Everything
She Feared
Author: Rick
Mofina
Publication
Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 978-0778333401
Paperback
Original
Publisher:
MIRA
Price $18.99
Book
Summary:
“Everything She Feared moves like a raging river. This is a thriller not to be
missed!
—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling
author
Every mother worries about their child. But Sara Harmon fears
hers…
When a teen falls while taking a selfie at the edge of a cliff, the last thing
she sees before plummeting to her death is Katie Harmon, the nine-year-old girl
she was babysitting, looking down at her.
Investigators gather at the scene, and Katie’s mother, Sara, rushes to comfort
her daughter. Yet there’s a small, secret ping of alarm in Sara’s heart that
she cannot share—though rookie detective Kim Pierce senses it.
For years, others have tried to unravel this secret. From true-crime podcasters
to a haunted journalist searching for a killer who vanished after being
released from prison several years ago. And now, with detectives tightening the
focus of their investigation, Sara is consumed by her darkest fear—that the
babysitter’s death was not an accident.
"Rick Mofina has penned a creepy, heart-pounding
page-turner…. A gripping, chilling thriller from beginning to end."
—Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling
author of The Overnight Guest
Buy Links:
HarperCollins:
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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-She-Feared-Suspense-Novel/dp/077833340X/
Sneak Peek Excerpt:
Near North Bend, Washington
SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD ANNA SHAW didn’t want to die.
Adrenaline surged through every nerve ending, her
fingers digging into the tree branch jutting from the cliffside.
This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real.
But it is real.
Anna had been atop the cliff, taking in the
breathtaking panoramic view of the river, forests and mountains. Then in a
heartbeat she was falling, falling some twenty feet, crashing into the big
twisting branch sticking from the cliff face, catching herself, seizing it,
struggling to hang on as it bent, now threatening to give way.
Gasping, she looked in horror a hundred feet
straight down to the rocks at the banks of the rushing river below.
Wind gusted up, nudging her dangling legs. As she
hung on for life, the branch cracked, her body jolted.
“Oh God!”
Anna glanced up at nine-year-old Katie Harmon
looking down at her from the clifftop.
“Katie!
Get help!”
Transfixed,
Katie stared in wide-eyed silence.
Anna
strained to move along the weakening branch closer to the cliff face to find a
hold on the craggy rocks.
But
pulling herself caused the branch to bob and shake, crackling more under her
weight. Her hands landed on short branch spikes, like protruding nails piercing
her palms with electrifying pain.
Suddenly
the branch split and Anna jounced a few feet lower, clawing, clinging on to the
fibrous remains.
“Katie!”
she shrieked. “Oh God!”
Anna
looked up.
Katie was
gone.
The branch
cracked again.
Run!
Every part of Katie’s brain screamed at her to run.
She flew along the trail, twisting, turning through
the dense woods, hoping to catch up to the others who had continued moving
ahead.
Anna’s fall had happened in a terrible instant.
So real and so frightening.
And no one else knows! No one was with us to see!
Katie willed herself to run fast, faster than she’d
ever run in her life.
She felt like she was moving in slow motion but she
blazed along the trail, coming to the clearing where her group from the Sunny
Days Youth Center was setting up.
Katie glimpsed the joyful calm,
nearly thirty kids and a sprinkling of adults supervising the day trip from
the city, oblivious to the horror now on the cliff they’d all just passed. The
boys were moving picnic tables together, others tossed a Frisbee. The girls were
opening backpacks,
tearing into snacks and drinks while others took pictures.
It all
stopped when Katie screeched: “Help!”
Heads
turned, smiles melted, the Frisbee crashed.
“What’s
up, Katie?” said Jackson, one of the supervisors.
“Anna
fell!” Katie’s chest heaved; she was gasping for air. “Taking a selfie. Fell
off the cliff! Hanging on to a tree!”
It took a
moment for Jackson and the others to absorb the alarm and snap to attention.
“We’ll
need ropes,” he said, glancing at the other supervisors, Adam and Connie,
who’d grabbed a canvas bag, unzipped it and yanked out tent ropes. They turned
to Katie, who’d already fled back on the trail, her sobbing echoing in her
wake.
“Everyone
stay here!” Connie said, starting to run with the two men as she called to
another adult with the group: “Dakota, keep everyone here!”
The
supervisors struggled to keep up with Katie, all of them racing back on the
trail to the area of the cliff. Two backpacks on the ground marked the point
where it happened. Katie stood there horrified when she looked down.
Only
spear-like remnants of the branch reached from the cliffside.
Katie
stepped back while Jackson, Adam and Connie, breathing hard, looked down,
their eyes ballooning in disbelief.
“Oh God!”
said Connie, her voice breaking.
“No! No!
No!” Adam yelled.
Anna’s
body was splayed on the rocks of the riverbank.
Ribbons of
blood were webbing to the water.
******
IN THE TIME that followed,
events unfolded like a tragic opera.
Connie’s
911 call went to the King County Communications Center. Panting with panic,
she struggled to report the emergency.
“A girl
fell off a cliff! We need—please, we need—”
“Take a
breath,” said the operator, calm, professional, taking control. “Tell me
exactly where you are and what happened.”
Connie
collected herself, answering questions and following instructions, enabling the
operator to dispatch paramedics and deputies from the King County Sheriff’s
Office North Precinct. The deputies then made a callout for Search and Rescue,
setting the response in motion.
“I can’t
look anymore.” Katie covered her face with her hands. Sobbing and trembling,
she lowered her hands and asked: “Is Anna dead?”
“We don’t
know.” Connie put her arm around her. “Help is coming.”
For their
part, Jackson and Adam had found a safe route to hurry down from the cliff.
Moving as fast as they could along the rugged riverbank, they came to Anna’s
motionless body.
Her arms
and legs were bent and twisted like a rag doll. She was lying faceup with her
eyes open, staring skyward, blood dripping from the back of her neck. Jackson
and Adam knelt next to her.
“Anna!”
Adam said, knowing the worst but saying her name again.
Her
stillness terrified them. They heard nothing but the river’s rush while Jackson
felt her neck, warm but no pulse.
He began
CPR.
Adam saw
her palms, bleeding from branch fragments projecting like quills in testament
to her fight to hang on. Gently holding her hand, Adam surveyed Anna, almost
glowing on the rocks in her bright yellow T-shirt. He didn’t know that her
mother had had it custom-made for her last birthday with the embroidered motto
crowned over her heart: All We Have
Is Today.
A small tattoo on her inner right wrist said Fearless,
and on her inner left wrist was a small heart. Her jeans were faded, stylishly
torn at the knees. One of her pink sneakers had been ripped away by the impact.
Anna’s head nodded in time with Jackson’s rhythmic
pumping. But both men knew that the effort to save her was in vain.
Still Jackson refused to quit.
Adam’s phone rang—it was the emergency operator.
She’d gotten his number from Connie.
“Yes… A lot of blood… No pulse… We both have CPR and
First Aid… He’s doing CPR… Unconscious… Not responding… Tell them to hurry.”
Staying on the line to provide
directions to the scene, Adam held Anna’s still-warm hand while watching
Jackson’s unrelenting CPR. Blinking back tears. His gaze went from Anna to the
rock face, his stomach lifting at the magnitude of the drop, his focus
traveling up beyond the broken branch to the cliff, seeing Connie looking down
at him.
Adam shook
his head slowly.
Connie’s
hand flew to her mouth. She turned, nearly doubling over before somehow
getting enough control to pull Katie closer, comforting her. Slowly they
started back to be with the others at their day camp.
Connie’s
mind swirled as they returned to the clearing; twenty-four kids, aged nine to
fourteen, were in the Sunny Days excursion, along with four adult supervisors
and three older teen assistants—now, only two.
Moments
ago they were all starting a blissful outing, only to see it turn into a day of
horrible heartbreak, a day they would remember for the rest of their lives,
Connie thought. Everything at their day camp came to a halt when Connie and
Katie emerged.
“Is Anna
okay?” asked Dakota, one of the supervisors.
Connie
searched the group, meeting anxious, expectant faces, feeling Katie’s sobs
against her. Holding her tight, Connie brushed at her own tears.
“Anna
fell,” Connie said. “She’s hurt bad, really bad.”
“Did Anna
die?” one of the girls asked.
Connie
stared at her.
“I want to
see!” said Dylan Frick, a boy who was also in Katie’s class at school.
“No!”
Connie said loudly, then softened her voice. “We don’t know anything yet. We
just have to wait.”
Some of
the kids got on their phones, texting and calling their families, while a few
of the girls rushed to Katie and Connie, encircling them in a group hug, their
sobbing soon mingling with the tragic operatic chorus of distant sirens echoing
over the treetops.
Excerpted from
Everything She Feared. Copyright © 2023 by Rick Mofina. Published by MIRA Books.
Author Bio:
Rick Mofina is a former crime reporter and the award-winning
author of several acclaimed thrillers. He's interviewed murderers face-to-face
on death row; patrolled with the LAPD and the RCMP. His true crime articles
have appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest and
Penthouse. He's reported from the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Qatar
and Kuwait's border with Iraq. This is his 31st book. For more
information please visit www.rickmofina.com
Social
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