One By One
Freida McFadden
Prologue
ANONYMOUS
There will be six of us.
Six adults. Stuffed into a six-person minivan like sardines, with all the luggage we felt we couldn’t possibly live without during our vacation at a swanky luxury inn. Our reservation is for six days. Six days of hiking and hot tubs. Six days away from civilization.
My mother was a religious woman. That’s how I know that on the sixth day, both man and serpent were created. You know—the snake that eventually convinced Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden forever? That’s why the number six represents both man and the evil that weakens him.
In Revelation, 666 is the number of the devil.
The sixth Commandment is thou shalt not kill.
Six is not a nice number.
I’m not religious. I don’t go to church. I don’t believe in a higher power. Six is just like any other number to me. But I know that every single one of these six people has a secret they don’t want anyone to know.
I can tell you my secret right now: At the end of this week, only one of us will make it home alive.
Chapter 1
CLAIRE
I don’t know when I started to hate my husband.
I didn’t always. When we tied the knot over ten years ago, we held hands and I swore I would love him forever. Until death did us part. And I meant it. I meant it with every fiber of my being. I genuinely believed I would be married to Noah Matchett for the rest of my life. I fantasized about the two of us growing old together—holding hands while sitting in matching rocking chairs in a retirement home. And when the minister declared us husband and wife, I patted myself on the back for choosing the right guy.
I’m not sure what happened between then and now. But I can’t stand the guy anymore.
“Where’s my UChicago shirt, Claire?”
Noah is hunched over the top drawer of his dresser, his eyebrows bunched together as his hazel eyes stare down into the contents of the drawer. He clears his throat, which is what he always does when he’s concentrating hard on something. I used to find it cute and endearing. Now I find it irritating. Nails on a chalkboard irritating.
“I don’t know.” I grab a couple of shirts out of my own dresser drawer and shove them into the brown luggage gaping open on our bed. “It’s not in the drawer?”
He looks up from the drawer and purses his lips. “If it were in the drawer, why would I be asking you about it?”
Hmm. Maybe this is why I hate my husband. Because he’s become a huge jerk.
“I don’t know where your shirt is.” I start sifting through my bras. How many bras do you bring for a weeklong trip? I’m never certain. “It’s your shirt.”
“Yeah, but you did the laundry.”
“So?” I stuff four bras into my luggage—that should be enough. “Do you think while I’m doing laundry, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh, here’s Noah’s UChicago shirt—better put that somewhere special, instead of the drawer where I put every other shirt of his I’ve ever washed in the history of doing laundry’?”
He rolls his eyes at me and sifts through the drawer one more time. “Well, it’s not in here.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Noah.”
He rubs at the dark stubble on his chin that has a hint of gray. He hasn’t shaved in three days, because he’s been working from home. He doesn’t care what he looks like unless he has to go to work. “Maybe you put it in Aidan’s dresser by mistake?”
That’s unlikely, since our nine-year-old son now does his own laundry. Somehow, my fourth grader can wash his own clothes, but my adult husband is not capable of it. From the moment we got married, laundry automatically became my responsibility. There was no discussion. The wife does the laundry. End of story.
“You’re welcome to check Aidan’s dresser,” I say.
Noah shoots me an exasperated look, then he stomps off in the direction of our son’s room, his large feet creaking against the floorboards. He’s not going to find the shirt there. I would bet a million bucks the shirt is right in that top drawer where he’s been looking all along.
In only a few short hours, we are embarking on a weeklong trip to a cozy inn located in the northern part of Colorado. It will be about a four-hour drive to get there, followed by a week of breakfast buffets, a Jacuzzi, nature walks, and a lake with trout that are basically jumping out of the water. It’s the perfect combination of getting away from urban (or in our case, suburban) life and still enjoying hot and cold running water and Cable TV. I can’t wait.
Well, except for the four hours in a car with my husband. Who probably won’t stop talking about his stupid UChicago shirt.
I drop a handful of socks into my luggage and walk over to Noah’s dresser. I’ve got two full dressers and a closet filled with clothes, whereas Noah just has the one dresser and a few dress shirts in the closet. When we were first together, he used to tease me about how much clothing I had compared with him. He still teases me about it, but now the jabs are considerably less playful.
If you buy one more shirt, we’re going to have to buy a separate house just for your clothing, Claire.