Chapter 1: The Woman in the Pool
“Don’t touch me! I’m already in—so stop acting like you own this pool!”
David Mercer stopped at the edge of his backyard pool, one hand still raised toward the enormous inflatable float drifting away from him.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Karen Whitmore was sitting on the float as if she had spent the afternoon there by invitation. Her oversized sunglasses were slightly crooked. Her turquoise swimsuit and floral cover-up were soaked around the edges. Water dripped from her blonde hair onto her shoulders.
Behind her, the side gate stood open.
David had locked that gate himself that morning.
“Why are you in my pool?”
Karen sighed dramatically.
“Because nobody answered the door. I live here too.”
David looked toward the houses surrounding his yard.
“No, you don’t.”
Karen rolled her eyes.
“I mean the neighborhood. The pool affects everybody’s property values.”
“This is my pool.”
“I know what you think.”
She said it with such certainty that David almost wondered whether he had missed something.
Then Karen reached toward the pool wall, trying to push the float closer to the steps.
David noticed something white lying on the patio.
A towel.
Not just any towel.
It was folded neatly beside a pair of sandals Karen had removed before entering the water.
David picked it up.
“You brought a towel?”
Karen’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But he saw it.
The smugness disappeared for half a second.
Then she recovered.
“I wasn’t planning on swimming.”
David looked at the towel.
Then at her.
“You weren’t?”
Karen pointed toward the water.
“I was checking the water quality.”
“With a towel?”
She said nothing.
David’s eyes moved toward the security camera mounted above the back door.
The camera had recorded everything.
Karen had not wandered into his yard by mistake.
She had opened the locked side gate herself.
And as David looked at the camera, a phone appeared over the fence across the street.
His neighbor, Mrs. Ellis, was recording.
Karen noticed it too.
Her hand slowly dropped from her sunglasses.
For the first time that afternoon, she looked embarrassed.
But instead of climbing out, she grabbed the float and pulled it farther toward the center of the pool.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Call whoever you want.”
David lowered the towel.
He wasn’t angry anymore.
He was thinking.
Because Karen’s behavior suddenly reminded him of something he’d dismissed three weeks earlier—a missing key to the community’s maintenance shed.
And now he wondered whether the pool was the first place she had entered without permission.
