Murder in Real Time

  Murder in Real Time

  By Julie Anne Lindsey

  Book three of The Patience Price Mysteries

  With the chaos of summer tourists and fall birders out of town, counselor Patience Price is looking forward to the quiet life she remembers. She longs for some peace. And an apple fritter. But the calm is cut short when a reality show sets up camp to film a special about ghosts on her little island. Now fans, reporters and crew have flocked to sleepy Chincoteague. Who knew ghost hunters had an entourage?

  When two cast members are killed in a room at the local B&B—a room usually occupied by Patience’s FBI agent boyfriend, Sebastian—she finds herself on the case. Sebastian doesn’t want Patience ruffling any feathers but, as always, she can’t help herself.

  Patience promises to let Sebastian handle the investigation—he is FBI, after all—but after a drive-by shooting, her wicked curiosity gets the best of her. And with the TV show forging ahead with filming, the list of suspects (and the line of food trucks) only grows. But has the shooter already flown the coop? And how do you find a killer when you don’t know who the target is?

  82,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  September might herald the end of summer fun and the vacation season, but the one thing you and I both know, as avid readers, is that we can always escape the daily grind thanks to books! This month, Carina Press is placing extra emphasis on the mystery genre, with the last week of September dedicated to not only our entire backlist of mysteries, but also four brand-new frontlist releases in four different subgenres of mystery.

  Within the mystery program, we welcome debut author Ricardo Sanchez with his novel Elvis Sightings. In this unique mystery that absolutely delighted our team from the first moment we read it, Floyd is a private detective who lives his life the way he thinks Elvis would have wanted him to—fast and hard in a sequined jumpsuit—and if he can avoid the billy clubs of government agents, a Viking reenactment and the amorous attention of the bearded lady sheriff, he just might prove, once and for all, that Elvis is still alive.

  Rosie Claverton brings us the second book in The Amy Lane Mysteries (a series that has some of my favorite Carina Press covers!). Welsh amateur sleuths Amy and Jason return in Code Runner, with Jason framed for the murder of a gang runner. When his prison transport is broken open, Jason is caught between the police, the gangs and the mastermind behind Jason’s downfall, while Amy races to prove his innocence.

  In Mistress of Lies, a historical mystery by Holly West, a young beggar girl claiming to be Isabel Wilde’s niece—previously unknown to her—shows up unexpectedly and reveals that Isabel’s brother Adam was murdered, compelling Isabel to take up an impossible task: discover the truth about her brother’s death, twelve years later.

  And joining these three in the mystery category, with a new release in her Patience Price Mystery series, Julie Anne Lindsey brings us Murder in Real Time. When a popular reality show host is murdered at the local bed-and-breakfast, Patience’s small town is overrun with grieving fans, paparazzi and a gunman who puts Patience in the crosshairs.

  If mystery isn’t your favorite genre, we have nine new releases in September in romance subgenres. Starting with contemporary romances, first up is Breaking His Rules by Alison Packard. If you love the friends to lovers trope as much as I do, you’ll love this story of two good friends pretending to be a couple at a coastal wedding, who find things get passionate when their true feelings rise to the surface.

  Rebound flings are supposed to have soft landings, but one sexy cop is about to fall hard in Christi Barth’s fun romantic caper Love on the Boardwalk. And in Emma Barry’s Private Politics, when a glamorous non-profit fundraiser becomes entangled in a political scandal, she turns to a savvy DC blogger for help clearing her name. As their hearts and ambitions collide, they find that everything in Washington comes with a price.

  If you like contemporary romance with an edge, reach for new adult romance Losing Streak by Kristine Wyllys. Rosemary Young was just another bartender until her boyfriend, Brandon Williams, lost a bet, leaving them with no choice but to sell their souls to the Lane’s crooked king.

  Author Stina Lindenblatt returns with Let Me Know, a contemporary romance with a new adult flavor. College freshman Amber Scott is propelled into the media spotlight when love letters she supposedly sent to her stalker surface prior to his upcoming trial.

  Switching gears to three books outside the contemporary romance genre, I’d like to turn your attention to Tyler Flynn’s newest male/male historical romance, Hunting the Spy. Nathan Kennett is hunting down a traitor who is selling the secrets of England’s defenses to the French rebels—could it be Sir Peter Ross, the man he loves?

  Don’t miss the final book in Jeffe Kennedy’s fantasy romance Covenant of Thorns trilogy. In Rogue’s Paradise, our scientist heroine discovers the origin of the fae and of her own nature, and whether she can make true love actually work. And it’s not too late to catch up with the first two books in this fantastic trilogy, Rogue’s Pawn and Rogue’s Possession.

  Eleri Stone’s Gun Shy has a wonderful Firefly-esque Western feel in a paranormal romance world. When criminal boss Gideon Moore sends men to steal the fort’s dwindling supply of Reaper cure for sale on the black market, Jane Fisher offers to guide Lieutenant Lyle Dalton through the shady side of Storm King Territory in an attempt to recover the serum.

  And last this month, we’re thrilled to present Shattered Bonds, the final book in Lynda Aicher’s Wicked Play erotic romance series. At the same time, we’re sad to see these characters go, as Lynda has captivated us with the emotional ups and downs of the relationships between this compelling cast of characters. Don’t miss this book, in which everything could change when the past comes back to destroy the members of The Den. Look for Game Play, the first book in Lynda’s new erotic romance trilogy, in spring 2015.

  Coming in October 2014, Dana Marie Bell returns us to the world of Maggie’s Grove, we welcome co-authors Eileen Griffin and Nikka Michaels and their incredible male/male romance duology, and R.L. Naquin is back with her urban fantasy Monster Haven series.

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  My phone vibrated on the Tasty Cream table between a dish with four French fries and a bowl that once contained the world’s greatest hot fudge brownie sundae. I glanced away from the bowl and placed a paper napkin over the chocolate carnage to cover my shame.

  “Covering that bowl won�
��t erase the fifty thousand calories you ate. You know that, right?” My best friend, Claire, smiled and sucked on the straw of her chocolate malt, unaffected by the damage we’d done to our waistlines by ordering half the Tasty Cream menu.

  “It wasn’t fifty thousand calories.” My guilty gaze swept over the napkin barely concealing the enormous bowl. “It was maybe a day’s worth of calories. I can skip eating tomorrow and it will be like this never happened.” Lies. Skipping meals wasn’t in my repertoire of practiced disciplines.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Claire shook her cup and poked the straw in and out of the lid. “Or,” she smiled wider, “you could train with me. We can rock and run together.”

  I rolled my eyes and rubbed my tummy. “I can’t run a marathon, even if there is live music.” My phone buzzed again and I flicked it with my fingertips.

  “The Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Mini is a mini marathon. It’s right there in the name. Only three-point-one miles. You could run that far without breaking a sweat.” She made a sad face. “It’s no fun alone. Please?”

  “Stop making that face. I swear, when you’re sad a little fairy dies somewhere. It’s not natural.”

  This time I lifted my phone when it buzzed. Telling Claire no was tougher than keeping my internal promise to only eat half the sundae. I read the text display and scrolled through the few messages I’d ignored during dinner.

  “Sebastian?” she asked.

  “Adrian.” I smiled, though I shouldn’t have. Adrian had been my one true love, until he left me for college. I plotted my revenge for a decade and then moved home when the FBI downsized me in July. Guess who’d also moved home? Yep. Adrian. We sorted things out after I saved his well-toned heinie from a murder charge and again after he saved mine from a crazy lunatic. Somehow, the saving and the sorting left things...complicated. In some ways it had been easier when I wanted to shove an ice cream in his nose and be done with him. Now, I alternated between wanting to squeeze his middle or squeeze his neck.

  I shifted in my seat. “He probably has another crazy plan to garner votes.”

  I needed to make peace with my waffling emotional attachment to my ex. The flip-flopping was exhausting, plus he was the town’s homegrown golden boy and running for mayor. We were going to be sharing our little three-by-seven-mile island for the foreseeable future.

  Most of the locals had watched Adrian and I grow up together and some still pined for us to reconcile.

  “Adrian runs three point one miles before breakfast.” Claire sighed. “I’ve seen him. It’s nice to watch.”

  “So, ask Adrian to run with you.” I sipped the tepid water in my glass, regretting my over-indulgence more by the minute. I blamed the Tasty Cream’s inviting old-time soda shop ambience. The minute I treaded over black-and-white checkered tiles and pulled up a little red cushioned chair, anything was possible. Except eating only half my sundae.

  “Uh-uh. Adrian’s your man.” She held a palm up between us. “I don’t care what you say. You loved him once and that means I can say hi to him and we can have fun together, in your presence, but I’m not running a marathon with that man, mini or otherwise, if you aren’t there. It’s not cool.”

  I loved her so much.

  “Besides, I need time to talk to you.” Claire’s long dark bangs fell over her eyes and she pushed them away without making eye contact.

  “About what?” My phone buzzed in my hand.

  “Answer the poor man. You know how excited he gets about things. What’s going on now?” She crossed and uncrossed her legs, shifting in her chair.

  “He says he has a surprise for me.”

  Claire clucked her tongue.

  “It’s not that.”

  “What?” Her large brown eyes widened in faux innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”

  I pulled a few dollars from my purse and placed them on the table. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not that.”

  “You can’t know what he has for sure. It wouldn’t be a surprise if you knew.”

  I followed Claire to the register to pay the bill. Her sea-green pedal pushers were amazing with black platform heels and a black silk blouse. I’d break my neck in anything higher than a three-inch heel, but Claire could outrun me in stilettos. It had happened more than once in Macy’s. With heels, she was average height. Without them, she was stretching for five foot two. Her posture, confidence and general disposition screamed runway model. All those cotillions her parents forced her through gave her a taste for self-respect and fashion. The rest was lost in translation. Like the part where they thought she’d settle down and start a family. Claire had the crazy idea it wasn’t 1955 anymore.

  That reminded me. “Do you have plans to see the SWAT guy again next weekend?” She’d waited months for a member of the FBI’s SWAT team to ask her out. They turned up at my birthday party together last weekend, but she hadn’t mentioned him since.

  She shook her head before I finished the question.

  I handed the teen at the register my bill and some cash but fixed my attention on Claire. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  She shrugged. “That’s part of it.”

  “I love talking about guys with you. Why on earth would you try to make me run three miles for that? Meanie.”

  Claire huffed while I stuffed the change from my bill into my wallet. “It’s a mini marathon. Three miles, not thirty, and it’s at the beach.”

  “I live on an island. I see the beach every day.” Chincoteague, Virginia, was a delightful costal town adjoined to the mainland by a bridge, the harbor and the sky. The bridge seemed to attach us to the world but, in all honesty, Chincoteague was its own planet. We had a long history of traditions and customs. Some were quaint, and some were odd by mainland standards, but Chincoteague was the epitome of small-town living. Peaceful. Beautiful. Islanders were family. Granted, every family had its quirks, especially one with twelve hundred people.

  “Come on. Virginia Beach.” She threw her arms wide and held the door with one hip as I passed. “They play live music. There will be tons of people there. It’ll be like college all over again.”

  “I’m too old for college.”

  “Speak for yourself.” She stopped short and sighed. “You’re right. Never mind. It was dumb.”

  I touched her elbow. “It’s not dumb. I just ate a gallon of ice cream. I should be begging you to make me run a marathon. Look,” I lifted my shirt. “I had to unbutton my pants.”

  She laughed. “Put your shirt down before someone takes a picture.”

  A flash illuminated the evening.

  I blinked through the dots floating in my vision. A man speed walked away from us, wearing a navy-colored windbreaker and khakis.

  “Who was that?” Claire asked. “I think he really took our picture. Unless he was shooting the Tasty Cream.”

  I turned to examine the ice cream parlor behind us. Its cone-shaped roof interrupted the beautiful island sky. The sun set earlier since fall had arrived and though it was barely past dinnertime, deep hues of smoky gray and violet above us suggested the hour was much later. A few stars shone in the distance over the water. I rubbed my eyes and turned in a circle, seeking some other item of interest a tourist might photograph. A family pressed open the Tasty Cream door and a heavenly mixture of sweet and salty scents drifted on the air to meet me. Fries and ice cream rolled in my tummy. A tummy now captured on film, popped button and all.

  “If I find him, I’m demanding he delete that picture.” I stepped off the curb and crossed the street to my apartment, with Claire at my side.

  “Tell me about the SWAT guy. Wyatt. What happened with him after you left my birthday party?”

  Claire sighed but didn’t answer.

  I rented the only available space on the island when I moved home durin
g the summer. Thanks to Adrian and a silly rumor about the house being haunted, no one ever wanted to live there. The owner hadn’t rented the space in a decade. Not the upstairs apartment I now called home, and not the downstairs unit, which had housed numerous failed businesses over the years. Now I lived in the apartment for next-to-nothing rent and Adrian owned the building. He used the downstairs for his campaign studio. Lucky me, living upstairs from temptation.

  Except, I wasn’t tempted. Not really. Not normally. Possibilities for a future with Adrian had dissolved long before our reunion this summer. Destiny had already dropped six-foot-sexy, Special Agent Sebastian Clark into my life. Sebastian, my personal hero. When Adrian was accused of murder this summer, I’d called Sebastian for advice. These days, I also called Sebastian my boyfriend. I adored him. In fact, I expected to see him soon. He rented a room by the month at Island Comforts, the local bed-and-breakfast, but spent more nights at work or my place than at the B&B.

  My tummy gurgled.

  Claire looked at me. “You better hope that picture doesn’t end up in the paper tomorrow.”

  I shook off her comment. Weirder things had happened to me since moving home. “You’re dodging my question. What happened with the SWAT guy and what do you want to talk to me about?”

  “I need your advice.” She braced her palm on the exterior railing to my apartment and began climbing the wooden stairs. “Not as my best friend, but as, you know, the other thing.”

  Before the FBI downsized me from my human resources position, I’d finished my counseling degree and planned to work with agents under stress or those who had discharged their firearm or been injured in the line of duty, etc. It was a good plan. The FBI paid big money to contractors for those services. I thought hiring me would save the bureau a ton of money. They thought firing me would too. So, I moved home to chase my dream and open a private practice, which proved more complicated than one would think. Small towns. Nosy neighbors. Those sorts of things weren’t always a counselor’s friend.

  “You want me to counsel you?” I worked to keep my voice flat. Any inflection on my part might be misinterpreted by her, and our friendship would take the hit. I slid my key into the lock, opened the door and motioned her inside.