Lockdown Secrets: BOOK TWENTY-ONE — (2020) (Whispering Pines 21)

Lockdown Secrets
A Whispering Pines Thriller / Horror Novel
24 Years, 24 Secrets

When the world shut down, Whispering Pines didn’t get safer.
It got quieter.

Jamie Rourke was one of the few people still moving through town.
As a grocery clerk turned delivery driver, she brought food to locked doors, dark houses, and people no one else checked on. During lockdown, she became invisible—and so did the things she began to notice.

One customer ordered too much.
Not panic buying.
Not survival supplies.

Preparation.

Heavy items delivered again and again.
Cleaning products that didn’t match any illness.
Meat purchased on a strict schedule.
Notes that grew stranger with every order.

Then the man died.

The death was ruled natural.
The house was sealed.
The case was closed.

Jamie knew better.

Because some of the groceries she delivered were never meant for the man who ordered them.
And someone came for those supplies—long before the body was found.

As Jamie reviews her delivery logs, patterns emerge that refuse to stay buried. The orders don’t just point to one death. They point to a system. A method. A way to disappear people while the world was distracted by fear and distance.

Lockdown didn’t stop violence.
It hid it.

The deeper Jamie looks, the more dangerous her job becomes. Doors open that shouldn’t. Homes smell wrong. Accounts remain active long after their owners are gone. And someone is watching her routes closely—adjusting orders, changing delivery times, learning her habits.

Jamie was never supposed to notice.

Now she’s part of the schedule.

Because in Whispering Pines, lockdown created the perfect conditions for something patient, organized, and ruthless to operate without witnesses. And when the town begins to reopen, it won’t be relief people feel first.

It will be the consequences.

Why You’ll Love This Book

• A terrifying lockdown-era premise that feels disturbingly plausible
• Psychological horror that creeps under the skin instead of relying on shock
• A working-class heroine whose access becomes her greatest danger
• Tension built through routines, records, and missed human contact
• A villain who thrives in silence, structure, and invisibility
• A story that proves evil doesn’t need chaos—only opportunity

What This Story Delivers

• A single POV that traps you inside growing dread

• Murder concealed beneath normal life

• Lockdown used as a weapon, not a backdrop

• Escalating danger with no safe authority

• A small town that fails in exactly the ways it should

This Is Not

• A cozy mystery

• A police procedural

• A fast, flashy splatterfest

• This is slow-burn psychological horror with sharp teeth.

Perfect For Readers Who Enjoy

• Stephen King–style menace and restraint

• Dark thrillers grounded in reality

• Stories where ordinary systems enable extraordinary violence

• Horror that lingers long after the final page

In Whispering Pines, people believed lockdown meant isolation.

They were wrong.

It meant no witnesses.

And Jamie Rourke delivered everything the killer needed—right to the door.