DOUBLE TWIST IS LIVE!!!
My debut hilarious, feel-good cozy mystery, Double Twist, is out today! If you want a feel-good, fun read with lots of twist and turns, this is the book for you! Buy links are below, and below that is a sneak peek of the first chapter. So scroll down and let me know what think!
Buy links (scroll down for chapter one sneak peek)
Amazon.us: https://amzn.to/3qmyXlY
Nook: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistNook
iBooks: https://apple.co/3FqSrtO
Kobo: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistKobo
GooglePlay: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistGooglePlay
CHAPTER ONE
A shadow moved across my fifth-floor window.
Assassin.
I yelped and launched myself out of bed. My foot caught in the sheet, and I crashed to the floor. I rolled onto my back, frantically kicking to get free. I scrambled up and lunged for the doorknob—
Then I heard a meow.
I whirled around and saw King Tut, my neighbor's rude and massive black cat, staring at me through the glass, with his unblinking yellow eyes, thick gray mane, and unruly tufts of fur in his ears.
A cat. Not a hit man. I wasn't going to die tonight.
My legs gave out. I landed hard, and then pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to slow my frantic heart rate.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. I'm not going to die tonight.
It was hard to believe I used to be fairly chill. Relaxed. Resilient.
Being raised and trained by a con artist mother had made me pretty unflappable, even after I'd ditched that life when I was seventeen.
Now? A grumpy cat had sent me running for my life. Two years being undercover against my drug lord ex-husband, Stanley Herrera, had totally screwed with my tolerance level for stress.
I'd made one little anonymous tip to the FBI hotline after finding bags of white powder in our china cabinet. One tiny, socially conscious gesture. That was all it had taken to get me dragged into a two-year sting run by an FBI control freak I'd nicknamed Griselda.
Agent Straus didn't appreciate my pet name for him, which made me call him Griselda as often as I could. I'd needed to find some way to amuse myself, because spying on the man I was sharing a bed with had been surprisingly stressful, especially once I learned how much he liked to have traitors chopped up into little pieces and used as an example to others.
Con artists were non-violent. Non-confrontational. Clever law-benders who delighted in the artistry of deception. My childhood hadn't prepared me for thriving in a world of hit men, murder, and violence.
The night Stanley had figured it out and pointed a gun at my forehead? If Griselda hadn't been literally breaking in the front door at that second—
But he had. So it had worked out fine.
Except for the apparent wee bit of lingering jumpiness on my part.
King Tut meowed again, tapping his left paw impatiently on the glass.
I took a deep, calming breath, and rolled to my feet. "All right. Cool your jets."
I walked over to him and fought with the window until I was able to get the crooked casing to move. As soon as it was open, King Tut hopped off the sill and strolled into my cardboard-box-sized bedroom, the one I'd been stashed in during Stanley's trial so a hit man couldn't keep me from testifying.
I'd always thought it would be fun to have my ex sending killers after me. Childhood dreams right there, right?
Tonight, no FBI agents were lurking in my hallways, and no one cared what I did. Why? Because ten hours ago, Stanley had been convicted, and he was now heading off to his new home behind bars.
Since I had nowhere else to go, Griselda had let me stay in the safe house for one more night, which gave me a chance to say good-bye to the cat who had been my only decent company for months. My only friend, actually, but who wants to sound like a loser?
The FBI had offered me witness relocation, but I'd turned it down. The last thing I wanted was to turn my life over to yet another person. I'd been forced into crime by my mother. I'd been tangled up with Stanley for years. And then I'd been used by Griselda as his little spy.
I was done letting someone else control me.
No more. Never. Ever. Again.
Tomorrow, I was packing up and moving on. To where? I had no idea. But I had about twelve hours to figure it out, so plenty of time.
The air drifting through King Tut's window was cold and crisp, an early May chill that made me shiver. The spring air felt alive and clean, like the fresh start I was claiming for myself. I braced my hands on the window and leaned out, inhaling the night air.
My next-door neighbor's window was open, and I marveled once again at how King Tut managed to jump the gap between our windows without being fazed by the five-story drop to the unforgiving pavement. Granted, I'd met my very sketchy neighbor a couple times, and if I lived with him, I'd probably risk plummeting to my death to get away from him, too.
The sound of a police siren drifted up from below, and I leaned out to check the street. It looked more like Griselda's ride than a Boston police car.
It stopped in front of my building as the theme from The Greatest American Hero burst from my phone.
Habit borne from two years of taking every call in case Griselda had news that would save my life made me hurry over to the nightstand and check the screen. Griselda.
This was supposed to be over. He wasn't supposed to call me in the middle of the night anymore. Ever again. Alarm prickling at the back of my neck, I hit the send button. "What's up?"
"Mia! Assassin. Get out!" he shouted. "Now!"
Terror shot through me, and I grabbed King Tut. But just as I started to run for the front door, I heard the whoosh of a silenced gun, and the lock on my front door exploded.
I skidded to a stop, scrambling backwards as I gripped the phone. "He's at the door!" I whispered. "He's here!"
Griselda swore. "Hide in the bathroom. Lock the door and get in the tub. I'm on my way up."
The front door splintered, and King Tut yowled in fury and tried to leap out of my arms.
Struggling to keep my grip on him, I raced into the bathroom, locked the door, and then dove into the tub, clutching the wriggling feline in my arms. I yanked the mildewed shower curtain closed, and then curled onto my side in the fetal position so all my body parts were below the rim.
The floorboards creaked outside the door, and I tried to hold my panicked breath, but it echoed off the yellowed tiles. Loud. So freaking loud. I really had to learn how to stop breathing in times of crisis.
I couldn't believe this. After all I'd survived for the last two years, now I was going to get whacked in a tub?
There was so much indignity in being murdered in a bathtub.
King Tut purred and began kneading my chest, through my tank top. I bit my lip and slid my hand beneath his claws to protect my skin.
His purring got louder, and the footsteps paused just outside the bathroom door.
Seriously? I was going to get busted by a cat?
I raised my head enough to peer around the edge of the curtain at the door. The wood was so flimsy there were already cracks in it. Literally one bullet is all it would take to get in. It probably would take no more than a gentle nudge with a pinkie finger, actually.
I was pretty sure my late-night visitor could muster up at least that much force, which meant I had maybe a millisecond at most until the only thing between me and a hired killer was a moldy shower curtain.
Griselda was, at that very moment, sweating his way up four flights of stairs. He was almost as fit as he liked to tell everyone he was, but he wasn't that fast.
In retrospect, maybe it would have been better to lock the bathroom as a red herring, and then hide somewhere else, like hang out the window by my fingertips. I would admire myself so much more if I died that way, instead of cowering in a tub.
My mom would be so disappointed in me for cowering in my last moments of life.
Truth? I would also be disappointed in myself for cowering in my last moments of life. I needed to die as more than a bathtub victim.
My phone rang again, but it was outside the bathroom. I must have dropped it during my sprint for safety. The floor creaked, and I heard my personal Grim Reaper move away from the door in pursuit of my phone.
Frantically, I scanned the bathroom for a weapon. Toothbrush? Towel? Mascara? Hairdryer?
Hairdryer.
I tucked King Tut under my arm, scrambled out of the tub as quietly as I could, and climbed up onto the sink. I tucked myself up against the corner closest to the door, set King Tut on my lap, and picked up the hairdryer.
I tested the weight of the hairdryer, swung it from the cord, and then heard the creak in the hall again, outside the bathroom.
I went still.
My assassin waited.
King Tut purred.
My quads started to cramp. My arm ached from holding up the hairdryer. Sweat dripped down my eyebrow and stung my right eye.
The doorknob rattled.
Fear shot through me, obliterating all thought of leg cramps.
The gun fired, and then the door handle exploded. I leapt back and my foot slipped on the porcelain. King Tut dug his claws into my thighs for balance, as I grabbed the towel rack to keep from tumbling off my perch right to my assassin's feet.
Two more shots and the door drifted ajar while I perched precariously, clinging to life by one old towel rack and a stained sink. I'd never wanted to see Griselda as badly as I did in that moment.
But he didn't show up.
Instead, the gleaming barrel of a gun poked through the gap in the door and then bullets flashed out of the end of it, right at the tub. Where I'd just been. Because that had clearly been a great place to hide. Thanks, Griselda.
A man moved into my line of vision. He was angled away from me, his gun and his attention focused on the tub. His all-black attire and ski mask escalated my terror level to near-debilitating heights.
He fired several more shots into the shower curtain, then reached out with his gun to push the shower curtain aside and inspect the bullet-ridden body he wasn't going to find.
This was it. My chance.
I braced myself, then tightened my grip on the cord. "Hey!" As I shouted, I swung as hard as I could.
He spun around just as the hairdryer smashed him across the face, shattering his nose with a loud crunch. He dropped like an old lady shocked by her first sight of porn.
I leapt over him, landed on the hall floor, and then raced for the front door. I ran out into the hall corridor, and then something hit me between the shoulder blades and flung me forward. I hit the carpet and dropped King Tut, who yowled with protest as he landed gracefully on his feet.
I scrambled up, but before I could get off my knees, something cold and hard pressed into the back of my head. A gun?
I froze.
"Mia Murphy. You two-faced, lying, little snake."
I blinked at the sound of my ex-mother-in-law's voice. "Joyce?"
The gun pressed harder into the back of my head. "We took you in as family. We loved you. I called you my daughter. And then you turned on my son and ripped him from me. And now you want to steal his business."
"Steal his business?" If I hadn't been so stressed about the gun pressed up against the back of my head, I would have started laughing at the ridiculousness of that idea. "There's literally nothing I want less than becoming a drug lord—"
"For that, you die." Joyce kicked me in the hamstring, and my leg immediately cramped, making me lurch to the right.
Except dying. That was something I wanted less than running a major drug operation.
"Turn around," Joyce snarled. "I want to watch your agony and pain as the life drains from your pathetic, unworthy body."
Wow. That was alarmingly sociopathic.
I slowly turned, frantically trying to figure out how to get out of this one. Then I saw her face. It was bright red. Twisted with rage. Mottled with anger. Her eyes were almost glazed. Crazy eyes. And she was aiming a machine gun at my face.
She met my gaze with unflinching hatred. "Without your testimony, Stanley won't get convicted on his appeal."
Witness protection? Who needs witness protection? Clearly it had been a great choice to turn that down. "Listen, Joyce, there's been a misunderstanding." I tried to summon the quick-thinking that had saved me so many times as a kid, but the assault weapon aimed at my face was making it difficult to concentrate. "I'm not going to testify against Stanley again or take over his business."
"Exactly. You'll be dead." Her flushed face twisted into a triumphant grin. "Say good-bye, you snot-nosed, thieving rat."
"Wait!" I held up my hands, which were shaking so badly I could practically feel the breeze on my face. "If you shoot me, you'll go to prison. Put the gun down. We'll both walk away and pretend we never met—"
She called me a name that would have had nuns fainting (or cheering, depending on the nun), and then her finger moved on the trigger.
I had no time to duck before the deafening sound of gunshot exploded in the hallway.
I yelped, but I didn't collapse in a bullet-ridden death.
Her mouth opened in surprise, a red stain blossomed on the front of her shirt, and then she toppled over. She hit the floor with a thump, and behind her stood Griselda. He was dripping with sweat, panting, and aiming his gun right where she'd been.
****
Want more? Get it now!
Amazon.us: https://amzn.to/3qmyXlY
Nook: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistNook
iBooks: https://apple.co/3FqSrtO
Kobo: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistKobo
GooglePlay: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistGooglePlay
Buy links (scroll down for chapter one sneak peek)
Amazon.us: https://amzn.to/3qmyXlY
Nook: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistNook
iBooks: https://apple.co/3FqSrtO
Kobo: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistKobo
GooglePlay: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistGooglePlay
CHAPTER ONE
A shadow moved across my fifth-floor window.
Assassin.
I yelped and launched myself out of bed. My foot caught in the sheet, and I crashed to the floor. I rolled onto my back, frantically kicking to get free. I scrambled up and lunged for the doorknob—
Then I heard a meow.
I whirled around and saw King Tut, my neighbor's rude and massive black cat, staring at me through the glass, with his unblinking yellow eyes, thick gray mane, and unruly tufts of fur in his ears.
A cat. Not a hit man. I wasn't going to die tonight.
My legs gave out. I landed hard, and then pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to slow my frantic heart rate.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. I'm not going to die tonight.
It was hard to believe I used to be fairly chill. Relaxed. Resilient.
Being raised and trained by a con artist mother had made me pretty unflappable, even after I'd ditched that life when I was seventeen.
Now? A grumpy cat had sent me running for my life. Two years being undercover against my drug lord ex-husband, Stanley Herrera, had totally screwed with my tolerance level for stress.
I'd made one little anonymous tip to the FBI hotline after finding bags of white powder in our china cabinet. One tiny, socially conscious gesture. That was all it had taken to get me dragged into a two-year sting run by an FBI control freak I'd nicknamed Griselda.
Agent Straus didn't appreciate my pet name for him, which made me call him Griselda as often as I could. I'd needed to find some way to amuse myself, because spying on the man I was sharing a bed with had been surprisingly stressful, especially once I learned how much he liked to have traitors chopped up into little pieces and used as an example to others.
Con artists were non-violent. Non-confrontational. Clever law-benders who delighted in the artistry of deception. My childhood hadn't prepared me for thriving in a world of hit men, murder, and violence.
The night Stanley had figured it out and pointed a gun at my forehead? If Griselda hadn't been literally breaking in the front door at that second—
But he had. So it had worked out fine.
Except for the apparent wee bit of lingering jumpiness on my part.
King Tut meowed again, tapping his left paw impatiently on the glass.
I took a deep, calming breath, and rolled to my feet. "All right. Cool your jets."
I walked over to him and fought with the window until I was able to get the crooked casing to move. As soon as it was open, King Tut hopped off the sill and strolled into my cardboard-box-sized bedroom, the one I'd been stashed in during Stanley's trial so a hit man couldn't keep me from testifying.
I'd always thought it would be fun to have my ex sending killers after me. Childhood dreams right there, right?
Tonight, no FBI agents were lurking in my hallways, and no one cared what I did. Why? Because ten hours ago, Stanley had been convicted, and he was now heading off to his new home behind bars.
Since I had nowhere else to go, Griselda had let me stay in the safe house for one more night, which gave me a chance to say good-bye to the cat who had been my only decent company for months. My only friend, actually, but who wants to sound like a loser?
The FBI had offered me witness relocation, but I'd turned it down. The last thing I wanted was to turn my life over to yet another person. I'd been forced into crime by my mother. I'd been tangled up with Stanley for years. And then I'd been used by Griselda as his little spy.
I was done letting someone else control me.
No more. Never. Ever. Again.
Tomorrow, I was packing up and moving on. To where? I had no idea. But I had about twelve hours to figure it out, so plenty of time.
The air drifting through King Tut's window was cold and crisp, an early May chill that made me shiver. The spring air felt alive and clean, like the fresh start I was claiming for myself. I braced my hands on the window and leaned out, inhaling the night air.
My next-door neighbor's window was open, and I marveled once again at how King Tut managed to jump the gap between our windows without being fazed by the five-story drop to the unforgiving pavement. Granted, I'd met my very sketchy neighbor a couple times, and if I lived with him, I'd probably risk plummeting to my death to get away from him, too.
The sound of a police siren drifted up from below, and I leaned out to check the street. It looked more like Griselda's ride than a Boston police car.
It stopped in front of my building as the theme from The Greatest American Hero burst from my phone.
Habit borne from two years of taking every call in case Griselda had news that would save my life made me hurry over to the nightstand and check the screen. Griselda.
This was supposed to be over. He wasn't supposed to call me in the middle of the night anymore. Ever again. Alarm prickling at the back of my neck, I hit the send button. "What's up?"
"Mia! Assassin. Get out!" he shouted. "Now!"
Terror shot through me, and I grabbed King Tut. But just as I started to run for the front door, I heard the whoosh of a silenced gun, and the lock on my front door exploded.
I skidded to a stop, scrambling backwards as I gripped the phone. "He's at the door!" I whispered. "He's here!"
Griselda swore. "Hide in the bathroom. Lock the door and get in the tub. I'm on my way up."
The front door splintered, and King Tut yowled in fury and tried to leap out of my arms.
Struggling to keep my grip on him, I raced into the bathroom, locked the door, and then dove into the tub, clutching the wriggling feline in my arms. I yanked the mildewed shower curtain closed, and then curled onto my side in the fetal position so all my body parts were below the rim.
The floorboards creaked outside the door, and I tried to hold my panicked breath, but it echoed off the yellowed tiles. Loud. So freaking loud. I really had to learn how to stop breathing in times of crisis.
I couldn't believe this. After all I'd survived for the last two years, now I was going to get whacked in a tub?
There was so much indignity in being murdered in a bathtub.
King Tut purred and began kneading my chest, through my tank top. I bit my lip and slid my hand beneath his claws to protect my skin.
His purring got louder, and the footsteps paused just outside the bathroom door.
Seriously? I was going to get busted by a cat?
I raised my head enough to peer around the edge of the curtain at the door. The wood was so flimsy there were already cracks in it. Literally one bullet is all it would take to get in. It probably would take no more than a gentle nudge with a pinkie finger, actually.
I was pretty sure my late-night visitor could muster up at least that much force, which meant I had maybe a millisecond at most until the only thing between me and a hired killer was a moldy shower curtain.
Griselda was, at that very moment, sweating his way up four flights of stairs. He was almost as fit as he liked to tell everyone he was, but he wasn't that fast.
In retrospect, maybe it would have been better to lock the bathroom as a red herring, and then hide somewhere else, like hang out the window by my fingertips. I would admire myself so much more if I died that way, instead of cowering in a tub.
My mom would be so disappointed in me for cowering in my last moments of life.
Truth? I would also be disappointed in myself for cowering in my last moments of life. I needed to die as more than a bathtub victim.
My phone rang again, but it was outside the bathroom. I must have dropped it during my sprint for safety. The floor creaked, and I heard my personal Grim Reaper move away from the door in pursuit of my phone.
Frantically, I scanned the bathroom for a weapon. Toothbrush? Towel? Mascara? Hairdryer?
Hairdryer.
I tucked King Tut under my arm, scrambled out of the tub as quietly as I could, and climbed up onto the sink. I tucked myself up against the corner closest to the door, set King Tut on my lap, and picked up the hairdryer.
I tested the weight of the hairdryer, swung it from the cord, and then heard the creak in the hall again, outside the bathroom.
I went still.
My assassin waited.
King Tut purred.
My quads started to cramp. My arm ached from holding up the hairdryer. Sweat dripped down my eyebrow and stung my right eye.
The doorknob rattled.
Fear shot through me, obliterating all thought of leg cramps.
The gun fired, and then the door handle exploded. I leapt back and my foot slipped on the porcelain. King Tut dug his claws into my thighs for balance, as I grabbed the towel rack to keep from tumbling off my perch right to my assassin's feet.
Two more shots and the door drifted ajar while I perched precariously, clinging to life by one old towel rack and a stained sink. I'd never wanted to see Griselda as badly as I did in that moment.
But he didn't show up.
Instead, the gleaming barrel of a gun poked through the gap in the door and then bullets flashed out of the end of it, right at the tub. Where I'd just been. Because that had clearly been a great place to hide. Thanks, Griselda.
A man moved into my line of vision. He was angled away from me, his gun and his attention focused on the tub. His all-black attire and ski mask escalated my terror level to near-debilitating heights.
He fired several more shots into the shower curtain, then reached out with his gun to push the shower curtain aside and inspect the bullet-ridden body he wasn't going to find.
This was it. My chance.
I braced myself, then tightened my grip on the cord. "Hey!" As I shouted, I swung as hard as I could.
He spun around just as the hairdryer smashed him across the face, shattering his nose with a loud crunch. He dropped like an old lady shocked by her first sight of porn.
I leapt over him, landed on the hall floor, and then raced for the front door. I ran out into the hall corridor, and then something hit me between the shoulder blades and flung me forward. I hit the carpet and dropped King Tut, who yowled with protest as he landed gracefully on his feet.
I scrambled up, but before I could get off my knees, something cold and hard pressed into the back of my head. A gun?
I froze.
"Mia Murphy. You two-faced, lying, little snake."
I blinked at the sound of my ex-mother-in-law's voice. "Joyce?"
The gun pressed harder into the back of my head. "We took you in as family. We loved you. I called you my daughter. And then you turned on my son and ripped him from me. And now you want to steal his business."
"Steal his business?" If I hadn't been so stressed about the gun pressed up against the back of my head, I would have started laughing at the ridiculousness of that idea. "There's literally nothing I want less than becoming a drug lord—"
"For that, you die." Joyce kicked me in the hamstring, and my leg immediately cramped, making me lurch to the right.
Except dying. That was something I wanted less than running a major drug operation.
"Turn around," Joyce snarled. "I want to watch your agony and pain as the life drains from your pathetic, unworthy body."
Wow. That was alarmingly sociopathic.
I slowly turned, frantically trying to figure out how to get out of this one. Then I saw her face. It was bright red. Twisted with rage. Mottled with anger. Her eyes were almost glazed. Crazy eyes. And she was aiming a machine gun at my face.
She met my gaze with unflinching hatred. "Without your testimony, Stanley won't get convicted on his appeal."
Witness protection? Who needs witness protection? Clearly it had been a great choice to turn that down. "Listen, Joyce, there's been a misunderstanding." I tried to summon the quick-thinking that had saved me so many times as a kid, but the assault weapon aimed at my face was making it difficult to concentrate. "I'm not going to testify against Stanley again or take over his business."
"Exactly. You'll be dead." Her flushed face twisted into a triumphant grin. "Say good-bye, you snot-nosed, thieving rat."
"Wait!" I held up my hands, which were shaking so badly I could practically feel the breeze on my face. "If you shoot me, you'll go to prison. Put the gun down. We'll both walk away and pretend we never met—"
She called me a name that would have had nuns fainting (or cheering, depending on the nun), and then her finger moved on the trigger.
I had no time to duck before the deafening sound of gunshot exploded in the hallway.
I yelped, but I didn't collapse in a bullet-ridden death.
Her mouth opened in surprise, a red stain blossomed on the front of her shirt, and then she toppled over. She hit the floor with a thump, and behind her stood Griselda. He was dripping with sweat, panting, and aiming his gun right where she'd been.
****
Want more? Get it now!
Amazon.us: https://amzn.to/3qmyXlY
Nook: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistNook
iBooks: https://apple.co/3FqSrtO
Kobo: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistKobo
GooglePlay: https://bit.ly/DoubleTwistGooglePlay
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