Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting. And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village. The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall.

Welcome to Darkblood - oops, I mean Darkhen Academy. There are three rules to survive the elite supernatural school: Do not talk or even look at The Seven, the uber-powerful supes that rule the academy. Never go into the Fae forest on a full moon...or else. And most definitely do not fall for one of the extremely hot and unattainable instructors. Too bad I’ve never really been a rule follower...If word gets out that humans are no longer safe from the supes, our worlds will once again be closed off. It’s up to us to stop that from happening.

Katie Bishop has just been pulled back into the world of the Crossroads Society - to hunt down a murderous sorceress looking to take over the throne of Savannah. It’s just another Saturday night in the city, but what happens on this particular evening will set the wheels in motion for a witch war that could destroy Blackthorn Grove - the reigning coven of Savannah.

I barely survived my first year at Darkhen Academy, and now, with Ryder gone and my heart shattered, I’m not sure I’ll outlive the second. But I have to, right? Because, Luxora and her evil minions aren’t waiting around for me to get over my broken heart. With increased attacks in the human world, the super slayer squad must ride on! Then, there’s my father. He’s kind of obsessed with unlocking my new superpowers.

Rule number one: Don’t piss off the dragon - or Sugar. When Katie Bishop is asked to join an elite Savannah society that guards the city against all the supernatural riffraff that blows into town on a regular basis, she can’t refuse. Especially when the city’s latest threat has targeted her to help it escape from an ancient book it’s been imprisoned in for more than a century.

As a middle child, Peyton Steele has always needed to find a way to stand out. But coming to the attention of the head of security for her client’s jewelry store when millions of dollars in jewels go missing is not the way to do it. She thinks the state-of-the-art cameras she’d recently had installed will make it easy to find the thief, but she’s stunned when the video doesn’t show the theft taking place. The lack of video evidence is not acceptable to store security manager and former detective, Grant Logan. He has to prove his abilities by finding the thief at all costs

Our task is simple. Kill all the demon baddies before they wreak havoc on the human realm and destroy the fragile peace between our two worlds. Easy peasy, right? Well if I can't figure out how to get this devil's mark off my chest, the demons won't stop coming for me. Luckily, my long lost father has shown up promising to help me get rid of it. But do I really want a dark warlock's help? Then there's my love life - or serious lack there of. I broke all the rules my first semester, and the worst was falling for my demon bad boy instructor.

Just when I thought my struggles with Luxora were finally over, the dark lord decides to rise from the ashes. Guess who she’s got her sights set on? Yup, me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Coven Council has discovered my little warlock secret. And they’re pissed. With enemies coming at me from all sides, how am I supposed to concentrate on schoolwork?

After surviving a car accident on an icy road in Hagen, North Dakota, Lily Baker regains consciousness with no idea where or who she is. Scattered Bible verses and the image of a man lying in a pool of blood haunt her memory. The same night of the accident, a young woman is murdered and tossed in a dumpster. Kylie Milliard, Hagen's only detective, doesn't immediately recognize the victim, but Kylie soon discovers that Lily and the dead woman share a dark past...if only Lily could remember what it was.

When a North Dakota couple is shot down in their home in cold blood, the sleepy town of Hagen wakes with a jolt. After all, it’s usually such a peaceful place. But Detective Kylie Milliard knows better. Despite not handling a homicide investigation in years, Kylie is on the case. A drop of blood found at the scene at first blush promises to be her best evidence. But it ultimately only proves that someone else witnessed the murder - and the results are shocking: the DNA reveals a familial match to a crime involving local nurse Lily Baker from over a decade ago.

Detective Londyn Steele is thrown into the deep end when she’s assigned to find an abducted socialite. Problem is, her family’s company, Steele Guardians, was supposed to protect the family matriarch at her 80th birthday party when she disappeared, and Londyn fears her investigation will expose problems in her family’s company and bring them down. Especially when County Detective Nate Ryder declares jurisdiction over the scene and Londyn must take a back seat in one of the most important cases she’s ever investigated.

She lived for upholding the law...Defense attorney, Malone Rice, doesn’t want to go to her 15 year class reunion. Attending means running into her former high school flame, now Portland police detective, Ian Blair. But when the committee decides to honor her for her pro-bono work with homeless teens, she knows it would be churlish not to attend. She will have to go and make the best of it. But now the law won’t save her. As expected, Ian attends the reunion, but what Malone doesn’t expect, is that Ian would find her standing over their classmate’s dead body.

County social worker Natalie Dunn discovers a horrible secret about the father of her juvenile clients. The man not only killed one woman, but Natalie suspects he’s killed several others. She plans to go to the authorities, but before she can, the killer turns his sights on her. Fearing for the lives of this man’s children, she removes them from their home and calls in former US marshal Drake Byrd of Nighthawk Security to protect her and the children and help her prove their father is a ruthless killer.

In space, mutiny means death - that’s why Inspector General Park Yerim is taking her investigation so seriously. The alleged mutineer is Captain Nicolau Aames, whose command of the massive Earth-Mars vessel Aldrin has come under fire. The vast System Initiative says he disobeyed orders, but his crew swears he’s in the right. En route to Mars, Park gathers testimony from the Aldrin’s diverse crew, painting a complex picture of Aames’s character: his heroism, his failures, even his personal passions.

For Green Beret Travis Chapman, special operations and covert missions are his life. When his country calls, he reports without question. Until now. Until he’s tasked with protecting a woman he’d once loved and sent him packing. He’d rather go AWOL than spend time with civilian researcher Claire Reed. Even when he learns that her vital research project is stolen, he thinks twice about seeing her again.

Hell hath no fury like a shifter scorned. Savannah has just been invaded by a pack of dangerous bikers - killer cats with greed and vengeance on their minds. Jackson Hunter’s past has finally caught up to him. So has the woman who refuses to let him go - a cat with some sharp claws. Katie Bishop is starting to wonder if she knows her boyfriend at all. He’s just given her two million reasons in cash to doubt that, and the shifters he used to ride with back in Atlanta want to get their hands on it. But they want more than just the money.

I never got involved in the dirt and the details of an investigation. I never let my preconceptions muddy a reconstruction. And I steadfastly refrained from ever allowing my past to dictate my future. At least until the one person I couldn’t lose went missing. Because then I’d relive every dark moment of my childhood, confront every heartbreak, and even sell my soul if that was what it took to get her back. Because I couldn’t accept a future - not even a promised one of immortality and unbridled power - that didn’t include one of the only two people I’d ever truly loved.

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

For 12 years, I had managed to separate my personal life from my professional life, becoming one of the best reconstructionists in the world - and proving to myself that I could do so on my own merits. Then I’d been forced into contact with my family, reuniting with someone I thought I’d lost forever, and rescuing my best friend. Now I had to savor what little time I had left before the contract with the Conclave came due and my future was wrenched from my control. Except there was one last case to solve. One last set of puzzle pieces to collect, then assemble again.