Trial by Fire (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 6)

by Linsey Lanier

  He shot up, reached for her. “Miranda, you can’t leave.”

  She pushed him away. “I think I’m going to have to, Parker. Unless you change your mind.” It was one last straw to grasp.

  He held her arms, fixed her with his gaze, his eyes as inflexible as his heart. “I can’t change my mind, Miranda. It won’t work.”

  Of course not.

  “And I can’t change my mind, either.” She pulled out of his grip and moved to the door. “I’ll sleep in one of the guest bedrooms tonight. “I’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

  “It’s our anniversary tomorrow.” Now his voice was sharp and bitter.

  Their anniversary.

  She put her hand to her face, trying to hold back the tears. It didn’t work. They spilled from her eyes and ran warm down her cheeks.

  She turned her head and smiled sadly at him. “I guess I was right. I didn’t think we’d last a year.”

  He only stared at her.

  And with her heart breaking into tiny pieces she knew would never mend she turned and made her way down the long dark hall.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  They call me Smoke.

  I’m here. I’m there. I swirl around you, grow thick and strong. And before you know it, I’m in your throat, choking the life out of you.

  I can be your blind date. I can be your sister’s friend. I can be your next door neighbor. I can be your real estate agent. I can be anyone I want.

  And you’ll never even know I’m there. Until it’s too late.

  Foolish, foolish woman. What was she thinking poking around in Evanston so late at night? She almost got herself killed on that old property. Until I intervened. Being crushed under a rotten beam was not the way I intend for her to die.

  I have a much better plan.

  And the plan has almost come together. Oh, they think they’ve tidied everything up. They think they know all the answers. But they don’t even have a clue.

  They will soon, though. Soon they’ll know everything. But by then it will be far, far too late.

  And at last I will win. At last I will have her.

  The one who got away.

  THE END

  To continue Miranda’s story, click here.

  Smoke Screen, the seventh Miranda and Parker mystery, is now available.

  Thank you for reading Trial by Fire, the sixth Miranda and Parker mystery.

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  More Books by Linsey Lanier

  Linsey’s Amazon Author page

  THE MIRANDA’S RIGHTS MYSTERY SERIES

  Someone Else’s Daughter – Book I

  Delicious Torment – Book II

  Forever Mine – Book III

  Fire Dancer – Book IV

  Thin Ice – Book V

  THE MIRANDA AND PARKER MYSTERY SERIES

  All Eyes on Me

  Heart Wounds

  Clowns and Cowboys

  The Watcher

  Zero Dark Chocolate

  Trial by Fire

  Smoke Screen

  OTHER SUSPENSE BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER:

  Chicago Cop (A cop family thriller)

  Steal My Heart (A Romantic Suspense)

  HUMOROUS BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER

  You Want Me to Kill Who? (A Dandy Frost—Ninja Assassin Story) #1

  You Want Me to Go Where? (A Dandy Frost—Ninja Assassin Story) #2

  The Clever Detective Boxed Set 2 (A Fairy Tale Romance): Stories 1-5

  Excerpts

  I hope you’ve enjoyed the sixth book in the Miranda and Parker Mystery series. Below is an excerpt from Book 7, Smoke Screen.

  Life is like a symphony, don’t you think?

  The mood ever changing? The tempo of one movement so different from another? The ebb and flow of the music the conductor controls with a single sharp rod? Fast, then slow, then fast again, ending in a frenzied exhilaration like the timpani of a long guttural scream.

  I can never decide which I like better. The look of terror in their eyes or their screams.

  Their eyes are all so different. So fascinating in their variation. Some catlike and blue as the sky, some round and brown as a chocolate marble, some large and inky green—like the foul-tasting medicine Mother used to give me to calm me down after one of my fits. But even the green ones are so pretty when they fill with the watery tears that inevitably drip down the sides of their faces.

  But the screams, the sounds…Yes, the screams are what truly drive me.

  The shrill reverberates through my body, making every nerve come alive. The never ending tears, the long, drawn out wailing, oh how it all spurs me on.

  Amazing that their voices are as varied as their eyes. Some soft and pleading. Some hard and commanding. I don’t like those. They remind me of Mother when I ran from her touch.

  The pitches of their screams are like the pitches of the instruments in an orchestra. I wonder if Mother would think so. She would, I’m sure. But she isn’t here to hear them.

  And in the end all the voices grow hoarse with the screaming, and then, of course, still. Like Mother. The symphony of life must end.

  It’s inevitable. Their fate.

  As it is mine to make them scream. It isn’t as if I have a choice.

  I always begin each project the same way. I waste no time invading her most private parts. Just the way Mother used to invade mine, rubbing her clarinet against my most sensitive spots. I tell her how shameful she is. Just as Mother used to tell me how shameful I was when I didn’t get my lesson right. I tell her she must be punished. Just as Mother punished me. And as I begin the punishment I tell her what she is.

  Whore. Whore. Whore.

  Just the way he taught me. He was a much better teacher than Mother.

  I hated her so. And I hated him, too. They both took so much from me. Mother took my innocence. He took my only love. It happened one night in December in a house full of flames.

  The night I got my new name.

  Now they call me—Smoke.

  A wisp here. A wisp there. And suddenly I’m gone. Soon I will be gone for good.

  Soon, very soon, I shall have the one I’ve been waiting for so long. The one I’ve been watching for almost a year. The only one who has managed to slip through my fingers. At last I will have her and the whole purpose of my life will be complete. I cannot wait to touch her.

  The one who got away.

  To continue Miranda’s story, click here.

  Smoke Screen, the seventh Miranda and Parker mystery, is available now.

  ###

  If you missed the Miranda’s Rights Mystery series, below is an excerpt from Book I, Someone Else’s Daughter where Miranda first goes to work for the Parker Agency—and gets into all sorts of trouble.

  Someone Else’s Daughter: Book I (A Miranda’s Rights Mystery) — Excerpt

  She could make it to the trees. She was too far away for him to catch up now. It started to rain. A soft rain. The kind, somebody had told her, that often came up in Georgia without warning. Beneath her, the ground sloped steeply as the grass grew wet. She slipped, tried to stifle a yelp, but it escaped her lips.

  The cop heard her. His light found her. “Stop,” he yelled.

  Man, she was having a bad night.

  But the rain slowed him down, too. She could hear him grunting and cussing behind her as he struggled down the slippery incline. She reached the bottom and
the land became flat again. Almost there. She sprinted across a patch of grass to the first clump of trees. Hesitating, she stopped to catch her breath.

  The bright moon cast an eerie glow on the rocks and wild growth. She’d never liked wooded areas. She thought about murders in the forest preserves where she’d grown up. She thought of stories she’d heard about snakes in the Georgia woods. She glanced behind her.

  The cop’s light bobbed about halfway down the hill.

  No choice. Gritting her teeth, she braced herself and stepped into the tall grass. Her foot went down on a squishy surface of pine straw and matted grass, a twig snapped, but it held. She took another step, reached out and felt tree bark in front of her. She sidestepped and moved around it. The ground was uneven and muddy. The drizzling rain fell against the leaves with a sound like soft cymbals. The air smelled cool and freshly washed. Brush tangled around her shins. Her hair and clothes were wet, but she couldn’t think about that now.

  She looked back again, could barely make out the cop. That meant he couldn’t see her either. She’d done it. She’d escaped. But he’d be hunting her in these woods soon. Probably call out the cavalry, too. Maybe she could make it to the other side. It was part of a subdivision, after all. She couldn’t remember the layout of the forest from her map.

  Better move faster. She took a quick step, then another. Found a spot where the trees opened up. She started to sprint. Wrong move. Something caught her foot.

  Down she went.

  She tried to catch herself on a tree, but her hand scrapped across its bark. Her palms skidded across the muddy ground.

  Damn. She didn’t need this now. What had she’d tripped over? She brushed her hair out of her eyes, hoping she hadn’t landed on a slithering snake.

  Then she froze.

  Inches away from her face, lay a shape. A familiar shape. She stared at it, her breath coming in snatches. Was she hallucinating? It looked like a kid’s sneaker. Peeking out from a pile of wet twigs and pine straw, like it had been lost there. Or buried. She reached out and whisked away some of the debris covering it.

  Her chest tightened. The sneaker had a foot in it.

  She got to her knees to sweep off more dirt. An ankle. A sock. A hem of denim. Oh, God. It was a leg. A human leg. Small. A child’s leg. A girl’s leg. A young teen.

  She found the other sneaker. She was shaking all over by now.

  Her heart choking her throat, she crawled to the side of what she now realized was a mound. Desperately she shoved away the muck and grimy pine straw, the dreck someone had used to…she couldn’t even think it…to bury someone?

  Two legs appeared under her hands, clad in a pair of designer jeans. The type hip young girls liked to wear. She kept going and found the bottom hem of a fancy, girlish T-shirt. Then two young hands…tied with thick rope, clasped together as if in prayer. Oh, God. This couldn’t be happening. Tears burned her eyes. She couldn’t stop herself. Madly, she brushed away the rest of the dirt, and at last, the face appeared. Young. Pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful. And perfectly still.

  Dead.

  Miranda’s mind reeled. This was the missing girl everyone was talking about. This was Madison. Had to be. But how did she get here?

  Her whole body shuddering, she put her hands to her head. She had seen death before, knew the look of a body in a casket. An uncle she barely knew who’d passed away when she was a child, a fallen officer who’d been a buddy of Leon’s, her own mother lying so still in her coffin with her hard, stony face. But she’d never seen death like this.

  So close, so stark, so…undeniable.

  The air had a dank smell. Long, dark hair lay damp and matted on the ground. Gnats and flies buzzed around the swollen face, glistening with the raindrops that fell on it. Instead of a childlike expression of innocence, there was the whisper of a smile. An air of superiority, as if she had felt far above whoever had left her this way.

  It was the eyes that got her. Open, staring, lifeless. Looking at them, Miranda felt as though a fist had reached inside her chest and yanked out her heart.

  She forced her gaze away from the eyes. Her breath caught, as her mind cleared. The girl’s neck. She had to take a look at the girl’s neck.

  She crept closer and saw that a wide, white ribbon had been tied around the young girl’s neck. What was that for? She didn’t know, but she had to look under it. She shouldn’t touch it. It was evidence. But she had to know.

  Slowly, she reached out with trembling fingers and lifted the soft cloth, moist with the rainwater. Her hands shivered so hard, she could barely slip it down, but somehow she managed.

  And then she saw it. The mark on her neck. Dark, round, distinct.

  She put the soaking ribbon back in place. Her hands shook violently, shot to her mouth, her head. Her chest felt like it would burst. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mingled with the rain, dropped onto the forest floor.

  This was Amy. This was her baby.

  Someone Else’s Daughter – Book I

  If you enjoyed this book you may also enjoy a novel about another strong woman, Maggie Delaney. Chicago Cop is a police thriller featuring GUTS team lead Lieutenant Maggie Delaney, a tough cop—with troubles at home—who must hunt down a crazed mafia hit man bent on revenge before everyone she cared about ends up dead.

  This time it’s not business. It’s personal.

  Chicago Cop (A cop family thriller) — Excerpt

  The floor of the Timberwood Station had a polished glow, giving it that familiar, sterile feel of government buildings, a nearly futile attempt to disinfect the ugly gore that often permeated police work. As Maggie’s heels clicked stoically on the linoleum, she noted two grim-looking suits emerging from a room down the hall.

  “Internal Affairs?” she murmured to the man beside her.

  “That would be my guess, Lieutenant.”

  Her escort was Captain Wallace Nye. A thin man, maybe in his fifties, with a blond, old-fashioned crew cut that made his protruding ears more pronounced and bulging, bloodshot eyes that told Maggie he wasn’t used to the night shift. He looked like he could use some coffee.

  Without fanfare, he stopped at the door the IA men had just exited, opened it for her. “The suspect’s in here.”

  Annoyed at Nye’s callous reference to a fellow officer, she peeked inside the room.

  The “suspect” sat at the low table under the harsh florescent lights, still dressed in his uniform, his head buried in his hands. Some of his partner’s blood was still caked along the sides of his fingers. His despair seemed to fill the room.

  It was him. Cousin Jen’s son, Tony. Dear God.

  Well, maybe she could do something to save his hide before she had to recuse herself. She stepped inside the cramped room as Nye closed the door behind her and stared down at the young man.

  Slowly he raised his head.

  His eyes were swollen, his dark hair disheveled, his youthful face streaked with tears. He looked like he had aged ten years in one night. “Aunt Mag?” He sounded like he thought he was dreaming.

  “Hi, Tony.” Her heart broke for him.

  Her mind flashed back to long ago scenes. The christening celebration at her mother’s house when Maggie was barely eleven, holding the wriggling baby boy in her arms. The phone call several years later and trying to comfort him after his father was killed in the line of duty. Driving to his house when she was a teen to babysit him for spending cash. The night he’d told her so seriously that he was in love with a neighbor and wanted to know what girls liked. She’d told him flowers and candy. And that they liked to be listened to.

  “They called you in?” he said in a hoarse voice.

  Maggie barely had the will to nod. “Chief Detective Zielinski called the BIS Deputy Superintendent.”

  “What?”

  “He asked the GUTS unit to investigate the incident.”

  He stared at her like she’d just become a ghost.

  A good-looking man sat at the table next t
o Tony. Maggie had seen him as soon as she came in but hadn’t acknowledged him. He wore a tailored, black worsted suit with a neat, equally expensive-looking red silk tie at his attractive throat. A throat which he now cleared as he raised a thick, expressive brow.

  Maggie turned her attention to him and quietly studied those dark, intense, deep-set eyes. That black, stylishly tousled hair with a touch of gray at the temples. That rugged, Al Pacino face.

  Bryce Brooks, local criminal defense attorney.

  She nodded toward him, her eyes back on Tony. “Did you call him?”

  “My mother did. They said I’d need a lawyer.”

  Maggie recalled that Brooks’ firm had handled Jen’s divorce from her second husband a year ago. She knew the man from the courtroom.

  He rose and offered his hand. “Good evening, Lieutenant.”

  Reluctantly, she shook it. His grip was firmer than she expected, rife with masculine strength and confidence, charged with unnerving electricity. She ignored the sensation.

  “Are you primary on this case?” he asked.

  She glared at him without answering. Brooks used to work for the State’s Attorney’s office but went over to the dark side years ago to open a practice with his partner. Since then, he’d garnered a litany of high-paying clients.

  He was good, one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the city. But in Maggie’s book, Bryce Brooks was a bottom feeder. He’d take any case for the cash.

  “You are related to my client, aren’t you?” he persisted.

  “Is he your client? I didn’t think you defended cops.” She put a hand on her hip. “As I recall, you’re usually the one raking the cops over the coals in the courtroom.” She’d seen him badger officers on the witness stand, had experienced his methods a time or two herself. He wasn’t unethical, but he came damn close to it.

  He smiled with one side of his face, looking far too smug, far too sexy, testosterone-fueled arrogance oozing from every pour. “Everyone has a right to a defense attorney. Even a Chicago police officer.”