A Race Against Tea Time

By Kari Kilgore

A Brewing Disaster

Regina Burke never expects trouble on a fine morning in Bountyfield, Virginia. Especially trouble involving her sweet nephew Trevor.

But trouble knows its own schedule, and holds its own secrets.

Now Regina races to keep Trevor from driving into a nightmare neither imagined.

Will she find him in time, before the nightmare wins?

 

An excerpt from A Race Against Tea Time:

A good kid headed straight into hot water

Pam shook her head sharply, once to the left, then the right.

"You really need to get around here and start making phone calls. I'm guessing the folks Trevor delivers to aren't in the best of health. From what you're telling me about this jimsonweed, we need to make damn sure they don't brew it up thinking they can settle down for their afternoon naps."

Regina held her breath, trying not to imagine Trevor's face if he was part of something like that happening, even with his usual best of intentions.

She could wish all day long for a drone or a helicopter, or a high-tech satellite tracking device that wouldn't work on narrow mountain roads anyway.

Or, she could do her best to help him like she always had.

"Thank you, Pam. Show me where I won't be in your way. We'll find him."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Mar 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393702399

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

A Race Against Tea Time

For all the fabulous Aunties

A RACE AGAINST TEA TIME

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

CHAPTER 1

Regina Burke adored the controlled chaos of a rural county courthouse. And the one in Boun County, Virginia, was her favorite by a long shot.

It wasn’t anything like what most people imagined, for one thing. The pale gray stone building with grand, white pillars out front was nearly one-hundred-thirty years old, built back when years started with eighteen rather than twenty. Which meant modern amenities like broadband internet, enough electrical outlets, and reliable heating and cooling weren’t exactly a given.

Regina doubted her smartphone would get enough signal through the thick walls to function more than a few feet away from the old rippled glass windows. If she’d been allowed to bring it into the courthouse at all.

There were courtrooms, of course, handling more than one kind of trial. General district court full of misdemeanors and traffic troubles, circuit court with heavier felonies and higher-end civil cases, the too-often sad juvenile and domestic relations court—they all operated here.

Unlike the well-lit, spacious versions on most of those legal or police TV shows and movies, the courtrooms themselves were generally cramped. Kind of dark in the corners. Occasionally smelling of mildew when the ancient roof sprang yet another leak.

A huge way those courtrooms differed from the fictional versions was the overall noise and activity levels. In Regina’s experience from years of working for a small law office in town, hardly anyone ever shouted or gave dramatic speeches. Most witnesses and defendants were nervous and quiet rather than ranting or yelling.

In fact, the mood in most proceedings was hurry up and wait.

For the judge. For a possible plea bargain. For endless hours while a jury attempted to persuade that one stubborn member.

Not Regina’s favorite way to spend a long, long day.

Handing routine filing duties, though, here or in other counties? That was an altogether different proposition. One that often brought the chance to get out and drive through the gorgeous Appalachian Mountains. Beautiful in their delicate spring pastels, vivid green late-summer finery, or spectacular autumn red, orange, and yellow. She even enjoyed trekking through winter gray or brilliant white, as long as the roads didn’t ice up.

Regina would volunteer for that duty every day of the week and twice on Wednesday.

Today she wasn’t out traversing the twisty mountain roads on the way to