The Edge of the Light by Elizabeth George

Hannah’s ability to hear the broken-up thoughts of others. Why Laurel had done this when she’d never told any of her other four husbands was a question she had never answered. But her weakness throughout life had always been men—what else could five stepfathers possibly indicate?—and somehow her greatest weakness had been the last one she’d married, Jeff Corrie.
    Hearing the thoughts of others equated reading minds. That was how Jeff Corrie had seen it, and this dubious skill of Hannah Armstrong’s had been too much for him to resist. He had an investment firm that specialized in financial opportunities for senior citizens, and once he learned what his stepdaughter could do, he figured there was no better method to get those senior citizens to hand over their pensions than to know from the first what was on their minds. In this way, he could reassure themwith facts, figures, and opportunities that looked to be surefire winners.
    That was where his stepdaughter Hannah Armstrong had come in. Coffee maker, tea maker, mineral water provider, cookie deliverer, sandwich girl . . . She came in and out of the conference room where either Jeff or his partner, Connor, or both of them had met with their potential clients, and afterward she faithfully reported on what she’d heard in those clients’ broken-up thoughts. She did this for three years as Jeff Corrie and his partner moved money here, there, and everywhere and made it next to impossible for the elderly to understand what was actually happening to their funds. Hannah Armstrong had not known about this part of the enterprise. She only knew she was helping old people to be less anxious about investing.
    Then things fell apart one afternoon when Hannah heard among Jeff Corrie’s whispers what she believed was his responsibility for the death of his partner. At that point, she’d told her mother the truth. At that point, she and Laurel had fled with a plan to drop Hannah off with a new identity on Whidbey Island where she would be in the care of Laurel’s old friend Carol Quinn. With Hannah—now Becca King—safely tucked away, Laurel would lay a false trail to Nelson, BC, until it was safe and Jeff Corrie was himself also tucked away: in prison where he belonged.
    It had all sounded so good, so easy, and so absolutely perfect. Indeed, the trip from San Diego to Washington State had all gone like a dream. But once on Whidbey Island, the newly born BeccaKing discovered that her mom’s friend Carol had dropped dead of a heart attack minutes before she was supposed to leave her house to meet the ferry on which Becca was sailing. Laurel herself was, at that point, out of range of the throwaway cell phone she’d purchased for Becca, and she had remained out of range to this day. Thus Becca had been imprisoned on Whidbey Island for sixteen months, which included the day that she had discovered to her horror she’d misunderstood Jeff Corrie’s whispers, for his partner Connor West was not dead at all.
    A long list of newspaper articles posted to the Internet existed on the topic of Jeff Corrie and Connor West. These articles began with the disappearance of Connor West, gone without a trace in a situation that was highly suspicious: with a BLT half made on the countertop in his condo’s kitchen, with the water running in the sink and a coffee carafe broken upon the floor. That had been the start of Jeff Corrie’s troubles, which had only increased when a neighbor of his mentioned to the San Diego police that she hadn’t seen Corrie’s stepdaughter or his wife in a number of weeks.
    Once Connor West had been found very much alive on a boat in Mexico, the focus of the stories altered. First they’d concentrated on the finger pointing that Jeff and Connor were doing at each other about their embezzling, which was fine with Becca, since it kept the papers’ interest off her and her mom. But