Read An Excerpt From ‘Watch It Burn’ by Kristen Bird

Three ladies work to uncover the scorching lies and scandal behind a self-help motion, igniting a powder keg of secrets and techniques that might blow their city aside, on this suspense novel good for readers who love Southern thriller.

Intrigued? Well learn on to find the synopsis and an excerpt from Kristen Bird’s Watch It Burn, which releases on March twelfth 2024.

It’s early morning within the small Texas city of Edenberg when the physique of sixty-seven-year-old Beverly Hoffman is found within the Guadalupe River—drowned in solely two inches of water.

After elementary faculty instructor Nichole Miller discovers the girl’s physique, she makes two telephone calls: first to the police, who name Beverly’s dying a slip and fall, and second to her greatest good friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is trying to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA profession, and she or he is aware of foul play when she sees it. The two ladies enlist the assistance of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s keen to reveal the reality.

Beverly had been beloved within the tight-knit neighborhood, having cofounded the wildly in style personal-development firm Genetive, Inc., alongside her influential husband. But one thing sinister has been smoldering beneath the floor of their picturesque hometown. And Genetive is on the heart of all of it.

MONDAY
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE FIRE
NICHOLE

Nichole pulled on purple operating shorts earlier than plodding to the toilet and gulping down 4 ibuprofen. Last night time’s whiskey sours had been the incorrect libation for the eve earlier than faculty began.

Without wanting within the mirror, she utilized moisturizer with SPF and pulled again her straight black hair into a large fabric headband, banging brushes and bottles as she went. As she made herself a bowl of oatmeal, she created as a lot racket as doable, hoping all of the whereas that the person in her mattress would get up.

When fifteen minutes handed and he was nonetheless loud night breathing soundly, Nichole left him a word saying she’d gone for a run and he ought to let himself out. Then, she turned her clock radio to the ’80s station at full quantity, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” echo­ing behind as she dashed out the entrance door as quick as her former cross-country legs would carry her. Nichole was a thirty-nine-year-old Korean American girl sneaking out of her personal home. It had come to this.

Hot and sticky couldn’t sufficiently describe the smothering humidity, like a stack of moist paper towels pasted to her head, as she jogged the trail she took each morning—solely just lately operating from the boys she’d invited home. This needed to be the fourth such morning. Or the fifth. Oh, God, had she truly misplaced depend? She was not purported to be a type of ladies. She ought to’ve known as her greatest good friend, Jenny, like she’d promised to do if ever this example arose once more.

I’m again now. You don’t need to grieve alone, Jenny had advised her earlier this summer season, wanting Nichole straight within the eyes. Much had modified since that first day of kindergarten after they’d swung aspect by aspect, conversing about the most effective identify for the puppy Jenny’s mom had introduced home (they’d lastly settled on Blue­bonnet Rose Dandelion), however their friendship had solidified. The subsequent day on those self same swings, Nichole had requested Jenny if she wished to be “booby friends.” (She’d heard the time period bosom bud­dies on TV and requested her large sister what the primary phrase meant.) When Jenny stated sure, Nichole figured she’d made a good friend for all times, that they’d eternally be on the identical group. She’d been proper up to now.

But Nichole hadn’t known as her oldest good friend earlier than that first drink, and now right here she was.

She reached the sting of the neighborhood the place the asphalt ended and the earthen path into the woods started. As she stored her eyes on the horizon, she tried to recall the sum complete she knew concerning the man she’d left alone in her home.

1. He was blended race, half Native American and white.
2. He took up a lot of her queen mattress, which meant he was greater than six ft tall.
3. She was fairly positive his drink of selection had been a gin and tonic.
4. He labored in…air-conditioning, or perhaps he was a me­chanic? Something along with his fingers.
5. He may say the alphabet backward whereas drunk.

A stirring record, little doubt, however not sufficient to maintain her in­terested in… What was his identify? Oh, shit. What was it? She swiped exhausting at her forehead, both to jar her reminiscence or to punish herself for this horrible lapse in judgment. At least she’d identified the names of the others.

As her ft padded towards the earth, she determined to dis­tract herself by considering by means of the day in entrance of her. After showering and dressing in her first-day-of-school outfit—even after nineteen years of instructing, she nonetheless chosen a particular en­semble every year—she would arrive in school and lower the re­maining All About Me worksheets into coronary heart shapes for her college students. Then, she would place a particular eraser at every desk and watch for the primary bell to ring. It can be a recent begin for a brand new yr. Still, on the periphery of her thoughts, one thing each­ered her about this plan.

A couple of extra yards and she or he remembered the issue: when she was on her option to the bar final night time, she—together with the remainder of the college—had obtained a vaguely worded e-mail from the top of the board, letting them know a brand new position had been created on campus: a curriculum coordinator.

The title sounded applicable for an academic adminis­trative position, however the last-minute appointment and the de­scription of the function had appeared…off. It said that this person can be evaluating—and, when mandatory, censoring—books and workout routines deemed “inappropriate” or “irrelevant” to “to­day’s cultural climate.”

In previous years, Nichole would’ve responded to the e-mail with an expert sequence of questions and considerations pushing again on such a sudden resolution; she would possibly’ve even protested the appoint­ment. As it was, she had no emotional power for an outcry.

Ten minutes into her run, and her abdomen roiled with the liquid contents of final night time’s debauchery. She slowed to a steadier tempo, holding fingers above her head in an effort to stem the nausea. It can be positive. Everything can be positive.

When she obtained home, the person in her mattress can be gone, and she or he would bathe and gown and enter the brand new faculty yr with none of the bags of this lonely summer season of males. A brand new leaf to show over this fall. That was what she wanted. She would embrace her singleness like Cheryl Strayed in Wild or Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love. She shook her head. No, not Julia Roberts—that was the movie. The e book was Elizabeth… Elizabeth Something.

Nichole took gulps of the dank air and tried to dash throughout the slatted bridge hovering over the Guadalupe. She may see that the river ranges have been low, which meant the Paddle Parade was unlikely to occur this yr until they obtained a very good rain­fall within the subsequent week. Rocks lower a jagged course to the opposite aspect, the white water shallow however quick because it dodged impediments.

See additionally

One time when she was a child and the water had been low like this, she and her sister had taken their neighbor’s kayak all the way down to the banks. Ten-year-old Christina, together with her truthful pores and skin and blue eyes, appeared nothing like Nichole, however that made them no much less a bonded pair. Christina sat within the stern, gripping tightly to a tree root, as five-year-old Nichole stepped shakily into the bow. When her sister let go, the 2 of them caught a present that carried their borrowed vessel into the center of the river, bumping them throughout algae-ridden rocks and silty divots earlier than ultimately hurtling them right into a tree rising on the fringe of the water and upending the kayak. Nichole had flailed, legs and arms pulsating, as she tried to remain afloat within the drop-off. Only seconds had handed, however concern slowed time for Nichole, so when her torso linked with Christina’s leg, Nichole held on for expensive life, climbing her older sister’s physique like a koala in a bamboo tree.

After the 2 of them lastly made their option to the banks, dragging the boat behind them, they swore by no means to step foot in these waters once more. When fifteen youngsters died within the river a couple of years later, their pact was solidified. To Nichole, these waters meant hazard, even at low ranges.

As she ducked underneath a dangling department now, leaves scratched at her shoulder and she or he remembered the tales youngsters in her class advised concerning the tragedy that had stolen lives on this river, whis­pers about how you might hear youngsters laughing on the banks on late-August days.

Nichole shivered regardless of the feverish warmth and compelled herself to make a full loop by crossing the second bridge.

As she got here nearer to the paved street, she peered into the gap, making an attempt to see if the person’s Jeep was nonetheless parked in entrance of her home. As she squinted towards home, one thing shade­ful caught in her periphery, a typical sight in a river that stored flowing in the identical route day in and time out, all the way in which to the Gulf. But this wasn’t the same old orange lifejacket, bikini high, or beer koozie. It was a pink-and-blue paisley-printed scarf, probably silk and definitely costly.

Nichole watched the material glide previous earlier than turning her face upstream. In the gap she noticed a mound of clothes piled within the heart of the riverbed.

She glanced at her watch. It was almost 6:30 a.m., and if she was going to make it to highschool on time, she actually wanted to get home. But one thing concerning the cloth in the course of the river wasn’t proper. She wanted to take a fast look.

She navigated the bumpy terrain with precision, and as she crept nearer to the financial institution, stepping round fallen branches and uncovered roots, the mound started to take form. That of a torso, of arms, of legs.

Nichole stopped midstride as she realized precisely what was in entrance of her: this was a physique—a girl, it appeared—face down within the heart of the shallow river.

Excerpted from WATCH IT BURN by Kristen Bird. Copyright © 2024 by Kristen Burn. Published by MIRA Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.