Red Blooded Murder. Laura Caldwell

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       Praise for the novels of Laura Caldwell

       Red Hot Lies

      “Chicago is brilliantly illuminated in Red Hot Lies, a book bursting with scandals and secrets.” —David Ellis, Edgar Award-winning author of Line of Vision and Eye of the Beholder

      “A legal lioness—Caldwell has written a gripping,

      edge-of-the-seat thriller that will not disappoint.” —Steve Martini, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow of Power and Compelling Evidence

       The Good Liar

      “The Good Liar strikes like an assassin’s bullet: sudden, swift, precise, deadly. Not to be missed.” —New York Times bestselling author James Rollins

      “Laura Caldwell’s The Good Liar is a massive achievement in one novel, launching a woman right up there with the top thriller writers around.” —International bestselling author Ken Bruen

       The Rome Affair

      “A fabulous, hypnotic psychological thriller …

      Laura Caldwell is a force we can’t ignore.” —New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron

      “This is [Caldwell’s] most exciting book yet …

      a summer must-read.” —Chicago Sun-Times

       Look Closely

      “A haunting story of suspense and family secrets …

      you won’t want to put it down.” —New York Times bestselling author Mary Jane Clark

       The Night I Got Lucky

      “Caldwell is one of the most talented and inventive

      chick-lit writers around, and her latest features a likable heroine in an unusual situation and ends with a clever resolution.” —Booklist

       The Year of Living Famously

      “Snazzy, gripping … an exciting taste of

      life in the fast lane.” —Booklist

       A Clean Slate

      “A page-turner about a woman with a chance

      to reinvent herself, something most of us have imagined from time to time.” —Chicago Tribune

       Burning the Map

      “Exotic locales (Rome and Greece), strong

      portrayal of the bonds between girlfriends, cast of sexy foreign guys and, most of all, its touching story of a young woman at a crossroads in her life.” —Barnes & Noble.com, selected as one of “The Best of 2002”

      Also by Laura Caldwell RED HOT LIES THE GOOD LIAR THE ROME AFFAIR LOOK CLOSELY THE NIGHT I GOT LUCKY THE YEAR OF LIVING FAMOUSLY A CLEAN SLATE

      Dear Reader,

      The Izzy McNeil series is fiction. But it’s personal, too. Much of Izzy’s world is my world. She’s proud to be a lawyer (although she can’t always find her exact footing in the legal world), and she’s even more proud to be a Chicagoan. The Windy City has never been more alive for me than it was during the writing of these books—Red Hot Lies, Red Blooded Murder and Red, White & Dead. Nearly all the places I’ve written about are as true-blue Chicago as Lake Michigan on a crisp October day. Occasionally I’ve taken licence with a few locales, but I hope you’ll enjoy visiting them. If you’re not a Chicagoan, I hope you’ll visit the city, too, particularly if you haven’t recently. Chicago is humming right now—it’s a city whose surging vibrancy is at once surprising and yet, to those of us who’ve lived here a while, inevitable.

      The Izzy McNeil books can be read in any order, although Izzy does age throughout, just like the rest of us. Please e-mail me at [email protected] to let me know what you think about the books, especially what you think Izzy and her crew should be doing next. And thank you, thank you, for reading.

       Laura Caldwell

       Red Blooded Murder

       Laura Caldwell

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Thank you, thank you, thank you to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Amy Moore-Benson and Maureen Walters. Thanks also to everyone at MIRA Books, including Valerie Gray, Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Pete McMahon, Stacy Widdrington, Andrew Wright, Pamela Laycock, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Alex Osuszek, Margie Miller, Adam Wilson, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Ken Foy, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Andi Richman, Reka Rubin, Margie Mullin, Sam Smith, Kathy Lodge, Carolyn Flear, Maureen Stead, Emily Ohanjanians, Michelle Renaud, Linda McFall, Stephen Miles, Jennifer Watters, Amy Jones, Malle Vallik, Tracey Langmuir and Anne Fontanesi.

      Thanks to all the TV and broadcast people who offered their insights, especially Jeff Flock and everyone at Fox Business News, as well as Steve Cochran, Anna Devlantes, Amy Jacobson, Elizabeth Flock, Jim Lichtenstein, Pamela Jones and Bond Lee.

      Much gratitude to my experts—Detective Peter Koconis and Chicago Police Officer Jeremy Schultz; Janet Girtsen, Deputy Laboratory Director of the Forensic Science Center at Chicago; criminal defence lawyers Catharine O’Daniel and Sarah Toney; private investigators Paul Ciolino and Sam Andreano; and physicians Dr Richard Feely, Dr Roman Voytsek-hovskiy and Dr Doug Lyle. Thanks also to everyone who read the book or offered advice or suggestions, especially Dustin O’Regan, Jason Billups, Liza Jaine, Rob Kovell, Beth Kaveny, Pam Carroll, Katie Caldwell Kuhn, Margaret Caldwell, Christi Smith, William Caldwell and Les Klinger.

       The hands that grabbed her were greedy. They shoved her, pushed her, not caring when she cried out. And although she wanted more—more now, more later—she felt the need, even in this faraway moment, to say the truth. “We shouldn’t be doing this again. At least I shouldn’t. This is the last time, just so you know.”

      “Shut up,” came the reply.

       “I’m not kidding. I want you to know that this is it. It’s over after today.”

       “Shut up.”

      Those hands moved lower, clawing and probing as though they’d been waiting for this, lying in wait until she was vulnerable, when they could strip her bare and plunge her into oblivion.

      She threw her head back and clutched at the bed sheets, holding herself down until the moment when she would step into the void that she so craved.

      A breeze trickled in the window, enticing after the biting winds that had battered Chicago for months. Yet nothing could touch the heat that boiled inside, carried her in small but growing crests, reaching her in places she always forgot until moments like this.

      The hands stopped suddenly, startling her.

      “Why?” she said, desperate.

      A mouth crushed against hers, bit her. “I said shut up.” And she did.

      Later, when she was alone, she slipped into her clothes for the evening—white, ironically. Tonight, she would smile, and she would be engaging. After all these years, she knew how to do that—how to shine her eyes at someone, how to direct her energy so they felt seen and heard and touched. No one at this event would know what she’d just done. She would carry the