A movie star finds herself trapped in her home by her husband and forced to play his deadly game. Solving it in time will be the only way to save the life of her suspected lover... and her own.

SYNOPSIS:

Molly Bowen drives home from a press tour of a film she was starring in. She talks on the phone with her best friend, and neighbor, Evie Marston about what she thinks her anniversary surprise will be when she gets home to their purposefully isolated, and secure, home. When she arrives there, she finds that most of her predictions are true: a candlelight dinner, her favorite foods, and “their song” is playing in their home’s overhead speakers. Will tells her that dinner is about a half hour or so out, but there is plenty of time for Molly to take her traditional post-tour "Zen Bath" upstairs and get ready. After she does, she returns to find dinner on the table, candles are lit, music is playing… But no Will. She walks through the house calling for him, but he is nowhere to be found. Will enters through the back door with a bottle of her favorite wine and sets the alarm. He has come from the direction of their large workshed.

They sit down to dinner and talk about her shoot. During the conversation, it is discovered that they met on the set of a horror film that Will wrote. He presents Molly with a gift. It is a new tablet with a button marked “Sleeping Beauty” on the screen. She presses it and it reveals a “live feed” of her friend Timothy Conrad lying unconscious inside a thick plex-glass coffin with a running countdown currently set around thirty-five minutes. The coffin is the same one he built as property master for her last shoot. Will tells Molly that Timothy is nearby and informs her that he has discovered their affair.

Molly denies it. He doesn’t believe her and tells her that he has taken their mutual love of “game night” to the “next level” by hiding five items throughout the house that prove her affair. He will give her “riddles” for each one so she can try to find them. He will give her the clue to the next if she can also prove them false. If she cannot, the game will end, and they will die of the poison that he had placed in their wine.

If she finds them all and can disprove them, she wins, and he will give her the antidote and the choice of giving it to him. Will says she will have to play the game his way because, besides the poison, he has changed the codes to the front and back doors and the Wi-Fi, and there is no way for her to get out or find help.

The rest of the story has quite a few surprises and I would love to have you read it someday.

KILLING TIME