Shadow’s Keep Book Tour & Giveaway

Deputy Sheriff William Shannahan doesn’t feel like a detective, at least
not like the ones he admires on TV. Not that he needs to be; the
small town of Graybel, Mississippi, is a peaceful place, with acres
of farmland, neighbors who always take care of their own, and noise
from the outside world muted by a hundred miles of forest.

That silence is about to be broken.

When a child is found dead in the woods, the medical examiner deems it
a
dog attack. But the paw prints belong to something far larger than
any creature in the Mississippi forests, and what animal would remove
the victim’s eyes? Though no one believes him, William can’t
shake the feeling that a human killer lurks in the shadowed woods.

And his girlfriend, Cassie, has a son the same age as the victim.

Cassie Parker was raised amid horrors she’s long pushed from her mind,
but
her scars won’t let her forget. Nor do the hallucinations, dreamsso vivid she can feel and smell and taste them. And no one is more
terrified than Cassie when another victim is found mauled to
death—because this body has been drained of blood. She knows
exactly what type of person would sacrifice a child, and why they’re
after hers. But how can she explain it to William?

This is William’s chance to act like a detective, to protect the woman
and child he’s desperate to save. Pushing back against prejudice
and presumption, he uncovers a trail of cruelty that spans decades,
but each clue brings him closer to a truth more horrifying than
killer beasts in the forest. For concealed beneath small-town
politics is knowledge that will shatter everything he knows to be
true about his town—and the people in it.

Shadow’s Keep
is a mind-bending exploration of obsession, desperation, and how
far we’ll go to protect those we love.

 

Add to Goodreads

 

Website * Facebook * Facebook Group * Twitter

FOR WILLIAM SHANNAHAN, six-thirty on Tuesday, the third of August, was “the moment.” Life
was full of those moments, his mother had always told him, experiences that prevented you
from going back to who you were before, tiny decisions that changed you forever.
And that morning, the moment came and went, though he didn’t recognize it, nor would he ever
have wished to recall that morning again for as long as he lived. But he would never, from that
day on, be able to forget it.
He left his Mississippi farmhouse a little after six, dressed in running shorts and an old T-shirt
that still had sunny yellow paint dashed across the front from decorating the child’s room. The
child. William had named him Brett, but he’d never told anyone that. To everyone else, the baby
was just that-thing-you-could-never-mention, particularly since William had also lost his wife at
Bartlett General.
His green Nikes beat against the gravel, a blunt metronome as he left the porch and started
along the road parallel to the Oval, what the townsfolk called the near hundred square miles of
woods that had turned marshy wasteland when freeway construction had dammed the creeks
downstream. Before William was born, those fifty or so unlucky folks who owned property inside
the Oval had gotten some settlement from the developers when their houses flooded and were
deemed uninhabitable. Now those homes were part of a ghost town, tucked well beyond the
reach of prying eyes.
William’s mother had called it a disgrace. William thought it might be the price of progress,
though he’d never dared to tell her that. He’d also never told her that his fondest memory of the
Oval was when his best friend Mike had beat the crap out of Kevin Pultzer for punching William
in the eye. That was before Mike was the sheriff, back when they were all just “us” or “them” and
William had always been a them, except when Mike was around. He might fit in somewhere
else, some other place where the rest of the dorky goo#alls lived, but here in Graybel he was
just a little…odd.
Oh well. People in this town gossiped far too much to trust them as friends anyway.
William sniffed at the marshy air, the closely-shorn grass sucking at his sneakers as he
increased his pace. Somewhere near him a bird shrieked, sharp and high. He startled as it took
flight above him with another aggravated scream.
Straight ahead, the car road leading into town was bathed in filtered dawn, the first rays of sun
painting the gravel gold, though the road was slippery with moss and morning damp. To his
right, deep shadows pulled at him from the trees; the tall pines crouched close together as if
hiding a secret bundle in their underbrush. Dark but calm, quiet—comforting. Legs pumping,
William headed off the road toward the pines.
A snap like that of a muted gunshot echoed through the morning air, somewhere deep inside
the wooded stillness, and though it was surely just a fox, or maybe a raccoon, he paused,
running in place, disquiet spreading through him like the worms of fog that were only now rolling
out from under the trees to be burned off as the sun made its debut. Cops never got a moment
off, although in this sleepy town the worst he’d see today would be an argument over cattle. He
glanced up the road. Squinted. Should he continue up the brighter main street or escape into
the shadows beneath the trees?
That was his moment.
William ran toward the woods.
As soon as he set foot inside the tree line, the dark descended on him like a blanket, the cool air
brushing his face as another hawk shrieked overhead. William nodded to it, as if the animal had
sought his approval, then swiped his arm over his forehead and dodged a limb, pick-jogging his
way
down the path. A branch caught his ear. He winced. Six foot three was great for some things,
but not for running in the woods. Either that or God was pissed at him, which wouldn’t be
surprising, though he wasn’t clear on what he had done wrong. Probably for smirking at his
memories of Kevin
Pultzer with a torn T-shirt and a bloodied nose. He smiled again, just a little one this time.
When the path opened up, he raised his gaze above the canopy. He had an hour before he
needed to be at the precinct, but the pewter sky beckoned him to run quicker before the heat
crept up. It was a good day to turn forty-two, he decided. He might not be the best-looking guy
around, but he had his health. And there was a woman whom he adored, even if she wasn’tsure about him yet.
William didn’t blame her. He probably didn’t deserve her, but he’d surely try to convince her that
he did, like he had with Marianna…though he didn’t think weird card tricks would help this time.
But weird was what he had. Without it, he was just background noise, part of the wallpaper of
this small town, and at forty-one—no, forty-two, now—he was running out of time to start over.
He was pondering this when he rounded the bend and saw the feet. Pale soles barely bigger
than his hand, poking from behind a rust-colored boulder that sat a few feet from the edge of the
trail. He stopped, his heart throbbing an erratic rhythm in his ears.
Please let it be a doll”. But he saw the flies buzzing around the top of the boulder. Buzzing.
Buzzing.
William crept forward along the path, reaching for his hip where his gun usually sat, but he
touched only cloth. The dried yellow paint scratched his thumb. He thrust his hand into his
pocket for his lucky coin. No quarter. Only his phone.
William approached the rock, the edges of his vision dark and unfocused as if he were looking
through a telescope, but in the dirt around the stone he could make out deep paw prints.
Probably from a dog or a coyote, though these were enormous—nearly the size of a salad plate,
too big for anything he’d expect to find in these woods. He frantically scanned the underbrush,
trying to locate the animal, but saw only a cardinal appraising him from a nearby branch.
Someone’s back there, someone needs my help.
He stepped closer to the boulder. Please don’t let it be what I think it is. Two more steps and
he’d be able to see beyond the rock, but he could not drag his gaze from the trees where he
was certain canine eyes were watching. Still nothing there save the shaded bark of the
surrounding woods. He took another step—cold oozed from the muddy earth into his shoe and
around his left ankle, like a hand from the grave.
William stumbled, pulling his gaze from the trees just in time to see the boulder rushing at his
head and then he was on his side in the slimy filth to the right of the boulder, next to…
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
William had seen death in his twenty years as a deputy, but usually it was the result of a
drunken accident, a car wreck, an old man found dead on his couch.
This was not that. The boy was no more than six, probably less. He lay on a carpet of rotting
leaves, one arm draped over his chest, legs splayed haphazardly as if he, too, had tripped in the
muck. But this wasn’t an accident; the boy’s throat was torn, jagged ribbons of flesh peeled
back, drooping on either side of the muscle meat, the unwanted skin on a Thanksgiving turkey.
Deep gouges permeated his chest and abdomen, black slashes against mottled green flesh, the
wounds obscured behind his shredded clothing and bits of twigs and leaves.
William scrambled backward, clawing at the ground, his muddy shoe kicking the child’s ruined
calf, where the boy’s shy white bones peeked from under congealing blackish tissue. The legs
looked…chewed on.
His hand slipped in the muck. The child’s face was turned to his, mouth open, black tongue
lolling as if he were about to plead for help. Not good, oh shit, not good.
William finally clambered to standing, yanked his cell from his pocket, and tapped a button,
barely registering his friend’s answering bark. A fly lit on the boy’s eyebrow above a single white
mushroom that crept upward over the landscape of his cheek, rooted in the empty socket that
had once
contained an eye.
“Mike, it’s William. I need a…tell Dr. Klinger to bring the wagon.”
He stepped backward, toward the path, shoe sinking again, the mud trying to root him there,
and he yanked his foot free with a squelching sound. Another step backward and he was on the
path, and another step off the path again, and another, another, feet moving until his back
slammed against a gnarled oak on the opposite side of the trail. He jerked his head up,
squinting through the greening awning half convinced the boy’s assailant would be perched
there, ready to leap from the trees and lurch him into oblivion on flensing jaws. But there was no
wretched animal. Blue leaked through the filtered haze of dawn.
William lowered his gaze, Mike’s voice a distant crackle irritating the edges of his brain but not
breaking through—he could not understand what his friend was saying. He stopped trying to
decipher it and said, “I’m on the trails behind my house, found a body. Tell them to come in
through the path

on the Winchester side.” He tried to listen to the receiver, but heard only the buzzing of flies
across the trail—had they been so loud a moment ago? Their noise grew, amplified to unnatural
volumes, filling his head until every other sound fell away—was Mike still talking? He pushed
End, pocketed the
phone, and then leaned back and slid down the tree trunk.
And William Shannahan, not recognizing the event the rest of his life would hinge upon, sat at
the base of a gnarled oak tree on Tuesday, the third of August, put his head into his hands, and
wept.

 

Follow the tour HERE

for exclusive content and a giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway