PRAISE FOR KENDRA ELLIOT
“Readers coming in cold to this thriller won’t have to worry about missing the series’ previous books: It reads just fine as a standalone plot, its wintry twists and turns paced adroitly and warmed up with a touch of romance.”
—The Oregonian on A Merciful Secret
“Elliot delivers a fast-paced, tense thriller that plays up the small-town atmosphere and survivalist mentality, contrasting it against an increasingly connected world. The romantic angle is subtle, with the established relationship between Mercy and Truman slowly and satisfyingly maturing as they solve the mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly on A Merciful Secret
“Each Mercy Kilpatrick mystery improves on the last . . . In this third installment, the whodunit, a tale that blends a hint of the paranormal with some all-too-human ghastliness, is engaging, but the real power comes from watching Mercy evolve as an individual.”
—RT Book Reviews on A Merciful Secret
“In the debut of her new Mercy Kilpatrick series, Elliot crafts an eerily fascinating small town. An air of menace is palpable throughout the story, and the characters hide a wealth of secrets and twisted loyalties.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on A Merciful Death
“In Elliot’s latest gripping novel the mystery and suspense are top-notch, and the romance embedded within will quench love story junkies’ thirst, too. The author’s eye for detail makes this one play out more like a movie rather than a book. It can easily be read as a standalone but is obviously much better if the prior three are digested first.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on Targeted
“Elliot’s latest addition to her thrilling, edge-of-your-seat series Bone Secrets will scare the crap out of you, yet allow you to swoon over the building romantic setting, which provides quite the picturesque backdrop. Her novel contains thrills, chills, snow, and . . . hey, you never know! The surprises and cliffhangers are satisfying, yet edgy enough to keep you feverishly flipping the pages.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on Known
“Elliot’s best work to date. The author’s talent is evident in the characters’ wit and smart dialogue . . . One wouldn’t necessarily think a psychological thriller and romance would mesh together well, but Elliot knows what she’s doing when she turns readers’ minds inside out and then softens the blow with an unforgettable love story.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on Vanished (Top Pick)
“Kendra Elliot does it again! Filled with twists, turns, and spine-tingling details, Alone is an impressive addition to the Bone Secrets series.”
—Laura Griffin, New York Times bestselling author
“Elliot once again proves to be a genius in the genre with her third heart-pounding novel in the Bone Secrets collection. The author knows romance and suspense, reeling readers in instantaneously and wowing them with an extremely surprising finish . . . Elliot’s best by a mile!”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on Buried (Top Pick)
“Make room on your keeper shelf! Hidden has it alclass="underline" intricate plotting, engaging characters, a truly twisted villain. I can’t wait to see what Kendra Elliot dishes up next!”
—Karen Rose, New York Times bestselling author
Kendra Elliot
A Merciful Silence
For my girls
My biggest fans
ONE
There it is.
Eagle’s Nest police officer Ben Cooley hit his brakes, thankful he’d been driving a cautious thirty miles an hour. He squinted, trying to see through the smears created by his windshield wipers. Ahead of his car, one-third of the road was gone, washed down the steep side of the hill. It looked as if a monster had bitten a ten-foot-wide chunk out of the asphalt. The last three days had dropped several inches of rain in Central Oregon, and he could swear the cities were about to float away. This sort of continuous downpour happened all the time in the Willamette Valley on the other side of the Cascade mountain range, but not in his beloved—and usually dry—high desert.
To the left of the road was a gut-turning drop-off that vanished into a forest of pines. On his right the rocky hillside sloped upward, and several impromptu waterfalls cascaded down, flowing across the road. The water was supposed to feed into the ditch and funnel beneath the road to flow safely out the other side, but the quantity of water had overpowered the culvert.
“Don’t know how the other side of the state puts up with months of this rain.” No one was around to hear Ben mutter to himself. He made a conscious effort not to do it within listening distance of the other guys in his department. The last thing the police chief needed to hear was that his seventy-something officer was losing his mind.
Ben hit his flashers, called in his location, and popped his trunk.
The highway department tried to keep up with the weather, installing nets and culverts and natural drains to keep the streets safe, but every year something happened to this poor road. And since its vehicle traffic was quite low, it ranked near the bottom of the state’s priority list.
Ben set out cones and flares, wondering if anyone would even use the road before the flares burned out. He went back to his car and got Lucas on the radio.
“We need the highway department out here to assess the safety,” Ben told the Eagle’s Nest dispatcher and office manager.
“That bad?” asked Lucas.
“Definitely. The guardrail along the south edge is gone. A car is going to come by, not see the hole in time, and end up forty feet down the hill, stuck in the pines. They need to close the road.”
“I’ll call it in.”
“Send Royce or Samuel out here with some roadblocks right away because the highway department will take hours to get here. I’ve blocked the road in one direction with my car, but we need something else.”
“Will do.”
Ben carefully walked to the edge of the wide gap, always curious about the engineering of roads. He saw the dirt-and-rock support under the asphalt had simply washed away, defeated by the continuous power of the water. The thick border of the black asphalt looked like a broken Oreo cookie wafer.
He moved as close as he dared, aware he didn’t know what supported the asphalt under his feet . . . if anything.
Peering into the giant washed-out section, he spotted the edge of a huge concrete culvert six feet below the road. A slow rivulet flowed out of it while a hundred times the amount of water surged outside the culvert.
The culvert is probably jammed with rocks and dirt.
He bent over, resting his hands on his thighs, and craned his head to get a look inside the culvert.