Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

All the kids at Slaughter Elementary had the sense to steer clear of Old Lady Ketchel’s place. Everyone except for Bobby Briars. And for his folly, Bobby and his parents mysteriously disappeared. You see, Hagatha Ketchel had a bone to pick. Not just with foolish kids like Bobby Briars, but with the entire town of Slaughter.

A treacherous storm, a flat tire, and a touch of serendipity causes Tessa Sullivan and her husband, Jack, to stumble upon the narrow strait that leads into Hamlet. It was supposed to be a one night stop until the rain let up and Jack could figure out how to fix the tire - until Tess lands herself in the local jail cell overnight and Jack is found dead in their hotel room the next morning. There's no doubt it was murder, but with Sullivan’s gentle wife having an airtight alibi, the sheriff has to wonder: Who had any cause to kill the outsider? And is he the only victim?

When Teagan Steele faces her hardest challenge since taking over her family’s security company, she has to dig deep to figure out how one of their clients smuggled antiquities into this country, and what they did with them. And she has to clear Steele Guardians of any charges of collusion and wrongdoing.

Aja knowingly sacrificed herself to save 20 girls from the Spider’s Web child trafficking network. She also gave herself up thinking it would free Marsha and two other SHIELD team colleagues. Unfortunately, she never should have trusted that the Black Widow would hold up her end of the bargain.

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island's original eight settlers to burn "the witch" out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward 100-some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life.

Mackenzie Steele has been instrumental in keeping Steele Guardians afloat, working long hours for months. Nearing burn out, her family encourages her to take a vacation, and she reluctantly agrees. She needs solitude and quiet, and a vacation rental home in the Oregon desert is just the ticket. But she’s no sooner unpacked her bags when a man lands on her doorstep. A man who can’t remember his identity or why he’s there. All they know is that the name Owen seems familiar to him.

For Green Beret Travis Chapman, special operations and covert missions are his life. When his country calls, he reports without question. Until now. Until he’s tasked with protecting a woman he’d once loved and sent him packing. He’d rather go AWOL than spend time with civilian researcher Claire Reed. Even when he learns that her vital research project is stolen, he thinks twice about seeing her again.

When Crys discovers a dead man in a client's living room, she refuses to accept that the murder is an open-and-shut case of domestic violence. If she can untangle this mess, she can prove her client's innocence and ease Rick's fears. But the only witness to the murder is hospitalized in a catatonic state. And the lead detective is Rick's former partner, the man Crys blames for his paralysis. Crys is on her own to save her client from jail and stop a murderer intent on tidying up loose ends.

In only a few months, the small town of Hagen has lost two high school seniors, both under strange circumstances. When a third senior, the mayor’s son, drives through the plate glass window of the town’s diner and ends up in a coma, the deaths no longer seem unrelated accidents. The town is paralyzed with fear. The police can find no good explanation. Other students deny any knowledge of what’s happening, but Detective Kylie Milliard is certain at least some are lying.

Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she’s clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she’s never felt so confounded or alone. She’ll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.

When Maya Glass - the Veritas Center’s toxicology/controlled substances expert - goes to check on her scientist friend after a cryptic phone message, Maya stumbles upon her worst nightmare. A deadly toxin has been released, her friend’s assistant has died in his secluded island lab, and her friend is missing. Worse yet, Maya is exposed to the deadly botulism toxin and she needs help. Fast. Problem is, the only person she can think of with the right contacts is her former love, FBI Agent Hunter Lane.

For 12 years, I had managed to separate my personal life from my professional life, becoming one of the best reconstructionists in the world - and proving to myself that I could do so on my own merits. Then I’d been forced into contact with my family, reuniting with someone I thought I’d lost forever, and rescuing my best friend. Now I had to savor what little time I had left before the contract with the Conclave came due and my future was wrenched from my control. Except there was one last case to solve. One last set of puzzle pieces to collect, then assemble again.

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

My lips are white. Sixteen-year-old Sep stares into the bathroom mirror. It’s not some weird lipstick (she never wears lipstick). Her lips are just - white. In a panic, she digs up an old lipstick and smears it on her colorless lips. But soon, more and more white spots begin to bloom, spreading their chalky tendrils across her olive brown skin. Does she have a disease? Is she turning into some kind of freak?

What's it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers.

When forensic photographer Ainsley Duncan’s brother is arrested for murder, she works hard to exonerate him through her contacts, but nothing clears his name until she happens upon a long-buried secret involving Grady Houston - the Veritas Center’s ballistics, firearms, and explosives expert. Grady’s worked hard to keep this secret buried for years and doesn’t want it coming out, so he balks at her request to help find the real killer and free her brother.

It’s Lew Ferris’s first day as the newly-elected Sheriff of McBride County, and already things are heating up in the Wisconsin Northwoods. The tragic drowning of a teenage girl draws an eerie parallel to the unsolved murder of another teen thirty years earlier, but one of Lew’s new subordinates—Alan Stern, Chief of the Deer Haven Police Department—has ruled it an accidental death by drowning.

It's mid-May in the tiny northwoods Wisconsin town of Loon Lake, and the fish are biting. But walleye isn’t the only thing on the hook. There are rumors that a precious vein of nickel and copper is buried on the property of wealthy Grace McDonough, and the drilling is about to begin. But not if environmentalist Pete Ferris can help it. When Grace's 24-year-old son, Noah, is caught in a sordid sex crime, police chief Lew Ferris makes the arrest.

Alice Brewster is at a low point. After being let go from her job at the ritzy Grant Hotel, she's taken to hiding out at a dingy Manhattan pub just so that she won't have to tell anyone the shameful truth. So when blonde, beautiful Taylor waltzes in one sunny afternoon, Alice is ready for the distraction of an unpredictable new friend. As Alice and Taylor get closer, Alice confesses the real reason she lost her job—a hotel guest, the wealthy real estate mogul Weston Chambers, assaulted her. But while Alice wants sympathy, Taylor's rage is white hot. We could kill him, she says.

Aja narrowly escaped dying, being incarcerated as a traitor, and suffering a catastrophic rift in her relationship with Marsha. All just to have the Black Widow avoid capture, pivot, and sell her trafficking operation to some unknown U.S. billionaire. Complicating matters, three U.S. Senators who tried to eliminate SHIELD through budget cuts are missing. Fueling rumors that they may somehow be involved in the billionaire’s nefarious operation. And then there’s the not-so-little matter of Aja’s former paramour joining the team to work on the SPIDA project.