Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) (ePub)

Kendra Thomas is found lying in a pool of blood with a fatal gunshot wound to her head. It's difficult for Brad Anderson, the detective investigating the case, to determine whether Kendra committed suicide or was murdered. There's no sign of a forced entry, no signs of a struggle, no prints on the gun except Kendra's. But when the clues begin to point to murder, Brad finds himself with a bewildering array of suspects: Evan, the recently divorced husband; Cory, the guy who's been stalking her and sending her "love letters" for months; the mayor, who had threatened to silence Kendra because of an affair he had with her; Ryan, the twenty-three-year-old stepson, who has strong "feelings" for her; and Sheila, the nineteen-year-old binge-drinking daughter who had recently threatened to kill her.

Brad is an avid reader of murder mysteries, but he's in a little over his head on this case. He's read enough to know that there is only one real rule in murder mysteries: The most obvious suspect can never be the guilty person. It's all rather odd to him because in real life, the obvious suspect is almost always guilty. Unfortunately, Brad has five obvious suspects, and only one of them has an alibi. So which one is the murderer? If it was a murder mystery, the murderer would, of course, be the guy with the alibi, but in this tale of a secret obsession, we're dealing with someone who's leaving clues all over the place—the only problem is that Brad can't see them.

What follows is an excerpt from the first chapter.

Sitting down next to her, he reached over, grabbed her by her long, shoulder-length brown hair and twisted her face towards his. It would all begin with a kiss. "Don't," she said. "What are you doing?" As he struggled to put his lips on hers, she turned her face away and pushed him back with her hands. Pressing on, he grabbed her by the wrists, but she broke free and slapped him across the face. Shocked, he attempted to push her onto her back, but she slid to the side and pushed him off the couch and onto the rug. Reaching up, he put his hands on her ankles and dragged her down next to him, but she writhed away and crawled over to her handbag, which was lying on a table about ten feet away. He knew what was in that handbag; he knew what she was going for.
She had the handbag in her hands now and was reaching inside, but he was right there with her—no way was she getting that gun out of her handbag. Standing up, she lurched away from him, but as she drew the gun out of her handbag, he grabbed her arm. The look in her eyes! Fury.
It had all gone terribly wrong. He never expected that she would really resist—not after all the history they had together, not after the way she had fooled around with all those other men since the day that he had first met her.
"I'll kill you for this," she said.
He still wanted her, but he had to deal with the gun first. Disarm her and then do what he wanted. He never suspected that she would be so strong, but there was never any real doubt as to who would win this battle of strength, and in a few seconds, he had twisted her arm around so that the barrel of the gun was pointing at her head.
But she wasn't done resisting, and as she kicked him with her foot, she tried to twist the gun around so that it would be pointing at him. That was when the gun went off. During the time they had struggled over the gun, her finger had never left the trigger, and when she had tried to twist her arm, she had inadvertently pulled the trigger.
The bullet went right through her temple, and she fell like you would expect a person to fall when they've been shot in the head.