A night meant to celebrate thirty-five years of marriage ends in gunfire—and leaves Rita questioning everything she believed about the man she loved.
Rita had hoped their anniversary might steady a marriage that had begun to feel unfamiliar—one last chance to find her way back to the man she married.
Jared had been distracted and short-tempered for weeks, but dinner was surprisingly warm, a glimpse of the man she’d loved for decades. Then the theater lights dimmed… and in the next instant Jared was dead beside her, one of fourteen victims in a mass shooting that shatters the mountain town of Rim Vista, Arizona.
Her son Grant rushes up from Phoenix, and in the days that follow, the family gathers to grieve together.
Until the unbearable happens.
As Detective Cliff Avery digs into the shooting, he uncovers threads tied to Jared’s deployment as a Marine in Iraq—threads a more ominous than a powerful person. Rita doesn’t want to burden her children with what she’s learning about their father’s past—or risk destroying the memory they’re clinging to. But when her college-age daughter, Brooke, is kidnapped and the abductor demands paperwork Rita has never heard of, her silence becomes the wedge that tears the family apart.
Grant’s grief turns to fury.
Rita’s fear turns to resolve.
And the clock turns merciless for Brooke.
Forced to confront a past she never knew existed, Rita joins forces with Cliff to expose the truth behind the shooting and rescue Brooke before it’s too late. Every secret they unravel tightens the danger around them—and reveals that the massacre was never random.
Jared wasn’t the only target.
And the real threat is still out there—watching.
If you love emotionally rich suspense novels about grief, family loyalty, and the price of protecting the people you love, Beneath His Lies is for you.
