Dead Right Read online

  Praise for BRENDA NOVAK’S

  Stillwater stories

  “In the first of a compelling new series set in the small town of Stillwater, Mississippi, Novak expertly mixes her usual superior characterisation with a chilling sense of evil as she pairs up a complicated heroine with a dark past with a caring, honourable man who gives her hope for the future.”

  —Booklist on Dead Silence

  “I was held spellbound by Ms Novak’s second book in her outstanding Stillwater trilogy. This series gets better with every book. [Her] characters are extraordinary in depth and feeling. I really fell in love with Clay Montgomery. This book is a page-turner bar none!”

  —Reader to Reader Reviews on Dead Giveaway

  “Novak’s ability to make this mystery cunning and deceptive is amazing, considering readers already know the outcome…Dead Giveaway is a turbulent and brilliant romantic suspense story that is sure to bring on a case of the chills. I cannot wait to see what is revealed in the final story of this trilogy.”

  —Romance Junkies.com

  “Brenda Novak has an uncanny ability to give life to her characters, even minor ones. And her work is singularly devoid of clichés…Novak also creates dynamic characters with strong emotional ties, but the threads that hold families together are sometimes tried to the breaking point. If anyone comes close to perfection, it’s Clay, who stands like a wall around those he loves. This series is a must read; just be prepared for an emotional ride.”

  —Romance Reviews Today on Dead Giveaway

  “Novak has a keen gift for combining suspense and romance, as well as for creating real, sympathetic heroines and darkly mysterious heroes…Dead Giveaway…is a very compelling read.”

  —Armchair Interviews

  Dead Right

  Brenda Novak

  www.mirabooks.co.uk

  Also by Brenda Novak

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  DEAD SILENCE

  For Joy, who left this life far too soon.

  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you—

  and miss you.

  “The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second something to reverence.”

  —George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans,

  English novelist, 1819-1880)

  Dear Reader,

  If you’ve read Dead Silence and/or Dead Giveaway, you’ve already met Madeline Montgomery. You know she loves the man who was her father, the man who went missing twenty years ago, and that she’s absolutely determined to discover what happened to him. You also know that if she manages to find out, it’ll make for a very unpleasant surprise (maybe a few surprises for you, too!). Her own family’s keeping the truth from her. They have good reason, of course. Their dark secret is something she’s better off not knowing. But she can’t settle for that. She wants to know, and love and denial can blind her for only so long. Especially when private investigator Hunter Solozano comes to town…

  As the last book in the Dead trilogy, Dead Right was a difficult story to write. Mostly because “the end” means I have to say goodbye to characters I’ve been working with for over a year—some of my favourite characters, in fact. But the sadness won’t last.

  Visit my website at www.brendanovak.com to view video trailers for my various novels, read excerpts and reviews, see what’s coming next, enter my contests, monthly draws, etc. Also, while you’re there, check out my Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research (my son suffers from this disease). I’d love to have you get involved, so just send me an e-mail to let me know how you’d like to participate (Brenda@brendanovak. com). Together we’ll do all we can.

  I love to hear from readers. If you don’t have internet service, please feel free to write me at PO Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, USA.

  Here’s hoping you enjoy Dead Right!

  Brenda Novak

  Chapter One

  Was his body inside?

  Hunched against the freezing January rain, Madeline Barker felt her fingernails cut into her palms. Standing with her stepbrother, stepsister and stepmother, she watched the police and several volunteers attempt to pull her father’s car out of the abandoned water-filled quarry. Her head pounded from lack of sleep, and her chest was so tight she almost couldn’t breathe, yet she stood perfectly still…waiting. After almost twenty years, she might finally have some answers about her father’s disappearance.

  Toby Pontiff, Stillwater, Mississippi’s, police chief, knelt at the lip of the yawning hole. “Careful, careful there, Rex,” he called over the high-pitched whine of the winch attached to a massive tow truck.

  Joe Vincelli and his brother, Roger, Madeline’s first cousins, hovered on the other side of the quarry, their faces betraying their anticipation. They spoke animatedly to each other, but Madeline couldn’t hear them above the noise. She was fairly sure she didn’t want to. What they had to say would only upset her. They’d long blamed her father’s disappearance on certain members of her stepfamily—Irene, Clay and Grace—who were gathered around her now. Unfortunately, the fact that the Cadillac had been found in the quarry five miles outside of town would only convince them they’d been right all along. It’d certainly prove that her father hadn’t driven off into the sunset.

  The black seal-like heads of two divers who’d gone down a few minutes earlier popped up and, with a gasp, Madeline realized she could see the front grille of her dad’s car through the murky water. With a sudden rush of tears, she instinctively moved closer to Clay, who remained as dark and silent as the surrounding rocks.

  The car didn’t break the surface. Rex hit a button that stopped the clamoring winch, halting its progress, and the silence made Madeline’s ears ring.

  Her stepmother, a short buxom woman with hair like Loretta Lynn’s, whimpered at the sight of the barely visible car. Grace shifted to try and comfort her, but Clay didn’t move. Madeline looked up at him, wondering what was going on behind his intense blue eyes.

  As usual, it was difficult to tell. His expression mirrored the gray, overcast sky. Maybe he wasn’t thinking. Maybe, like her, he was simply surviving the cataclysm of emotions.

  It’ll be over soon. No matter what happens, knowing is better than not knowing. She hoped…

  “This is making me nervous,” Rex complained. Short and wiry with the tattoo of a woman partly visible at his neck, he frowned as he joined Chief Pontiff. “What if we clip the rocks? The car could get hung up.”

  “It’s not gonna get hung up,” a police officer by the name of Radcliffe said.

  The tow-truck driver ignored the unsolicited input, keeping his focus on the man in charge. “I don’t think this is gonna work,” he insisted. “I say we bring a crane in here, Toby, before someone gets hurt or we ruin my truck.”

  Toby, a slight blond man with a neatly trimmed mustache, had become Chief Pontiff six months earlier and was a friend of Madeline’s. They’d grown up together; she’d been close to his future wife all through high school. He shot Madeline a sympathetic glance then, lowering his voice, he turned away from her.

  Still, she could make out his words. “That’ll take another few days. Look at that group over there. See the woman in the middle? The one who’s white as a ghost? Her mother killed herself when she was ten years old. Her father went missing when she was sixteen. And she’s been standing here since dawn, getting soaked. I’m not going to send her home until I get her father’s car out of this damn quarry. We need to see if his remains are inside. It’s already taken me a week to arrange it.”

  “If she’s waited that long, what’s another two or three days?” Rex asked.

  “It’s another two or three days!” Toby nearly shouted. “And she’s not the only one with an interest in what’s happening here, as you can tell.”