Survival Instinct

“Hey,” Dave said. “If you’d let me in on your plans before you went charging out, I would have told you my gun was in the car.”

“And there’s a handy two-by-four next to the basement door, so don’t aim those baby blues at me. You didn’t have to leave me hanging!” Okay, maybe she wasn’t being fair. She was the one who’d come out alone, preferring to handle things her way. But he had led the thugs here.

“You took care of them well enough.”

She hadn’t wanted to take care of them at all. Not like that. “They’ll be back. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about that.”

“You’re kidding,” he said with surprise. “You can’t stay here and wait for them.”

But she had nowhere else to go, not unless she pulled out one of her precious fake IDs.

Not unless she was willing to abandon what Ellen had died to give her.

Dear Reader,

I was one of those good little girls. Really. I thought if I told a lie, my young world would end, and that my existence depended on the Everlasting Goodness of Me. (It made sense at the time.) But the heroine of this book, Karin Sommers? Her growing-up years depended on just how well she could lie, deceive, playact and lead adults around by the nose.

You get the idea. If there were ever two people with more disparate personal foundations…

Okay, part of me is hoping that you won’t notice that Karin is so real to me that I just referred to her as an actual person. But the rest of me hopes that in reading this book, you’ll experience the same sense of discovery I did as I wrote it. The “Oh, wow, this is what it would be like…” experience. As well as the profound sense of pride in Karin as she discovers who she really is. And those con game details that I so gleefully worked up? Just don’t tell my mom, okay?

Doranna

spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures—and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and which she instills in her characters.

Doranna’s first fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres; she now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves. Most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of titles at www.doranna.net along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos and a link to her SFF Net newsgroup.

I made up some of the tech in this novel, but from the looks of things it’ll be real by the time the book reaches the shelves…. But yes, there is a water tower on North Payne Street!

Thanks to:

The Things That Go Bang regulars The Alexandria & Scotch Connection Greg Davis, Associate Chief Medical Examiner, Commonwealth of Kentucky

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Karin Sommers’s Journal, March 12

Dear Ellen—

Happy birthday. I miss you terribly, and I’m sorry you’re dead.

I wish it weren’t my fault.

February 17, previous year

Karin Sommers twisted in the front seat of the Subaru Outback, reaching for the bag of pretzels perched precariously on the clothes crammed behind her. Every nook of the car held the carefully chosen belongings she and her older sister, Ellen, had extracted from Karin’s small California apartment. Extracted, piled on and driven casually away as if it weren’t the biggest breakout since the Birdman of Alcatraz.

But she wasn’t looking at her things, and she wasn’t really looking for the pretzels. She looked back at the dizzying curve of road disappearing into the darkness behind them. The sign for the Kentucky state line was already hidden behind a jut of construction-cut mountainside. The coal truck riding their bumper quickly lost ground as they hit this latest series of severe asphalt curlicues.

Have we made it yet?

“You’ll get carsick if you keep that up.” Ellen plied the wheel expertly, familiar with the abrupt and narrow Appalachian roads. “Besides, we’re two-thirds of the way across the country. If dear old stepdad had a clue where you were, he’d have been breathing down our necks a long time ago.”