The First Body

J.O. Starr

Every Friday night, **Noah Mercer** drives for a rideshare company to supplement his income after losing his wife in a tragic accident. He prides himself on remembering every passenger—except one. A woman dressed in gray enters his car just after midnight. She gives no destination, barely speaks, and disappears before the trip officially ends. Security footage shows Noah driving alone. Days later, a prominent attorney is found murdered. Then a journalist. Then a retired detective. Each victim had secretly been connected to a twenty-year-old case involving the disappearance of a young girl—a crime everyone believed had gone unsolved. The only link between the murders is Noah’s mysterious passenger. As detectives begin suspecting Noah himself, he races to uncover the identity of the silent woman before he becomes the final victim. But the deeper he investigates, the more he realizes the passenger may not be hunting random people… She may be leading him toward the truth about his own wife’s death. In a shocking finale, Noah discovers that the “silent passenger” has been orchestrating a deadly reckoning against everyone responsible for a decades-old conspiracy—including someone Noah has trusted all along.