Tide Pool

By Lincoln Chase

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime—seven all-inclusive days of pristine beachfront R&R. But when Alec's wife vanishes, leaving him under scrutiny with the Mexican police, their trip of a lifetime becomes a perilous struggle for survival. 

Channeling the wiles of Gillian Flynn and Harlan Coben, Tide Pool will have you guessing until the very last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Design Vault Press, LLC
• Release date: Jun 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386621515

Lincoln Chase

Lincoln Chase is a fiction writer and stay-at-home dad. He loves books, movies, coffee and the occasional cat-video binge on YouTube. In his spare time, he--wait... what the hell is spare time? Okay, if Lincoln had spare time, he would undoubtedly enjoy baking cookies, long walks on a beach and driving a car with more than one hubcap.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

August 1, 2017

Hospital Galenia, Cancun, Mexico

SARA

I used to hate hospitals. The smells, the eerie sounds. The clinical color palette. Kinsley died in a room just like this one. Did you know that? Of course not. You were away on one of your business trips. Banging a sales rep or whatever the hell you guys actually do at those ambiguous conferences. I was surprised you managed to show up for the funeral.

Anyway, this place doesn’t seem so bad. It has an international feel that I can’t help but find endearing. Or maybe it’s just seeing you here, so alone and helpless.

I wonder if I’ll be here when that monotonous beeping finally stops, if the nurses will come sprinting in with a crash cart to revive you like they do on TV. I wonder how long it would take for you to die if I put a little kink in that air hose?

Ah, well. A girl can dream.

I didn’t marry you for love, you know. Nor did I marry you for money. I married you to piss off my parents. It worked; they’ve barely spoken to me since. I’ll admit that I looked forward to a life of luxury with you; how could I not? I mean, come on—I grew up in a trailer park for God’s sake! Talk about some serious marrying up, right? And falling in love isn’t so hard; you’ve always been a looker, so you had that working for you. But I was better off without you.

It’s so clear in hindsight.

God, I should’ve read the fine print on that prenup. Even if I spend the next fifty years doting over you, I won’t see a dime when you die. I’ll be homeless. A castaway. How could you do that to someone you love? You’d honestly rather your brother—a convicted felon who defrauded hundreds of old ladies out of their pensions—blow your estate than leave your wife with anything—a place to live, a car—anything at all?

I should’ve hired a lawyer with a better track record. Well, before I signed the damn thing, that is. I guess I was too bedazzled to care at the time.

I should’ve known you thought I was too simple to grasp what you’d done. And that no matter how many times I proved you wrong, you’d always see me as beneath you, and therefore a gold digger.

But most of all? I should’ve left the first time you hurt me.

I grew up with two older brothers, you know, so I wasn’t unaccustomed to a fat lip or a bloody nose. But that’s not to say I was prepared for a life of fear. After we had Kinsley, I tried harder than ever to make you happy. I truly wanted to love you. For you to love me. I wanted us to be a real family. Could you tell? Did you even notice? I doubt it. If so, you hid it awfully well.

When Kinsley died, my resentment turned to hate. For a while, I told myself it was part of the grieving process. The hate, I mean. Losing a child is supposed to be the worst thing a person can endure. That’s what people told me, what some went so far as to promise with their well-meaning platitudes.

They were wrong.

There is something worse. Living with a man who shackles me with the loss of our child, for example, is infinitely worse. Having to prop you up? To nurse my own grief even as you heaped yours on my shoulders—as if I wasn’t a victim of child loss like you, but a mastermind behind the very existence of SIDS. God, it hurt so badly to lose her. And you just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had to kick me while I was down. It was almost more than I could bear.

I should’ve seen it all coming. But I didn’t.

We honeymooned in Paris, do you remember? God, that was an unforgettable experience. We made love and walked the city hand in hand. We ate foods I still can’t even pronounce, drank wine at hundreds of dollars a bottle. Do you remember? Sigh. It was a fairy-tale experience. Literally. Because when we finally came home, all the joy just poofed out of existence. Like one of those dreams you want desperately to cling to, but can’t.

The first thing you did back home was alienate me. You were rude to my friends when they visited, so it wasn’t long before they stopped coming around. I tried to meet up with them for lunch or a movie, but you’d always find a way to spoil things. You’d call to accuse me of infidelity or guilt-trip me for daring to know people outside our marriage. Or—my favorite—when you’d actually come looking for me if I didn’t answer your call? Ah, that was priceless. It never got old to find you parked outside a restaurant or movie theater, just waiting to cause a big scene and bring me to tears in front of everyone. No wonder my friends stopped returning my calls. The humiliation was too much, even for them.

God damn you.

Do you remember when you cut up my credit cards? I felt so helpless, having to lobby for anything I wanted to buy. New socks or a DVD. To get my nails done once in a while. The butler—even the maid service—had more spending freedom than me. Why? Why were you so hell-bent on controlling me like that? Telling me what to