Whiskey LullabyAn Addison Holmes Novel
Liliana Hart
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
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
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Liliana Hart
Copyright © 2020 by Liliana Hart
All rights reserved.
Published by 7th Press
Dallas, TX 75115
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dedication
To Scott -
Thank you for taking me on trips and buying me snacks when I’m stuck in a story. You understand my process well. And thanks for loving me when I want to throw every book in the trash and start over at the halfway point. You’re an awesome husband.
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to all the team of people who help get these books on the shelves. It truly takes a village.
Thanks to Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs for the amazing cover. Thank you to my editing team, Imogen Howsen and Ava Hodge.
And a special thanks to Scott Silverii, for reading this book as fast as I could throw chapters at him and helping me plot through the storms. You’re an excellent researcher, brainstormer, sounding board, and formatter. I’m glad we’re married, otherwise you’d be really expensive.
Prologue
Friday
They say it’s not over till the fat lady sings.
I wasn’t fat yet, but my time was coming. I figured it was best to get my last rodeo out of the way before cankles and stretch marks set in. Though technically, my last rodeo had been a few weeks ago when I’d closed my last case. But retirement had caused a proverbial hitch in my get-along.
I wasn’t sure where all the cowboy imagery was coming from, but I’d been having weird dreams that Sam Elliott was trying to recruit me to become a US Marshal and hunt down outlaws. Sam also wanted me to put a bit in his mouth and ride him like a stallion, but I declined because I’m a married woman now.
Pregnancy hormones are weird.
My name is Addison Holmes, and I’m no stranger to weird. It was a miracle Nick had married me at all. I’m Southern by birth, which means I come from a long line of crazy. The good news is Nick is Southern too, so he wouldn’t know what to do with a normal woman.
My mother always said that good intentions paved the road to hell, and my intention had been to retire from the PI world and move on to the next phase of my life. I had no idea what that phase was going to be. I was in what the experts liked to call “transition.” The limbo of not knowing anything about my future, except that there’d be a tiny human attached to it, was daunting to say the least, and I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t handling it all that well.
Between Sam Elliott and my murky future, it didn’t take a psychologist to know that I was missing the action my previous life provided. I was the kind of woman who needed adventure and excitement. In truth, I’d become an adrenaline junky and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Which might have been the reason I’d agreed to take this case, even though I’d told Nick I was done with PI work forever. Which was why this was going to be my little secret.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been halfway decent at my job at the McClean Detective Agency. I was as surprised as anyone else as far as the halfway decent moniker went. It’s not skill or experience I possess, so much as bulldog tenacity and luck.
Sometimes my tenacity got me into trouble. I could have turned this whole thing over to a veteran PI, the cops, or even the FBI. But this case hit close to home, and I’d promised my mother I’d take care of it without dragging our family name through the mud. But considering Aunt Scarlet had been dragging our name through the mud for years, I wasn’t so sure what she was worried about. Holmes women had been making headlines for decades.
I was pretty sure if I got out of this alive I’d be making more than headlines, because if Nick became aware of my current situation I’d have to move to another country.
Vince Walker was my stepfather, and I’d tracked him to a fishing cabin on the bayou where I’d hoped to catch him in the throes of passion with a twenty-something townie skank.
I’d been there about five minutes when a car had pulled up and Vince had shushed me and shoved me out the back door onto a floating dock the size of a doormat that moved every time I shifted my weight. He told me to avoid the flotants and keep quiet.
I didn’t know what a flotant was, and if I’d had cell service I would’ve Googled it, but I figured whatever it was, I’d at least be able to see it coming for me. There was a pirogue tied to the dock and it swayed gently in the marshy green water. Gnats and other bugs hovered over the scummy surface, and other things I didn’t want to think about made creaking noises off into the mossy trees.
The bayou was a cacophony of smells—hot mud, dirty dishwater, and fish—for the most part. My sense of smell had become heightened over the past few weeks—meaning if the wind blew the wrong way I was probably going to throw up. I was going to have to add the bayou to the growing list
