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One shattered birthday party.
Two teenage victims.
A city drowning in fentanyl.
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The Weird Girl
A Georgia Thayer Novel #2
by Carla Damron
Genre: Women’s Suspenseful Crime Fiction
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One shattered
birthday party. Two teenage victims. A city drowning in fentanyl.
Social worker Georgia Thayer (The Orchid Tattoo) has spent her career fighting
for the vulnerable, but nothing could prepare her for being a foster mom to
Tessa—a teenager haunted by her traumatic past. Determined to give her a normal
life, Georgia’s efforts to give her a normal life crumble when a neighborhood
party spirals into disaster, leaving one girl fighting for her life while
another disappears from the front yard of her family’s home.
As Georgia undertakes a frantic search for the missing girl, she uncovers a
dangerous fentanyl trade that snakes from hospital emergency rooms to high
school hallways to the darkest corners of her city. She is up against a
charismatic candidate for attorney general and a ruthless drug kingpin, two
powerful men willing to use lethal means to bury their secrets.
With her chosen family threatened, her faith in herself shaken, and an
unexpected ally emerging from the shadows, Georgia’s efforts to save one girl
puts her own in danger.
The clock is ticking. The truth is deadly. And every second lost could mean
another life destroyed.
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Lily Grace Duffy slipped out the front door of her family’s modest bungalow, holding the doorknob to control the click. Her parents normally slept soundly—her mother’s CPAP drowning out most other sounds—but she needed to be careful. Going out at this hour (or any time after dark) was forbidden, but tonight was definitely worth the risk.
Lily Grace wore black jeans and her favorite loose blue top. She’d taken in the waist of the jeans so they fit better. Her mom insisted she wear baggy clothes, but needle and thread (and wearing oversized sweaters around her mom) took care of that. At sixteen, she wanted her curves to show.
When the text arrived, inviting her to the party, she’d hopped out of bed. She rarely got invited to things—no, make that she never got invited to anything, but Ariel, the most popular girl in tenth grade, had sent out a group text that included Lily Grace. Perhaps it was an accident. Maybe Ariel didn’t mean for Lily Grace to receive the invite, but it had come, and she wouldn’t miss the party, even if it meant defying her parents and sneaking out so late.
She pulled the tube of lip gloss from her pocket and swiped it across her lips. She’d hurried to dab on mascara and blush before her hasty exit, and she wore her hair in a ponytail because she’d had no time to tame her unruly curls. She hoped she looked okay.
She used the flashlight on her cell phone to navigate the sidewalks. The party was at Cooper Hawthorne’s house, about half a mile away, on the outskirts of Columbia. When cars passed, she ducked behind trees, not wanting to be seen. Besides, a young girl walking alone at night might be bait for predators. Her mom always warned her about predators.
Her phone’s GPS guided her down Bryson Road. She knew from Instagram that Cooper’s dad had built a giant home on a few acres out there and that Cooper had a swimming pool and owned a big black Labradoodle named Bear. He’d been dating Ariel, and they made the perfect couple. Both Instagram-beautiful, with slim bodies and white teeth, they walked the halls of Dreher High School hand in hand, kissing before parting to go to class.
Maybe one day, Lily Grace would have a boyfriend like Cooper, too.
No cars came down Bryson Road, and no streetlights lit her way. Party noises thumped in the distance: pounding bass, the rumble of voices. Overhead, a pearl of a moon gleamed among a spattering of stars, and she smiled, glad to be far enough from ambient light to see constellations winking in the night sky.
Two more moons appeared, lower, dead ahead. A car weaving up the road. Its headlights shone on another figure—a girl walking toward Lily Grace. Someone from the party? Behind the girl, the car continued to approach, faster now, swerving like the driver had no control. Rap music blared from its sound system, and a voice sang off-key from its open windows.
The girl started to run. As she came closer, Lily Grace recognized her: Sara Clark, Ariel’s best friend, president of the drama club. The car continued its approach, weaving, the music rumbling in the night.
And then, the horrible thump of impact, a piercing scream as the car hit Sara and sent her flying. The car skidded against gravel, slid off the road, and nearly hit Lily Grace. She hurled herself into some bushes as the car smashed into a tree.
Then all was quiet.
She lay in the shrub, dazed, assessing her own body. Her limbs moved. Her head throbbed from hitting something. There were scratches on her arms from branches. But she was alive. She wasn’t sure if that could be said about Sara.
Oh God, Sara.
Lily Grace stood on wobbly legs, scanning the ground around her. She’d lost her phone when she flung herself out of the car’s path. Dammit. She needed to dial 911.
Her chest throbbed from landing on a rock or something. Her hands bled from landing on twigs. She had to find Sara. She’d never forget the awful sound of the car hitting her, not in a million years. It echoed inside her and soured her stomach. After a few unsteady steps, she managed to get to the road. There was no movement from the car a few dozen yards away. Sara should be nearby.
There, by the cluster of pines. Lily Grace rushed to her, falling to her knees, using the faint moonlight to scan Sara’s body. It was so very broken. An arm twisted in the wrong direction. Her leg askew. Her head tilted back and her eyes closed. Blood pooling beside her. The gash on her face—God. With a trembling hand, Lily Grace felt for a heartbeat. There. Faint, but there.
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The Orchid Tattoo
A Georgia Thayer Novel #1
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Crime fiction that
makes a difference: in The Orchid Tattoo, award-winning author
Carla Damron delves into the disturbing world of human trafficking.
Social worker Georgia Thayer can balance her own mental
illness with the demands of an impossible job. Mostly. But when her sister
vanishes in the dead of night, her desperate quest to find Peyton takes her
into the tentacles of a human trafficking network-where she encounters a young
victim called “Kitten.”
Kitten is determined to escape. She won’t be trapped like
the others. She won’t sell her soul like Lillian, victim-turned-madam, feeding
the dark appetites of international business moguls and government leaders. But
the Estate won’t let her out of its lethal grip, and her attempts at freedom
threaten her very life.
Aided by Kitten and, at times, by the voices in her head,
Georgia maneuvers to bring down the kingpin of Estate and expose its dark
secrets, but her efforts place her-and the few people she allows to get
close-in grave danger.
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Chapter One
At three a.m., I should be home in bed like any normal person, but “normal” fits me about as well as “perky” or “has her shit together.” Instead, I was in the windowless catastrophe that was my office, trying to ignore the page from the Emergency Department flashing on my phone: “Georgia Thayer to Bay Four.” The seventh time that day. I might as well move my desk down there, maybe claim a stall in the staff bathroom. With a frustrated grumble, I rose, locked the office, and made my way down to the ED.
I entered the curtained off bay to find a frizzy-haired woman sitting on a gurney, half-dressed, hand-cuffed, sunken in posture as though trying to disappear.
Mark Westfall, a staff psychiatrist with the girth of a manatee, bifocals askew on his bald head, motioned me left as he went right.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“New patient. Not talking. Looking like a level three.”
We used codes to delineate behavioral problems. Level three was bad. It meant needing restraints to keep the patient from harming themselves or others, but this small woman sat quietly, eyeing us as though we were enemy assailants.
I shot Mark a puzzled look because nothing about her screamed “management problem.”
“Just wait,” Mark said.
I took a tentative step closer. “Hey there. I’m Georgia Thayer, the hospital social worker. Can you tell me your name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Maybe you can tell me why you’re here?”
Silence.
“She’s not talking. They found her on a park bench. When the officer asked her to move on, she bit him.”
She gave a skittery glance in my direction.
I put her age at around thirty, skinny, and unkempt. She swung her legs like she was on a swing, her lips moving but little sound coming out. I inched closer.
“Careful,” Mark said.
What was he worried about? She seemed—
The banshee shriek she emitted nearly knocked me over. She leaped from the gurney and scrambled to the curtain encircling the bay; two nursing assistants pushed through to keep her from bolting. She screamed again as she jumped atop the gurney where she squatted like a bullfrog. Impressive move for someone in handcuffs.
“Told you,” Mark said to me.
“Hey, hey!” I said. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.” This woman was in torment. I spent the next five minutes trying to coax her to climb down, her looking wild-eyed with paranoia, then suddenly, she quieted. Again, she sat on the gurney—mostly silent, though her lips moved as though whispering to a ghost. A few minutes later, she flipped again, yelling, combative if we got close, Mark getting frustrated and ready to order a butt injection of some tranquilizer. Then she quieted again. Weird.
As the cycle repeated, I focused on what triggered the crazed outburst. Had one of us moved? Said the wrong thing? Then I saw it. Whenever the air conditioning kicked on, the banshee reappeared. When it shut down, so did she.
I told the med-tech to adjust the thermostat. “Are you nuts? It’s a thousand degrees out,” she replied.
“Just for a few minutes.” As the system shut down, the woman exhaled, her face softening as the tension evaporated. “You don’t like the air blowing,” I said.
She shook her head with vehemence, the first meaningful communication we’d had with her.
“Too cold?”
Another headshake.
“The noise?”
A slow nod. Weird, because given all the cacophony of noise that filled the ED, the air switching on was hardly noticeable. “That whoosh it makes?”
“No.” She inched closer, her sour breath on my face. “The laughing.”
Mark’s brows shot up.
“The laughing,” I repeated. “When the air turns on…”
“The demon laughs. He’s in there. He’s coming after me.” She spoke this last sentence with a somber acquiescence as though resigned to this horrible fate.
I knew, much better than most, how she felt. “That sounds terrifying. It may be hard to believe, but we will keep you safe here.” I turned to Mark. “Think we should admit her to the fifth floor?”
He nodded. “Wish she had some kind of ID. I’ll have one of the residents work her up.”
“And maybe make sure they turn the vent off in her room. That’ll make life much easier for her,” I said.
“And everyone else,” Mark whispered back.
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Carla Damron
believes fiction can make a difference. A social worker, advocate, and author
of suspense, women’s fiction, and mysteries, Damron uses her writing to put a
human face on issues like drug abuse, mental illness, and human trafficking.
She’s won multiple literary awards, including the Women’s Fiction Writers
Association Star Award for Best Novel and the NIEA award for best suspense.
Damron holds an
MSW and an MFA in Creative Writing and teaches with Writers.com. Currently the
VP for the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, she lives in South
Carolina with her husband and their family of entitled rescue animals.
You can read
more about her at https://carladamron.com/
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