by CJ Lyons
“Fine with me. The paperwork is all yours, as well.” Luka glanced at Krichek, who was sitting with his feet on his desk, chair tilted back, sipping the noxious brew he called coffee. “Krichek. Got a case for you—actually four cases.”
“Four? Boss, I can’t carry four open cases!” His feet dropped to the floor. “It’ll ruin my batting average.”
“Not just four open cases, four open cold cases. Files are in my office.”
“Cold cases?” Krichek protested, his glare aimed at Harper. “Shouldn’t that be the rookie’s job?”
“Not today they aren’t. I want case summaries and action items on my desk by the time we get back.” Luka hobbled past them, heading to the door, Harper following.
As they waited for the elevator, she caught sight of his bemused expression. “You enjoy that, don’t you? Making his life hell?”
“It’s what the kid needs. The swift-kick-in-the-pants style of motivation is the only thing that works for Krichek. On his own, he’ll sit around all day wondering what to do next. Give him a challenge—”
“And he’ll rise to the occasion.” She thought about that. “You know, it’s really because he doesn’t want to let you down. Has nothing to do with clearance rates or looking good.”
He said nothing, so she asked, “And Ray? What’s his motivation?”
“Ray doesn’t need any motivation. He does what he does out of love. For the team, to get bad guys off the street. Most of all, for the victims.”
Ray? Always ready with a jibe or devil’s advocate argument? “I can’t see him as any kind of crusader for justice.”
“Ask his two ex-wives or the kids he never gets to see. Why do you think he refuses to take the sergeant’s exam? Because it would mean time off the street and behind a desk.”
“And me?” she asked as they reached the door leading to the parking lot. “Where do I fit in?”
“You? You’re the rebel, the pesky little sister who never stops asking questions or finding new ways to think and do things.” He grinned as he held the door for her. “A lot like how I was when I was young and naive.”
She laughed at that—Luka was only ten years older than her and most of the brass still thought of him as a rebel. A rebel who got the job done and brought the department good publicity, so they mostly left him to his own devices. “Guess I could have worse role models.”
Neither of them said it, but she knew they were both thinking it: role models like her family.
“Maybe it’s because I never married or had kids,” Luka said, “but it always seemed to me that we may be born into one family, but what counts is the family we choose when we grow older. Who we love, who we’re loyal to, who we’d lay our lives on the line for.”
“And who’d lay their lives on the line for us,” she said in a low voice.
“Exactly.” They reached the car and he threw her the keys. “Welcome to the family, Harper. You drive.”
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Books by CJ Lyons
Jericho and Wright Thrillers
The Next Widow
The Drowned Woman
Save Her Child
Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers
Farewell to Dreams
A Raging Dawn
The Sleepless Stars
Lucy Guardino Thrillers
Snake Skin
Blood Stained
Kill Zone
After Shock
Hard Fall
Last Light
Devil Smoke
Open Grave
Gone Dark
Bitter Truth
Angels of Mercy Medical Suspense
Lifelines
Catalyst
Trauma
Isolation
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Jericho and Wright Thrillers
The Next Widow (Available in the UK and the US)
The Drowned Woman (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from CJ
Thank you for choosing to read Save Her Child. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with the latest Jericho and Wright thrillers, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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People often ask why I set my stories in the mountains of the rust belt of Pennsylvania. Not only did I grow up there—and most of my family still lives in a small city very like my fictional Cambria City—but during my career as a physician caring for children and their families, transporting patients in medevac helicopters, as well as assisting police and prosecutors, I’ve learned that these tiny “forgotten” corners of the country are a microcosm reflecting the world at large.
These are areas surrounded by wilderness where you can literally get away with murder. But, like larger urban centers, there are also families in crisis, leading to a population of “throwaway” children who find new, more dangerous “families” with the predators on the streets who convince them that they love them like no one else can. The disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” grows with each passing year and yet the families who have deep roots in the history of these small, forgotten mountain towns with their exhausted coal mines and shuttered steel mills, they refuse to leave, unable to turn their backs on their ancestors and traditions even as they fear for the next generation’s legacy.
Rust-belt cities like Cambria City make for great storytelling, because they reflect so many of our own real-life stories. Stories of courage and honor and sacrifice and most of all, stories of communities building hope for the future.
These ordinary, average working people trying to make it through a day as best they can… they truly put the “heart” in my thrillers, more so than any serial killer or cunning criminal I could invent. I hope their stories have provided much more than a mystery to puzzle through or spine-tingling suspense to steal your breath; I hope that their stories offer solace in rough times along with a glimpse of a universal truth that I witnessed with every shift in the ER: heroes are born every day.
Which is why I believe we’re never alone when lost in a good story.
Thank you for getting lost in one of mine!
I hope you loved Save Her Child and if you did, I would be very grateful if you could write a review. I’d love to hear what you think, and it makes such a difference helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.
I love hearing from my readers—you can get in touch on my Facebook page, through Goodreads or my website.
Thanks,
CJ
www.cjlyons.net
The Next Widow
Jericho and Wright Book 1
In the distance Leah heard sirens. She ignored them. Right now, her daughter needed her and Emily was just out of reach, curled up under the bed, her eyes closed, desperately shaking. Leah did the only thing any mother would do. She crawled through the blood to get to her daughter.
When Detective Luka Jericho is called to a family home in rural Pennsylvania, he’s shocked to find six-year old Emily Wright is the only witness to her father’s murder. Her mother, Dr Leah Wright, returned home from work to find Emily huddled under the bed behind the body, and Luka is desperate to find out what Emily witnessed. He knows that the killer could still be out there, waiting to strike again.
But Leah is hesitant to ask Emily to relive what she saw. She knows that Emily could be haunted by those memories forever. Until the same red roses Leah was sent on the night of her husband’s murder are found in Emily’s hospital room and the family is attacked again…
L
uka must race against time to unravel Leah’s family secrets, as he battles painful reminders of his own fiancée’s death. But he has no idea just how close the killer is. Will he be able to keep Leah and her daughter safe?
Fans of Karin Slaughter, Kendra Elliot and Tess Gerritsen will devour this fast-paced and chilling new crime series from New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons. You won’t be able to put this book down.
Get it here!
The Drowned Woman
Jericho and Wright Book 2
Her eyes fluttered open as the first splash of frigid water crashed through the open window beside her. She shook her head, startled to be awake—to be alive. She was in her car, in the river. She blinked, tried to focus. And then it came back to her. He’d tried to kill her…
One month since she lost her husband, Dr Leah Wright knows it’s time to return to her family home. Though the crime scene tape and blood stains are gone, she will never feel safe with her daughter there again. Receiving a call from Detective Luka Jericho to assist with a police investigation is a welcome distraction, until she sees the scene: a wife dead, another family ripped apart.
As Leah is the new head of the Crisis Intervention Center, Luka knows she can help him speak to the victim’s traumatized husband, who he suspects might have had something to do with his wife’s death. But when Leah interviews the woman who lives across the hall, they uncover evidence of a serial killer in their rural Pennsylvania town. The same person who claims responsibility for drowning Luka’s fiancée seventeen years ago…
With danger closer to home than ever before, Leah realises that to find the killer they may need to dig into Luka’s past. But the killer is already taunting Luka, promising to kill again. Is it already too late to save another innocent life?
Brilliantly suspenseful until the very last page, The Drowned Woman is perfect for fans of Karin Slaughter, Kendra Elliot and Tess Gerritsen. An addictive new thriller in the Jericho and Wright crime series from New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons.
Get it here!
Acknowledgments
Dear Reader,
Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes of publishing a novel? There’s a large cast of hard-working professionals who often remain anonymous—even to the author!
Please allow me to take this opportunity to acknowledge the few whose names I know (and a quiet tip of the hat and heartfelt thanks to the ones who I don’t know yet), starting with my editor, Jennifer Hunt.
Being an editor sounds like a glamourous job. But actually, it’s more like going to school for a very long time in order to take a job where you’re expected to put in as many hours of work at home as you do during office hours and where you spend as much energy herding creative “cats” and juggling deadlines as you do helping to polish literary gems.
Jennifer has the responsibility of taking my words and ideas and helping me take them to the next level—not an easy thing as I’m constantly pushing the boundaries of genre constraints! The first book we worked on together, The Next Widow, was as much medical thriller as it was domestic suspense and yet she was in charge of wrangling my text, crafting the marketing plan, deciding upon title and cover art, helping with sales tactics, as well as reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading 100,000 words while constantly adding comments and suggestions to help make them the best they could be.
Rinse and repeat again… not only for this, my next book, The Drowned Woman, but also for all the titles written by her other authors. A true testament to her creativity—and patience! I am humbled by Jennifer’s insights and ability to force me to never take the easy way out, to make me question everything, and to explore new and different ways to give our readers the best experience possible.
Thankfully, Jennifer has a great team to help her, including my fantastic copyeditors, Natasha Hodgson and Becca Allen; the dynamic marketing team of Noelle Holten, Alex Crow, and Kim Nash; along with a stellar sales team and the leadership of Peta Nightingale.
But it all starts with Jennifer falling in love with my ideas and then being willing to take the time and energy to push my stories to be the best they can be.
So, sending heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the entire Bookouture team, especially Jennifer Hunt! I look forward to creating many more of my quirky “Thrillers with Heart” with all of you!
Thanks,
CJ
Published by Bookouture in 2021
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © CJ Lyons, 2021
CJ Lyons has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-433-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.