Synopsis

She left home as the local pariah at twenty-two, but when a family tragedy brings her back, she must confront her tortured past—and a new danger in town that no one seems to understand but her.

After years of self-exile, Jacinda “Jac” Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn’t been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death—and all the whispers said she was to blame.

That chief was Jac’s father.

Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past.

Brook Haven feels different now. Wealthy newcomer Faye Arden has transformed the notorious Moor Manor into a quaint country inn. Jac’s convinced something sinister lurks beneath Faye’s perfect exterior, yet the whole town fawns over their charismatic new benefactor. And when Jac discovers one of her granddad’s prized possessions in Faye’s office, she knows she has to be right.

But as Jac continues to dig, she stumbles upon dangerous truths that hit too close to home. With not only her life but also her family’s safety on the line, Jac discovers that maybe some secrets are better left buried.

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Excerpt

Chapter 3

I spent two years of my life, first as his assistant and then in the past year as his lover, losing myself in Conrad because anything was better than thinking about home and what I’d done. I thought he was trying to help me, even when I knew that wasn’t in his nature. Just like he did to his students’ stories, he had helped himself to my life, my pain, and got himself a damn book deal for it.

God, I really wanted to burn down everything in Conrad’s place, just like Angela B. Firing off that email to Dean Higgins and the entire department hadn’t been satisfying enough. Tomorrow, I’d regret blowing up my job, but truth be told, I wanted revenge.

Conrad’s teaching career at the university was a start. And I couldn’t just let him use my past. Taking all his meticulous notes and his partially finished manuscript, taking back what was mine from someone who could not tell my story—that I would never regret.

I took one last inspection of the condo, making sure there wasn’t anything else I needed to take. Nothing I could see. I stopped in the kitchen on my way out. The page from his contract for the manuscript Deadly Daughter: A Lowcountry Killing—the bastard—rested on top of the box I held.

In the hallway outside, I stood in front of his closed door. I locked it, then bent down to pick up the page from where I’d put it on the floor beside his door.

Don’t ever be a fool over love. Or anything, come to think of it. That is what my granddad would have said. Don’t be a fool over nobody.

I’d been a fool over Conrad. It wasn’t going to happen again.

I placed the first page of Conrad’s contract in the middle of his front door and stabbed his kitchen knife though it, holding it there.

My shoulders sagged, reality settling in. Maybe the email was a mistake. What was I supposed to do for work now? No other college would hire me because who at the university would recommend me? My southern saint of a mother would never let me live it down if she had to drive up from South Carolina to bail me out of jail. I couldn’t bear the look Granddad would give me, letting me know that, once again, I wasn’t making the best choices.

I jumped when something moved behind me. I spun around, expecting that Conrad and the cops had caught me. My hand went automatically to my heart when I saw it was Mrs. Dixon, the nice old lady in the condo across from Conrad’s, with hair so white it was nearly blue. My small-town upbringing didn’t allow me not to know a neighbor’s name, even if the neighbor wasn’t mine. Conrad wouldn’t know her.

We said nothing as the seconds stretched while she took in the whole scene. I watched as her clear blue eyes looked me over from head to toe, then danced over the box at my feet with the notebooks protruding from it, finally resting on the knife embedded in Conrad’s door.

My body deflated. The jig was up. The knife might have been overkill.

Her voice came out wobbly and thin as she looked up at me. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said. “You aren’t back, are you?”

What was that supposed to mean? Past triggers of being Black in not-so-Black spaces bubbled to the surface, making me pull on my armor, readying myself to do the daily battle of fighting for my right to just be. Until I remembered she had just caught me squared up in front of my ex-boyfriend’s door, playing darts with his contract and chef’s knives.

“No, ma’am,” I said, my southern manners slipping through in a complete clash with the wobbling knife handle and the paper. “I, um . . .” Had she already called it in? Was DC Metro on her speed dial and careening here to take me in?

“I was just leaving him a note, Mrs. Franklin.” Should I say more?

“I stopped by to . . . grab the last of my stuff.”

Her eyes lit up with a satisfied glint. “Well, good. He’s an ass anyway. I was just telling my daughter about him the other day, although she thinks I’m being a busybody. He’s so rude and pompous, like those privileged male chauvinists I used to admin for back in the day who thought women were just around for their pleasure.” Mrs. Dixon harrumphed. “You’re better off without the likes of him. You aren’t the only young thing he entertains in there, you know.”

I dropped my head, feeling not a little embarrassed. “I know.”

About the Author

Yasmin Angoe is the Anthony Award-nominated author of the critically acclaimed Nena Knight Series, including Her Name is Knight, They Come at Knight, and It Ends with Knight. NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS is Angoe’s first work of domestic psychological suspense. Yasmin’s Knight Series have been featured in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, The Guardian, PopSugar, and the Woman’s World book club, and the series is currently in development for TV by Ink Factory & Fifth Season.

Yasmin is the recipient of the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color and has been nominated for the Anthony Awards and the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award. She is a proud member of several prestigious organizations, such as Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Crime Writers of Color, International Thriller Writers, and the Women’s National Book Association.

Hailing from Northern Virginia, Yasmin Angoe is a first-generation Ghanaian American who grew up in two cultural worlds. She taught English in middle and high schools for years and served as an instructional coach for virtual teachers. She now writes fiction fulltime and freelances as a development editor. Yasmin lives in South Carolina with her husband their four children.

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