In the Shadow of Revenge

by Patricia Hale

Overview

Everybody thought brilliant Cecily would leave dead-end Millers Falls for something better. But a two-decades-old tragedy locks her in place. Few understand the fierce bond that Cecily and Amelia share with Hilary, who was assaulted one summer as the two other girls watched helplessly. It's a bond of love and guilt…and a desire for vengeance that cuts clear to the bone.

So Assistant DA Cecily Minos waits, eager to see the guy in her courtroom. When Amelia meets a man who has the tattoo the girls remember seeing that day, they think they've finally caught a break. But the police refuse to reopen the case, and it's up to Cecily and Amelia to pursue their suspect.

Their investigation soon uncovers secrets best left buried. But the law is slow, and they've waited long enough for revenge…

71,000 words

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781426895845
Publisher:	Carina Press
Publication date:	07/15/2013
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	591,275
File size:	376 KB

About the Author

 Patricia Hale received an MFA degree from Goddard College in Vermont. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, NH Writers Project and Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Besides writing, her interests include hiking, kayaking and yoga. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two German Shepherds.

Read an Excerpt

I was sitting in Courtroom C inside Portland Maine's County Courthouse, half of me listening to Joe McIntire's closing arguments, the other half deciding between microwave and take-out. Like me, McIntire was an Assistant DA. He'd requested the Juvenile team while I'd put in for Domestic Violence. As expected, our cases often overlapped. Joe was trying to impress upon the jury that the fourteen-year-old kid sitting at the table behind him had brought a knife to his middle school for protection. The boy, whose stomach he'd laced open in the bathroom, had bullied him since third grade and therefore incited the defendant's attack. I agreed, but the bottom line is, our legal system says you can't fight words with knives. I glanced at the jury to get a read.

An older woman, questionably blonde, sat in the first row, crying. Beside her, an Asian twenty-something peered into a magnifying mirror, wiping lipstick off her teeth. In the second row, a man hunched behind the person in front of him and picked dirt from his fingernails. I failed to see how this represented a jury of the boy's peers. I glanced at the judge. She checked her watch. There was a time when a crime committed by a child would hold a courtroom mesmerized by its rarity. Now we had days when the entire docket held nothing but juveniles.

The cell phone in my pocket vibrated. I slipped it out and saw a new text message from Amelia, my best friend.

She's back in.

"She" referred to Hilary, the third member of our trio. It had been just the three of us for as long as I could remember, even boyfriends were kept at arm's length.

Where?

I wrote back keeping my phone between my knees. Cell phones are highly frowned upon in the courtroom and confiscated at the judge's discretion.

Psych/Addictions unit at Maine Medical Center. Meet me at 6?

I told her I would and dropped the phone into my bag. That was the thing about Hilary. She always made sure we knew when she was in, but she'd be sarcastic and ungrateful, a flat-out bitch, when we went to see her. At least to me. She had her reasons. But even though the conflict could sometimes rub us raw, we were still as tight as always. Nothing kept us apart back then, or now.

I left the courtroom before the final arguments were complete, pretty sure that I didn't want to hear the verdict anyway, and climbed two flights of stairs to my office, a cubicle among cubicles in the DA's office which employed forty-five Assistant DAs in all. My mission as a lawyer is to convict now, talk later. I know I'm supposed to want justice, but it's an afterthought. Anyone who touches a kid deserves to rot. I don't care about remorse. Each time I get a conviction and watch the perpetrator shuffle out of the courtroom in cuffs, I'm elated.

This morning when I argued against the defense council's request for a restraining order and convinced the judge to keep an abusive father in jail until his trial date, I smiled when he turned to me in tears. "No deals," I told him. The truth is I requested the Domestic Violence Unit for one reason, revenge. It's my turn to destroy some lives.