Cat In An Aqua Storm

Temple changed into aqua knit shorts and top, then slid her bare feet into cork-soled wedgies two-and-a-half-inches high at the heel. Did she feel more self-confident—-any more vindicated, or vindictive? Had she made a breakthrough in her slo-mo relationship with her attractive but elusive neighbor? Maybe.

She walked to the bedroom/office at the unit’s other end, detouring through the kitchen to snag a glass of Ruby Red grapefruit juice. Visions of chopping a thug in the bridge of his nose with the hardened edge of one hand, then jamming the heel of the other hand under his nostrils so the presumably broken bridge bone would drive, splintering, into his brain, burned as gory-red in her head as the grapefruit juice in her hand.

Matt wasn’t teaching her that maneuver, but she’d heard of it. Maybe going through the motions now, learning the moves that she hadn’t known when the two men had attacked her, would restore something they had taken. Maybe. At her desk, a pale-pink Post-it note with the group-therapy phone number stuck out from the top of her computer screen like an anemic tongue.

She ripped it off, then lifted the phone receiver and dialed. Maybe just going through the motions of anything—even survival—wasn’t enough.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

www.carolenelsondouglas.com

Carole Nelson Douglas is the award-winning author of 60 novels in the mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy and romance/women’s fiction genres. She currently writes the long-running Midnight Louie, feline PI, cozy-noir mystery series (Cat in an Alphabet Soup, Cat in an Aqua Storm, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday etc.) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasy series (Dancing with Werewolves) set in imaginative variations of Las Vegas: contemporary and paranormally post-apocalyptic.

Carole was the first author to make a Sherlockian female character, Irene Adler, a series protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. She has won Lifetime Achievement Awards from RT Book Reviews for Mystery, Suspense and Versatility, and was named a Pioneer of Publishing. Her Midnight Louie novels and stories also won several Cat Writers’ Association first-place Muse Medallions, including for “Butterfly Kiss” and “The Riches That There Lie.” Carole has e-published the first four Irene Adler novels and some shorter fiction. (www.wishlist.com)

A daily newspaper reporter, feature writer and editor in St. Paul, she moved to Fort Worth to write fiction fulltime and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

ALSO BY CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

“Her fine Sherlockian novels and her Midnight Louie books have turned her into a genuine mystery star. Pick one up and you'll see why.”—Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene magazine

The DELILAH STREET, Paranormal Investigator, series in print and eBook

Dancing with Werewolves... Brimstone Kiss... Vampire Sunrise... Silver Zombie... Virtual Virgin

The New York Times Notable IRENE ADLER Series in print and eBook

Good Night, Mr. Holmes... The Adventuress... A Soul of Steel... Another Scandal in Bohemia... Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge (Jack the Ripper duology)... Femme Fatale... Spider Dance

Novellas in eBook

Alice Holds the Cards

Fruit of the Tomb (ML)

Monster Mash (DS)

Once Upon a Midnight Noir

(in print also) ML & DS

The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (IA)

Christmas Stories

The Rakehell’s Christmas Angel

Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol

A Wall Street Christmas Carol

The MIDNIGHT LOUIE Feline PI series*