenser and poured a ten-dollar bottle of Icelandic water into a glass for Lara.

“Okilly dokilly, well, if that’s everything, I’ll just take off,” said Ruby.

“Our driver can take you home,” said Lara.

“No, it’s fine. Thank you, Lara. It’s a nice evening. I’m only ten blocks.”

“Ruby, parts of your neighborhood…” But Lara didn’t finish the sentence. She wanted to say that Ruby lived in a dangerous area. But it would’ve been an unkind reminder that Ruby no longer enjoyed West Seventy-Fourth Street as her address. The Pullers, like everyone else on Ruby’s client list, knew she had once been a resident. Before something bad had happened.

Still, she was one of them. From money. Trustworthy. Reliable.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m free tomorrow if you need anything. I do love spending time with those little perfect peach fairies upstairs. They’re sooooo adorable,” Ruby said.

“The kids are all good for tomorrow. Chad’s taking them to the park. Just text me and let me know how much for tonight and I’ll send it,” said Lara.

“Great, good night, you two. Don’t let the beddy bugs bite,” she said.

As the thick mahogany front door closed behind Ruby, the bubbly expression slid from her face. She skipped down the steps to the street.

Chad wouldn’t be taking the kids anywhere tomorrow.

Ruby took out her phone, pulled up her photo files. She had shots of the diaries of all her clients. Most of them just put the calendars on their fridge; some had them in little notebooks on the hall table; others synced their diaries to their Google Nest Hubs or Amazon Echos, which made them easy to access.

Tomorrow, Lara had a nail appointment at eleven, then lunch with the girls.

Chad had racquetball with Jeff at eight thirty in the morning; then he was taking the kids out.

The slow-acting emetic that Ruby had added to his coffee would have Chad puking his guts out within a few hours. She expected to get a text from Lara around nine saying Chad was ill in bed and could she take the kids for the day?

Ruby charged extra on Saturdays, and she needed the...

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Verlag
Atria Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668049376
ISBN 13 
9781668049372
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
406
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

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