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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