The man was already half in love with her before she even said his name. “Danny,” she drawled, letting the syllables melt like rum over ice. “You smell like driftwood and other people’s mistakes.” He laughed too quickly—shoulders tight, eyes flickering like they’d misread something. A laugh that begged: please, let this stay simple. She leaned in, close enough for him to catch the synthetic coconut oil in her hair.

Later, once all requisite reports had been properly filled out, it was determined that the break-in had occurred at 9:30 a.m. Timing, as the sage has pointed out, is everything. Most especially when police forms are done in triplicate. Perhaps if it had been a weekday during the school year, the escaped murderer and bank robber extraordinaire Norman Peters might still be alive.

I saw death in his eyes. Doug sensed it too. “Stay,” he said, gripping my shirt. Sand scattered from his hands and down my front. “I can get help,” I said, not believing there’d be time. Swallowing, Doug shook his head. His lips were dry and crusted. His eyes sunken. The baking heat of the desert does that to a man.

Submissions / Daydream believer Days Hours Minutes DAYDREAM BELIEVER Stories Inspired by the Songs of the Monkees DAYDREAM BELIEVER —an anthology of crime fiction short stories inspired by the song…

1 kid (a mom at sixteen). 2 death threats (both from him, years apart). 3 years with him (I should have left sooner). 4 Plan Bs taken (one didn’t work). 5 years with Aria (she starts kindergarten in the fall). 6 friends dead (drugs , car accident , suicide, drugs , drowning). 7 times in a police station (at ages seven, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty).

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Henry didn’t particularly like any of his new neighbours, but he had a special antipathy for Dustin, the man on five. He stank, for a start, his odour lingering in the elevator for hours after he’d used it. He smoked weed wherever he felt like it, carried out loud telephone conversations in the stairwell, and blasted music day and night. He was, in short, a daily irritant, making Henry’s newly straitened life even more unpleasant than it already was.

Declan Shaw is back in CATCH ME ON A BLUE DAY. What to Expect inside... “For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.” It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide. A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut to help him with research.

Declan Shaw is back in CATCH ME ON A BLUE DAY. What to Expect inside... “For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.” It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide. A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut to help him with research.

“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.” It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide. A shockin…

In the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, where rolling hills and hidden valleys guard secrets as old as the land itself, a missing child’s case threatens to slip into oblivion. The leads have dried up. …

The heavy beat shook the thin walls of my apartment, like a coffin maker hammering nails. The Grim Reaper was getting impatient—maybe today. My lung cancer is a bastard, but so is my neighbour. He …

“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.” It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide. A shockin…

“I want to see your manager—now.” “I’m trying to help, Mrs…” Irwin glanced at the card in his hand, “Haversford-Waterford. We don’t carry draperies in that color. I’d be happy to find something sim…