Cursing Angie Faust Series Book 1 by Lynne Murray Genre: Urban Fantasy
The day she killed her boss… Everything changed. She never laid a hand on him to take his life. She didn’t have to. As her boss lies on the floor with a dozen witnesses staring and paramedics working in a futile effort to save him, a mysterious stranger approaches Angie with a bizarre offer. It’s a job with the ExtraTerrestrial Protection Agency, a secret organization. Can Angie trust a group whose very existence is ultra classified? She has to decide in a hurry because her newly released power starts drawing attention from life-draining, telepathic, Mindworms and alien scientists obsessed with abducting humans. Most terrifying of all, she’s stalked by one of the most fearsome predators in the galaxy. If you loved Men in Black or Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles series, buckle up for a wild ride with Angie Faust in Cursing. Get it now! Goodreads * Amazon
Lynne Murray was born in Illinois, but she grew up in transit due to her father’s work with the military. She’s lived in Texas, Alaska, Florida, Washington state, and Southern California, before landing and staying in San Francisco. Lynne writes the kind of books she loves to read. Those usually feature a lot of action, quirky characters and supernatural attitude. She just might read anything that isn’t tied down, but some of the books that have to be restrained also make it onto her list. Her favorite authors include Illona Andrews, Faith Hunter, Patricia Briggs, Kim Hamilton, Terry Pratchett and T.H. White. She now lives and writes and stares out the window at the ocean with a group of rescue cats, who rescue her right back with heroic feats of purring. Website * Blog * Facebook * Facebook * TwitterPinterest * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads
Chapter 1
Things changed the day I killed my boss. I was trying so hard not to.
He died quickly from cardiac arrest in front of a dozen witnesses in the glassed-in
fishbowl of a conference room at Wolfe, Savage and Steele, the law firm where we
worked. I never touched him physically. I didn’t have to. His name was Carroll Caine.
The Office Manager’s death interrupted an extended yelling session aimed at me.
Caine was a short, square-built man with small bulging, blue eyes, a permanently red face
and silver hair, cut brush short. For some reason, he had singled me out for verbal abuse
almost from his first day on the job. He retired from the Navy as a Warrant Officer. Law
firms like to hire former non-coms on the theory that they work well with a formal chain
of command. But for Caine, taking orders from civilian lawyers he didn’t respect chafed
him like a sandpaper jockstrap.
He took it out on his subordinates. I was a favorite target.
Understanding why Caine attacked me so often didn’t protect me when he did.
My other co-workers looked away in embarrassment or relief that, at least for the
moment, Caine wasn’t singling them out. Not Francine, the woman sitting next to me in
the conference room. She was petite, blonde and eager to score points with Caine by
digging up the slightest hint of an error on my part.
Caine picked a bad day to stand over me and settle in for an extended rant. My Aunt
Bess had simply disappeared six months earlier and without her, I had no one. The pain
of her loss had retreated to a dull ache most days, but sometimes it flared up into a sharp
pain of grief and confusion.
I focused all my attention on breathing slowly and letting his word roll over me.
I huddled in my chair, trying to make myself invisible, staring down at the pad of
paper in front of me, a pencil gripped in my hand.
Caine paused for breath as if savoring looking down at me. He leaned in close.
“You’d already be out of here if I didn’t suspect you might have a hidden disability and
you’d sue all our asses. Is that it, Angie?”
“Look at me!”
I slowly looked up and met his eyes. Bad idea. The urge to let loose the anger that
built in every cell of my body. I blinked when a cloud of black dots like a swarm of tiny
insects filled my vision, swirling between Caine and Francine. I glanced around. Most
people stared at the table or Caine. No one else gave any sign of seeing the whirling dots.
Great Angie, you’re hallucinating, just what I need.
“Keeping something up your sleeve, Angie? Maybe you lied on your employment
application?” His spit landed on my face. Droplets hit my glasses. I wanted to wipe them
off, but I didn’t move a muscle.
I could smell Caine’s rage under the Bay Rum aftershave and lingering cigar smoke
on his breath.
Something inside me settled. Everything seemed sharper, clearer and despite the
black cloud of dots passing between Francine and Caine. It couldn’t be real. A voice
somewhere in the mists of early life echoed in my head.
Stop the heart.
Deadly calm washed over me. I felt myself starting to shake as if there was an
earthquake. There was not. Yet an inner vibration shook me physically like the roars I
heard when my aunt took me to the Lion House at the San Francisco Zoo at feeding time.
I focused on Caine. Not on his face, on his chest. Every sound in the room fell away.
I found his heart. I raised my hand to point at him, still holding the pencil.
He straightened up. A slow smile on his face told me he was hoping he had made me
mad enough to do something stupid. He had.
“Ya gonna hit me, Angie?” he asked.
“No.” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so calm.
Now.
I snapped my arm a few inches back as if I meant to throw the pencil at him. Caine
instinctively rocked back on his heels, but there was no escape for him. Energy tore
through me. My fingers tingled as I completed the short gesture toward his chest. I sensed
the familiar but unknown force piercing him like a tool. It reached for his heart and
grabbed it. And squeezed.
The pencil broke in half. The eraser end bounced off the table and fell on the rug. I
lowered my arm, feeling his heart, frozen in a spasm as if my hand really was squeezing
it. The inner shaking stopped and I took a deep breath, suddenly, oddly at peace.
Caine’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor. He twitched a few times. I
don’t know how, but I could feel his life leave his body. He wasn’t coming back.
I stood up and backed away as two co-workers rushed past me to attempt CPR. They
knelt beside him, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to revive him. I jammed my hands
into my pockets and finally let go of the top half of the pencil. I kept my head down
because I couldn’t help myself from smiling. The roaring inside me was gone. The swarm
of black particles was gone too.
I took my hands out of my pockets and saw a couple of wood slivers had pierced my
skin. I was bleeding. It didn’t even hurt. I didn’t feel anything but relief at the sudden
quiet when Caine shut up.
Then the fear hit.
Everything I learned growing up told me I should go home, grab my getaway pack
and leave town. It would be hard to run without my aunt organizing our escape.
I didn’t want to move again. I loved San Francisco. The rent-controlled apartment
was my true refuge with my grandfather’s books lining almost every wall.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to run. Maybe no one noticed how Caine had died. People
drew back to the edges of the room while efforts to revive him got more frantic. No one
paid the slightest bit of attention to me. It wasn’t as if I’d physically touched the old man.
Maybe no one would blame me.
Scratch that.
As I surreptitiously dabbed Caine’s saliva off my face and glasses with the cuff of
my long-sleeved blouse, I raised my head and looked straight into the eyes of the most
gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He twirled a pair of sunglasses in his hand and continued to
stare right at me.
He had a tousled mop of sun-streaked light brown hair. He wore a tan suit about the
same shade as his hair and a light blue shirt and gold and darker blue striped tie. His
angelic face, even features and sensual lips seemed familiar. Maybe I’d seen him in one
of those semi-porn underwear ads—the kind where you don’t look closely at the model’s
face because you’re too busy checking out that impossibly lithe and muscular body. He
leaned against the receptionist’s desk as if he owned it, as if he owned any place he stood
simply by standing there.
He stowed his glasses in his jacket pocket and raised a blond eyebrow at me as if
asking a question with luminous blue eyes.
The receptionist, a sixty-something retired airline stewardess with a British accent,
had already called 911. Now she leaned over her counter at the perfect angle to check out
Underwear Model Man’s ass at the same time that she watched the drama around our co-
workers struggling to revive Caine.
Underwear Model Man held my gaze and nodded at me. I flinched in surprise. He
didn’t quite smile, but his eyes crinkled as if we had a secret understanding. A deep
feeling of dread settled like lead in my gut. This couldn’t be good.
I made it past the reception desk and nearly to the elevator when Underwear Model
Man fell into step beside me. He was taller than me. I’m five ten, he must have been
around six feet.
“Meet me for coffee after work,” he whispered, leaning close. He smelled of Irish
Spring soap. “There’s someone you need to talk to. Someone you have a lot in common
with. You won’t regret it.”
I kept moving without answering. Every woman in the place stared at this guy. He
was that magnetic. The last thing I wanted at this particular moment was anyone paying
attention to me.
But the stranger followed me and held the elevator door while I got in. “Seriously,
you owe it to yourself to listen to an offer that would get you out of this…place.” He
didn’t have to say “This hellhole,” it was implicit in his tone. I couldn’t disagree with
him. The only thing I liked about Wolfe, Savage and Steele was the paycheck.
“An offer I can’t refuse, huh?” I snapped at him. “That turned out so well for the guy
who found the horse’s head in his bed.”
The man chuckled. “No dead horses, I promise. But your skills deserve better.”
“You know nothing about my skills,” I kept my voice low.
“Don’t I?”
Francine and three other women slipped past Underwear Model Man into the
elevator with me. They all stared at and me, then back at him again.
He let go of the door and it closed before I could say another word.
An older woman whose name I didn’t know commented on how fine that young man
was. Then the elevator bell dinged for our floor and we all filed out in silence. No one
mentioned Caine.
Underwear Model Man was leaning against the building waiting for me when I went out
the front door. He’d taken off his tie and it was hard not to look at the tanned skin and a
curl of golden chest hair showing where the top button of his shirt was open.
“Hi, I’m Chad Falconer.”
At least I didn’t have to keep calling him Underwear Model Man. Automatically, I
responded, “Angie Faust.” I instantly regretted that. Now he knew my name.
I needed to get away fast. Men like him don’t follow women like me home from
work without some agenda. Whatever his reason it didn’t involve flowers, dinner dates
and happy endings. Maybe he sensed how desperately I missed my aunt. Predators can
read body language and track wounded animals.
“Whatever it is you’re selling, I can’t afford it.”
He grinned as if I’d said something terribly witty. “Fair enough,” he said, falling into
an easy pace beside me. Chad persisted, walking closer and tilting his head down to get
my attention.
“Whoever you are and whatever you want, I don’t trust you,” I said.
“The only reason you should listen to me at all is that you and I seem to be the only
two people who understood what was going on this morning.”
I stopped so fast he almost ran into me.
“My boss had a stroke or heart attack while he was yelling at me. He was an old
man. He had a strenuous day of verbally abusing people. His heart just gave out.”
“It doesn’t usually happen that way though, does it?” Chad said. “I don’t know about
you, but the people I want to see die usually go on to live a disgustingly healthy life of
making everyone miserable and die peacefully in bed at 95.”
“You can’t blame me for what happened,” I concluded, my voice wavering a little.
He seemed to understand because he stepped away a foot or so. “Believe me, Angie,
blame is the last word I would use to describe you or anything you do.” He stepped in
front of me to stop for a moment but he held out his hands out with palms up. “Would
you do me a favor?”
“Maybe. Will you let me alone if I do?”
“Absolutely. The only thing I ask is that you come with me to a coffee shop and
meet someone who understands your great gift.”
“Gift?” I snorted a small burst of laughter at that thought.
“Seriously, it’s a public place, a café not far from here. No pressure.”
I stared at him. I never admitted that I was responsible for the violent things that
happened around me. My aunt and I rarely spoke about it. “Where is this place?”
“It’s an easy walk. Come on, it will only take half an hour of your time.”
I admit I was curious and absurdly relieved that he didn’t seem to be selling anything or
whipping out a chloroformed rag and forcing me into a car. But mainly I agreed because
of a vain hope that there might actually be a way to cope with whatever the hell it was
that I had been fighting my whole life.
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