RILEY THORN AND THE DEAD GUY NEXT DOOR LUCY SCORE Copyright © 2020 Lucy Score All rights reserved No Part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electric or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the publisher. The book is a work of fiction. The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. ISBN: 978-1-945631-67-2 (ebook) ISBN: 978-1-945631-68-9 (paperback) lucyscore.com 082320 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Epilogue Author’s Note to the Reader WONDERING WHAT TO READ NEXT?: About the Author Acknowledgments Lucy’s Titles To Josie, a real life badass. 1 10:02 p.m., Saturday, July 4 he dead talked to Riley Thorn in her dreams. The living inconveniently telegraphed their secrets to her over T grocery conveyor belts and in crowded restaurants. She did her best to ignore them all. In fact, right now, the only thing she was talking to was her breasts. “Heading south on 83 toward the bridge. We’ve got company,” she said through gritted teeth. “Oh my God. She’s lost it. She’s talking to her tits,” one of her backseat passengers whined. “I talk to mine all the time. Don’t you?” another announced. “I do not know if I speak to any body part,” the only man in the vehicle mused. “Perhaps I should try it.” “You people are not normal,” complained the final backseat tagalong. Ha. Normal. Normal had been Riley’s rebellion against a patchouli-scented, home- grown vegetable-selling, seance-attending childhood. Normal was her middle name. Well, not technically. Her legal middle name was the worst possible middle name in the history of middle names. She’d change it if it didn’t involve actually writing it down on paperwork and handing it to another human being. Normal was what she longed for now as she jammed her foot down on the accelerator. The stolen pickup truck lumbered up to speed while Ram Jam howled “Black Betty” at full volume. Her front-seat passenger slapped fresh magazines into her guns. “It looks like the cops,” Riley reported, wondering if she should pull over or if it would be the last mistake she’d ever make. Red and blue lights flashed on in her rearview mirror. “You can’t shoot at cops!” There was a loud bang, and one of her backseat passengers shrieked. “They’re shooting at us! Bad cops!” Just then the night sky lit up to the right. “They’re not shooting at us,” Riley insisted over the music. Fireworks exploded to their right as City Island’s pyrotechnics crew went balls to the Fourth-of-July-wall. There was a baseball stadium full of families enjoying both the nation’s favorite pastime and birthday, completely unaware that the bad guys were closing in on a group of—what had been until last week— relatively normal citizens. She desperately wished she could have been one of them. Innocent. Happy. Her only concern the inflated prices at the beer stand. But no. She’d made one stupid mistake, one seemingly innocent decision, and now she was going to end up in the Susquehanna River in a stolen truck full of weirdos. The unmarked sedan behind her veered into the left lane, and she knew exactly what the occupants were going to do. It blared into her mind in high definition. “Everybody get down!” she shouted and slammed on the brakes. All five of her passengers hit the deck just before a hail of bullets took out the windows on the driver’s side. “Pretty sure they’re shooting at us now,” one of the smartasses pointed out. “You think?” Riley yelled back. Glass rained down, and the smell of burning rubber assailed her nostrils. “We’re taking fire,” Riley yelled in the vicinity of her breasts. If anyone was talking back, she couldn’t hear them. Not over the fireworks or the screaming or the rock song wailing at full blast on the radio with the broken volume knob. She peeked over the wheel. Black tire tracks led up to the car sitting sideways across two of the bridge’s three southbound lanes. Two men stood in front of the car, legs braced, guns drawn. She couldn’t go back. There was only one way to get past gun-toting bad guys barricading the road to freedom. She could only hope the truck’s massive engine block would protect them enough to make it work. “Everybody hang on,” she said grimly as she revved the engine. A shower of golden sparkles rained down from the sky above, drifting toward the inky black of the river. “What’s the plan?” her front-seat passenger asked, calmly chambering rounds in both guns. “I’m gonna ram them.” Step one. Accelerate to thirty miles per hour. “I blame you, Nick Santiago,” she yelled to her breasts again and mashed the gas pedal to the floor. She couldn’t tell which pops and booms were fireworks and which were bullets peppering the front of the truck. “Ohhhhhhmmmmmmm,” hummed the large black man wedged into the back seat in the midst of three shell-shocked waitresses. “What the hell is Beefcake doing?” “How should I know? Maybe we should hum with him?” Riley blocked out the back seat ohms. Step two. Aim for the center of the front wheel. Her passengers abandoned their ohm and joined together in a chorus of screams and regrets. Bits and pieces from each of their lives flashed before Riley’s eyes. She had half a second to appreciate the irony that it was other peoples’ lives and not her own. Because that’s what her quest for normal had earned her. A too-quiet, forgettable life. “I should have stayed in school!” “I never should have given that guy a BJ!” “I should have had that second hot fudge sundae!” Riley never should have answered the knock on her door two weeks ago. Boom. 2 6:55 a.m., Tuesday, June 16 he soothing sounds of digital wind chimes and chanting monks yanked Riley from an unsettling dream T about an elderly woman obsessed with lymph nodes. She slapped at the buttons on the expensive gradual progression monstrosity she’d stolen from a very stupid man and pulled the blanket over her head. Here, in the space between sleep and work, she was alone. Blissfully, quietly alone. No intrusive thoughts from strangers to acknowledge. No dead grandmothers to appease. Here, under the covers, everything was normal. Well, as normal as a broke, divorced, 34-year-old proofreader who hailed from a long and distinguished line of female… Never mind. She didn’t like to think about the special “talents” that ran in her family. Especially not first thing in the morning. It was a summer Tuesday. Which meant her cubicle mate, Bud, would bring in sushi just past its expiration date and then spend most of the afternoon in the bathroom. Donna, the front desk gargoyle, would be wearing a withering glare and take out her Monday night church bingo losses on anyone who wandered past her desk. It also meant that Riley would treat herself to the one and only fancy coffee drink she budgeted for the week. With the siren’s call of caffeine fresh in her mind, she dragged herself out of bed and shuffled for the bathroom in the hall. “Riley!” A thin, reedy voice called from one of the lower floors. “Fred needs help with his Kindle again.” “Okay, Lily,” she yelled back. Riley’s mother took a ceramics class with Lily Bogdanovich. So when Riley had found herself on the other side of a changed lock on the front porch formerly known as hers, Lily had happily opened her attic. The crumbling stone mansion on Front Street belonged to the Bogdanovich twins. Lily and Fred were elderly siblings who had inherited the house, half of a racehorse, and every issue of Playboy Magazine published between 1972 and 1984. Never having families themselves, the Bogdanovich twins had set up an off-the-books flophouse in the mansion, opening up their guest bedrooms to complete strangers. Riley had space on the third floor that included room for a bed, a small living area, and a microscopic kitchenette that couldn’t handle much more than microwave popcorn and toast. The plaster ceiling followed the odd, grandiose rooflines of the ancient architectural wreck in hard angles and weird slants. But the dormer windows offered a decent view of the Susquehanna River as it meandered its way south on the other side of Front Street. The downside? “Keep it down out there,” the downside snarled from behind his closed door.