Janice Kay: Back Against The Wall

What she doesn’t know could cost her her life...

It’s upsetting enough to find a body walled up in the garage of her childhood home...but then Detective Tony Navarro suggests the remains might belong to her mother! Beth Marshall and her siblings thought their mom had abandoned the family years ago. If she hadn’t... If she was murdered... And now the sexy police detective believes their father is the killer. He enlists Beth to help him find clues he suspects are in her father’s garage. What neither of them realize is that the clues are really in Beth’s subconscious. They’re juggling family, loss and their growing attraction—but everything loses its importance when the killer gets Beth alone...

“I won’t hang around while you look through the garage. Unless you want me to, Ms. Marshall?”

She would have laughed, if her mood had been better. “You’d be here for the next two weeks.”

“Call if you need me,” the man said, then shook hands with Tony Navarro and strode to his car, undoubtedly relieved to have escaped.

Tony didn’t move. He wasn’t watching the attorney’s departure; he was looking at her.

“Do you need the key for the side door?” she asked. “Let me get my purse and I’ll give you mine.”

“No.” A hand on her arm stopped her. “Actually, yes, thank you, but there’s something else I’m hoping you’ll do for me.”

“That I’ll do for you?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Is there any chance you could take more time off work? I could use some help going through the stuff in the garage, and on the lawn.” When she gaped, he grimaced. “The truth is, you’d recognize something that doesn’t belong, or should be there and isn’t.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m supposed to use up my vacation days to help you go after my father?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll have a chance to point out evidence leading to someone else.”

And he was right—this offer would make her part of the investigation. What could she do but accept?

Dear Reader,

Writing a novel has a lot in common with putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Bits and pieces that have been floating unconnected in my brain suddenly fit. That’s never been truer than for this book.

I read a long time ago about a man who just wanted the neighbors to leave him alone, so they did. Years passed, and vines grew over the house. I suppose the neighbors assumed he’d moved. Eventually a kid decided to sneak into the house...and found the man, whose remains had mummified, sitting in his chair watching a TV that had presumably died many years before. Bet that poor kid never got over it!

I write often about family ties, and have pondered the difference between the increasingly modern American family, with kids who have moved far away from parents and see them only occasionally, and the extended families once more common, where lives are tangled, sometimes annoyingly, but no one in need goes without help. In this story, both hero and heroine are part of the second kind, for completely different reasons. Both love the closeness even as they chafe at the demands of their families.

Add in another theme that has always drawn me: what happens to the family and friends left behind when someone vanishes. The effect is more profound than if that same person had died, allowing everyone to grieve. What’s left behind instead is anger, grief, of course, fear and a lot of questions.

I had a moment of complete satisfaction when these and other pieces clicked together in my head and, hallelujah, there it was: a story.

Good reading,

Janice

Back Against the Wall

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

An author of more than ninety books for children and adults (more than seventy-five for Harlequin), JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. A USA TODAY bestselling author and an eight-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008 for her Harlequin Superromance novel Snowbound. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

FLANKED BY HER brother and sister, Beth Marshall stared at the pile of boxes blocking the side door into the detached garage. She hadn’t a clue whether she was looking at some of the oldest stuff jammed in here or the most recent. If there was such a thing as logical layering, say from front to back.

She almost snorted. This is Dad, she reminded herself. There would be no logic in how he stored anything.

Beside her, Matt groaned. “‘Give me a weekend,’ you said. This could take weeks.” He sounded so appalled, she was reminded that neither he nor Emily had so much as glanced inside the garage in, well, years. Beth had tried to prepare them, but obviously hadn’t succeeded.

Matt was not an enthusiastic volunteer. Or a volunteer at all, really. He might still love their father—she wasn’t sure—but Matt harbored a lot of anger, too. He made no effort to see Dad except for holidays, which he and his wife, Ashley, apparently considered obligatory. Or, at least, she did and had her ways of persuading him to show up and behave himself.

“Quit whining,” Beth ordered, refusing to let herself be annoyed by his attitude. So what if he hadn’t wanted to help? He was here. He’d contribute some muscle she felt sure they’d need.

“Do you promise Dad won’t come out?”

She rolled her eyes. “Can you imagine it crossing Dad’s mind that maybe he should help?”

He sighed heavily. “No. Okay. Why didn’t I see a Dumpster?”

“Because I wasn’t sure we’d need one. I’m hoping most of what’s in here is good for a thrift store, at the very least.”

He gave her a look she recognized from their childhoods.

Ten or fifteen feet separated the detached garage from the house where they’d all grown up. It would be way more practical to raise the street-facing garage door and gain a wash of daylight instead of depending on the two sixty-watt bulbs high on the ceiling, but none of them wanted neighbors to see the disaster inside. They’d debated parking their vehicles to block the sight line—but what was to stop a neighbor from strolling up the driveway to investigate what they were doing? Fortunately, a wood fence and gate that ran between the house and garage kept anyone from seeing what they were up to.

The truth was John Marshall had become a pack rat. Her word. Her brother called him a hoarder. Beth’s younger sister, Emily, just looked anxious.