From the bestselling author of We Don’t Leave, comes a fast-paced, chilling psychological thriller in the vein of Jennifer Hillier, Riley Sager, and Kiersten Modglin.
Remey Owens is desperate to move on with her life after the brutal murder of her next-door neighbour, Marlena. When the opportunity to housesit for her best friend’s parents arises, it feels almost too good to be true. While staying in the beautiful Craftsman-style home, she hopes she won’t hear the banging through the walls or Marlena crying, even if it is now only in her mind.
But things don’t go as planned.
While she finds some solace knowing that Marlena’s killer is dead, the calls from Remey’s obsessive ex and the strange noises in the house make it hard to relax. And there’s a prickling down her spine when she returns late one evening—something’s amiss.
Soon, it becomes apparent that she’s not as alone as she believed. The quiet isolation of the home that had once seemed peaceful, now feels far more threatening. Here, there are no neighbours close enough to save her.
To survive the night, Remey must let go of everything she thought she knew about Marlena’s death. Because the terrifying truth is more disturbing than she could have imagined, and it’s coming for her too.
KNOCK THREE TIMES
PROLOGUE
The echo of my boots against the cement is drowned out by sirens, wailing somewhere close to my apartment complex parking lot. I quicken my pace, past the concrete pillars in the underground parking, toward the exit door. I slam the metal bar down and step into the gray light of late afternoon. The plastic around my fingers is tight. I grasp at the ties of the garbage bags clutched in each of my fists as two police cars screech to a stop before the row of concrete blocks lining the edge of the parking lot up ahead. The sirens stop, too, but the red-and-blue lights flash, lighting up the cars they’ve parked beside.
What’s happening out here?
A small crowd has gathered around the side of the dumpster several feet to my left, along the back of the building. A shallow ditch separates them from the lot. They’re all looking into the opening of the small sliding door where I toss my garbage. A woman in a pink peacoat from my floor steps away from the little door—her eyes squeezed shut, her hand pressed against her mouth.
My stomach muscles clench, and I stop at the back of the group as a woman, who’s always gardening at the front of the building, and her lanky teen son eagerly step into the place where Pink Coat stood seconds before. Another siren in the distance screeches louder by the second. I glance over my shoulder, toward the entrance to the lot.
A pair of police officers step out of their vehicle and approach the crowd. I turn back to the dumpster. Two men in front of me shuffle to the side and wave the officers over, pointing to the side sliding door ahead. The police don’t seem to be in a hurry. I step up behind the mother and son, peering between their shoulders.
Something smooth and pale protrudes from between black and white garbage bags. A pillow? No, there’s a waxy sheen to it. Is that skin? It couldn’t be. The woman steps aside, pulling her son away, revealing floral material. Pink and blue in some parts—maroon splotches stain others. I recognize that dress. A cold panic washes over me as I struggle to breathe.
Marlena wore that dress the last time I saw her. My skin prickles with goosebumps.
She always flashed me the most beautiful smile when I passed her in the hallway, when I saw her and Scott coming out of their apartment. But I think it was for show.
My boyfriend Logan and I heard everything through the wall that separated us: their shouting, the banging, the bright tinkling of glass. Her crying. And I knew what was behind those sunglasses she always wore—knew about the bruises around her eyes. Every time I heard her cries through the wall, I wished I could hug her or hold her hand. I wanted to tell her she deserved better and that she deserved to feel safe. I wanted to protect her. Even if Logan kept telling me to mind my own business.
You can’t save her, Logan’s voice echoes in my mind. It’s what he said to me after I tried to befriend Marlena one day and ask her out for coffee. I told him that instead of accepting my offer, she’d whispered in a delicate voice like a breeze through bluebells, “If I knock three times, call my mom. Please. Anything else, and he’ll kill me.” She shoved a piece of paper into my hand and turned away from me after that, ducking into the elevator before I could protest, her pink-and-blue floral dress flowing.
That stained dress barely covers the pale skin of the leg tucked between the garbage bags.
Behind more bags, a hand sticks out toward me—like it’s reaching for help. My whole body shivers.
Knock, knock, knock.
Is this my fault? Last Friday night, we’d heard the sound against our shared apartment wall: the knocking.
I called the number, and a woman’s voice answered—I guessed Marlena’s mom. I told her I heard the knocking. Exactly as Marlena instructed. Logan and I stood by the wall, listening to Marlena cry, waiting for something to happen. Someone else always called the police on them in the past, but that Friday night, when no one came to help, we couldn’t just stand by. Logan went to the front doors of the building and called the police. He waited for them down there while I listened at the wall, desperate for help to arrive.
I stare at the dumpster as an officer ushers me to the side. I hear Marlena in my head, the soft croon of her voice, Call my mom. Anything else, and he’ll kill me.
She’d warned me this would happen. Every shaky breath I draw burns at my lungs. Did this happen because of us? Someone pushes me back into the bigger crowd that’s gathered as the officers each shine a flashlight into the sliding door.
The dumpster fades, and suddenly I’m watching through the peephole of my apartment. The police knocked on Scott and Marlena’s door, and I remember just waiting—wincing at the loud crash as they broke the door down. In the aftermath, the officers berated us, telling us that the emergency number was for emergencies only, and that they took fake filing seriously since there was no one in their apartment. They gave us a warning not to let it happen again. I told them about the deal we’d made when we heard the knocking, but neither of them were interested. They’d left right after.
That was last Friday night, when I still had hope I’d see Marlena again.
Knock, knock, knock.
My vision clears as one of the police officers steps aside and speaks into his radio. The remaining officer shines his flashlight into the dumpster, his beam catching on a yellow circle of flesh around a deep-brown eye. Marlena’s dead stare is fixed on me.
Tears slide down my cheeks, burning my eyes. “No. Please, no.”
I squint, desperate for a clue that the woman is not, in fact, Marlena. That it’s someone else wearing her dress. But I know it’s her. We failed her.
“Oh, dear.” The woman in the pink coat from my floor steps beside me and tugs at the arm of my coat. “You mustn’t look. Come on, now. Let’s make room for the officers.”
My body goes with the momentum of her tug. I let her lead me back toward the underground parking, the world a blur through my tears. We stop several feet away from the gathering crowd on a patch of grass between the lot and the door to get back inside.
“I think that was that young girl beside you, isn’t it?”
I turn to Pink Coat and realize she’s staring at me, waiting for an answer.
That young girl beside you.
I press my lips shut. I don’t want to say it, because if I say it, it’ll make it real.
“That’s that girl with those flashy purses,” an older man says as he approaches us, stopping next to Pink Coat. “She’s always wearing a new one. And the big sunglasses.”
She wore those to hide the bruises, but we all know what was under them. Everyone knew what was happening to her, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t stop him. My chest heaves as I blink at my tears, trying to stop them from falling.
Pink Coat leans in, shooting us each a wide-eyed glance, and whispers, “She’s the one with the abusive boyfriend. I almost called the cops on him last month.”
Wait… did she say almost? Who else called besides us?
“You don’t say.” The man glances over his shoulder.
Three officers surround the side opening to the dumpster. Another officer with neon yellow police tape in hand uses his body to make space between the crowd and the line he’s creating. They step back bit by bit as he does. A woman with a little terrier on a leash peels away from the crowd and strides toward us with her nose in the air, shaking her head. Pink Coat makes room for her in our circle.
“I got a good look—not that I wanted to. It’s Marlena,” she says, lifting her dog up into her arms, not bothering to whisper. Now, it’s confirmed. She knew her—knew her name. Maybe they were close. Maybe she had a friend here and wasn’t as isolated as she seemed. “The one with the terrible split lip last summer.”
I wince, my stomach muscles clench, and my breath catches in my throat.
Logan and I only moved into the apartment this summer after six months of dating. We hadn’t even been together when Marlena had that split lip. The length of her relationship—the true length of her pain—hits me with an empathetic pang in my own chest. And before us… it’s possible that no one had called the abuse in. Maybe they’d all assumed the neighbors closest to the couple would call—the bystander effect. No wonder the police thought we were full of it.
Pink Coat nods. “Yep, I knew it.”
Panic swells in my chest. I can’t breathe. I glance over at the dumpster. I can’t stand here anymore, so I take a step back.
Pink Coat leans in closer to me. “Just terrible. She just wouldn’t leave him, even after what he did to her. This is what happens.”
“Terrible,” the man agrees.
This is what happens?
My chest heaves with anger, my fists clenched in balls. I will myself to take another step away before I lose it on them.
“You poor dear, all that ruckus next door,” Pink Coat says to me, then turns to the others. “I heard them all the way down the hall sometimes.”
“What kinds of things did you hear?” the man asks.
It takes a moment of silence in the group before I realize everyone’s staring at me, waiting.
I can’t speak. I can’t move. All I can see is Marlena’s dead eye, staring at me.
Knock, knock, knock. I imagine it coming from inside the dumpster.
I knocked, Remey. Why didn’t you help me?
But I did. I called her mom like she’d asked me to. We even called the police when nothing happened. But we didn’t do enough, and it wasn’t just Friday… The final actions that led her here happened Saturday night…
“Her boyfriend’s been out of work for a while.” The woman pets her dog’s head, pulling his long hair away from his eyes, and puts him down. The dog shakes and trots toward the direction of the dumpster, only stopping at the resistance from the leash. “That kind of stress can cause people to do some pretty desperate things…”
Knock, knock, knock.
The dog stares at the dumpster. Does he hear it, too?
One officer talks into his radio while another finishes off the line of tape a few feet away, making sure no one can get close enough to see her. I saw enough. I saw too much. All the voices and noises around me fade away.
My knees wobble. Acid bites its way up my throat—I’m going to be sick.
We failed her. I need to tell Logan what’s happened.
I stumble back toward the underground parking. I push through the door and step into the dark, damp underbelly of the building. The door closes, shutting out the chatter from the crowds and the static racket from the police radios. In the quiet, I’m left with the knocking, echoing in my mind. A clanging beside me makes me jump, and I look down, only now realizing I’m still carrying my garbage bags. A green beer bottle—one of Logan’s—rolls back toward the door.
One of my bags must have broken.
It clinks against the cement pillar behind me. I walk back, slowly, clutching my bags of garbage between my slippery, sweaty fingers.
He put her in with the trash. My body shakes with rage.
This is what happens, they’d said, but it didn’t have to end like this. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
I drop my bags and march toward the door. I need to tell the police what I know. They’re finally here for Marlena—but it's too late. Scott already killed her and put her in with the garbage.
CHAPTER ONE
10 Days After Discovering Marlena’s Body
I long to feel peace beneath the shadows of the golden leaves, clinging to the branches of the trees above me. Children play on the swings at the jungle gym several feet off the path we’ve stopped along. Dogs chase after each other on the other side of the path, in the soccer field.
Logan seems to be waiting to speak until I give him my full attention, but I watch the dogs nipping at each other’s legs and tails.
“When’s the last time you had contact with him?” There’s tension in Logan’s gravelly voice, louder now like he’s attempting to command my attention.
The couple approaching, hand in hand, takes my focus instead. I remember when we were as happy as they seem. It was only a few months ago that we rarely ever disagreed, never mind fought.
“Remey, did you hear me?”
“I haven’t spoken to Shawn since we broke up.” I hang my head, shuffling to the side to make room for the grinning couple.
My ankle boots clunk against the paved path until I step onto the long grass of the soccer field, swaying in the breeze.
“Nothing? Not even a text?” Logan lumbers to the grass, squinting against the bright sun headed for the horizon.
I stare into his gleaming brown eyes and shake my head no. He frowns slightly, studying me before shoving his hands in his sports jacket pockets. The bright yellow beauty of the sun casts a glow across everything on the field before it sinks into the horizon behind our neighbourhood across the street. It brightens his darker features and shines against the short regrowth of his new buzzcut after the last hockey season ended.
“Then I just don’t get it.” He shrugs, making a sour expression. “Why are you keeping those pictures in your nightstand?”
I exhale a loud, deep breath as I prepare to recite my reasons again.
“Shawn’s family took me to Italy. It was my first time travelling out of the country.” I fold my arms across my chest, waiting for his expression to change. When it doesn’t, I sigh again and drop the perfunctory tone. “It was a big deal, Logan. It was my first time on a plane—first time travelling out of the country. Just because he’s in some of the pictures, you think I should get rid of them?”
He runs his hand over his new short hair and shakes his head. “I definitely don’t think you should keep them beside you where you sleep every night. Come on, Remey. You don’t see how weird that is?”
Multiple dogs bark to our right—high-pitched yips mixed with low howls of the two hounds, desperately trying to catch up with the rest in the distance. I focus on the road a few meters ahead. The road back to our apartment. I just want to go home, take my sleeping pills, and curl up in bed.
Logan takes a step to the side, so I can’t see anything but his muscular frame. “Remey, you always say communication is important in a relationship. So, visiting Europe was important to you. Fine. Can you tell me why you keep the ones of him?”
I look up at him, exasperated. “You think I take out the pictures of Shawn and look at them while you’re sleeping or something? C’mon, I don’t understand what the issue is. I didn’t even remember they were in there.”
“You keep pictures of your ex—"
“And his family. There’s only, like, three of Shawn. Would you be happier if I cut him out of them? You want me to ruin the only photos I have, standing in front of the Trevi Fountain, just so you don’t get jealous?”
Even if he does—I’m not doing it. I’m keeping them.
He scoffs and shakes his head. “I’m not jealous.”
“Then what are you?”
He purses his lips and shakes his head. “Let’s go back to the apartment.”
So now we’re finished talking about it because he says we are?
Children laugh on the swings beside us, pumping their legs back and forth, shooting themselves higher and higher into the air with pure momentum.
If I go back to the apartment, he’ll swing me back into our normal routine, and because of the momentum, I’ll just go with it. It’s what I’ve always done. I’ve swung back and forth with his moods, hanging on for the ride like those children swinging. Some of them are so little, they can’t put their feet down to stop themselves, and sometimes, it feels like I don’t have control, either.
I thought I stopped the momentum with that phone call to the police for Marlena. I can’t get caught up in it again.
“No.” I stand firmly in place. “I’m tired of having this conversation. From where I stand, you’re trying to control me by making me feel guilty about something I shouldn’t—"
“If you don’t come, I’ll just go back without you.” He glances at the children in the park, and the dog owner walking by, then lowers his voice. “I’m not doing this here.”
He started it, and I want to remind him of that, but he takes a few steps toward the road. Always his way.
“Logan.” I call his name as a warning—I’m not swinging your way again.
I won’t just go along with it and be made to feel like I’ve wronged him. Maybe if he’d approached me about the photos calmly and respectfully, instead of throwing them across the bed toward me, as if it was some big reveal or gotcha moment of betrayal. Logan could be dramatic, passionate, confrontational, and a little unpredictable. If it had been another man, I might have thought he were throwing the pictures at me, but no—not Logan. He wanted me to face the apparent secret I’d been keeping from him, literally and figuratively.
He stops and turns back to me. “You’ve been different lately.”
I frown. The cool breeze whips through my long, dark hair, obstructing my view of him. I squeeze my arms at my sides to keep warm. “And you think it’s because of the pictures?”
“You go for long walks on your own, and you didn’t answer your phone when I called you from the locker room after hockey practice this week. You always used to answer me. You used to like when I’d let you know I was finished and on my way home. You used to say it’s what made me different from the other guys who waited until they had privacy to be vulnerable with their wives and girlfriends.”
“You do that all the time. You go out, don’t tell me where you’re going, and then get upset when I question you. Don’t you see how hypocritical that is?”
He shakes his head no. “It’s not the same thing. I haven’t heard you laugh lately. I don’t think I’ve seen you smile in days…”
My eyes widen, and I choke on an incredulous laugh. I brush the hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear, eager to see his expression.
He frowns slightly and leans back, his eyes opening wider.
Has my expression triggered the real reason to finally dawn on him? Is that why he stopped spewing all these odd reasons, even before my reaction? Did the real reason truly escape him? He should be so lucky. I can’t escape it.
His stare is blank as he waits for a response. Doesn’t he know?
Anger wells up from my core to my chest. It’s been ten days. I take a few steps closer to him and lean in. I close the distance between us, but avoid touching him.
“Marlena. Have you forgotten about what happened? I can’t stop thinking about her. Have you?”
How could you? Please, tell me you haven’t.
He licks his lips, and his chest heaves before he opens his arms and wraps them around me. For a moment, in the comfort of his strong embrace, I’m protected from the cruel wind, and from the awful mistake we made that Saturday night.
Knock, knock, knock.
After the Friday night filled with knocking, the police, and the warning we’d received from them, we’d woken that next morning to the buzzer at our door. When Logan answered, a woman stood there with dark circles under her eyes—Marlena’s mother. I told her what happened the previous night and what the police had said.
“Marlena and I had a plan,” she’d whispered. “If she knocked, you’d call me, and I’d come over and park on Kingston Road, between the streetlights by the corner. She’d sneak out whenever she could, whenever she was safe, even if it took until sunrise.”
Marlena had never shown. I spent the day listening for their return, ready to call her mom again. I didn’t hear them, but that very night, it came again—from our shared wall.
Knock, knock, knock.
Logan’s arms wrapped around me feel like a cage now. But I don’t hear the dogs playing or the children laughing on the playground anymore. I’m trapped with him—trapped in the memory—and all I can hear is what he said that night.
“Babe, I didn’t hear anything. They weren’t even there when the police came last night. She left. Maybe she left him for good. I hate to say it, Rem, but I think you’re hearing things. I think you’re scared for her and you’re being extra cautious, but you’re not being rational anymore. You make up stories for a living. I think your imagination is running away on you.”
I’d called her mother again anyway, but the voicemail was full. I told Logan we should call the police, but he tried to convince me to watch a movie to take my mind off things. Once he realized I wouldn’t, I made him go next door with me and knock on their door. When no one answered, he practically herded me back into our apartment and tried to bribe me out of focusing on the knocking with a bad massage. He went to get the massage oil from my nightstand, where he found the photos of my trip with my ex. When he came out of the bedroom, I was already on the phone with the police, but I knew I’d waited too long. I should have called them when I suggested it the first time. They came, and again, no one was in the apartment. That was the last I heard of Marlena.
Standing on the path of the park, the last of the sun dips below the horizon, leaving a golden dusk behind, along with the regrets and guilt I hold from that night.
“We did what we could,” Logan’s gravelly voice whispers, and any sense of security I feel is blown away like his words, both lost in the wind. “She wouldn’t leave him. She had a family that wanted to support her. Her mom was desperate for her to leave and come home, but she wouldn’t listen.” He pulls away slightly and cradles my face in his big, rough hands. He’s staring into my eyes, but I avoid his gaze. “No one could have changed her mind.”
He always tries to smooth things over—to excuse away the inexcusable. Right now, it feels good, and I hate admitting it, even to myself.
I shake my head. “She was in danger, and we knew it, and we—"
“Shh.” He runs his fingers through my hair, and I hold my breath. It’s all I can do to keep from pulling away as he brings my face close to his, his rough hands so familiar, more comforting than his words. “Listen, trust me. I’m messed up about it, too. He left her in the dumpster, like a piece of trash. Like something you just throw away. She didn’t deserve that. You never should have had to see that…”
I squeeze my eyes shut preemptively to push the image of her dead gaze and outstretched hand away, and end up pushing Logan away, too.
“Scott’s dead, Remey. The coward killed himself right after her. He slit his wrists. That’s who’s to blame.”
The cold breeze envelops me, and I wrap my arms over my chest. “Logan… I should have… I could have…”
He shakes his head, letting me go, and I press my fingers to my lips before I can say the words—saved her.
His face turns sour again. “What you mean to say is it’s my fault. If that’s the real reason you’ve been acting so different, just say it.”
The real reason? He’s convinced I’m cheating on him with my ex, Shawn. He thinks I’m using Marlena’s death as an excuse for the distance he feels between us. Maybe because I haven’t spoken to him—to anyone except my best friend, Nicole—about it since I found her body.
I can’t stomach the thought of everything that happened enough to wrap my mind around it fully, and even if I could, even if I knew where to start about expressing my feelings, he doesn’t want me to share them. He gets defensive instead of accepting some of the blame.
He wouldn’t understand me if I told him I still hear her crying some nights—that high-pitched gasp of breath she used to take when she was hyperventilating.
He’d think I was crazy if he knew I still hear the knocking coming from their wall.
I can’t even tell my best friend about it. I can’t bring myself to admit it consumes me.
So, I keep it in, along with the memory of the bruises she tried to hide behind makeup and scarves and sunglasses. The thought of how fast my heart would race, walking past her boyfriend after he’d yelled at her. The new necklaces she’d proudly wear—gifts that I’m sure he’d given to apologize for hurting her. The idea that we were right next door when it all happened… when she’d been killed…
I press my whole hand over my mouth as saliva pools beneath my tongue and my stomach heaves.
“You really have nothing to say?” Logan throws his hands in the air and shakes his head, taking a step backwards. “I’m going home. If you won’t be honest with me about Shawn, I’m going back, packing my things, and we’re done.”
He marches toward the road, reaching the sidewalk as I see the black car from the corner of my eye. Too fast. The car is going too fast.
Logan steps off the curb.
“Shawn!” I scream.
It happens all at once, as if in slow motion. Logan turns toward me. The shocked confusion on his face pushes me forward, reaching out toward him. He doesn’t see the car. It’s going to hit him. My heart fills my throat. The car screeches, swerving around him before driving off.
The relief that he is safe and in one piece instead of lying flat on the road is quickly replaced with a deep, sinking feeling. I connect with the pain filling his eyes.
I called him Shawn. Why did I do that?
“Logan,” I stammer, stumbling toward him as the car speeds around the corner, out of sight. I point to it. “I’m sorry—the car—I was trying to warn you, and I don’t know why I said that…”
“I think we both know why.” He shakes his head, turns back to the road, and looks both ways this time.
“Logan, I’m sorry,” I call to him, stopping at the edge of the sidewalk.
He steps over the curb on the other side of the street without looking back. Why did I call him Shawn? Was it because we were just talking about him? I haven’t spoken to Shawn—never even thought of him for more than a few seconds—since we broke up after college. We both took writing courses, and I don’t even know if he achieved his dream of becoming a journalist.
Logan marches on, his body getting smaller in the distance.
My chest aches, willing him to stop. To come back.
Each step he takes cements the permanence of his decision that feels like the end.
An older woman stops before me, clutching her purse under her arm. “Honey, are you okay?”
Someone’s hound dog with long, floppy ears sniffs at my feet.
“Honey?” the older woman asks.
I swallow back my tears.
“I saw what happened.” A man’s deep voice comes from somewhere behind me. “That was close. You saved him.”
Logan disappears around the corner of Kingston Road, in the direction of our apartment, leaving me breathless and alone.
No more swinging in his direction—only mine now—but I don’t know where to go.