Like, Follow, Kill. Carissa Lynch Ann

      

      Like, Follow, Kill

      CARISSA ANN LYNCH

      One More Chapter

      an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Carissa Ann Lynch 2019

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

      Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

      Emoji © Shutterstock.com

      Carissa Ann Lynch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008362638

      Version: 2019-08-08

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

      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

       The One Night Stand – Coming in 2020

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

      This book is dedicated to my editor, Charlotte Ledger, and my agent, Katie Shea Boutillier. Thank you both for believing in my stories and making me a better writer.

       Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except for the cubic centimeters in your skull.

      George Orwell, 1984

       Prologue

       I was born with a scream inside me. Lodged between my heart and throat. Can’t swallow it; can’t choke it down. Can’t spit that motherfucker out. It’s stuck, like me … anchored to the in-between, slowly rotting in the core of me. It festers like a sore, oozing through my bloodstream, sending seeping shocks of silent fury to every nerve ending in my body.

       Like an IV, it drip, drip, drips, but there’s never a release.

       One of these days, I’ll open my mouth and the world will rumble from the roar.

       Chapter 1

       My body is broken.

      Arms like dying, desperate fish, they flop on the seat beside me. Hips yanked from their sockets. Red-rose gashes on my chest and neck.

      A deep dark hole where my nose once was.

      And my teeth … these teeth don’t belong to me. Like broken eggshells, they stab the roof of my mouth, pricking my cheek and gums.

       Are they Chris’s teeth?

       If so, how did Chris’s pearly white, now-broken teeth end up in my mouth? Did I kiss him?

      No, not a kiss.

       I can’t remember the last time I kissed him … but I can taste his blood in my mouth.

      Chris with the cocoa-colored eyes and hair like silk on my skin. Chris with the lips, soft as falling feathers on a windy day …

      Chris: the love of my life.

       Chris: who is dead.

      One minute we were laughing … or were we shouting? Discussing our plans for the day … although now I’ve forgotten what those plans were.

      And the next … the next … we’re upside-down, strapped in our seats like a rollercoaster, only we can’t get off, we’re stuck, suspended in mid-air. The roof of my Buick becomes the sky. I’m mesmerized as it swirls like one of those psychedelic spinning tunnels, like they have at the county fair.

       Oh, the fair. That’s where we were going, weren’t we?

      Chris promised me a deep-fried Snickers bar.

       And I promised him I’d stay sober.

      Chris: The Love Of My Life and Chris: The Headless Man On The Seat Beside Me are one and