A young woman is found dead. She is not the first. And she won’t be the last.
Bailey Wixx doesn’t want to get involved. She’s come all this way, to the ends of the earth, to escape murder.
Haunted by her parents’ mysterious deaths thirteen years ago, she travels to the Salty Octopus Pool Club—a private enclave for wealthy, influential men of southern society—for a hard reset. But death always finds her; she knows this, and when a beautiful pool girl is found murdered only steps from her beach cottage, paradise turns into a nightmare.
Bailey reluctantly agrees to help the charming local detective, and as they unravel the dark truth at the bottom of the Salty Octopus’ pool, they realise that the club’s indiscretions go much deeper than one dead girl. And if Bailey’s not careful, she’ll become the next buried secret.
A young woman is found dead. She is not the first. And she won’t be the last.
Bailey Wixx doesn’t want to get involved. She’s come all this way, to the ends of the earth, to escape murder.
Haunted by her parents’ mysterious deaths thirteen years ago, she travels to the Salty Octopus Pool Club—a private enclave for wealthy, influential men of southern society—for a hard reset. But death always finds her; she knows this, and when a beautiful pool girl is found murdered only steps from her beach cottage, paradise turns into a nightmare.
Bailey reluctantly agrees to help the charming local detective, and as they unravel the dark truth at the bottom of the Salty Octopus’ pool, they realise that the club’s indiscretions go much deeper than one dead girl. And if Bailey’s not careful, she’ll become the next buried secret.
Who the fuck is Melisande Benet?
Monica stares at the text message, her perfectly painted fingernail in the shade of Cajun Shrimp hovering over the send button. But she hesitates. Don’t be stupid, Monica. Don’t do something you will regret later. And instead, she presses the back button, erasing the barbed question meant for her husband.
Tossing her phone onto the granite counter next to his, she feels upended. Thank God she didn’t rage-send the text. It would have popped up on his phone like an unsightly wart—forcing her to stare at it all day, grappling with the gravity of what she’d set in motion. Even if she deleted it from his phone, who knows how these things ghost around devices, waiting to be discovered. She’s going to need to steady her nerves and make more rational decisions moving forward.
Refilling her glass with a full pour of Beringer White Merlot, the wine glugs out at an imprudent speed; most wines would be offended by this unceremonious treatment, but this particular vin de table is accustomed to hard, fast, desperate delivery.
Monica has mastered the ration of liquid that keeps her warm and buzzy most of the day—until it doesn’t, and the grapes sour in her stomach and her state of mind shifts, inevitably leading to screaming, crying, and the throwing of breakable objects. When her family is around, she can keep most of the crazy pinned neatly down, but when she’s left to her own devices, the fasteners of powerless frustration release.
Maybe this discovery is a good thing. Something tangible: proof.
But as her mind whirls with all the ways to screw over her cheating husband, her heart aches. It hurts. Not so much because she loves him, because love is mostly inconsequential when a marriage arrives at this juncture. What bothers her is that someone else won; a notion that pecks away at all her insecurities. Someone else ensnared her husband, Colton Cane—someone younger, prettier, and clearly full of being in a way she hasn’t been in over a decade. No one warns you about how the hardships of life will slowly chip away your beauty, taking away your self-confidence with it. It should be obvious, but somehow you must experience it to truly understand.
Needing to see the harlot again, she punches in her husband’s password and clicks on the message icon. The picture of the gorgeous golden-brunette springs to life—a long, bronzed, sparkly femme—like a fucking adolescent gazelle caught at golden hour.
Monica had suspected Colton of cheating last summer—those tiny clues that start to pile up when there is a whiff of infidelity in the air: late nights, long work hours, and a short temper. But she couldn’t find the smoking gun. She needed proof, and it just wasn’t there. And then it all went away, and he went back to the normal, self-absorbed Colton she’d always known—concerned only with his newest exercise regime, or whatever self-improvement book he was reading, or how many calories were in the truffle mac and cheese. But at least he was around, if not always present.
And then, a few weeks ago, he snapped at her for not cleaning the dishes, and then hid his phone when a text message pinged, and then had to go into work late again… and again. But this time around, she was determined to outfox him. She began by driving through the club’s parking lot to make sure his truck was there when it was supposed to be, trailing him when he left their beach house, asking just the right leading questions, and spending more hours than she would like to admit trying to figure out his phone’s PIN and email password.
It took quite a bit of detective work on her part, but if she was being honest with herself, it was exciting. The Columbo of it all. It was more fun than she’d had in years—playing private investigator. It was a game of cat and mouse, and she was determined to catch him eating the cheese.
Annoyingly, his truck was always at work when it was supposed to be. And trailing him had become nerve-wracking; the thought that at any moment he could glimpse her in the rear-view mirror, catching her two car lengths back. How would she explain herself if she got caught?
She’d attempted eavesdropping, leading questions, looking for signs of a lover on his clothing—anything to catch him in the act, trap him. Otherwise, without hard proof, she was just a paranoid, middle-aged woman dangling by the thread of reality over the abyss of crazy with an abundance of time and imagination to concoct fanciful scenarios (with a debatable drinking problem).
Monica’s self-awareness has alerted her to the fact that signs of her instability might already be starting to become apparent to the outside world. Her reflection reveals pupils that have widened and darkened just slightly, exposing a burnt ash of irrationality that has infected the irises. The slow smolder of madness, starting with an ember and ending in a raging fire of black insanity, surely noticeable to anyone who meets her gaze.
Glancing again at the picture of his beautiful young lover, a queasy sensation grips her stomach and tightens her throat; she takes another desperate inhale of wine to wash down the discomfort.
She can’t pry her eyes away from this piece of actual physical evidence. It is real. But it doesn’t feel real. She’s worked so hard to unearth it; but it’s not providing the satisfaction she expected… she was hoping for. Rather, it feels like a knife to the chest. It’s no longer a chase. It’s not a satisfying Columbo gotcha moment. It’s painful.
Fooling around—those were the words she’d used in her head. And those words didn’t feel so bad. Even when she was having one of her boozier days where she’d allow herself to imagine what that meant exactly, she’d always pictured some young, mousy, needy thing—one of the new arrivals at the Salty Octopus Pool Club with daddy issues or low self-esteem. A girl who was young and foolish and could stroke his massive ego for a while. But not—not this exotic, sexy twenty-something Melisande Benet.
It was his phone that eventually sold him out. And Monica knew it would be. If there was going to be proof of an affair, that was where she would find it. At some point, she gave up on the stakeouts and the attempts to snare him in his own lies, instead putting her sole focus on obtaining that cell phone.
Colton’s phone is an appendage, as important to him as his arm. He has it on his person at all times during the day, and safely password protected in his bedside table at night. But this week, she watched and waited patiently, holding out for that perfect moment when his guard was down and she could see his fingers deftly swipe in the passcode: the last two digits of his birth year, followed by the last four digits of in his social security number. Predictable Colton—choosing a set of numbers that were all about himself.
This morning, which felt so long ago now—a million-mile journey from here to there—she had laid in bed motionless, waiting for the sound of water running through the beach house pipes. Then, slowly, she inched around the bathroom threshold and watched her husband step into the shower. She’d only have a few minutes. Colton’s morning shower was only a splash of water to “get the blood pumping.”
With thieving fingers, she lifted the phone from his bedside table and dropped it into the pocket of her robe as the crank of water turning off shuddered through the pipes in the wall. Shit, he must be in a hurry this morning. She’d have to quicken her pace. On soft feet, she shuffled down the stairs, making sure not to wake the boys. They were teenagers now, but Tanner was an early riser, often awake before anyone else in the house, and it was common to find him huddled in a corner or tucked in a shadow, scrolling on his phone before dawn.
The house was still dark, and she almost tripped over Tanner’s surfboard, along with a wet towel and swimsuit balled up at the bottom of the stairs. Normally, this would land Tanner on laundry duty all week to pay for his crimes, but this morning it seemed trivial.
As soundlessly as possible, she opened her car door and tenderly placed the phone into her Range Rover’s glove box, covering it with a tea towel for an added measure of security. A seagull screamed overhead—the only witness to her mischief.
Reentering the house, the sight of Tanner sleepily lounging across an oversized chair in the corner of the living room stopped her in her tracks. He was fully engrossed in his device, not even registering her presence… or, at least, she hoped.
Colton’s rummaging around for his phone was audible from the main level of the house. Tanner pricked up at the unusual noise of items being tossed and shuffled at a panicked volume. And that was when he noticed her standing there, giving her a confused smile before going back to his virtual life.
Her stomach clenched in that moment. Wheels were in motion. Colton never misplaced his phone; it wouldn’t take long for suspicion to land squarely on her. She would have to remain calm, brave, and normal if she was going to pull this off.
With shaky hands, she poured herself a coffee and made her way over to Tanner, who lounged in sweatpants, a soft T-shirt, and his shark-tooth necklace. His tanned skin and bouncy, blond curls completed the ultimate surfer-boy look.
“Good morning, Tans. How’d you sleep?” she asked, squeezing his knee.
The groggy fifteen-year-old stretched out his limbs and yawned. “Gooood.”
“Did you eat something?”
“Nope, not yet.”
“You want me to make you some toast?”
He shot her a look that basically relayed the message that he was a big kid, and he didn’t need his mom to make him breakfast anymore. And she wondered if there was ever an age that a mom stops asking her kid if they’ve eaten something that day.
When Colton pounded down the stairs, his eyes were searching the room wildly. “You seen my phone?”
Calmly, she made her way to the fridge and poured a dash of cream into her coffee. “Sorry, haven’t seen it.” And then added casually, “Did you check your bedside table?”
He didn’t respond. Apparently, the question was too stupid to warrant a reply.
Thankfully, he was running late—only destroying half the house in his search for the missing phone. Grabbing his keys and telling Tanner goodbye, he slammed out the front door, shooting Monica one last suspicious look as he hustled to his truck.
The morning inched by painfully slowly as she got the boys ready and out the door for their summer jobs at the golf course, knowing that at any moment, Colton might return from work to continue searching for his phone.
Finally, the house was quiet, and she made her way out to the SUV, popping open the glove box. She had been too anxious to go back inside the house, so instead she just slid down into the passenger’s seat of the car, punched in the passcode, and navigated to his text messages.
It hadn’t taken long.
Her body reacted before her mind registered anything: Her stomach flipped, tiny beads of sweat sprouted above her lip, and her heart raced wildly in her chest. It was the sender that didn’t belong in the list, the time stamp that didn’t fit into working hours, the first few visible words of the text—all of it screamed out from the screen as if it were typed in bright red letters:
Time: 5:05 AM
Sender: Melisande Benet
Message: See you tonight 😘 XOXO, M
The message was so bold and unabashed that she knew immediately that the affair had been going on for some time. There was no attempt to disguise it, as one might do in the beginning of a relationship when cheating still feels foreign and wrong—when the secret is still tucked deeply inside veiled actions and careful phrases.
The picture attached to the message made it painfully worse. Staring back at her from the screen was a sun-kissed, youthful figure in a skimpy black bikini—the strings and straps of the swimsuit crisscrossing her figure in an alluring web. Lush, golden-chestnut hair swung casually to one side of her face, revealing just a glimpse of her large, walnut eyes and full, pouty lips. A gold chain hung around the woman’s neck, dangling between her perfect, perky breasts. Flawless, glossy white nails filed into points capped her slender, pretty fingers, adorned with thin gold bands. It can’t be. The fucker had upgraded in the worst conceivable way. He found a woman who looked identical to a younger, sexier, happier version of herself—the version she had been when they first met.
Dropping his phone onto the leather seat, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror—she knew that she still looked good… for her age.
Forty is the new twenty, right? She’s not one of these women who had kids and gave up on her appearance. In fact, if you aged the young woman on the screen by twenty years, it would be her; they shared the same warm brunette hair, sun-kissed cheeks, and full pink lips.
Unfortunately, in all those wasted, boozy hours ruminating in misery about the possibility of an affair, she never took the time to devise a plan for what would come next.
And so, this day, today, unfolds unscripted: Look at the phone, throw it down, robe to pants and back to robe, cry, drink wine, eat a carrot stick, and then, fuck it—eat an entire pack of Oreos (followed by a bag of Lay’s), search online for divorce lawyers, search online for Melisande Benet, cry some more.
And then, when she feels composed enough to complete a sentence, she calls him and tells him that she has found the phone, claiming it was lodged between the headboard and the mattress. And, no, she had not looked at it. And, no, she’s not sure why they didn’t hear it ring when they tried to call it earlier. And, no, for the last time, she had not taken it. Lies to keep him satiated until she decides the next steps.
Arriving at the house around two o’clock to pick it up, he barely says a word to her, relief at the sight of his phone untwisting his pinched features. If he had just liberated his dick from a vise, he couldn’t have looked more relieved. But before he goes, he eyes her mistrustfully, still wary of her involvement in the missing phone.
Watching him drive off, the mix of Texas dust and sand swirling around in his wake, she paces around the house and then eventually settles on the front porch. She’s gutted. The anger and excitement of earlier have given way to a hollow penetration that has torn out her entire chest cavity.
A few more hours pass in restless uncertainty, before she settles onto the couch and notices the late-day light zebra the beach house’s weathered floorboards. And, for some reason, the stillness of this moment—signaling the end of a day—causes her body to become immobile. She can’t move, she can’t breathe, she can’t think. She’s paralyzed with grief.
Josh texts that he and Tanner are coming home for a quick dinner and then spending the night at Dylan’s house, giving her enough motivation to rise and make herself presentable.
She preps and feeds the boys a meal of spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread, all while acting like everything is as normal as can be. Josh eyes her knowingly once during dinner, asking if everything is okay, and she lies and tells him she’s just tired from working in the yard in the hot Texas sun. He sweetly responds that he will give her a hand out there this weekend.
Then, both boys rush out the door with a “Bye, Mom” thrown through the closing door. She wishes they would stay home tonight. They are the one thing she’s gotten right. And she aches for some reassurance that not everything up to this point has been a failure.
Colton arrives home an hour later and wordlessly takes a plate of food into his office.
And then, as she sits on the couch flipping through channels, like a star in the darkest night sky, a light—a spark—inside of her. What to do? What to do? She feels the need to do something. Her legs are twitchy. Colton can’t take all of her and make her the long-suffering wife that becomes the forgiving ex-wife. That’s just not who she’ll become. Fuck that!
Her heart gallops behind her ribcage; an energy is building inside of her. Moving to the sink, she washes out her wine glass and rinses off the dirty dinner dishes, and then sets down a plate that is only partially clean. She’s done cleaning up messes.
For too many years, she’s been holding up their facade of a life, and today she will drop it and let it shatter into a thousand tiny pieces—irrepairable for future use.
Her body moves upstairs, and she pulls on a white skirt and cotton top, fluffs her hair, applies some mascara, and swipes her lips with pink gloss.
And this is the moment that she should pack a bag, pick up the boys from Dylan’s house, and drive off this tiny spit of land to start a fresh, new life without Colton Cane. But that is not what she does. That option feels too tidy, too neat. She’s done cleaning up messes.
Instead, she gets in her midnight-blue Range Rover. Who the fuck is Melisande Benet? She’s going to find out for herself.
Bailey Wixx, a woman haunted by the death of her parents, seeks refuge in a secluded paradise along the Texas coast, where, as an employee of the extremely exclusive Salty Octopus Pool Club, she has the freedom to roam the shorelines of both the peninsula and her own tragedy.
The club offers its ultra-rich members a place to jet away from prying eyes and unwind…among other things. But even in the refuge of her sultry coastal retreat, death follows Bailey.
When a pool girl is found dead, Bailey’s superpower of attention to detail forces her to start pulling at the strings that keep her personal wounds closed—strings that start to make the club’s tightly held secrets unravel. The arrival of the disarmingly handsome Detective Jack Barnes further entangles things. Bailey’s keen mind and good-looking legs keep her one step ahead of Jack Barnes, forcing him to continually return to her for insight, encouraged by their magnetic chemistry.
Lust and love intertwine in a story of hidden pasts, forbidden desires, and intrigue, leaving readers wondering: is it a crime of passion? Or calculated greed?
Motivations blur, and dirty secrets surface. As secrets begin to bubble to the surface, Bailey must race against an opponent who is willing to kill again—and the next body could be hers.
Sires of the Salted Sea hooks readers from the first chapter. Jennifer Evans presents a cast of characters who are both incredibly flawed and obsessively compelling. The point-of-view changes with each chapter, beginning in third person, but moves to a first-person POV when the chapter is seen through Bailey’s eyes. This centers the story on Bailey, while allowing readers to move between characters (and suspects) and build their own theories on the whodunit. In Bailey, readers find a young protagonist with a Sherlockian mind. Her cool reasoning, independent mindset, and self-assured confidence create an allure that rivals even the sexiest members of the club. While romantic scenes are closed-door, Evans does not hold back from creating sexual tension and heat on the page.
Evans offers a refreshingly beachy take on the locked-door mystery by combining the eliteness of a gated club with its position on a Texas peninsula, where security and tidal forces cut it off from the mainland.
For those who like their mysteries spicy with a wide array of characters, they should look no further than Sirens of the Salted Sea.