#TeaserTuesday - Long Way Down

Sleep-deprived, but checking in for another #TeaserTuesday. If you follow me on Insta, you'll know I got a new Dobie puppy. He's adorable, and cuddly, and just the sweetest...but going through the new-puppy, crate-training blues. I'm happy to report that he, and therefore I, got five hours of sleep last night. Woo freaking hoo, y'all. So now I'm trying to get back on track with writing as he settles into the routine around here. 

Today's teaser is from the next Dartmoor (Lean Dogs Legacy, really) offering, Long Way Down, in which a book finally presents me with the chance to write one of my all-time-favorite tropes: heinous criminal helps detectives get inside the mind of the monster they're hunting. It's a shtick I will never get sick of. 

In general, I'm excited for y'all to read this book. Though not a spy novel, like Prodigal Son, it has a bit of a different feel than the rest of the series. Melissa is one of those prickly, walls-up, defensive leading ladies with a backstory that gets peeled back like onion layers as we go along. It's her story, truly, with Pongo being the adorable-but-badass emotional support character. Plenty of romance, a splash of club action, and a whole lot of crime thriller. 

“What about former associates?” she pressed. Leaving here with nothing felt like losing; she hated the idea of him smiling at her retreating back with the simple satisfaction of knowing he’d been unhelpful. “Relatives? Any cousins? Nephews?”

He put his head to the side, smile serene, now. “Come on, Detective. You have my file. You already know I don’t have any family or friends.”

“Then–” She paused, and took a deep breath.

“How old are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“What? Early thirties? You’re a detective. You’ve seen enough bad shit to know that the world’s not a comic book. Somewhere out there, I can promise you there’s more than one person who admires me for what I did. It could be anyone. The boy who rings up your groceries. The man who held the door open for you on your way into the store. Anyone.”

It could even be, she well knew, the man standing at the pulpit every Sunday, thanking her mother afterward for her generous offering to the collection plate.

She said, “Why do you sound happy about that?”

He looked it, too, eyes sparkling behind his glasses.

“Everyone in the world has monstrous thoughts and urges. I acted on mine. I’m free, detective. They put me behind bars, but I did it, and they can’t take it away.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s still here, all of it, and I’m free.”

***

Halfway across the parking lot, shrugged deep into the hood of her waterproof jacket, she glanced over her shoulder up the river’s edge, toward the dull gray of Sing Sing’s perimeter wall. She pictured Osborn’s face, his smile, the knowing little smile beneath his glasses, and recalled the line she hadn’t relayed to Contreras just now.

I think you know something about that, don’t you, detective? Childhood trauma.

What – what makes you think that?

It’s something about your eyes. The way they’re haunted.

She turned her back on the rain-streaked stone and hurried toward the car.