The
Mannequin Offensive
Rocky
Bridges
Book
1
Kirsten
Weiss
Genre:
Mystery/Suspense (paranormal)
Publisher:
Misterio Press
Date
of Publication: July 1, 2016
ISBN:
1-944767-02-9
Number
of pages: 328
Word
Count: 72,300
Book
Description:
After
an overseas assignment goes bad, all Rocky Bridges wants is out of
the global security business. No more personal protection gigs. No
more jaunts to third world countries. No more managing wayward
contractors. But when her business partner is killed, Rocky must
investigate her own company and clients.
Rocky’s
no PI, but she’s always trusted her instincts. Knife-wielding
mobsters, sexy insurance investigators, and a Russian-model turned
business partner are all in a day’s work. Now her inner voice has
developed a mind of its own, and she finds herself questioning her
sanity as well as reality as she knows it. Rocky can’t trust those
around her. But can she even trust herself?
The
Mannequin Offensive is a fast-paced novel of mystery and suspense.
Release
Day Sale. 99
Chapter
1
It
was just meat.
Sickly
green tiles, slick with something I didn’t want to identify. A wall
of cabinets with square, metallic doors. And on the autopsy
table…just meat.
I
adjusted my mask, adapted my breathing. My stomach flipped at the
smell of ammonia and petroleum. By this point, I should have been
used to the oil stink. Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, reeked of the
stuff. It seeped from the ground, staining the sand, hanging heavy in
the air. But surely I was imagining the odor here, in the morgue two
stories below the city’s streets.
My
scalp itched where my blonde hair had been shorn away. My brain
throbbed, spun, and I recognized the signs of a potential faint. I
relaxed my knees so I wouldn’t pass out and focused on his toes.
Not his toes, I mentally corrected, its toes, the corpse’s toes,
crooked from a lifetime in dress shoes.
It
wasn’t Derek, not anymore. The man who, yesterday, had skipped out
on a meeting with Azeri officials to drag me to see the burning gas
fields was gone. He’d told me the fields had been holy to the
Zoroastrians. Mystical. But he’d told me a lot of wild stories,
about missing pirate ships and Vikings who’d made their way down to
the Caspian.
“Who
knows?” he’d said. “One might have been your ancestor. You look
like a Valkyrie, tall and blond and powerful.”
“Viking
pirates.” I’d rumpled my hair, scanning the low, brown hills for
marauders, pickpockets, and corporate spies. “Sounds like a movie.”
And I’d launched into a fantasy screenplay, complete with axe-play,
wenches, and a traitorous Viking who’d doomed the expedition.
“They
were wiped out by disease,” he’d said.
I’d
snorted. “Non-fiction. Who needs it?”
The
coroner cleared his throat.
I
glanced across the table.
The
coroner’s black eyes gleamed maliciously over his surgical mask. I
was an intruder, my appearance in his morgue an insult to his
professional standards.
“Are
you all right?” They were the first English words he’d spoken,
and they surprised me.
“I’m
fine.” I shrugged. “It’s just meat.”
A
sunburst of light glinted off the coroner’s scalpel, expanding,
disorienting me.
He
placed his fingers on the body’s clavicle.
Oh
God, he’s going to cut him. My heart thundered. Meat, I told
myself. Just meat.
Something
grabbed my leg, and I jerked, woke up. My feet swung off the suede
couch, and I swayed drunkenly, blinking.
My
neighbor, Glenda, stepped hastily back and adjusted her lightweight
green duster. A fit seventy-something, she favored flowy fabrics. Her
lips moved, silent. Her white brows creased, and her mouth moved
again. Glenda prodded the neat coil of white hair piled upon her head
with a long finger.
Shaking
my head, I tried to escape the remnants of the nightmare. I yanked
the earplug from my right ear. “Sorry. What?”
Sun
slanted through the sheer curtains, making rectangles on the burnt
orange and blue oriental rug. My dog, Churro, panted on the bamboo
floor next to Glenda, his black and white head tilted with concern.
He was a dachshund-beagle mix. It was a mystery to me how two
short-legged breeds had combined to create a svelte, mid-sized dog
that looked like neither. But Churro, like me, was his own dog.
“I
said, your phone’s been ringing off the hook.” Glenda raised a
white brow. “I can hear it in my townhouse.”
I
grimaced. My landline was intentionally loud. I checked my cell,
lying on the glass coffee table. Dead. I tugged down the hem of my
rumpled, white t-shirt. “What are you doing in here?”
She
rested her hands on her narrow hips. “You gave me a key. Remember?”
I
remembered. We’d exchanged keys when I’d first moved in. Glenda
would water my plants when I was away, and I’d make sure that if
Glenda died, her body would be found before being eaten by her cats.
(Her words, not mine.) Since I traveled often and Glenda could only
be eaten by her cats once, it had seemed a good deal at the time.
I
squinted at my fireplace mantel, painted a butter-cream yellow, and
the clock perched on it. Three o’clock. My gaze drifted upward to
the painting of sunflowers. Happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.
A
garbled murmur turned my attention back to my neighbor. “Did you
say something?” I asked.
“Sorry.
I keep forgetting.” Glenda motioned toward my head, and my hand
automatically rose to the shaved patch of skin above my left ear.
Fine hair grew over the puckered scar. I’d tried parting my hair on
the other side, covering it up. But it looked odd, and so I wore my
blond hair in its usual long braid.
“I
asked when you were planning on returning to work. This moping isn’t
healthy.” Glenda’s lips pulled down, deepening the lines around
her mouth, and I felt an unreasoning guilt.
“I’m
not moping, and I’m not returning. I’m done.” I was done with
the travel, done with the health hazards, done with the egos. Done,
done, done.
Besides,
a lifetime of new possibilities stretched before me. I could do
anything. I could open a bar. I could open a bookstore. Or a bakery.
Or a bookstore and bakery. I could even start something that didn’t
start with the letter B. Lifetime of possibilities? There was an
entire alphabet of possibilities.
“Done.”
Glenda’s mouth pinched. “You’ve been sleeping all day, ignoring
your responsibilities…”
“I’m
on leave.”
“You’re
too old for this.”
“Thanks.”
Sheesh. She wasn’t my mom. Though she was old enough to be.
I
stood, unpeeled the t-shirt from my back, and arched, feeling rather
than hearing the crack. I was built like a German barmaid, able to
carry six steins of beer in one hand, all curves and hidden muscle.
It had been a useful physique in my role as security consultant. I
rubbed my hands over cheeks splattered with freckles.
The
dog pawed at my knee, whining.
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah.” I opened the glass door that looked over my fenced
garden.
Churro
bolted past.
“What
will you do?” Glenda asked. For a moment, I thought I heard a hint
of motherly concern in her voice.
But
I was imagining it.
I
watched Churro race in circles, ears flapping, ball in his mouth. He
stopped before a New Zealand palm and dropped the tattered ball,
cocking his head, as if waiting to play. He nosed the ball toward the
plant.
I
snorted and shook my head. I loved Churro but was under no illusions
about his degree of smarts.
“Well?”
Glenda asked.
“Well,
what?”
“What
are you going to do?”
“I’m
going to open a combo wine bar and bookstore.”
Glenda
lowered her chin. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’ll
be great,” I said, spinning the fantasy. “I’ll call it the Book
Cellar. Get it?”
“What
do you know about running a wine bar? You don’t even drink wine.
You’re a beer drinker.”
“Yeah,
but the Book Keller just doesn’t have the same punny ring.” I
laid an earnest hand on my chest. “People buy books during the day
and drinks at night. It’s an optimal use of the space.”
“What
space? Have you already found a space?”
The
phone jangled, and I flinched.
“I
told you it was loud,” Glenda said.
I
walked into the light-filled kitchen and picked up the phone. “Rocky
here.”
Someone
pounded on the black-painted front door.
I
jerked my chin toward the door, covering the phone with my hand.
“Would you mind?” I asked Glenda in a low voice.
My
neighbor glided toward the door.
The
voice on the phone cleared his throat. “It’s Hank.” He paused.
“Rocky, you need to prepare yourself for some bad news.”
My
breath hitched, and I leaned against the gray granite counter. I knew
those words. I’d spoken those words. And there was no way to
prepare for what came next.
The
front door swung open, and Glenda stepped aside.
Two
uniformed police officers walked in.
“Who?”
My throat tightened.
“It’s
Pete. He’s been killed.”
My
brain stumbled, hit a wall. I pressed my palm into the edge of the
granite counter, felt its coolness beneath my skin. The bastard
couldn’t be dead. I hadn’t forgiven him yet. I tried to swallow,
failed.
“Rocky?”
Hank asked.
“How?”
My voice was a croak.
“Knifed.
They found his body in a parking lot this morning. Must have happened
sometime late last night.”
I
bowed my head and ran my palm over my hair. My scalp was damp with
sweat. “What do you need?” I finally said.
“The
police are looking to talk to you. Don’t say anything.”
“Why?
I don’t know—”
Hank
broke the connection.
I
stared at the phone. I wasn’t in the habit of blabbing to cops.
Over two decades of working in third world countries had taught me
the authorities were not my friends. American cops were light years
ahead of the thugs I’d dealt with overseas, but old habits died
hard. More importantly, there was nothing I could tell the officers.
I didn’t know anything.
It
made no sense. Pete couldn’t be dead.
The
uniformed police moved toward me, their broad faces grim.
I
leaned against a cabinet.
I
didn’t cry.
About
the Author:
Kirsten
Weiss worked overseas for nearly twenty years in the fringes of the
former USSR, Africa, and South-east Asia. Her experiences abroad
sparked an interest in the effects of mysticism and mythology, and
how both are woven into our daily lives.
Now
based in San Mateo, CA, she writes genre-blending steampunk suspense,
urban fantasy, and mystery, mixing her experiences and imagination to
create a vivid world of magic and mayhem.
Kirsten
has never met a dessert she didn’t like, and her guilty pleasures
are watching Ghost Whisperer re-runs and drinking red wine. Sign up
for her newsletter to get free updates on her latest work at:
http://kirstenweiss.com
Twitter:
@KirstenWeiss
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/kirsten.weiss
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