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Pressed Together

By Kim Garee

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Pressed Together
(Book 1 of the Together series)

Unofficial Chapter One excerpts …

[This isn’t the beginning, but it sets the scene for Drew and Emily’s meeting. Here, Drew has been talking to the local police chief. The chief is the only person at Buckeye Lake who knows what Drew is really doing there: he’s followed the trail of the man who witnessed his brother’s murder here just after he’d made it home from WW2. The chief is letting Drew pretend to work security on the boardwalk as he tries to locate the witness without giving anything away to others also in pursuit]
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What a perfect place for a coward to hide.
Drew Mathison squinted up at the roller coaster, scanning its segmented seats for one man. The “click-click-click” of the cable meeting the cog on the first hill was followed by a beat of silence, then screams as the cars plummeted and raced out over the water.
“Day like this, the coaster alone brings in 5,000 bucks and more, y’know,” the chief told him proudly.
Drew nodded and scanned, rehearsing ways to get information without giving any away. He chewed on a sliver of wood he’d used to stir his coffee, impatient with the air of celebration that had been getting in his way since he’d arrived two days before. He pushed to the background the pulse of a jazz band, that chorus of squeals raining down from The Dips coaster, and the crack and fizzle of a midday firework. Just beyond the coaster but still overhead, a man in pea-colored tights rode a high wire cycle over the midway. As people poured in, they gawked at him, eager for the distraction of the unexpected.
Drew resented distractions. They got in the way of what he wanted: to haul the man who could identify his kid brother’s killer back to a courthouse six states away.
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[skipping ahead a bit - Emily tracks him down for a human interest piece]


His pause was uneasy, as though something else had caught his eye. “Sure thing. Thank me while you can because you won’t be doin’ it for long,” the chief said, his tone of both amusement and warning pulling Drew’s attention back from the next load of riders on The Dips. He followed the chief’s nod and apologetic gaze toward an approaching woman. “I was going to warn you, but here she comes. Already. Woman beats me to near everything.”
She was clearly aimed right for Drew, set apart from the crowd not just in her focus but in the fact that, like him, she was obviously not a vacationing tourist here for the summer kickoff. This woman was working.
She wore a white blouse with a little blue bow tie that matched the belt on her flat-fronted beige skirt. A wide satchel strap crossed her chest. Her shoulder-cropped hair was blonde, nearly yellow, and she wore an eager smile. Here she comes. Gunn’s phrasing echoed in Drew’s head over the rattling of the roller coaster’s latest pass.
The final thing he noticed about the woman—too late—was the notepad in her hand, gray and boasting the words “field notes” across the front: a reporter’s tool.
“She insisted on running a little story on you,” Gunn explained, arm out in an almost defensive gesture.
“There’s no story,” Drew heard himself say. What could the chief have been thinking? She had already arrived, though, and overhearing his statement only seemed to make her smile broader. The assessing sweep of her eyes felt like a mild electrocution, neither a good nor bad thing, and then she turned to Gunn.

[she fills the chief in on some vandalism/threats she’s been experiencing, and he, of course, passes the complaint off to his new, pretend officer]


“Until you solve these crimes, all I can hope for is shaming them in print.” She shrugged, still cheerful, and turned again. “Is this the new Officer Mathison you mentioned?” Her hand, covered in a summer-knit white glove, was narrow as it found his for a shake. “Emily Graham.”
“Call him Sergeant in the story,” Gunn corrected, shooting Drew another apologetic look. “I told him he could keep his rank in our department. A man doesn’t go from being a decorated Army detective to ‘officer’ back stateside, you know?”
“Officer is fine,” Drew mumbled. Publicity? A story? This couldn’t be happening. Mama Mathison’s ear-twisting manners had him adding, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Great. Good. Leave you to it, then,” Gunn said even as he walked away. “I’ll just be, ah, checking in with George about the barge for the fireworks. Got that quote I gave you, Emily? Make me sound good and all?”
“You know I always try, Chief,” she called affectionately, with a grin at Drew.
She was not a short woman, in those strappy heels, and he only had to look down at her a little as he told her, “There’s no story.” He could only imagine how disastrous a feature in print would be: his name plastered across the paper for a Conti hitman to find.
Drew had to get to the witness before there was no witness. Publicity was his enemy, of course, as was wasted time. He nodded and started to move away, happy to have made himself clear.
“If you won’t let me interview you, will you at least take my complaint report, Officer? I mean, Sergeant?”
Oh, right. Soaped windows. Unpleasant word. Highly unpleasant word, for all that she seemed more amused than frightened.
Curiosity mingled with impatience. Plus, this was the work he’d agreed to. And this was about her, not him, so it was fine to turn back.
Now it was his turn to pull out a notebook. It didn’t feel quite as reassuring in his hand as a gun, but somehow the job did settle him.
They faced one another on the pier, pencils ready.
“This is like a Wild West draw,” the newspaper woman observed. She was chewing gum, something he had always found unattractive. “You can take the first shot, soldier.”

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[... and Chapter One goes on from there, beneath the shadow of a roller coaster]

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