Beside The Dying Fire

By Kelly Watts

Martin is a detective investigating several blood-drained bodies of men scattered throughout the city. What the victims all have in common is that they all have records of soliciting prostitutes. Dubbed the "vampire murders", the detective goes undercover and finds out that the woman killing the johns may be impossible to resist, even when his own life becomes at stake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201258627

Kelly Watts

Kelly Watts is a resident of Alabaster, Alabama., where she lives with her husband, Carl, and their children. She likes to spend her time writing, playing the violin and volunteering at local schools. This is her first book.

Book preview

Chapter One

We need a little help on this one.

His best friend in the world, Phillip James, was asking for a favor.  This wasn’t the first time that Marcus had come asking.  Phillip knew that when the regular Chicago Police Department methods failed, Martin McAndrews was the man to turn to.

Just not this time.

Phil, you know I’m not in that business anymore.

His friend sipped at the glass of cognac Martin had offered him, and they sat in silence for a few long minutes at the patio table.  Martin had only purchased this condo last week, and he’d only had time to outfit it with the most basic furniture.  The patio set had come with him from his last place, a modest estate home near Lincoln Park. 

Phillip was an athletic sort of man, always jogging or working out at the gym.  He was taller than Martin, and his muscles bulged under his dress shirt.  Detectives didn’t wear uniforms.  Of course, in Martin’s experience, the simple off-the-rack suits they did wear marked them as police officers just as surely as anything else.  So did Phillip’s short black hair, swept neatly to one side, and his clean-shaven face.

In comparison, Martin was slender like a reed.  His light brown hair, nearly blonde in the sunlight, was unkempt in that way that Bradley Cooper carried so well.  He wore jeans and a simple black t-shirt today.  Tomorrow it might be a business suit, or khakis with a button-up, as the mood suited him.  The thing of it was, his appearance fooled most people.  Yes, he was handsome, and yes he would never win any beach-body contests, but he was whipcord strong and agile, and when that was coupled with his levels of intelligence and experience, he was downright deadly.

Phillip had challenged him a few times in a no-holds-barred fight, just