Killer Instinct

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘This range and growth allows us to see Charlie in a quieter, almost sleuth-like mode early on and then evolve into the calculating, ultimately cool – yet compassionate – protector she was born to be.

  ‘It is Charlie Fox and the stiletto-sharp (no pun intended) writing skills of Zoë Sharp that will stick with you after reading these stories. I was unaware of this excellent series before now; but you can damn well bet I will be seeking out more. Highly recommended!’ Wayne D Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal series

  ‘If you've never read any of Charlie Fox thriller series, these short stories are a great way to meet Charlie Fox at her best. My favourites were Served Cold, Off Duty, and Truth And Lies, where we see the gamut of Charlie's reactions as she handles each situation to a necessary conclusion. This tension-filled and suspenseful collection is a thrilling read that will have you clamouring for more.’ Dru Ann Love, GoodReads.com

  Meet Zoë Sharp

  Zoë Sharp was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. After a promising start at a private girls' school, she opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve in favour of correspondence courses at home.

  Zoë went through a variety of jobs in her teenage years. In 1988, on the strength of one accepted article and a fascination with cars, she gave up her regular job to become a freelance motoring writer. She quickly picked up on the photography side of things and she has worked as far afield as the United States and Japan, as well as Europe, Ireland and the UK. Since her fiction writing career took off, she dovetails her photography with working on her novels.

  Zoë wrote her first novel when she was fifteen, but success came in 2001 with the publication of KILLER INSTINCT – the first book to feature her ex-Special Forces heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The character evolved after Zoë received death-threat letters in the course of her photo-journalism work.

  Later Charlie Fox novels – FIRST DROP and FOURTH DAY – were finalists for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. The Charlie Fox series has also been optioned for TV.

  As well as the Charlie Fox novels, Zoë's short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines, and have been shortlisted for the Short Story Dagger by the UK Crime Writers' Association. Her other writing has been nominated for the coveted Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Anthony Award presented by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Macavity Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers’ Association.

  Zoë lives in the English Lake District, and is married. Her hobbies are sailing, fast cars (and faster motorbikes), target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on. She and her husband, Andy, who is a non-fiction author, have recently self-built their own house. Zoë blogs regularly on her own website – www.ZoeSharp.com – and on the acclaimed group blog, www.Murderati.com.

  Meet Charlie Fox

  The idea of a tough, self-sufficient heroine who didn't suffer fools gladly and could take care of herself is one I had lying around for a long time before I first wrote about Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox. The first crime and mystery books I ever read always seemed to be populated by female characters who were only any good at looking decorative and screaming while they waited to be rescued by the men!

  I decided early on that Charlie Fox was going to be very different. She arrived almost as a full-grown character, complete with name, and I never thought of her any other way. At the start of the first book I wrote about Charlie, KILLER INSTINCT, she is a self-defence instructor with a slightly shady military background and a painful past.

  In RIOT ACT, Charlie has moved on to working in a gym, and comes face to face with a spectre from her army past – Sean Meyer. Sean was the training instructor she fell for when they were in the army together and she's never quite forgotten or forgiven him for what she saw as his part in her downfall. Sparks are bound to fly.

  Close protection – the perfect choice

  It's Sean who asks Charlie to go undercover to the bodyguard training school in Germany where the events of HARD KNOCKS take place. Charlie agrees as a favour to him, but gradually realises that close protection work is the perfect choice for an ex-Special Forces trainee who never found herself quite in step with life outside the army that rejected her.

  By the time we get to FIRST DROP Charlie is working for Sean's close protection agency and he accompanies her on her first assignment in Florida. By now she has come to terms a little with her violent abilities – or so she thinks. But then she's plunged into a nightmare in which she has to kill to protect her teenage principal.

  Which is why, at the start of ROAD KILL, Charlie was a little in limbo about her life and her career in close protection. Until, that is, one of her closest friends is involved in a fatal motorcycle crash and she agrees to take on an unpaid bodyguarding job. She and Sean are soon drawn together to protect a group of thrill-seeking bikers on a wild trip to Ireland.

  The second book to be set in the US, SECOND SHOT, starts with a bang – or rather, two of them – when Charlie is shot twice and seriously injured in the course of her latest bodyguarding job in New England. The events of this novel strip away Charlie's usual physical self-assurance and leave her more vulnerable than ever before as she tries to work out what went wrong and still protect her client's four-year-old daughter from harm. Charlie is also forced to confront how far she's prepared to go in order to save the life of a child.

  By THIRD STRIKE, Charlie and Sean are living in New York City and working for Parker Armstrong’s exclusive close-protection agency, where Sean has become a junior partner.

  In this book, I really wanted to finally explore Charlie’s difficult and often destructive relationship with her parents – and in particular with her father. Charlie has to protect her mother and father from harm at all costs, but is hampered by trying not to let them witness just how cold-bloodedly their daughter must act in order to be effective at her job. It puts her in an often impossible situation, brings her relationship with Sean to an explosive head, and causes her father to reveal a side of himself everyone will find disturbing.

  Not only that, but the story ends with big questions over Charlie’s entire future.

  By the start of FOURTH DAY, where Charlie, Sean and Parker Armstrong are planning a cult extraction in California, Charlie has still not solved the problems that arose during the previous book – nor has she found the courage to explain it all to Sean. When she volunteers to go undercover into the Fourth Day cult, she’s looking as much for answers about her own life as about the man who died.

  It's this battle with her own dark side that is one of the most fascinating things for me as a writer about the character of Charlie Fox. I wanted a genuine female action hero, but one who had a convincing back story. I've tried to ensure she stays human, with all the flaws that entails – a sympathetic character rather than just a 'guy in nylons' as someone described some tough heroines in fiction.

  In the latest instalment, FIFTH VICTIM – involving a deadly kidnap plot among the jet-set of Long Island – there are complications with Sean’s ongoing condition, and Charlie’s increasing awareness that her boss, Parker, views her as so much more than a mere employee. Charlie is forced to make decisions this time out that will change her life forever . . .

  The instinct and the ability to kill

  Characters who live on the fringe have a certain moral ambiguity that we find seductive, I feel. Charlie has that obscurity to her make-up. She discovers very early on that she has both the instinct and the ability to kill. And although she does it when she has to and doesn't enjoy what it does to her, that doesn't mean that if you push her in the wrong direction, or you step over that line, she won't drop you without hesitation.

  Dealing with her own capacity for violence when she's put under threat is a continuing theme throughout the books. It's not an aspect of her personality that Charlie f
inds easy to live with – a difficulty she might not have if she was a male protagonist, perhaps? Even in these days of rabid politically correct equality, it is still not nearly as acceptable for women to be capable of those extremes of behaviour.

  But Charlie has evolved out of events in her life and, as you find out during the course of the series, things are not about to get any easier. I do rather like to put her through it! She's a fighter and a survivor, and I get the feeling that if I met her I'd probably like her a lot. I'm not sure she'd say the same about me!

  Although I've tried to write each of the Charlie Fox books so they stand alone, this is becoming more difficult as time goes on and her personal story overlaps from one book to the next. I'm always expanding on her back story, her troubled relationship with her parents and her even more troubled relationship with Sean, who was once her training instructor in the army and, when she moves into close protection, he then becomes her boss. He continues to bring out the best and the worst in her.

  And their relationship is becoming ever more complicated as the series goes on. In the next outing, Charlie is struggling to deal not only with the dangers faced by her client, but also from the one person she should be able to trust with her life . . .

  If you’re a fan of Charlie Fox, you may well enjoy this Jonathan Quinn novella from award-winning author, Brett Battles. (Oh, and Jonathan Quinn is absolutely no relation to Marc Quinn!):

  BECOMING QUINN

  a Jonathan Quinn novella

  by Brett Battles

  Most careers begin with an interview and a handshake. Others require a little . . . something more.

  Meet Jake Oliver. The day will come when he's one of the best cleaners in the business, a man skilled at making bodies disappear.

  At the moment, however, he’s a twenty-two year old rookie cop, unaware his life is about to change.

  In a burning barn a body is found – and the fire isn't the cause of death. The detectives working the case have a pretty good idea about what went down.

  But Officer Oliver thinks it’s something else entirely, and pursues a truth others would prefer remain hidden – others who will go to extreme lengths to keep him quiet.

  Every identity has an origin. This is Quinn’s.

  BECOMING QUINN is a 57,000 word novella, and includes the bonus first chapter to WATCH ME DIE by Lee Goldberg.

  Praise for the Jonathan Quinn series:

  “A pure delight.” Jeffery Deaver, author of EDGE and the Lincoln Rhyme novels.

  “Battles is a master storyteller.” Sheldon Siegel, author of PERFECT ALIBI

  “Quinn is one part James Bond, one part Jason Bourne.” Nashville Book Worm

  “The best word I can use to describe his writing is addictive.” James Rollins, author of the Sigma Force series.

  BECOMING QUINN

  excerpt

  Chapter One

  MAY 1996

  Durrie wasn’t a fool.

  No way would he position himself right next to the old barn when the takedown happened. Where one bullet was sure to fly, others would often follow. Once things calmed down, he could move in. That’s how he liked to work.

  So instead, he’d set up a hundred feet away, behind an old steel tank that looked like it had been empty for years. If a bullet did somehow end up heading in his direction, the tank would rob it of whatever momentum it had before it could reach him.

  To keep tabs on what was happening in the barn, he had a small monitor on the ground beside him displaying a feed from a camera inside. The camera and monitor were connected by a long cable that ran through a signal booster so that the image wouldn’t be too degraded. He could have used a wireless camera, but the technology was still new, and didn’t always work correctly. Until it did, he preferred to go the tried-and-true hardwired route.

  The agent tasked by the Office to perform the termination, a guy named Larson, was already in the barn. Durrie could see him in the monitor, leaning against the wall and taking a sip from the cup of coffee he’d brought along. In addition to Larson, there were four other members of the operation team. Two were hidden near the barn, while the other two were positioned down where the private dirt road met the blacktopped street the target would be arriving on.

  The selection of the site was good. Not perfect, Durrie noted, but good. They were on the edge of Phoenix, Arizona, in an area populated mostly by small horse ranches that would undoubtedly be swallowed up by development at some point in the future.

  Now, though, the barn’s closest neighbor was a half-mile away. A mile would have been better, but you took what you could get. At least it wasn’t happening in a hotel room downtown.

  Durrie checked his watch, then took a look at the road. Nothing. In the wide-open surroundings he should have been able to see the guy’s headlights by now.

  Perhaps the target had found out about his reduced life expectancy. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone had figured out their services were no longer needed. If that happened, the ops team would have to go on the hunt, and Durrie would have to follow. That was not something he was interested in doing. Durrie was a cleaner, his job to get rid of the body. Anything that made doing his work harder brought with it the potential of discovery. Not a pleasant prospect.

  He looked back at the monitor, annoyed. Someone had screwed up somewhere, and he and the ops team were going to have to deal with it. Why couldn’t everyone be as good at their job as he was? It would sure make things a hell of a lot easier.

  He was about to check his watch again when a pinprick of light caught his eye. He looked toward it. Headlights on the blacktop road, heading this way.

  He stared at them, watching them approach, then willing them to slow as they neared the dirt road. As if on command, he saw brake lights flare off the shrub behind the vehicle.

  When the car turned, he smiled.

  Sure, someone was about to die, but it was the target’s tough luck. He should have thought about the likely outcome before trying to make some extra cash selling secrets.

  “Heat sensor confirms only one person in the vehicle,” one of the spotters near the turnoff said over the radio. “ETA one minute.”

  On the monitor, Larson set his coffee cup on the ground, and moved into position in the center of the barn. Though Durrie couldn’t see it, he knew the man was palming the remote control for the automated rifle mounted in the rafters. As soon as the target was in position:

  Click.

  Bang.

  Done.

  Well, that was if your target cooperated. Durrie thought it was unnecessarily complex. It would have been better, in his mind, to have a gun hidden nearby that the shooter could grab when needed and pull the damn trigger himself. Though no one had said anything, Durrie had a funny feeling someone had decided this was a good opportunity to field-test a new toy.

  “Vehicle has stopped.” This was a different voice. Durrie recognized it as belonging to Mills, one of the ops team members near the barn.

  Durrie looked away from the monitor, and over at the mirror he’d set up so he could see the building around the side of the tank. The target’s sedan was parked right next to the barn’s door. The driver sat behind the wheel, seemingly frozen in place. Maybe the guy did know what was about to happen, Durrie thought. Or at least sensed something was wrong. Durrie sure as hell would have.

  Strike that.

  Durrie would have never allowed himself to get into this position in the first place. If he sensed he was on the verge of being taken out, he would have disappeared, and no one would have ever found him. He’d already made the preparations. In this business, it was probably more a question of when rather than if he was going to have to disappear.

  Finally, the guy got out of his car.

  “Visual on target,” Mills said. “ID confirmed.”

  No going back now, Durrie thought.

  The target walked around the sedan to the barn’s entrance. He hesitated there a moment, then opened the door and w
ent inside.

  Durrie turned his attention back to the monitor. Larson, still in position, had donned a disarming smile.

  “Owens,” he said. “I was getting worried.”

  “Took me a little longer to get here than I expected,” the target said. He was standing just inside the door, several feet from the kill zone.

  Durrie frowned, his eyes narrowing. If he’d drawn up the plans for this operation, Owens would be dead by now, and Durrie would be moving in to wrap up the corpse and get it out of there.