The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  The dog continued to inhale his food, but her father answered.

  Winners do, Gracie, and doers win.

  Grace picked up her phone and called Jim Breck, the internal security chief and her go-to guy with a local cell phone company. The SA’s office regularly turned to him for wiretaps and call records.

  “Counselor Courtemanche, why does it not surprise me that you’re working after hours?” Jim said when he answered his work phone.

  She laughed. “Because like you, Jim, I love my work and have no social life. Did Deputy Fillingham contact you this afternoon for a call search?”

  “Not yet.”

  Figures. Fillingham was new to the force, green, and probably trying to figure out how to work the sheriff’s office resource directory. “I need to know the subscriber’s name and contact information on a series of calls I received.”

  “Got the paperwork?”

  No, and she wasn’t likely to get a subpoena, not while on vacation. She tucked a curved end of her hair behind her ear. Help meeeee! “This isn’t an official investigation,” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

  “Sorry. Can’t move forward without a subpoena.”

  She tucked a wing of hair behind the other ear. Sometimes you had to bulldoze past a few roadblocks. “I received nine calls from a stranger begging for my help. This whole thing could be a series of crank calls from friends of a convicted felon who’s been harassing me for the past few months.” Her shiver of unease morphed into a gnawing fear. “Or it could be a young woman in grave danger and who’s running out of time. I’m seriously leaning toward the latter.”

  Jim said nothing.

  “Come on, Jim. You’ve worked with me for years. You know my track record.”

  “Let me see what I can do,” he finally said. An excruciating two minutes later he came back on the line. “Interesting.”

  Without a subpoena, they were walking a fine line, but she was grateful to finally be doing something. “Can you verify the subscriber’s name?” Grace asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you verify the subscriber’s address?”

  “No.”

  No surprise there. “Can you verify that it was a prepaid phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And let me guess, the subscriber is listed as Mickey Mouse.”

  Jim cleared his throat and said with a cough, “Clark Kent.”

  It fit the MO in the other Morehouse communications: phone calls and texts made from untraceable prepaid phones. But Lia never mentioned Morehouse, and more importantly, she sounded genuinely terrified.

  Much like Allegheny Blue and his search for bones, Grace couldn’t let go. “Where was the phone purchased?” As this wasn’t subscriber information, she knew Jim could speak freely. Clicking sounded on the other end of the line.

  She tapped her fingers against her pearls.

  “Retailer in Port St. Joe.”

  “If I give you the time of the calls, can you tell me the location?” She rolled her shoulders and flexed her wrists, a warm-up of sorts, like in tennis.

  “Caller didn’t activate GPS functionality, but according to the Call Data Record, the call came off the Cypress Point cell tower. It’s an omni site that covers a three-mile section. Topo map shows swampland, a handful of high-end resort properties, and a few residences.”

  Like hers. Her shack was located on Cypress Point. Lia Grant’s call had been made within three miles of her home. Significant or coincidental?

  After thanking Jim, she tapped her fingers on the base of her keyboard, itching to do something. Normally she’d work. Grace could always lose herself in her cases, give herself over to the consuming fire to battle the bad. She’d been drawn to the prosecuting end of criminal law because she wanted to fight bad guys who’d haunted much of her childhood.

  “They’re everywhere,” her mother used to say on her difficult days. “The bad guys are on the streets, in our neighborhood, beneath our home.” Her mother’s delicate fingers would claw into Grace’s ten-year-old shoulders. “They’re watching me, following me, touching me while I sleep. Make them go away, Gracie, please, please make them go away.”

  She’d take her mother’s trembling hand and lead her around the house, turning on lights and shooing away shadows. “They’re gone, Momma. The bad guys are gone.” Grace never knew if her words or the tumblers of scotch that always followed soothed her mother.

  Ten years ago when Grace joined the SA’s office, Grace discovered her mother was right. Bad guys were everywhere. Jamming her hair behind her ears, she began typing.

  She didn’t need the subscription databases and law enforcement contacts afforded to her as a member of the SA’s office. Using the almighty Google, she searched the terms “Lia Grant” and “Florida,” and a dozen hits turned up, including one about a young woman who lived in nearby Carrabelle. Within fifteen minutes Grace had a full page of notes on the nineteen-year-old nursing student and member of her church volleyball team, including a current address and phone number.

  After eight rings, a groggy voice came on the line. “’lo.”

  “Lia Grant, please.”

  “Lia’s not home yet.” Yawn. “Who’s this?”

  “Grace Courtemanche. She called me this afternoon.” Nine times. “I’m returning her call.”

  “You spoke to Lia today?” Something rustled, and when the voice spoke again, all fuzziness was gone. “If you talk to her again, tell her to get her ass home. Last night she had a volunteer shift at the hospital, and she borrowed my car. She was supposed to have it back to me by ten this morning so I could make it to my summer school class. Didn’t happen. I called her a dozen times, but she never returned my call, and I missed my chem exam. I’m gonna kill her.”

  Grace looked at the photo she’d found on Lia’s church’s website. The young woman had stick-straight brown bangs and hair bobbed at the shoulders, a big toothy smile with a slight overbite, and a tiny cross pendant around her neck. Was this sweet-looking girl the same one who made those scared-as-hell phone calls?

  After asking a few more questions, Grace hung up and dialed the hospital where Lia worked as a volunteer. The clerk at the twenty-four-hour information desk verified Lia had not shown for her volunteer shift. “Quite odd for Lia,” the chatty woman said. “Although she’s young, she’s a responsible little thing, a real good girl.”

  Tell my momma I…I tried to be a g…g…good girl. I tried…

  Had Lia Grant really been buried alive in a box underground? With a phone? Near or on the Giroux place? Grace knuckled her temples. It sounded insane. Just like Larry Morehouse thinking she’d take a bribe and deal him down. And just like her mother who believed bad guys lived under their house and stole her jewelry. Yes, insanity lived in this world.

  She called the sheriff’s station and left word for Deputy Fillingham to contact her immediately, but in the meantime, the bulldozer would keep rolling. Grace reached for her purse. The lump of dog snoring under the kitchen table opened one eye.

  “You’re not going with me.” She dug out her keys and headed for the door, the dog at her heels. “You shed and drool and you stink.” She opened the door and tried to slip out, but the dog lumbered past her, a slow-moving avalanche. “Dammit, Blue! Get back here.”

  The dog plodded to her car where he sat near the passenger-side door. For some reason she couldn’t even begin to fathom, Blue didn’t like her going off at night alone. Tonight she didn’t want to fight. It would take too much time and energy that should be spent on Lia Grant, whoever she was. Scratch that. Wherever she was. Grace opened the passenger door, and as the old dog heaved himself in she mumbled, “The vet said you’re supposed to be dead by now.”

  This time her car started, and she slipped through the night to the hospital where Lia was scheduled to volunteer. Despite the dark, it didn’t take her long to find a small blue hybrid. Grace checked the license plate number Lia Grant’s roommate had given her. A match.


  “This is too easy,” Grace said to Allegheny Blue as they got out of the car.

  Locked car. No obvious car damage. Under the car near the back driver’s side tire she spotted something white and knobby. A picture of one of Allegheny Blue’s bones flashed through her head. She shook off the gruesome image, squatted near the tire, and pulled out a purse. Inside was a wallet with a driver’s license. Bangs and a toothy grin with a slight overbite looked back at her.

  It’s cold. And dark. I can’t breathe. Help me, Grace. Help meeeee!

  The plea brushed across the back of her neck with a chill at odds with the steamy night. Where the hell was Deputy Fillingham? Grace reached for her phone to call but was interrupted by an ear-piercing sound. Allegheny Blue stood at the back of the car, his body quivering, his tail whipping the air, his neck arched in a night-splitting howl.

  She ran to the back of the car and found him spotted up on a smear of red slashed across the bumper.

  THE DISH

  Where Authors Give You the Inside Scoop

  From the desk of Lily Dalton

  Dear Reader,

  Some people are heroic by nature. They act to help others without thinking. Sometimes at the expense of their own safety. Sometimes without ever considering the consequences. That’s just who they are. Especially when it’s a friend in need.

  We associate these traits with soldiers who risk their lives on a dangerous battlefield to save a fallen comrade. Not because it’s their job, but because it’s their brother. Or a parent who runs into a busy street to save a child who’s wandered into the path of an oncoming car. Or an ocean life activist who places himself in a tiny boat between a whale and the harpoons of a whaling ship.

  Is it so hard to believe that Daphne Bevington, a London debutante and the earl of Wolverton’s granddaughter, could be such a hero? When her dearest friend, Kate, needs her help, she does what’s necessary to save her. In her mind, no other choice will do. After all, she knows without a doubt that Kate would do the same for her if she needed help. It doesn’t matter one fig to her that their circumstances are disparate, that Kate is her lady’s maid.

  But Daphne finds herself in over her head. In a moment, everything falls apart, throwing not only her reputation and her future into doubt, but her life into danger. Yet in that moment when all seems hopelessly lost… another hero comes out of nowhere and saves her. A mysterious stranger who acts without thinking, at the expense of his own safety, without considering the consequences. A hero on a quest of his own. A man she will never see again…

  Only, of course… she does. And he’s not at all the hero she remembers him to be.

  Or is he? I hope you will enjoy reading NEVER ENTICE AN EARL and finding out.

  Best wishes, and happy reading!

  LilyDalton.com

  Twitter @LilyDalton

  Facebook.com/LilyDaltonAuthor

  From the desk of Shelley Coriell

  Dear Reader,

  Story ideas come from everywhere. Snippets of conversation. Dreams. The hunky guy at the office supply store with eyes the color of faded denim. THE BROKEN, the first book in my new romantic suspense series, The Apostles, was born and bred as I sat at the bedside of my dying father.

  In 2007 my dad, who lived on a mountain in northern Nevada, checked himself into his small town’s hospital after having what appeared to be a stroke. “A mild one,” he assured the family. “Nothing to get worked up about.” That afternoon, this independent, strong-willed man (aka stubborn and borderline cantankerous) checked himself out of the hospital. The next day he hopped on his quad and accidentally drove off the side of his beloved mountain. The ATV landed on him, crushing his chest, breaking ribs, and collapsing a lung.

  The hospital staff told us they could do nothing for him, that he would die. Refusing to accept the prognosis, we had him Life-Flighted to Salt Lake City. After a touch-and-go forty-eight hours, he pulled through, and that’s when we learned the full extent of his injuries.

  He’d had multiple strokes. The not-so-mild kind. The kind that meant he, at age sixty-three, would be forever dependent on others. His spirit was broken.

  For the next week, the family gathered at the hospital. My sister, the oldest and the family nurturer, massaged his feet and swabbed his mouth. My brother, Mr. Finance Guy, talked with insurance types and made arrangements for post-release therapy. The quiet, bookish middle child, I had little to offer but prayers. I’d never felt so helpless.

  As my dad’s health improved, his spirits worsened. He was mad at his body, mad at the world. After a particularly difficult morning, he told us he wished he’d died on that mountain. A horrible, heavy silence followed. Which is when I decided to use the one thing I did have.

  I dragged the chair in his hospital room—you know the kind, the heavy, wooden contraption that folds out into a bed—to his bedside and took out the notebook I carry everywhere.

  “You know, Dad,” I said. “I’ve been tinkering with this story idea. Can I bounce some stuff off you?”

  Silence.

  “I have this heroine. A news broadcaster who gets stabbed by a serial killer. She’s scarred, physically and emotionally.”

  More silence.

  “And I have a Good Guy. Don’t know much about him, but he also has a past that left him scarred. He carries a gun. Maybe an FBI badge.” That’s it. Two hazy characters hanging out in the back of my brain.

  Dad turned toward the window.

  “The scarred journalist ends up working as an aide to an old man who lives on a mountain,” I continued on the fly. “Oh-oh! The old guy is blind and can’t see her scars. His name is… Smokey Joe, and like everyone else in this story, he’s a little broken.”

  Dad glared. I saw it. He wanted me to see it.

  “And, you know what, Dad? Smokey Joe can be a real pain in the ass.”

  My father’s lips twitched. He tried not to smile, but I saw that, too.

  I opened my notebook. “So tell me about Smokey Joe. Tell me about his mountain. Tell me about his story.”

  For the next two hours, Dad and I talked about an old man on a mountain and brainstormed the book that eventually became THE BROKEN, the story of Kate Johnson, an on-the-run broadcast journalist whose broken past holds the secret to catching a serial killer, and Hayden Reed, the tenacious FBI profiler who sees past her scars and vows to find a way into her head, but to his surprise, heads straight for her heart.

  “Hey, Sissy,” Dad said as I tucked away my notebook after what became the first of many Apostle brainstorming sessions. “Smokey Joe knows how to use C-4. We need to have a scene where he blows something up.”

  And “we” did.

  So with a boom from old Smokey Joe, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Kate Johnson, Hayden Reed, and the Apostles, an elite group of FBI agents who aren’t afraid to work outside the box and, at times, outside the law. FBI legend Parker Lord on his team: “Apostles? There’s nothing holy about us. We’re a little maverick and a lot broken, but in the end we get justice right.”

  Joy & Peace!

  From the desk of Hope Ramsay

  Dear Reader,

  Jane Eyre may have been the first romance novel I ever read. I know it made an enormous impression on me when I was in seventh grade and it undoubtedly turned me into an avid reader. I simply got lost in the love story between Jane Eyre and Edward Fairfax Rochester.

  In other words, I fell in love with Rochester when I was thirteen, and I’ve never gotten over it. I re-read Jane Eyre every year or so, and I have every screen adaptation ever made of the book. (The BBC version is the best by far, even if they took liberties with the story.)

  So it was only a matter of time before I tried to write a hero like Rochester. You know the kind: brooding, passionate, tortured… (sigh). Enter Gabriel Raintree, the hero of INN AT LAST CHANCE. He’s got all the classic traits of the gothic hero.

  His heroine is Jennifer Carpenter, a plucky and self-reliant former schoolteacher turned innkeep
er who is exactly the kind of no-nonsense woman Gabe needs. (Does this sound vaguely familiar?)

  In all fairness, I should point out that I substituted the swamps of South Carolina for the moors of England and a bed and breakfast for Thornfield Hall. I also have an inordinate number of busybodies and matchmakers popping in and out for comic relief. But it is fair to say that I borrowed a few things from Charlotte Brontë, and I had such fun doing it.

  I hope you enjoy INN AT LAST CHANCE. It’s a contemporary, gothic-inspired tale involving a brooding hero, a plucky heroine, a haunted house, and a secret that’s been kept for years.

  From the desk of Molly Cannon

  Dear Reader,

  Weddings! I love them. The ceremony, the traditions, the romance, the flowers, the music, and of course the food. Face it. I embrace anything when cake is involved. When I got married many moons ago, there was a short ceremony and then cake and punch were served in the next room. That was it. Simple and easy and really lovely. But possibilities for weddings have expanded since then.

  In FLIRTING WITH FOREVER, Irene Cornwell decides to become a wedding planner, and she has to meet the challenge of giving brides what they want within their budget. And it can be a challenge! I have planned a couple of weddings, and it was a lot of work, but it was also a whole lot of fun. Finding the venue, booking the caterer, deciding on the decorating theme. It is so satisfying to watch a million details come together to launch the happy couple into their new life together.

  In one wedding I planned we opted for using mismatched dishes found at thrift stores on the buffet table. We found a bride selling tablecloths from her wedding and used different swaths of cloth as overlays. We made a canopy for the dance floor using pickle buckets and PFC pipe covered in vines and flowers, and then strung it with lights. We spray-painted cheap glass vases and filled them with flowers to match the color palette. And then, as Irene discovered, the hardest part is cleaning up after the celebration is over. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.