It was the perfect place to die.
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And don’t miss Carissa Ann Lynch’s other nerve-shredding thrillers!
The One Night Stand is a gripping and addictive psychological thriller featuring a one night stand that transforms into a murder scene.
What if your stalker could become your saviour? Like, Follow, Kill asks this question as an internet stalker becomes the key witness in a mysterious disappearance.
Without a Trace is another intoxicating psychological thriller following an officer who can’t find any trace of the existence of the missing child she seeks let alone any evidence of what happened to her.
My Sister is Missing spins a twenty-year-old local mystery around a case that has never been solved, a bone-chilling VHS tape depicting a horrific crime, a set of suspicious neighbors with something to hide, and the missing sister at the heart of it all.
Be sure to follow Carissa on Twitter @carissaannlynch, on Facebook @CarissaAnnLynchauthor, and check out her website at carissaannlynch.wordpress.com for all the updates on her latest work.
Now read on for an exclusive excerpt from The One Night Stand…
A night she won’t forget…
When single mum Ivy wakes up to a complete stranger lying next to her, she knows her one night stand hook-ups have to stop. The encounters mean nothing to her, but for just a short time, they allow her to forget.
A murder she can’t remember…
But then Ivy discovers the stranger in her bed has been stabbed to death, and she is covered in his blood…
The One Night Stand: Chapter 1
NOW
When I think about Delaney, I think about Dillan.
Three pounds, two ounces. The delivery nurse held her out to me in the palm of her hand, like a baby bird in its mother’s nest. And right on cue, my tiny fowl opened her eyes and mouth, changing my life forever.
She’s alive. Delaney is going to live, I’d thought.
But in those beady black eyes, those chirpy pink lips … I still saw the son who didn’t make it: Dillan.
There’s Delaney, but no Dillan.
A painful dichotomy of intense love and exceptional grief arose and gave birth to me that day.
“Only one twin survived.” The doctor was soft-spoken and honey blonde; I’ll never forget the contours of her face. And those words … her words would haunt me for the next fifteen years, probably longer. There was a name for my tragedy: twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. In layman’s terms, she had described it as one twin donating blood to the other. But the way she described it was almost morbid – one twin sucking up all the nutrients, sucking the life right out of its roommate…
My beautiful Delaney was headstrong and iron-willed, and it didn’t surprise me that she was the stronger of the two.
So, when I woke up to find my fifteen-year-old daughter standing over me, her eyes like shiny black marbles glowing in the moonlit shadows of my room, the first thing I thought about was Dillan.
Even now, Dillan is still one of my first thoughts each morning. I wonder what he would have looked like, as a teenager. Maybe just like Delaney, with black feathery hair and deep brown eyes. If you take away the lashes, and the girlish curve of her jaw … I can almost see what my son would have been…
“Mom!” Delaney hissed, tugging the blankets from my chest. It was the hiss that did it – a warning sign, that Delaney was about to scream, or in the very least, get angry and throw a few things.
“W-What is it, honey? What time is it?”
My eyes fought to stay open, my contact lenses that I wasn’t supposed to sleep in at night, sticking to the backs of my eyelids.
Delaney stood up straight, her skin so pasty and pale that it was almost translucent in the low-lit room. She had this funny look on her face.
I know that look.
Not anger, which was her go-to emotion these days … not sadness, which was probably the runner-up. No, not either of those.
Delaney is scared, I realized with a start, sitting up too fast, my head swimming as I reached for her.
“What’s wrong, Laney?”
But Delaney’s eyes refused to meet mine; they were trained on something else beside me…
“There’s a stranger in your bed.” Her words were like shivery little whispers in the dark.
My scalp prickled with fear and I leapt from the bed, nearly knocking her backwards. I stared at the shape of a man lying on the usually empty side of my bed.
He had long legs, so long they were hanging over the end of the bed. Hairy toes poked out from beneath the blankets.
I took a small step closer, holding my breath.
He was buried beneath the sheets, except for his gangly toes and a few blond pokes of hair pricking out from the top…
My brain tried to play catch up with what my eyes were seeing, but Delaney cut in, “Who the hell is he?” She took the words straight out of my mouth.
No longer was she that scared little girl I remembered from her youth – she had transitioned back into her usual mood: angry at times, and don’t-give-a-fuck mostly.
“I have no idea, Laney.”
It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. I had no recollection of inviting anyone over, but it wasn’t the first strange man I’d had in my bed this month...
“Nice, Mom. Real nice,” Delaney groaned.
My mind raced, thoughts trickling back to the last thing I remembered… I’d been online again, that stupid dating site. I hadn’t wanted a profile in the first place, but Pam and Jerry, my two friends from work, had set the whole thing up for me.
Did I invite one of the guys I met online to
