We are absolutely thrilled to be able to share with you this excerpt from Jon McGoran‘s forthcoming international, ecological thriller, Dust Up — available April 19th from Tor / Forge Books.
McGoran will be visiting Mystery Lovers on April 23rd — check out this preview before you go!
“Dust Up is an explosive international thriller… McGoran proves that he is the new master of this genre.” – New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry
“The action is unending, and McGoran displays enviable skill… [Dust Up is] A first-tier thriller.” – Booklist
Chapter 1
At the first knock, I was fully awake. It was that kind of sound—hard, sharp, urgent. Loud. I pulled on my pants and grabbed my gun.
There was the tiniest pause, and for a moment I wondered if it was a cop. It was an almost perfect cop knock — bang, bang, bang. Maybe it was my partner Danny and something was wrong. Or one of my other fellow public guardians got drunk and thought it would be a hoot to “cop knock” my door in the middle of the night. Or maybe I was in trouble.
Then it kept going. Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.
That was no cop.
The pounding grew faster, from urgent to frantic. I was halfway down the stairs when it changed again, from a fist against a door to an explosive report. A gunshot. Then another and another. The sounds didn’t overlap— when one started, the other one stopped.
Bang bang bang bang bang— BANG BANG BANG.
I skipped the last few steps, but by the time I jerked open the door, both sounds were gone, replaced by the squeal of tires and the engine roar of a black Toyota Corolla speeding away. Just before it disappeared, the driver looked right at me. She was Asian, young, maybe pretty, but her face was contorted. Anguish, sorrow, fear.
Then she was gone.
I looked down.
“What is it?” Nola asked, coming down the stairs behind me.
“Stay back!”
She stopped, halfway down. “What is it?” she asked again, quieter, sadder. Like somehow she knew.
“Just . . . stay back, okay?”
The red blossom on his chest was still growing, but his eyes were glassy and gone. Nothing was pumping that blood. He let out a soft sigh. His last breath.
I wanted to close the door, go back to bed and pretend it hadn’t happened. Maybe I would have, but he was slumped across the threshold. I knew it would be a while before I closed that door again.
“Doyle?” Nola called, still standing on the steps, sounding small and far away.
I looked out the doorway, up and down the deserted street.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
That’s what you have to say. What I meant was, I was okay, although that wasn’t true, either. I came back to the bottom of the stairs. “Someone’s been shot.”
She nodded because she already knew it. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Chapter 2
“Ronald Hartwell,” Detective Mike Warren announced, reading it off his note pad like it was the result of some impressive feat of detective work. As if finding the guy’s wallet and copying the name off his driver’s license made Warren a hotshot.
Danny caught my eye and smiled. He was off duty, but he’d come over as soon as he heard. We were leaning against one of the parked cars in front of my Fishtown row home while Warren impressed us with his deductive reasoning.
“So who is he?” I asked.
“Some dead guy,” Warren said with a snort, laughing as though he wasn’t the only one doing it. “Seriously, though . . .” His head snapped around. “Maybe you should be telling me.”
Mike Warren was a bit of a dick.
“Well, maybe you could look through his wallet a little more,” Danny said. “You know, find some more ‘clues.’ ”
Warren ignored that, looking at me sideways. “ You’re saying you don’t know the man, but I find it interesting he decides to get himself killed on your front doorstep. Weird, ain’t it?”
I shrugged. I had told him what happened several times already.
He nodded sagely, as if something would come to him.
“Could be coincidence,” Danny said. “Guy sees someone coming up on him, starts pounding on the nearest doorway.”
Warren kept nodding, then turned to me. “But you saw the girl who did it, right?” He looked at his note pad. “ Isn’t that what you said? Fleeing the scene of the crime.”
That was not what I had said. “I don’t know who did it. I saw a woman driving away fast. She looked upset.”
“So, what,” he said, “you don’t think she was fleeing the scene of the crime?”
“Pretty rough thing to witness. She might have just wanted to get away before she was next.”
“But you didn’t see anybody else out here, right?”
I shook my head. I knew she was the main suspect, and she should be, but the look on her face said she wasn’t trying to get away with murder; she was trying to get away from murder.
Warren shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t running away at all. Maybe she was in a hurry to go kill someone else.”
He had a laugh at that, then he held out a business card. “Call me if you remember anything else.”
I left his hand hanging there. “I know where to reach you.”
He nodded smugly as he put the card away, like he’d heard I was an asshole and I had just confirmed it.
Excerpted from Dust Up by Jon McGoran (Tor / Forge Books). Reprinted with permission from the author.
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