Hi Cindy! Thanks so much for hosting me today. I appreciate being invited into your worlds. I write contemporary mysteries and romance. I’m sharing with your readers an excerpt from Kill Shot, one of my recent releases in romantic suspense.
I will be giving a free download of Kill Shot as well as a Bad Girls Need Love Too…tee shirt in a choice of size ( small to extra-large) to one lucky person who leaves a comment.
Kill Shot is a reunion story about two people who grew up in the same neighborhood and were sweethearts through school. But my heroine, Micki Vermillion, decided she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and have a career in photography instead of being the stay-at-home wife the hero expected her to be. “Oz” Osmond follows his dream and becomes a cop while Micki is following hers, but when someone shoots the windows out of her car, the first person she calls is Oz. Their reunion is not the smoothest, with both of them being cautious and reluctant to reopen old wounds.
This scene takes place after Micki has been attacked for a second time in her apartment and Oz, her ex-boyfriend, is on the scene with other police and emergency personnel.
Kill Shot excerpt:
~*~
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just let me get up.”
Oz loomed over her, his brows drawn together. “You’re not fine. Shut up, lay down and let them examine you.” He looked worried as opposed to angry. He stepped away and an ambulance attendant took her blood pressure while another blinded her by shining a flashlight in her eyes.
Micki stared up at the ceiling in her entryway, following the bright haloes of light echoing off her retinas. “How did you get here? I specifically didn’t call you.”
One of the EMT’s hailed Oz. “I think she’s talking to you, Officer.”
He glowered down at her. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You told me not to. I didn’t even have a chance to call nine-one-one.”
“I think she’s delirious, sir,” the young EMT said.
Oz grunted. “No, she’s always confusing. One of your neighbors called nine-one-one and dispatch cross-referenced your name to the shooting in the park.” He let out a sigh. “Does it make any difference how I got the call? I’m here now.”
Micki raised her hand to her throbbing head, tentatively touching the area close to her eye. “Ouch! What’s wrong with me?”
“Don’t ever give me a straight line like that.” Oz squatted down to her level. “You have what is referred to as a mouse. A real shiner.”
“A black eye! He hit me. Yes, I remember.” The tissue around her eye was swollen and tender.
“You saw your attacker?”
“Clearly.” She glimpsed movement at the periphery of her vision and swiveled her head. An officer scooped debris off her floor. “Oh, just look at my apartment,” she wailed. “The computer! He smashed my computer.”
“It’s okay, Micki. It was just a computer.” Oz sounded reasonable, but he had no idea of the enormity of her loss.
“That computer is my business. I use it to print and store picture files.” She struggled to get up, but several pairs of hands restrained her. “Please, I…I have to see.”
Oz nodded and lifted her to her feet. She swayed dizzily for a few moments, reeling from the carousel spinning in her head and from the carnage around her. Several people, including two uniformed officers were examining the items strewn on the floor.
“My stuff is so trashed,” she wailed. “Oh, noooo! He took the memory card out of the USB port.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Oz tried to hold her steady.
“I left the memory card from my camera in the port to the computer. It holds three hundred shots and it was full. It had the pictures I shot yesterday.”
Oz lowered her onto the gurney. “I was wrong. She’s delirious. Take her to the hospital and don’t let her walk until I have personally come to question her.”
“Oz!”
The EMTs strapped her to the gurney and raised the legs, sending a pounding pain to her head.
“Oz!”
“I can’t hear you. Go with these trained professionals and be nice.”
“My camera! That guy took my camera.”
Oz stopped the gurney. “What camera?”
“He jerked the new camera case off my shoulder. I just rented it. Oh freakin’ great! What else can happen?”
“Don’t ask.” He stared hard into her eyes and rested his hand on her forehead for a moment. “I’ll see you at the hospital.”
The problem with having a big, hunky, alpha-male ex- boyfriend is that he always thinks he knows what’s best for you and that he has the right to impose his views on you. Micki considered the pros and cons of the situation as she was being loaded into the ambulance.
Someone shot at her and now someone had broken into and trashed her apartment. Clearly, the two acts were connected and the shooting wasn’t random as she had hoped.
With the wail of a siren adding another dimension to the pain throbbing in her head, the ambulance transported Micki to Saint Andrew’s Hospital at mid-town, where radiology scanned her head as though it contained hidden treasure.
A haggard-looking young doctor came into her cubicle to examine her. He appeared to have been on duty longer than his allotted shift. A scraggly beard sprouted from his chin and the front of his scrubs had a fresh spatter of something Micki didn’t want to think about.
His smudged glasses had slipped to the end of his nose. He frowned at her over the rims. “It says here I’m not to release you until an Officer Osmond comes to pick you up. Are you under arrest?”
Micki groaned. “I need to go home. Someone broke into my place. Even now, people are tromping all over my stuff.” She was nodding her head, but each movement brought a shower of pain like mini fireworks going off behind her eyes.
The doctor nodded too, giving her a pill to calm her down and another one for pain. He instructed her to continue lying down with an icepack on her bruised face. The cubicle was curtained off from the rest of the ER and before she knew it she’d fallen asleep.
At some point during the time she slept, Oz appeared. She heard his deep voice as he talked to the doctor, although she couldn’t force her eyes to open.
“How did you get her to stay?” Oz asked.
“I gave her something to help her relax.”
“You doped her?” Oz gave a snort of laughter. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
The voices faded and she slept for several hours. When she awoke she’d been transferred to a room. Oz was sitting beside the bed.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“We’re in the observation unit. The doc didn’t want to admit you so he’s just looking at you.”
“What are you doing here?” She struggled to sit up.
A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth. “I’m looking at you too.” He raised the head of the bed with the remote.
She felt groggy and disoriented. “I feel worse than before. What was in the pills he gave me? I didn’t sign any papers for treatment.”
Dark eyes devoured her; challenged her. “I did. I told them you were my wife. Are you going to sue me?”
“Jerk.”
“Good to see you’re back to normal.”
“I need to go home.”
“I’ll take you home.” He pushed the call system and a voice asked what they needed. “She’s awake. Tell the doc to release her.”
Micki folded her arms and glared at Oz. “Do you always get everything you want?”
He shot her a dark glance as he left the cubicle. “Not everything.”
A Nurse Aide entered and helped her find her shoes.
She was forced to ride in a wheel chair to the front entrance where Oz waited for her. It was already dark.
How long was I asleep? What’s happening at my place? She squinted at Oz, still dizzy and lightheaded.
He helped her into the passenger seat and belted her in before silently easing the car into gear.
When they pulled out from under the portico, a light rain was falling. It looked golden in the street lights and made the roads appear black and oily.
Her head throbbed rhythmically in time to the windshield wipers.
Oz drove silently, glancing at her from time to time.
She pulled down the mirror behind the visor and observed her battered image. “Pretty scary.” She touched the bruised area on her cheekbone and the half-circle below her eye. “It looks like I missed with the eye shadow.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” She shut the mirror with a snap. “Hey! This isn’t the way to my place.”
“I said I was taking you home. My home.”
A swarm of butterflies flew formations in her chest. “Oz, I can’t stay at your place.”
He pulled into the underground parking at his apartment and found his assigned space. He switched off the ignition and turned in his seat to face her.
“I’m only going to say this once and I don’t want any argument.” He gazed at her solemnly, letting the effects of his words sink in.
Micki bit back the retort that sprang to mind and nodded her head.
“Someone is after you. He shot at you and he punched you in the face. He ransacked your place and destroyed your property. He took your camera bag. I will not let him get to you again. Got that?”
The significance of his words caused a shiver to run down her spine. She nodded again, feeling like a king-sized bobble head. “But…” She started to protest but he laid a finger on her lips to silence her.
“You’re going to stay with me, because I’m the meanest son-of-a bitch around and I’ll take care of you. I know you don’t want to be taken care of, especially by me, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”
She swallowed the tangle of razor wire at the back of her throat.
Oz held her gaze. His face wore the ‘Take no prisoners’ expression.
She nodded silently and moistened her dry lips.
Oz seized upon her gesture. He gazed at her mouth hungrily before expelling a long breath and getting out of the car. He slammed his door a lot harder than necessary.
Where did he get off ordering her around like a child? She lolled against the headrest as Oz rounded the car and wrenched her door open.
Micki was vaguely aware that the drugs she’d been given were influencing her compliance as she allowed Oz to draw her from the vehicle and tuck her under his arm.
Being smushed against him wasn’t so bad. Her face hurt, her legs were leaden, her head pounded and she was emotionally drained from her trauma-inducing adventures. Yet, it wasn’t so bad having Oz put his arm around her.
She stumbled against him and he swept her up into his arms. Her whole body stiffened for a nanosecond. She had to protest. He was taking too much for granted. She should stop him right here and now.
She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. It felt so good to be held, to be borne like a child, like when her daddy had carried her up to her bed. She was excruciatingly tired. A little sleep would be good.
~*~
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