Bitter Truth Read online

  Bitter Truth

  A Beacon Falls Thriller featuring Lucy Guardino

  CJ Lyons

  Praise For CJ Lyons’ Thrillers with Heart:

  "Everything a great thriller should be—action packed, authentic, and intense." ~#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

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  "A compelling new voice in thriller writing…I love how the characters come alive on every page." ~New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver

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  "Top Pick! A fascinating and intense thriller." ~ RT Book Reviews

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  "An intense, emotional thriller…(that) climbs to the edge of intensity." ~National Examiner

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  "A perfect blend of romance and suspense. My kind of read." ~#1 New York Times Bestselling author Sandra Brown

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  "Highly engaging characters, heart-stopping scenes…one great rollercoaster ride that will not be stopping anytime soon." ~Bookreporter.com

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  "Adrenalin pumping." ~The Mystery Gazette

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  "Riveting." ~Publishers Weekly Beyond Her Book

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  Lyons "is a master within the genre." ~Pittsburgh Magazine

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  "Will leave you breathless and begging for more." ~Romance Novel TV

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  "A great fast-paced read….Not to be missed." ~Book Addict

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  "Breathtakingly fast-paced." ~Publishers Weekly

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  "Simply superb…riveting drama…a perfect ten." ~Romance Reviews Today

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  "Characters with beating hearts and three dimensions." ~Newsday

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  "A pulse-pounding adrenalin rush!" ~Lisa Gardner

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  "Packed with adrenalin." ~David Morrell

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  "…Harrowing, emotional, action-packed and brilliantly realized." ~Susan Wiggs

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  "Explodes on the page…I absolutely could not put it down." ~Romance Readers' Connection

  CJ Lyons’ Thrillers with Heart:

  To download the complete list in PDF click HERE or visit CJLyons.net

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  LUCY GUARDINO THRILLERS:

  SNAKE SKIN

  BLOOD STAINED

  KILL ZONE

  AFTER SHOCK

  HARD FALL

  BAD BREAK

  LAST LIGHT

  DEVIL SMOKE

  OPEN GRAVE

  GONE DARK

  BITTER TRUTH

  RENEGADE JUSTICE THRILLERS, featuring Morgan Ames:

  FIGHT DIRTY

  RAW EDGES

  ANGELS WEEP

  LOOK AWAY

  TRIP WIRE

  FATAL INSOMNIA MEDICAL THRILLERS:

  FAREWELL TO DREAMS

  A RAGING DAWN

  THE SLEEPLESS STARS

  HART AND DRAKE MEDICAL SUSPENSE:

  NERVES OF STEEL

  SLEIGHT OF HAND

  FACE TO FACE

  EYE OF THE STORM

  SHADOW OPS, ROMANTIC THRILLERS:

  CHASING SHADOWS

  LOST IN SHADOWS

  EDGE OF SHADOWS

  CAITLYN TIERNEY FBI THRILLERS:

  BLIND FAITH

  BLACK SHEEP

  HOLLOW BONES

  ANGELS OF MERCY MEDICAL SUSPENSE:

  LIFELINES

  WARNING SIGNS

  URGENT CARE

  CRITICAL CONDITION

  YOUNG ADULT THRILLERS:

  BROKEN

  WATCHED

  CO-WRITTEN WITH ERIN BROCKOVICH:

  ROCK BOTTOM

  HOT WATER

  SINGLE TITLE STANDALONES:

  LUCIDITY, a Ghost of a Love Story

  BORROWED TIME

  With almost a million copies sold, readers can’t get enough of Lucy Guardino, everyone’s favorite Pittsburgh soccer mom turned kick-ass FBI agent!

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  Don’t miss any of Lucy’s adventures:

  SNAKE SKIN, a USA Today Bestseller

  BLOOD STAINED, a USA Today Bestseller

  KILL ZONE, a Suspense Magazine Book of the Year

  AFTER SHOCK, a novella

  HARD FALL, Winner of the 2015 Thriller Award

  BAD BREAK, a novella

  and Lucy’s NEW Beacon Falls Mysteries:

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  LAST LIGHT

  DEVIL SMOKE

  OPEN GRAVE

  GONE DARK

  BITTER TRUTH

  Everything a great thriller should be—action packed, authentic, and intense.” ~Lee Child

  Want to be the first to have a chance to read the new books? Sign up for my Thrillers with Heart newsletter HERE—and you’ll also get a free copy of the first Lucy adventure, SNAKE SKIN!

  Be sure to open the Thrillers with Heart emails; they’ll arrive every few weeks with info on contests, new books, and exclusive offers for my readers!

  Chapter One

  There are some who say hunting animals for sport is cruel and barbaric. I agree. After all, animals cannot fully comprehend the fact that they are being hunted from afar, and when the knowledge of a threat finally emerges—if ever, given modern high-powered rifles and scopes—they react with thoughtless instinct. Where’s the fun in that?

  But humans… that’s a different matter altogether. Stalking prey as cunning and dangerous as you are, who could easily turn into predator if given the chance… what greater challenge could there be?

  I will never kill an animal for sport. But a man? Why not? It’s as much my life at risk as his; our commonplace, barbaric, primal fight for survival elevated to a game of wit and daring.

  And if someone’s too blind, too civilized, too soft, dimwitted, or slow to recognize me as a deadly threat when I have them in my sights, then they really are just dumb animals, deserving of whatever fate befalls them. Boring as chasing a rabbit into a snare. I prefer my game armed with wits, desperate enough to resort to teeth and claws, as capable of killing me as I am them.

  It makes victory taste all the more sweet…

  Magruder County, Idaho is known for many things. The least miles of paved roads per capita. Not just in the state; in the entire US of A. The highest concentration of wolves, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions in the lower forty-eight. The lowest rate of violent crime in the tri-state area. The most arrests for poaching—although the citizens of Magruder County refuse to acknowledge hunting slightly out of season to put food on the table as a crime, the federal government that manages the three wilderness areas and two national forests that occupy most of the county still does.

  The least accessible county seat in the state. The highest number of private airstrips—there being no paved roads beyond Poet Springs, the county seat. The lowest number of hospital beds, being zero since the nearest hospital is two hundred twelve miles away in Lewiston or east over the mountains to Missoula.

  And the most flavorful huckleberries in the whole damn world. At least that was Sheriff Bill Beachey’s opinion as he strode through a patch of fireweed, skirted a mound of bear scat that was at least a day old, and made his way to the clearing at the top of the cliff overlooking Blanco Canyon.

  He snatched a handful of the tiny indigo berries and dribbled them into his mouth one at a time, savoring the moment when their skins burst open, releasing their flavorful juice. Huckleberries were even better when his wife, Deena, baked them into pies or the bread that she used to make French toast on Sunday mornings, or boiled them into jam she’d save for the winter months to remind them of these glorious summer days.

  Winters were harsh here on the western slope of the Bitterroots, where arctic winds pounded their fists against unyielding granite peaks,
howling, trapped in the mountains’ embrace until the air shed tears of thick, wet snow that some days felt as if it would never stop. But when Deena brought out the huckleberry jam, one taste magically made summer seem not so far away.

  It had been a hot July, and now, the first week of August, the berries were ripening quickly. He’d bring Deena here this weekend, Bill thought. Just like when they were first courting—and with Deena, unlike the girls who’d come before, it had definitely been courting, from the first moment he met her, forty-one years ago when they were both just high school kids. Pick some berries, then fall asleep with his head in her lap as she read aloud from whatever book she had handy, the summer breeze teasing her long, dark hair across his face, the last thing he’d see before he closed his eyes. Sheer heaven.

  Couldn’t have days like that back in Denver—not without his phone going off, interrupting them with a callout to a crime scene. After thirty years working the city streets, he’d thought he wanted to retire, come back home to these mountains, take up fishing or the like. But it turned out sitting around all day trying to learn how to relax was more stressful than working a triple homicide with the leads gone dry. He’d been slowly going crazy. Until Sheriff Langer had his heart attack—a mild one, a wake-up call, the doctors had told him—and asked Bill to fill in until the election.

  Funny thing was, returning to law enforcement—even in a sleepy county like Magruder, where ninety percent of his time was spent in his Jeep, driving from one minor call to the next—had probably saved Bill’s life. It had definitely saved his sanity and his marriage. He loved the job so much that last week he’d actually filed the paperwork to put his name on the ballot come November—the only name on the ballot so far, the county clerk who also functioned as their department’s dispatcher and the county postmistress had told him.

  The last drop of berry juice eased its way down his throat. Bill smiled and pushed the brim of his Bronco’s ball cap up to better let the sun graze his face. He moved through the meadow to the edge of the cliff, facing east over the valley carved out by ancient glaciers and past it to rows of jagged white peaks towering over forests green with balsam, cedar, and pine, then beyond them to more peaks, these just across the state line in Montana.

  He’d ask Deena to read him some poetry during their picnic, he decided. Yeats or Yates or some other dead Irishman. She’d love it.

  He slid his phone from his shirt pocket and took a few photos for Deena. Loose pebbles cascaded down the sheer cliff face, bouncing off the boulders below. An innately cautious man—it was how he’d survived thirty years on the job in Denver—Bill stepped back.

  Which was how he was caught off balance. A lightning strike of electricity surged through him, freezing his muscles, pain ripping down every nerve. Then a shove from behind pushed him over the cliff’s edge.

  At first he flew, his cry of surprise filling the air. Then he hit the rocky scree-covered slope and his howl was cut short. His body bounced and skidded against cruel blades of granite, not a tree or bush in sight for a handhold; the rocks offered no purchase, only more damage to his hurtling body. He flailed his arms up to protect his head but was held captive by gravity, and he hit the ridge with a sickening crack of bone that echoed across the gorge.

  And then there was silence. As if the entire forest had paused, waiting to see if Bill were dead or alive.

  For a long time, no sound came. Slowly, timidly, afraid to draw the attention of the predator on the cliff, the forest came alive once more. Then, amid the buzzing of insects and the rustling of leaves in the breeze and a variety of small animals intent on gathering food and the soft padding of carnivores stalking their prey came a foreign sound from the cliff’s edge: human laughter.

  Chapter Two

  Lucy Guardino shivered as she sat in the air conditioning of the University of Pittsburgh’s orthopedic surgeon’s examination room. Given that most patients would be wearing thin hospital gowns or dressed like her in shorts and a T-shirt, the cold air seemed to serve to mainly add insult to the overall indignity of being a patient.

  Waiting over an hour wasn’t helping. Especially when she could hear Dr. Twame’s deep bass laughter as he chatted with his nurses outside the room. Why was it that every orthopedic surgeon she’d encountered thought he was irresistible to women? And none of them seemed to know how to read a clock. She was always fifteen minutes early for every appointment; they were invariably at least an hour late.

  At least this was hopefully her last appointment for a while. Even her physical therapist, a.k.a. the Sadist, said her recovery from the dog mauling that had almost cost her her leg had been remarkable. All she needed now from Twame was an answer for the new pain that was plaguing her: an almost constant tooth-rattling spike that radiated from mid-calf down to her little toe. She’d dealt with plenty of pain during her rehab—the lightning jolts of nerves healing; cramps and muscle spasms; a deep bone ache that drilled into her very marrow. She’d been able to grit through all of that and make it out the other side—until now, when she thought she was healed, that finally her life could return to normal, this new pain was threatening to slowly drive her insane.

  “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” Twame said as he pushed through the door, holding an X-ray of her ankle up before him as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “What am I going to do with you?”

  He plopped down on the exam stool and wheeled it over to her. Even though she was sitting with her legs dangling over the end of the exam table, he was still tall enough to meet her gaze. Twame was in his mid-thirties with the build of a former football player—and the arrogance. “You know this is a masterpiece?” He waved the X-ray with its bristling hardware shining bright white against the grays and black of her bones and muscles. “You’re my Mona Lisa. So why do you insist on ruining my handiwork?”

  Given that it wasn’t his ankle but hers—and that she had worked her butt off these past eight months, rehabbing it to be able to walk again, albeit with the help of a brace—she answered with a glare. “Bottom line.”

  His sigh ruffled the film he still held before him, preferring to stare into its depths rather than at his flesh and blood patient. “Most patients, this long out, I’d be discharging them from follow up, telling them to return as needed. But you…”

  “Is it because of the times I re-injured it?” Nothing major. A pin twisted loose after she tackled a serial killer. A moderate sprain when she slipped and fell while outrunning a wild fire. Other injuries sustained after she’d left the FBI to join the Beacon Group as a private investigative consultant. Lucy’s leaving the FBI hadn’t exactly been voluntary—more like politically motivated. The powers that be under the new director had decided to retire her, citing a “career-ending” line of duty injury.

  “Well,” the surgeon hedged. “We always knew the damaged nerves would be problematic. Did the new meds help with the dysautonomia?” Fancy medical speak for the new pain with its almost constant electrical tingling that made her muscles quiver as if worms were crawling beneath her skin.

  “No.” Just like nothing else had helped. Not the TENS unit or the ultrasound or all the anti-inflammatories, anti-depressants, anti-everythings. She needed to be able to do her job without her injury putting anyone else at risk—a team was only as strong as its weakest link.

  That night in January when the killer’s dog had mauled her leg, it had robbed her of far more than skin and tendon and muscle and bone. The thought left her gripping the edge of the exam table—the sound of a the dog’s rapid panting, the hot spray of its drool mixed with her blood, the smell of an animal surrendering to bloodlust overwhelming her. She blinked, fought for breath, and edged back to the present, holding the dog with its fetid breath and blood-smeared muzzle at bay. For now.

  “The muscles are coming along nicely.” They’d had to remove large chunks of muscle that had been crushed by the dog’s jaws, and then go back and take more after she’d developed an infection. “Thank the PT for that.”
>
  The physical therapy that Lucy had relentlessly doubled up on, getting up before dawn to work out with Nick, her husband, and then going back on her own after work before going home.

  “It’s these bones,” he continued. “There’s just only so much you can do with old bones. If you were a nineteen-year-old quarterback…”

  “But I’m not.” Her tone was sharp.

  He lowered the X-ray but still didn’t make eye contact, instead cupping Lucy’s heel in one hand, scrutinizing the Gordian knot of scars stretching down her leg, crossing over her ankle before finally wrapping around her foot. “Have you given any thought to my alternative treatment option?”

  Amputation. Not an option.

  “It’s easier to rehab after a BKA—below knee amputation—before you’re forty. And the advances in prosthetics are amazing. I can guarantee virtually full function—more than what you have now—with a significant decrease in pain.”

  He finished his examination, dropped her leg, and moved to the desktop computer. “I think we need to seriously discuss it. One more injury, we might have no choice anyway. Better to do it on your terms, right?”