The New Friend

THE NEW FRIEND A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER WITH A SHOCKING ENDING SL HARKER Copyright © 2022 by SL Harker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS 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 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Epilogue About the Author Also by SL Harker PROLOGUE Golden flames lick the inky night sky. Perhaps they’re reaching for the stars. I can’t say I blame them. I would, too, if I had the chance. In front of me, the wooden frame of the house is being eaten by the fire. I watch the roof cave in and the windows explode. Soon, the fire will blot out everything, leaving nothing behind. Just a charred memento of a home that once was. I crouch in the shadows and feel the heat on my skin. My stomach flutters as I watch the broken windows for a sign of anyone inside. I listen out for screaming, but all I can hear is the roar of the fire. It’s terrible and magnificent all at once. I know I need to move, but for now, my body remains exactly where it is. I can’t pull my eyes away from the scene in front of me. I stand there, watching and doing nothing. The fire blazes on. 1 There is a burning heat all around me, raging, rushing through my home. If I stay where I am, the flames will burn through skin, muscle and bone until I’m nothing but ash. I will my feet to move, but they might as well be encased in concrete. The effort to take a step back overwhelms me, and I sink to my knees. Maybe, if I breathe deeply enough, the smoke will take me before the flames do. Then I sit up, gasping for breath. Sleep had its deep grip on me, pulling me back to memories I would rather forget. It had me mired in my sheets. But it’s over now. There’s no fire. There’s nothing around me but darkness and the sound of my own harsh breathing. I will my heart to stop hammering, then I untangle myself from the sheets. Planting my feet on the floor, I try to remember what my last yoga instructor said about the mind-breath connection. Closing my eyes and concentrating, I attempt to steady the thumping of the pulse in my veins. After a few ragged tries, I give up and push myself off the bed. I shiver a little, not because of the cold, but because even after all these years, my nightmare returns regularly. And it never fails to terrify me, no matter how many times I’ve had the same dream. I head downstairs, pausing on the second-floor landing to listen to the silence before continuing to the ground floor. My footsteps echo around the place as I make my way to the kitchen. It’s too much house for one person. I know this. The three-story brownstone should be occupied by a family that has children to run up and down the stairs and clatter into the kitchen looking for snacks. A recently divorced thirty-five-year-old woman who doesn’t even have a pet to interrupt the still morning doesn’t need all this space. But I had to take what was available to rent when I moved out of the penthouse apartment I’d shared with my ex-husband, Nick. He’d offered to let me keep the apartment, but I couldn’t stay there, not in a place where we’d shared ten years of our lives and where he’d brought other women into the home that was meant to be our haven. Not enough redecorating in the world could cover that stain. I push away those thoughts and search for a glass. The past haunts me tonight. It must be the stress of the divorce and the move. It’s always in these times that things I would rather forget come back to mess with my head. “Aha,” I mumble to myself. The glasses are in the third cupboard I open. The house came fully furnished, which helped a lot. During the move, I’d grabbed essentials and nothing more. Once I move on, I move on. But I’m still not quite accustomed to this place. It makes me feel like a stranger. My attention drifts to the window above the sink. Pearl-gray early-morning light seeps through the kitchen window. I glance at the clock, not surprised to see it isn’t even six o’clock yet. I hardly ever sleep past six. Sometimes I would like to be one of those people who lazes away half their morning in the bed, someone who revels in the luxuriousness that is half a morning spent lying in a pile of comforters. Dreams tend to interrupt my slumber right before the sun comes up, though. Taking a sip of water, I settle onto one of the stools arranged around the kitchen island and grab the laptop sitting there. I navigate to a real estate site and start browsing homes. Here’s the thing—I can afford just about any home I want. Thanks to a substantial divorce settlement, I’m a wealthy woman. Nick felt horrible about the divorce, despite the fact that he didn’t seem to feel any real remorse for repeatedly cheating on me, and left me with half his worth. The money, along with a large beach