Blog Tour: Valentina Giambanco's Blood and Bone

 

The Crime Warp is lucky enough to be hosting Valentina Giambanca's Blood and Bone blog tour today.  Read on for an extract from  the third in her Detective Alice Madison series (Released in PB 25th August 2016)

 

 

Chapter 1

Present day

The nightclub sat a little off the main road, surrounded by trees on one side and a warehouse on the other. It was almost eleven and the parking lot was full. The music – a series of eighties classics – had found its way out of the squat building and low thumping pulsed  in the chilly air.  Two men sat in a gray Mazda with the engine running and the   heating turned up high. They had been parked for half an hour, waiting. They already knew when they drove there that the club would be closed for a private event – a bachelor party – and still they sat in their car, drinking and smoking in silence. The waiting felt almost as good as what was to come later; it gave their enterprise the guise of a hunt.

      The club door opened, spilling orange light on the wet concrete with a blast of U2, and a woman walked out. One of the men wiped the condensation on the windshield with his sleeve to get a better look at her. His eyes tracked her long strides as she reached an SUV.

       ‘Here we go,’ he said and he pulled the handle to get out of the car.

Alice Madison felt the bite of the air, and it was a relief after the heavy warmth and the alcohol fumes inside. Her Land Rover Freelander was parked close by and she was rummaging in the back seat when she heard car doors opening and closing behind her and steps approaching.

      ‘Hello there,’ a man said.

      Madison turned. ‘Hello,’ she replied. Two men stood a few yards away; she didn’t recognize either of them.

      ‘Club’s closed,’ the taller one said. ‘Bachelor party.’

      ‘Yes,’ Madison replied, and knew instantly that they were not guests: they were two guys in their late twenties – only a handful of years younger than she was – who wanted to make conversation with a stranger in a parking lot and who would definitely blow a 0.1 if breathalyzed.

      ‘Do you work in the club?’ The man continued. ‘I’ve been here before but I’ve never seen you, and I’d sure remember someone as cute as you.’ He grinned and it was neither friendly nor pretty. His friend giggled and darted a look at the lot. No one else was about. Madison clocked him doing it.

      ‘No, I don’t work here,’ she said, politely, but that was all the chat they were going to get from her, and she closed the car door.

      The plastic bag in her hand was wrapped around a DVD case; she had found what she wanted and it was time to go back inside. The men stood between her and the club door.

      ‘If you’re not a waitress then you must be the entertainment,’ the taller man said, and he looked her up and down. There was a nasty slick behind the words and Madison smelled rank sweat and beer in the cold November air.

      She took the measure of them: white, six feet tall or thereabouts, built and dressed like they did their running in gyms and their fighting on the Xbox. Had they been drinking in their car, waiting for the right person to leave the club?

      ‘Gentlemen, I heartily recommend that you ask the staff inside to call you a taxi to take you back wherever you’ve come from,’ she said and moved forward, but they blocked her path.

      The shorter one opened his mouth and his voice was reedy and too high for someone his size. ‘I don’t think she likes you,’ he told his friend.

      Madison sighed. ‘You’re having a really bad night, you just don’t know it yet. Go home, before you do something stupid.’

      Their smiles went away. They were somewhere between tipsy and drunk and yet lucid enough to understand that for some reason the woman in front of them was neither charmed nor intimidated by their efforts.

      This is going to go one of two ways. Madison squared up to them – hoping they were smarter than they looked but ready in case they were just as dumb as she thought.

Available in PB £7.99, Amazon Kindle £3.99 or HB £17.99 Click here

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