Book Excerpt: Sabotage in the Stable - Book 10 of the Whisper Creek Mysteries series

I am busily working on the next Whisper Creek Mysteries book. This is number ten of the series, which seems unbelievable to me because it feels like a week or two ago that the idea for these books popped into my head. 

I hope you enjoy the first chapter - which is a very, very short chapter - of Sabotage in the Stable. This novel will go live on November 3, 2026.

She was dying. Life was draining out of her body, leaving behind a red stain of blood beneath her in the clean white snow. She slowly blinked her eyes. She didn't have energy to do much else. The sky above her looked like an overturned bowl of black velvet studded with glittering stars. There seemed to be a million of them. Two million.

There were so many things that she wanted to remember but couldn't. She knew she'd lived a good life. A decent life? She liked to think she'd been accomplished, but strangely, there was a lot of dead air in her mind where her memories used to be. It was almost like quiet static, whispering like the cold wind she could feel blowing across her face.

She tried to remember her name, but she couldn't even recall something as simple as that. She knew she'd probably heard it spoken, shouted, cried at least a hundred times in a day, but it was like she was already gone. It was almost like she had never existed at all.

She felt a tear escape the corner of her eye and trail down the side of her face. It got caught in the thick strands of her hair before seeping into the hollow of her ear. She couldn't remember, so she'd placate herself with the belief that yes, she'd been somebody in this life. She'd done good things. She'd made a difference. If none of that were true, she wouldn't be around to face that reality. This moment. Right this second was all she had left, and she couldn't bear to think that there wasn't somebody somewhere who would miss her when she was gone.

It felt like she didn't have a core any longer, like her body had been carved out. The only thing she could feel was that cold, mountain air against her cheeks and forehead. Where was she? How had she gotten here? Obviously, she walked … right? She couldn't remember. She wanted to turn her head to look at what was around her, but it was all just a passing thought. Her body felt more and more disconnected, and even as she thought about it, the arms and legs she'd used to hug her child and to walk across the stage were simply not there anymore.

Child …

That idea lingered longer than any of the rest, but she couldn't conjure up an image of such a thing. Was she a mother? Did she have a kid? Was she thinking about her life, or just life in general? And then those musings were gone, evaporated into the winter air. It was back to the quiet static again.

The stars glimmered above her. They called to her. They looked like shiny pieces of ice hanging in the sky. Cold. Numb. Just like she had become.

She didn't even have the energy to close her eyes before her heart stopped beating. The glimmer of stars above shone in her eyes when the small cloud of her last breath floated upward from her parted lips. And then she was gone.