( psst…also, you might wanna run by Laurie’s blog…Dianne Castell is having a blog party on 3/13 & 3/14 and I do believe prizes were mentioned)

When it comes to promo, I’m probably a publisher’s nightmare. I hate to promote. If people ask, I’ll honestly admit I think most of my writing sucks (although I’m glad there are people who think otherwise). But every once in a while, I manage to turn out something I think is fairly decent. Today’s book, Talking with the Dead, is one of those books.

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“She’s a good cop.”

Michael closed his eyes as Lucas wavered into view.

“Leave her alone, Lucas,” he said tiredly. It was a waste of time. Lucas was feeling the need to investigate, which meant he was going to do everything but leave her alone.

Not good.

He sensed something about Daisy Crandall that made his skin itch. She had believed him all too easily. Cops didn’t do that. And it didn’t matter that her badge said County Sheriff. Still a cop.

She should have been a lot more skeptical.

The only reason that made sence as to why she didn’t scoff at him…she knew he wasn’t lying.

Some people had that knowledge, the ability to look at somebody and know whether that person was telling them lies—or truth. She had known. Plain and simple. And if she could sense truth, she could possibly sense other things. He’d rather she not know about the ghost that followed him.

“I like her.”

Now Michael frowned. Staring at Lucas, he cocked a brow, waiting. Lucas hadn’t ever said that about anybody before. He wouldn’t like somebody he couldn’t trust. He’d been very cautious in life about who he cared for—death had only enhanced that.

Lucas shrugged as he met his brother’s stare. It was an odd gesture, one that made his mostly solid image ripple for a moment and Michael saw the outline of the dresser behind Lucas for the briefest second. “She’s…solid,” Lucas finally said. “And sad. There’s something broken inside her.”

Michael felt his heart clench at Lucas’ words. Yes, he had sensed the grief inside the pretty, sloe-eyed woman. It had left an urge inside him, to go to her and cuddle her against him, stroke away the bleak look in her pretty brown eyes. “Nothing I can do about that,” he murmured. He wished he had just moved on. There were complications here that he didn’t need—complications that went beyond the ghost of a murdered woman and a missing runaway.

But she pulled at him…not just the ghost.

The sheriff.

Too often, the only people that could hold his interest were the dead. They whispered to him at night, surrounded him during the day. But the living, they rarely held any interest for him.

He felt her determination to find the murderer, a deep, steady intent that all but colored the air around her. Solid. Yes…true blue. Loyal, determined, steady, through and through.

Michael couldn’t walk away until he knew there would be no more ghosts behind him when he left. Which meant stopping the killer.

Running his tongue along his teeth, he studied the articles in front of him, sifting through to find the earliest one. Six dead women. Going back a year and half. The last two had both been killed within the past four months. The killer was escalating. They developed a taste for it, a need. Time passed and they had to kill more often, more frequently.

More violently.

Were there only the four? Or had he hidden some of the victims?

Areas like this were thick with woods and valleys, easy places to hide bodies. These four had been local. But Michael knew there was one out there that wasn’t from around here. A runaway…somebody barely more than a child. If he had taken one runaway, he’d likely taken others.

So possibly more murders than they knew about.

Rubbing his thumb across his chin, he contemplated the grainy picture in the paper. Pretty. Young…in her twenties. But the second one was in her early forties. And then a college coed who’d been home on summer break. The fourth one, the nurse, the ghost he had met earlier—28, married, mom with kids. Only thing they really had in common…they were female and white.

No pattern. That made it harder to pin things down.

There was something else that had to link them.

“What’s the damned link?” he muttered, shoving a hand through his hair.

“You know, some people just like to kill.”

“Yeah, but they usually have a preferred sort of victim,” Mike said absently.

“You’ve become too much like a cop.”

Mike smiled. “I don’t know what else there is left for me to be, Lucas.”

A cool breeze drifted through the room.

Feeling the heavy weight of emotion that seemed to roll from Lucas, he looked up. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly. “And this isn’t a bad rap, you know.”

“You wade through the shittiest type of scum known to man, Mikey. You’ve put yourself inside the heads of monsters—I see how sick it makes you. I know how angry it makes you. I know it hurts. And you want me to buy that it’s not a bad rap.” Lucas shook his head. His eyes were so full of grief, it hurt to even look at his brother, but Mike wouldn’t look away.

“Yeah. I want you to believe it.” Scrubbing his hands over his face, he sighed. Pushing back from the small desk, Mike started to pace the tight confines of the hotel room. “Yeah. I’ve had to deal with shit. But you and me…we’ve been doing that all our lives. It’s not like I don’t know how to handle it.”

“I should have tried harder. We should have left sooner.”

“Neither of us could have known how low she would have stooped. Or what kind of messes she had gotten involved in,” Mike said quietly.

Lucas spun away. The force of rage flooding him had made his image wavery and Mike could barely see him. “I should have. I knew her—I knew what kind of scum she was involved in, knew better than you what she was capable of. I was supposed to protect you, Mikey. I failed. I shouldn’t have let this happen to you.”

“It happened to you,” Mike said.

“It happened to us both.”

That stopped him in mid-stride. He turned around, looking across the room at his brother. “Guess it did. And it happened for a reason. If it hadn’t…” Grisly images, things he’d rather forget, rolled through his mind. No, he didn’t want to remember many things that he’d seen in the past ten or fifteen years of his life. But lives had been saved because of it, killers had been stopped. “There’s a man sitting in jail right now because of what happened to me. His last victim didn’t die. We got to him before he could hurt her. You know what? I couldn’t have stopped him if I was your everyday average Jones, Lucas. It may not be the easiest thing to live with, but I’d rather have some bad nights and know that bastard will never kill anybody again, then to change it.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough, Mike?”

Focusing on the papers in front of him, he blew out a breath. “No. There’s a girl out there, Lucas. A kid. He has a kid. And I’m not going to stop until I’ve stopped him.”

“And then there will be another. And another…and another. When will it ever be enough?”

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Da rulz

• Each day, you get a new chance to win one ebook from my backlist. I’ll post an excerpt from one of my ebooks. To enter, just respond in comments to each new daily excerpt and you’re entered.
  
• Winner’s name will be posted on the blog and you do need to check the blog to see if you’ve won. I’m sorry, but I’ve spent way too much time chasing down winners…and hey, I gotta write. 😉 I’ll try to get it posted the next day, but be patient with me. I’m sooooo forgetful.
• The winner will select one title from my ebook backlist, posted below, or you can check it out via my website here.
• You can enter each day, but once you’ve won, you can’t win any more for this ‘ebook-a-day’ giveaway.
• Please only enter once each day. Don’t enter under multiple email addies. This is rude, it isn’t fair to others. FYI, WordPress tracks IP addies. I reserve the right to delete suspicious entries. Also, because of those who’ve tried rigging contests in the past by entering under multiple emails, I restrict all contests to one entry per household. For more on my contest rules, check out the disclaimer page
  
• The contest is open to anybody, even if you’ve won something from me before. (excluding the ‘ebook-a-day’ contest). The prize is for an ebook, you can take your pick from my backlist, but I won’t be substituting a print book for an ebook. Trying to promote ebooks and all….

And…I won’t just draw one name. I’ll draw 3 each day. So that’s 21 chances to win.

Okay, have at it!

Winning names have been drawn and posted.  To avoid confusion, this thread is now closed to comments.