Once Shunned - Блейк Пирс

Blake Pierce

Once Shunned (A Riley Paige Mystery—Book 15)

Blake Pierce

Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes fifteen books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising four books (and counting); of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising three books (and counting); and of the JESSE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2019 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright sahachatz  used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

PROLOGUE

Robin’s eyes snapped open.

She found herself lying wide awake in her bed. She thought at first she’d been awakened by a noise coming from somewhere in her little house.

Breaking glass?

But as she lay there listening for a moment, she heard nothing except the comforting rumble of the furnace in the basement.

Surely she’d just imagined the sound.

Nothing to worry about, she thought.

But as she turned on her side to try to get back to sleep, she felt a sudden sharp pain in her left leg.

This again, Robin thought with a sigh.

She switched on the lamp on the nightstand and pulled away the covers.

She no longer felt surprised to see that she had no left leg. She’d gotten used to that months ago. The leg had been amputated above the knee after her bones were crushed to a pulp in a terrible car accident last year.

But the pain was plenty real—a cluster of throbbing, cramping, and burning sensations.

She sat up in bed and stared at the stump under her nightgown. She’d suffered from phantom limb pain like this ever since the amputation, mostly at night when she was trying to sleep.

She looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was four o’clock in the morning. She let out a groan of discouragement. She was often awakened by the pain at this hour or earlier, and she knew there was no chance of going back to sleep while this sensation was tormenting her.

She considered reaching under the bed for her mirror box, a therapy device that often helped her through episodes like this. It involved slipping the stump into the end of a long, prism-shaped box with a mirror on one side, so that her remaining leg cast a reflection. The mirror box created the illusion that she still had both of her legs. It was a weird but effective technique for diminishing or even getting rid of the phantom pain.

She’d watch the reflection while manipulating her remaining leg, clenching and unclenching the muscles in her feet, toes, and calves, as she tricked her brain into believing that she still had both legs. By imagining that she was controlling the missing leg, she could often work out the pain and cramping she felt there.

But it didn’t always work. It required a level of meditative concentration that she couldn’t always attain. And she knew from experience she had little chance of success just after waking up in the early morning hours.

I might as well get up and get some work done, she thought.

She briefly considered putting on the prosthetic leg that she kept beside her bed. That would mean stretching a nylon gel liner over her stump, pulling a couple of socks over the liner to compensate for the shrinkage of her stump, then fastening the prosthesis into place, putting her weight on it until she felt it pop fully into place.

It hardly seemed worth the trouble right now—especially if she got lucky and the pain faded on its own and she could go back to bed and get some more sleep.

Instead, she pulled on her bathrobe, reached for her elbow crutches, slipped her wrists through the cuffs and gripped the handgrips, then hobbled out of the bedroom into her kitchen.

A pile of papers awaited her there on the Formica-topped table.

She’d brought home a huge bundle of poems and short stories to read—submissions for Sea Surge, the literary magazine where she worked as the assistant editor. She’d read more than half of the pieces last night before she’d gone to bed, selecting just a few that might be worthy of publication while setting the many others aside for rejection.

Now she skimmed through a batch of five especially bad poems by a remarkably untalented writer, the sort of greeting-card verses that the magazine too often received. She laughed a little as she plopped the poems onto the rejection pile.

The next batch was altogether different, but also typical of the sort of thing she often had to wade through while sorting through submissions. These poems immediately struck her as dry, bloodless, obscure, and pretentious. As she tried to make some sense of them, her mind started wandering, and she found herself thinking about how she’d wound up living alone in this cheap but comfortable little rented house.