Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1)

Read Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1) Storyline:

Valkyrie gripped the wheel, all of her focus directed at a
single point just beyond the hood of her 1934 Packard, where the dense coastal
fog obliterated the beams of her headlights into shimmering halos. The slick pavement
climbed, twisted, and dropped down next to the Pacific shoreline. The Packard’s
ancient vacuum-powered wipers made a quiet whip-creak,
whip-creak as they flipped back and forth. A dull static buzzed out of the
radio, the white-noise remnants of a jazz station that had vanished somewhere
outside of Fort Bragg. In the darkness outside, the sporadic rain seemed to ebb
and flow like the tide, now furious and driving, now little more than a mist,
but never entirely gone.

Valkyrie’s cell phone rang, and the
noise snapped her back to reality. She wondered how long she’d been listening
to static on the radio. She glanced at the screen and it said, simply: Unknown.

Perfect,
she thought. Her phone hadn’t
rung in days, but now that she was flying down a dangerous road in the middle
of the night -during a storm, no less- it just had to. Valkyrie was surprised
it was even getting a signal. The indicator said one bar, but she doubted that
was accurate.

Val scanned the area for a safe
place to pull off the road. Through the haze, she saw the meridian curving
along the side of the pavement, the thin barrier of sheet metal the only thing protecting
her from a two-hundred-foot plunge straight into the icy black waters of the Pacific.
To her right, she caught a glimpse of foamy waves crashing against the rocks. To
her left, the silhouetted shapes of ancient sequoias and jagged coastal
mountains frowning down at her, almost willing her to spin the wheel and slip
quietly over the cliffs.

The phone continued to ring as Valkyrie
sped through a tight inside corner. She eased off the accelerator and then punched
it as she climbed the ridge on the other side. As the highway straightened out,
Valkyrie reached out to turn off the radio. She tapped the speakerphone that
was built into the car’s custom burl-wood dash, and it spat out a tinny beep.

“It’s Val,” she said.

“Valkyrie, it’s time for us to
talk.”

It was a man’s voice, low, broken
by the lousy reception, but still familiar. The sound sent a chill crawling
down her spine.