Derek
Monahan sees violent death wherever he turns. His strange ability forces him to
watch crimes that repeat in loops of blood and anguish. The only positive is
that he is able to use his power to solve cold crimes...like the disappearances
of boys from a secretive academy.
Dr. Kate Lincoln hates that her kid brother was sent to an awful school in
Georgia. The place is a nightmare--housed in what was once a brutal asylum. Now
her brother has disappeared, and she's the only one who seems to care.
Derek wants to help the beautiful doctor, but going undercover in a place
that seethes with ancient violence isn't easy. When she sees just how much his
job affects him, Kate realizes she wants to be the one to help heal the wounds
of this strong, noble, and very sexy man.
As long as she survives to do it.
***GIVEAWAY***
One (1) winner will win a digital copy of Cold Image from Amazon. Please comment on this post with your favorite scary movie to be eligible. Make sure to include your email address so I can contact the winner. Giveaway runs from November 3 to November 6.
Excerpt from COLD IMAGE by Leslie A. Kelly
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“You know I see violent deaths, right?”
“I know you see ghosts.”
He shook his head. “Not ghosts. I’ve never seen a ghost.”
She looked up at him, her brow furrowed. “Now I really don’t
get it.”
He’d explained this so many times, to so many people and
knew the easiest way to make them understand. “Imagine somebody taking an old
black-and-white video camera and recording the last few minutes of someone’s
violent death. It’s then set to replay on a loop, over and over, at the spot
where it happened.” Well, usually at the spot. There had been a few occasions
when it had been an object holding the imprint. That had happened last fall,
when they were investigating some murders at a carnival in north Florida.
It took a second, then came the gasp. “Wait, you see victims
reenacting their murders?”
“Not always murder. Sometimes it’s deadly accidents.
Suicides. And they’re not reliving it—like I said, I don’t see ghosts.”
“Then what are they?”
“I call them death imprints. Like something stamped on a
spot and repeating for eternity, long after the soul or spirit of the person is
gone.”
“Eternity….” She sounded horrified.
Frankly, so was he. He wondered if the images ever
faded away. He’d never seen evidence of that, but hoped someday his parents
would stop being brutally murdered.
“How awful. Constant death. Every
death.
“Not every death, only the violent ones. They leave a mark,
and I see it.”
“All of it,” she pressed.
He nodded once, knowing how carefully she watched him,
though her face was shadowed by the trees.
“I can’t believe you don’t live on a deserted island.
Savannah—God, a city that old?”
“I avoid certain areas.” Particularly the dangerous ones
with long, ugly pasts. As she’d pointed out, in a city so old, there were lots
of those. Lots of opportunities to be startled out of a regular day by walking
into the path of a mob hit from Prohibition days, or shootouts with bank
robbers, or innocent victims dragged into back alleys.
“I imagine you have a mental map of where it’s safe to
visit.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, glad she got it and he didn’t have to
explain much.
“That’s a wise thing to do. Your mind probably can’t handle
the constant barrage.”
“You shrinking me, Doc?”
“No. I’m trying to put myself in your place.”
He didn’t know anybody who could do that. His Aunt Beth’s
ability was minor, just a glimmer here and there. Fortunately, his Dad had
known what his sister could do, and had, one night while drunk, told his buddy
Abe. That was why his pseudo-uncle had trusted him, believing Derek about what
he saw in Dad’s office. Abe had pressured the cops until they did a proper
investigation and acknowledged the scene was a double-murder, not a
murder-suicide.
A thug his father had prosecuted, and two accomplices, had
been responsible for the crime. His dad’s name had been cleared. Some comfort
for an orphaned twelve-year old, he supposed.
“Is there anywhere you can go in the
city?”
“I know which streets are safe to walk on.” And which
weren’t. “I avoid the intersection at Skidaway Road and Victory Drive—lots of
car accidents there.” Bodies flung through windshields, pedestrians hit by
buses. “There’s a block on Bryant Street I steer clear of, too. A banker took a
high-dive from a ninth floor roof. He almost landed on my head the first time.”
He tried to shrug, as if it were routine. In truth, though,
he never got completely accustomed to it, especially when he saw something new,
though there wasn’t much he hadn’t experienced by now. Well, maybe an official
prison execution, though he’d certainly seen his fair share of hangings, almost
always self-inflicted.
A painful visual immediately surfaced. He shoved it away,
back into the deepest recesses of his mind where the grief over his parents
still lingered.
She gasped, suddenly realized something he’d hoped she
wouldn’t grasp for a while. “Oh my God, this place is going to be very bad for you, isn’t it?” she asked as they reached the center
of the woods, where the ground was marshiest and little light shone through.
“Probably.”
“I wasn’t thinking so far ahead. I thought you saw the
occasional ghost. But you will see every horrible death
that ever happened here!”
He didn’t reply, silently acknowledging that fact.
“For you to come to a former asylum…from the days when the
treatments were barbaric and dangerous,” she said in a broken whisper. “Why did
you agree?”
“It’s my job.”
True, but there was a lot more to it, including his own need
to pay debts owed to the dead, as he’d once paid his parents’. “Plus, I’ve
worked in hospitals before.”
“But here! This is different. There was no care or therapy
in those days. This was simply a place for people to dump their unstable
relatives and forget about them.”
“Don’t forget the unwanted wives,” he growled, remembering
some of what he’d uncovered doing more research last night. There’d been a
famous case some decades ago when a millionaire had accused his wife of
“hysteria” and had her committed here. She’d died a suspicious death not long
afterward, and he’d married his mistress a month later.
He wondered briefly if the wife had been the blonde, but
quickly realized she hadn’t been. He’d seen grainy old newspaper pictures of
her. She was dark-haired, with sad, dark eyes. Still, her fate could certainly
have been the same as the woman he’d just watch die.
“Oh, God, and tuberculosis!” she exclaimed, her hand on her
mouth. “It’s so ugly.”
Yeah. He’d researched that disease, too. Natural deaths were
one thing. Choking because your own lungs are useless and fluid-filled? Well,
it wasn’t exactly a peaceful way to go.
“Oh, Jesus, somebody else should do this, not you.”
She sounded so horrified, so remorseful for not having known
the possible ramifications, he had to put a hand on her chin and lift her face.
“It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t. I know how brains work, I know about
repressed memories, how witnessing shock and trauma damage a person. You are
not okay, and this place will make you less okay.”
What luck to land with a clinical psychiatrist who could so
easily analyze him and put her finger right on the truth of what he did and
what it did to him. He so didn’t need to have this
conversation right now.
“Look, you were right there while I watched a woman being
strangled to death, and I got through it.”
Grimacing as he revealed another detail of the brutal attack
he’d witnessed, she twisted her long, elegant fingers into knots. “I am so
sorry I dragged you into this.”
He eyed her, knowing she meant it…but not entirely. “If it
means you finally get answers about your brother, it’ll be worth it though,
right?”
Her teeth caught her bottom lip. Finally she nodded. “Worth
it for me, yes. I don’t suppose it’s ever worth it for you.”
“Sure it is.” He thrust off the thoughts of all he’d seen,
all the murders from so long ago there was no way he could help resolve them.
But he’d seen the most important one, the one that had put him on this deadly
path.
His parents murders had been solved, the killers
incarcerated. So yeah. It was worth it.
“And you pray for them?” she whispered.
He nodded. He’d never really talked about that before;
honestly, he wasn’t sure he’d done it aloud in front of anyone before, his
final condolences often a whisper in his mind. She just made him feel at ease
enough to pray for the poor, lost woman aloud.
“Next time,” she whispered, her eyes gleaming with emotion,
“I’ll pray with you.”
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