Wicked Deeds

Contents

Cover (#u8c6d3656-8693-5368-bd12-c9e259e8ccb5)

Back Cover Text (#u1f7e3095-5bfd-5e31-a9ee-8feb405086ae)

Praise (#u6b4755c3-712a-59ee-99fa-54d50e4204f1)

Title Page (#ubd0e92dd-c3c4-5ab1-b96f-228ada748d32)

Dedication (#u971712db-f369-5899-a9fd-be05ac0fef29)

CAST OF CHARACTERS (#u31177b5b-4321-5b17-a903-0b62c4a10fbe)

Prologue (#u47386061-cbb9-5757-a9f4-a75e9468a060)

Chapter 1 (#u5806d41c-e9a6-5e1d-b9c3-d077ca275af2)

Chapter 2 (#uaf6bef15-9157-55b5-8702-432c3776edc2)

Chapter 3 (#u71d36dc6-6d3f-586c-a180-720ae9b293df)

Chapter 4 (#uf71ccd15-43ac-5ed9-ad62-b12b927a49a8)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#u4c1cea3e-c0dc-5289-b0af-5bb3f1177773)

In Dreams

It was dark, and it was night, and she was following along a strange wooded path.

Vickie Preston fought against it; good things never started this way.

But she wasn’t in deep woods. She was not far from some kind of a city—she could see light through the trees.

The light seemed strange. It wasn’t the contemporary, bright luminescence of electricity that shined with such fervor that it was easily seen from space. This was different. Soft light. As if it came from candles or...gas. Gas lamps.

She had, she thought, stumbled into a different time, a different place. She made a turn, and the darkness was gone, things changing suddenly in that way of dreams; she was in a city, and it was day, late afternoon perhaps, with evening on its way.

People were rushing about, here, there and everywhere.

“Vote! Fourth Ward polls!” someone called out.

A woman with a big hoop skirt pushed by Vickie, dragging a man about by an ear. “Harold Finder! Voting is no excuse for my husband to show himself in public, drunk!” she said angrily.

Harold was twice his wife’s size, but Mrs. Finder seemed to have an exceptional hold on his ear!

They had just come from what appeared to be a tavern. Vickie looked about, wondering why no one noticed her. They were all dressed so differently; men in frock coats and waistcoats and cravats and women with their tightly corseted tops and great, billowing skirts. Granted, she was sleeping in a long white cotton gown, “puritanical,” or so Griffin had teased her.

No, no, oh, yuck! You know how I feel about our dear historical Puritans! she’d told him.

Vickie, like Griffin, had grown up in Boston. She’d become a historian and wrote nonfiction books. Despite trying to understand the very different times they had lived in, she just didn’t care much for the people who had first settled her area—they were completely intolerant.

Griffin could usually just shrug off the past; he’d been a cop when she’d first met him and he was an FBI agent now. The past mattered to him, but mostly when it helped solve crime in the present.

He’d been sleeping next to her, of course. They were on their way to Virginia from Boston, ready to start a new life. But they’d stopped in Baltimore, at a hotel... They’d laughed as they got ready for bed, he’d teased her about the nightgown...

She did not look like a Puritan!

Griffin had assured her that she wouldn’t wear the “puritanical” gown long, and she hadn’t, but then, freezing in the air-conditioning of their hotel, she’d put it back on...

She was glad, of course. Otherwise, she’d be walking stark naked around this unknown and bizarre place.

Where was she?

She turned to the doorway of the “polling place” where Harold and his wife had just departed. She could hear all manner of laughing and talking. It was definitely a tavern. Gunnar’s Place.

And there was nothing indicating Puritan Massachusetts here—she wasn’t in Massachusetts and these people certainly weren’t Puritans.

She walked in, wondering if women were welcome. It didn’t matter. No one seemed to notice her.