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An exciting new 2-in-1 novel
Guardian Angel
A serial killer, with a
weakness for brunettes, is on the streets of Boston, Mass. Detective Tim Angel
and his partner Dale Faulkner are assigned the case but to make matters muddier,
crime writer Jayne Murray has hitched a lift every night for a week to gain
insight into the seedier side of life for her next novel.
Will Tim stop the murderer
before another brunette is killed or will Jayne become the fourth victim?
Guardian Angel:
The Journey Home
An out-of-the-blue phone
call turns one regular paperwork-filled day into an unexpected emotional roller
coaster for Detective Tim Angel. News that the father he believed to be dead is
not only alive but has been living a secret life. The shock sends Tim onto the
brink of an emotional breakdown, unable to cope with his feelings from the past
and the only people who can help him are the ones he has shut out.
Is this the end for Tim
Angel?
Chapter One
Detective Tim Angel bent down
next to the body and shook his head and sighed.
“Well, I guess it was going to
happen sooner or later.”
The corpse, a middle-aged woman,
had received a fatal blow to the head if what was left of the skull was anything
to go by. The body lay in its own pool of blood.
“You know her?” Jayne Murray
asked, then corrected herself, “I mean knew her?”
Tim looked up. From this
position, his fair hair twinned with green-grey eyes made him appear insipid in
the failing Boston light, weak even, but as he stood tall and stepped closer to
Jayne, it was obvious his height and broad shoulders more than made up for any
fragility.
He offered her a gentle smile.
“I’ve seen her before, Jayne. She was homeless.” He looked at her trembling
hand and tipped his head. “You okay? You need a glass of water?”
Jayne unconsciously pushed short
brown hair away from her thirty year old face. She couldn’t look more out of
place in her light jacket, jeans, sweater and sneakers. Tim lead her to the
hood of the police car and she leaned against it.
“Take a moment. It’s not so
easy to deal with it all when you see it for real, is it?”
She shook her head. “I see dead
bodies all the time on the TV but it never feels real. This poor woman lost her
life tonight. Somehow it just doesn’t feel right to be here just because I’m
researching a book.”
Tim nodded. “You want me to
organise a car to take you home?”
“No,” Jayne came back quickly.
Her reputation as a fiction writer depended on experiences like this even if it
was at the expense of someone else. Last night’s drive-along in wasn’t nearly
as thrilling, attending two muggings and a robbery, all of which were
frightening in their own way but dealt with after the event and were considered
just ‘picking up the pieces’. She looked over Tim’s shoulder uttering a silent
prayer for the woman. “I have to see the seedier side of life. That’s why I’m
here.”
“Not everyone can handle it
though. It’s not a crime to be that way.”
“Can you?”
“I’ve been a cop for a long
time. Dead bodies are always shocking but it’s true, you do get desensitised to
some degree.”
“That’s awful, isn’t it?” she
looked back at him, into his eyes. “Don’t you think so?”
“I guess,” he shrugged, “but if
I got grossed out at every call I was sent to, I wouldn’t be a very good cop.”
His making light of the
situation relieved her but also made her feel uneasy.
Tim shuffled on his feet. His
agitation to get back to the job in hand was vital, even if he wanted to spend
time with the woman in front of him more. “I’ve got to make some notes.
Anything you need, let one of the officers know, okay?”
“I should come with you.”
He smiled, knowing if she took
just one more look at the body she’d be throwing up all over the crime scene.
“I think you should sit this one
out. There’s no shame in that.”
“But -.”
“Sadly, there’ll be plenty more
dead bodies,” he admitted sourly. “You won’t miss a thing, I promise.”
Jayne watched him walk back to
the crime scene as the darkness of the evening loomed in amid the flashing blue
and red police lights. She inhaled deeply, smelling a mixture of death and
exhaust fumes in the air. She wanted to vomit there and then.
His words rang in her ears
seconds later. He was right to assume she didn’t want to miss a thing but
writing about dead bodies and seeing them for real were two very separate
entities.
Her agent, Carl Castor, was the
instigator of evenings like this, Carl and his infuriating brother and business
partner, Gerald. The pair had been so disappointed with her inability to bring
in blockbusting sales from her third book, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, saying she’d
lost her edge. Seeing real dead bodies, witnessing real crime, Gerald
suggested, was the only way to bring back her crime writing grittiness.
Of course, she agreed. Anything
to keep her in the Castors’ good books, so to speak, but had Gerald or Carl ever
seen a real dead body themselves? Had they had to put their stomach contents on
the line in the course of their day?
Unlikely.
She folded her arms over her
chest eyeing Tim and his partner, Dale Faulkner, from a distance. They knew
what they were doing, that much was obvious.
Just as she felt the trembling
stop, another car drew up. Coroner, it stated on the side. She walked gingerly
over to the scene, following the Coroner underneath the newly-erected yellow
police tape. She watched as they took photos, placed down markers and made
notes. As she leaned over them once more at the dead woman, there was nothing
she could do but allow the sudden pain in her stomach to travel at supersonic
speed into her throat.
And within seconds she vomited
onto the Coroner.
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