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    A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)
    A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)
    A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)
    Ebook68 pages48 minutes

    A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)

    By A.W. Hartoin

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    About this ebook

    ~Part of the USA Today Bestselling Series~

    Sin never dies.
    Mercy Watts is trying to recover from a tumble through a rocky river, but crime just won’t let her be. A retired librarian takes a life and Mercy takes her case under duress, of course. Soon she’ll be drawn in by this unusual criminal and she’ll have a choice to make with painful consequences.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA.W. Hartoin
    Release dateMar 3, 2016
    ISBN9781310462627
    A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)

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      Book preview

      A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short) - A.W. Hartoin

      A Sin and a Shame (A Mercy Watts Short)

      by A.W. Hartoin

      Copyright 2016 A.W. Hartoin

      Smashwords Edition

      "This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Also By A.W. Hartoin

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      A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four)

      Mercy Watts Mysteries

      Novels

      A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One)

      Diver Down (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Two)

      Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Three)

      Drop Dead Red (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Four)

      In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Five)

      The Wife of Riley (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Six) coming soon

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      Touch and Go

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      A Sin and a Shame

      Paranormal

      It Started with a Whisper (Sons of Witches)

      Scene One

      I’D SQUATTED AND I couldn’t get up. This was a new low for me. Literally. I lay on my bathroom floor with my leg cast wedged between the toilet and the vanity, and I wasn’t exactly sure how it happened. One minute I was squatting with my cast stuck out straight, and the next I was on the floor. All I was trying to do was scoop the cat pan, a chore that was easy until I broke my ankle in a river while chasing a would-be murderer.

      Skanky, user of said cat pan, sauntered in when he heard me cry out. He jumped on the toilet and, being the least graceful cat in recorded history, promptly fell in, let out a horrific yowl and jumped out. He landed next to my face and shook, spraying my face. So now I was trapped in my own bathroom with toilet water on my face and a soaking wet cat yowling at me. He wanted me to towel him off because he was apparently too fancy to lick off toilet water. This from a cat that ate tinfoil and used tissues. The worst part was that I couldn’t remember when I’d last cleaned my toilet. At least two weeks. Ew.

      I whacked my knee in an attempt to knock the cast free and pain rocketed through my ankle. It hadn’t been healing well, and this wasn’t going to help, but I had to do something. I tried a second time. The cast didn’t move, but the pain intensified.

      Why didn’t I bring my phone in here? I asked Skanky.

      He yowled and shook, spraying me with more toilet water. Awesome.

      How about you pretend you’re a dog and go get my phone?

      Skanky head butted me and yowled in my face. Useless animal. I tried to sit up and discovered that my abs were practically non-existent. I was still heavily bruised from being battered against boulders and had a certain Walking Dead look that had kept me homebound for the last week and a half. Staying home was much easier than explaining what happened to me, or worse, having some sleazy photographer take a picture and sell it to the tabloids with the headline, Marilyn Monroe look-alike dying of injuries. I was famous for my face and my family.

      My father was Tommy Watts, a homicide cop with a phenomenal closure rate. He’d retired and opened his own agency. I’d gotten dragged into a few high-profile cases. Whenever I was involved, headlines happened. I decided I’d rather wait until my hovering mother came looking for me with a ready lecture on how I should be living at home so she could watch me than call 911 or anybody else. Mom could at least be trusted to keep this quiet. She hated unfavorable publicity and this would embarrass her to the extreme if I made it into the papers. Again.

      Everyone else would talk, including Chuck, my new boyfriend. Chuck was my cousin by marriage and a homicide detective with absolutely no shame or discretion. He’d recently informed me that I’d been in love with him since the day we’d met at the courthouse when my uncle married his mother. The first thing Chuck said to me was that he was my boyfriend. I wasn’t exactly sure what that entailed, since I was nine, so

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