Prologue

The late-autumn morning arrived with unpredictable clouds and a brisk wind off the Hudson River. Frosty gusts whipped through the Village streets, and the sidewalks were nearly deserted, but inside our cozy coffeehouse the buzz of happy customers promised a robust winter season.

I could hardly believe that only a few weeks ago, our tables were empty, our revenues wrecked, and I feared all was lost.

The heartbreaking slide started earlier this fall when the location filming of a hit television show in and around our Village Blend had disrupted our daily revenue stream and brought a distressing deficit to our bottom line. That calamity had no sooner ended when a devastating drop in foot traffic clobbered us anew, threatening our very existence.

As the manager and master roaster of this historic shop, I refused to watch it suffer a sad, slow death. I owed my family of baristas and beloved octogenarian mentor more than that. So, instead of giving up, I began to fight for its life.

A remedy came in the form of an idea from the Village Blend’s own bohemian past: an upstairs writers’ lounge. Resurrecting that simple vintage concept jump-started our traffic faster than a triple-shot red-eye with a Red Bull chaser.

Looking around me now, our financial problems appeared to be solved. Outside our wall of French doors, the chilly sidewalks were still far too barren. But inside, our coffeehouse was no longer empty.

Our marble-topped tables were packed with contented customers sipping our drinks and nibbling our pastries. The air was filled with the scent of freshly roasted coffee and the buzz of conversation. Our espresso machines hissed, our fireplace crackled, and our speakers resonated with smooth jazz.

With a fresh tray in my hands, I climbed the spiral stairs to our second floor. All the spots in our lounge were occupied, and every person was a writer. They came here for a place to create and collaborate, and they had my admiration. Many of them balanced multiple part-time jobs, squeezing out extra time in their schedules to type out the music of their imaginations.

As I moved among them, most were lost in the process, fingers dancing across their laptop keyboards, pens twirling on notebook pages. In the corner, I noticed a slumped figure. The poor soul had fallen asleep across their work, head down on the table, cobalt blue hoodie pulled fully up, arms sprawled out beside them.

No rest for the weary, I thought, a phrase I’d heard often among the writers who gathered here—including those who sometimes napped between gig-economy shifts.

As I drew closer, I sensed something was off about this writer’s slumped form. Another few steps and I nearly dropped my tray.

“Hey, are you okay?”

No response.

I shook the writer’s shoulder, and one limp arm slipped off the table. I saw the waxy flesh and curled fingers.

Oh, no. No, no, no—

Praying I was wrong, I shook the figure again. This time, the whole body toppled off the chair and onto the floor. Seeing the collapsed corpse sent an icy shock through me. Realizing what it meant chilled me to the bone.

In the next few minutes, chaos descended—the call to 911, the uproar in the shop, the desperate attempts to revive a person who could not be saved. As the inevitable whirlwind struck, the gears of my mind worked, putting pieces of a puzzle together with sickening swiftness.

Over the past few weeks, I’d learned things that had spiked my suspicions. Now I feared this poor dead writer had not died of natural causes. And there was something else. Something worse—

There could be more deaths to come.

To stop the killings, I would have to reach back to a dark night from the Village Blend’s past and predict the future moves in a murderer’s mind. I’d need to recount a dozen micro dramas, sort out specifics, and consider all the suspects: from the eccentric old poet and the bestselling author to the crazy young professor and this shop’s chief competitor.

Everyone was involved in this story, practically from the start—and it all began when our financial woes were at their worst. When I feared the end was near. Not the end of any writer’s life, but the existential end of our Village Blend.