Manipulation: A Blackburn Erotic Thriller (Book 3)

Manipulation – Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Detective Victor Reeves parked his unmarked sedan at the curb of 74 Thyme Street. The engine ticked as it cooled in the thickening heat, each metallic click marking time against the morning’s stillness. Three patrol cars sat in a row near the plain ranch house, their light bars dark, radios murmuring through half-open windows like distant conversation. An ambulance waited nearby. Its crew leaned against the back doors, their postures loose and resigned, already certain there was no one left to save. They’d tried.

The house sat low on its lot at the corner of Seventh. Vinyl siding bore the dull patina of sun and age. The front yard stretched more dirt than grass, patches of bare earth showing through like worn fabric. A chain-link gate hung open, one hinge twisted at an angle that suggested years of neglect. Reeves stepped over scattered gravel that crunched beneath his shoes and walked toward the porch.

Officers Zachariah Winters and Angela Camacho met him by the door. Winters stood tall, his gray hair cut military-close; Camacho, compact and steady, kept her hands folded at her belt in stillness.

“Detective,” Winters said. “The neighbors called at six-twenty. One shot fired. We arrived and found John Dala on the steps.” He nodded toward a spot by the doorway where the concrete bore a darker stain. “The gun was at his feet.”

Reeves opened his notebook. The leather cover felt soft from years of handling, the gesture worn into muscle memory. “Did he cooperate?”

Camacho’s glance was brief but telling. “He hasn’t stopped talking since we got here. He said he shot his wife in the kitchen. Claims she deserved it over breakfast.” She shrugged once, the gesture carrying volumes she didn’t need to voice.

Yellow tape marked off the entrance, its bright warning stark against the faded siding. Further inside, the forensics team spoke in low, professional tones. Camera shutters punctuated the hush with mechanical precision.

“The victim?” Reeves asked.

“Rhyanne Scudamore,” Winters replied after consulting his notes. “Forty-three years old. Shot once in the back of the head at close range.”

Reeves climbed onto the porch. The boards flexed and groaned beneath his weight. The hallway inside felt narrow and airless. At its end, a strobe from a camera flickered against walls that had lost their color to time and indifference.

The kitchen felt cramped and heavy with trapped heat and a silence broken only by the careful movements of the forensics techs. On the floor beside a cold stove lay Rhyanne Scudamore face down, her dark hair spread in a wide arc across stained linoleum. The cast-iron skillet still held eggs, their edges hardened.

Blood had sprayed along the lower cabinets in a distinctive pattern. Most of it had already dried to brown in the morning warmth, the metallic scent mixing with burned food and old grease.

Marcus Webb looked up from his work when Reeves entered. “It’s pretty clear-cut,” he said. “Looks like a contact wound to the head. The thirty-eight revolver was still warm when we bagged it.”

Reeves took in each detail. Routine procedure filtered everything through experience and restraint. The scene resembled dozens before it, yet it was never quite routine enough to ignore what lingered in the air when violence outlasted its cause.

Reeves studied the kitchen. Scudamore had faced the stove when she was shot, caught mid-task. The eggs in the pan showed one side browned too long, the other pale and untouched. Whatever mistake had happened here had cost her everything.

“Any signs of a struggle?”

“None.” Webb’s response carried professional detachment. “She never turned around. The shooter was close, maybe three feet. Quick.”

Outside, Reeves watched Winters and Camacho guide John Dala into a patrol car. Dala looked unremarkable. He was soft around the middle, with pallid skin that spoke of too many hours indoors. His hands were cuffed behind his back, his expression flat but oddly satisfied, as if this outcome had been waiting all along.

“She couldn’t cook eggs right,” Dala muttered before the door closed with finality. “Twenty-three fucking years and she never got it right.”

The car pulled away, tires crunching over loose asphalt. Reeves watched until it disappeared around the corner, then glanced at the crowd gathering down the block. Neighbors had been drawn out by sirens, their morning routines fractured by violence.

A woman approached the tape. She was silver-haired and drawn tight with worry. She wore a faded housecoat and slippers that had seen better days.

“Officer?” she called to Reeves. “I’m Lori Clattenberg. I live next door.”

He met her at the line. From her porch she would have had a clear view of the Dala house. Every argument would have been audible through thin walls.

“I’m Detective Reeves. Did you see anything, Ms. Clattenberg?”

“I heard them,” she said, arms folded tight against herself, though sweat already beaded on her forehead. “They fought every morning about breakfast, laundry, something small every time.” Her voice carried the exhaustion of repeatedly witnessing another person’s downfall.

“This morning?”

“It was worse.” She kept her gaze fixed on the Dala house, as if it might reveal something new. “She was crying and begging him to stop yelling. Then I heard the shot.” Her hand trembled as she pointed at the porch steps. “He came outside after. He just sat down and put the gun beside him like he was waiting for a bus.”

Reeves wrote as she spoke, his pen moving steadily across the page.

“How long were they here?”

“Five years? Maybe six.” She hesitated before adding, “He hit her before. Sometimes I called you people, but nothing came of it. She had always said she fell or walked into something.” Clattenberg blinked hard against tears that threatened to spill. “I should have done more.”

The cycle played itself out in Reeves’ mind with depressing familiarity. Abuse, police calls, apologies, another incident. Until one day the pattern reached its inevitable end.

“You did what you could.” He meant it simply. It was a truth learned too many times on this job. “We’ll need your statement later at the station.”

She nodded and made her way home, each step careful on the uneven lawn.

Reeves called over Field and Schiller and set them to canvassing for doorbell footage and witnesses on both sides of the street. It was the standard work that built cases one methodical step at a time. Unglamorous but necessary, constant as sunrise after violence breaks through suburban walls.

* * *

She’d hit him hard enough to break his nose and enjoyed it.

Detective Morgan Blackburn flexed her hand. Her suspension had been no surprise. She knew it would happen before she even slapped him. The tendons shift beneath her skin. Dawning sunlight flooded the kitchen, pooling across counters and glinting off the running faucet. She rinsed an apple under the stream, its surface gleaming bruised-red while cold water numbed her fingertips. The sharp scent of Empire mingled with Bach from the small speaker by the window: crisp, ordered notes threading through the room like silver wire.

Her grip tightened on the apple, pressure anchoring her in memory. Kendria Chaplin had found pleasure in rubbing a similar red apple between her legs, just as Blackburn had commanded. Her moans had been low and rough. Apple was their safe word, and to prevent Kendria from orgasming, Blackburn had knocked it from her grip, ending their session. Kendria had obeyed. Kendria had been hers.

Until she wasn’t.

The memory dissolved as routine took over. Blackburn sliced the apple with deliberate movements. Sunlight caught droplets sliding across the fruit’s skin, each action ordinary, a barrier against what waited beyond these walls.

Flash: Oak Street. Heat radiated from the pavement in waves. Banter cut short by screeching tires, a silver car bearing down with mechanical malevolence. Time fractured. Blackburn’s arms grasped for Kendria too late; bodies torn apart by force and fate at an impossible speed. The aftermath: only noise. A stranger shouting slurs, chaos rising like steam from hot asphalt. Something twisted inside her. Not grief, but fury at losing what could have been hers. Her palm met flesh with a wet crack; the man’s head snapped back, blood blooming bright across his upper lip.

It felt good.

Blackburn lay stretched on her leather couch, a demitasse balanced between her fingers, half an inch of espresso cooling bitterly in the bottom. The nearly empty plate sat on the table, moisture glistening where fruit had bled. On her lap, the latest copy of Rijksmuseum Bulletin.

Sunlight etched soft lines across the floor, catching her jaw still set, teeth pressing against words and anger she refused to release. The suspension sat heavy on her shoulders, an invisible weight that made her skin feel too tight. She’d never tolerated leashes.

Her phone rang, abruptly and insistently. Reeves’ name lit the screen.

She answered with a clipped, “What.”

“Where are you?” Reeves kept his tone flat, though traffic hummed in the background. He was not at the office. “We have a shooting at Seventh and Thyme.”

Blackburn sipped the last of the espresso, bitterness coating her tongue. “Hayes suspended me. Turns out punching racists isn’t part of my job description.”

The line went quiet except for distant sirens. When Reeves spoke again, he sounded tired. “Yeah. I heard.” He paused, letting silence fill what neither needed to say.

She exhaled heavily. “That clown made it personal. So did I,” she said, voice low, words pared to bone. “You’ll have to work it without me for now.”

“But—”

“Just handle it, Reeves.” She cut him off and ended the call.

The next call came minutes later: Chief Hayes. She let it ring until the screen went black, then reached for the TV remote and switched on New Dresden Today.

The anchor’s voice blended into white noise: “Tonight at six, an exclusive from Brynn Cassidy that could shake New Dresden’s foundation.”

She clicked it off before the promo ended. Brynn was a damned fly. An annoying pest constantly rolling in shit.

She stayed motionless, sinking deeper into old leather that smelled faintly of conditioning oil as neighborhood sounds pressed in: a dog barking beyond her fence, a car door slamming two houses down with metallic finality.

A knock broke through. Three raps. She waited until the second round came, louder, insistent. Blackburn looked at her watch. Seven forty-two. She had been sitting here for less than ninety minutes, though it felt like forever.

With effort, she pushed up and crossed to the door. Each step slow and even, nothing in her movements wasted energy or betrayed urgency.

Through the frosted sidelight, she recognized Willow Adler’s frame immediately. Heavy set, short, familiar. They’d been together, on and off, for more than two years. Right now: a forbidden ‘on.’ Disallowed by NDPD’s policy on dating subordinates.

But Blackburn couldn’t resist: Willow was an almost perfect subordinate.

Willow caught sight of Blackburn’s silhouette and waved, holding up a paper bag, grease spots darkening its bottom corner.

Blackburn opened the door.

“Chief Hayes sent me,” Willow said, eyes steady behind her glasses. “He’s worried; you’re not answering calls.”

Blackburn shrugged. “Ignoring him.”

Her phone started ringing again behind her, that same custom tone she had chosen specifically because it annoyed her. Hayes again. She ignored it just as easily.

Willow lifted the bag an inch higher. “Bagels. Nova lox.”

A pause. Then Blackburn exhaled, tension easing from her shoulders.

“All right,” she said, stepping aside with a nod toward the kitchen. “Come in.”

Willow entered quietly, shoes left at the door, coat hung in its usual place. She moved to the kitchen, footsteps silent on the cool tile.

“They say you’re suspended,” she said, reaching for a butter knife as she opened a drawer with ease. Blackburn unpacked deli bagels, still warm and yeast-scented, and set cream cheese beside them.

“I am. I hit someone. It’s online now. Viral.” Cold. Factual. Blackburn nodded, watching Willow slice bagels and feed them into the toaster.

Willow took a seat across from her, peeled back the plastic on the Nova lox, its briny scent drifting through the air.

“Did you watch it?” Willow asked, pulling hot bagels free, steam curling upward.

“I didn’t need to,” Blackburn said, sliding her plate closer. “I was there.”

Willow paused mid-preparation, glancing up. “The chief wants you at headquarters for a morning press conference.” The words came fast, rehearsed.

“What’s it about?” Blackburn’s tone sharpened like a blade finding its edge.

“I don’t know.” Willow looked past her to her own plate.

“You do,” Blackburn said.

Before Willow could answer, Blackburn’s phone rang: Brynn Cassidy’s number appeared on the screen. Blackburn wondered if it was time to get a new, unlisted phone number.

The phone was dark for just a moment when a new alert flashed; another call coming in. Blackburn answered.

“Good morning, Chief Hayes.”

“Blackburn, I need you at headquarters for a press conference.” His voice was taut, professional strain woven through each word.

“So,” Willow said, “what’s this about?”

Hayes hesitated just long enough for intent to show. “Clyde Mullen’s attorney reached out. They’ll drop any lawsuit if you apologize on camera.”

Willow froze, bagel suspended midair at the word “apologize.” She knew Blackburn well enough to know those words rarely left her lips, and never with honesty.

Blackburn registered Willow’s reaction and responded with a dry wink. “What time do you want me there, chief?”

“8:45. Press conference at nine sharp.”

“Understood.” Blackburn ended the call, methodical as ever.

“You’re not actually going to apologize,” Willow said, skepticism threading through her voice.

Blackburn’s mouth sharpened into something between a smile and a warning. “I’m going to make sure he remembers this morning for all the wrong reasons.”

Willow’s laugh broke the tension as she turned back to breakfast, still uncertain which ‘he’ Blackburn had in mind.

Blackburn stood, brushing crumbs from her hands to the plate. Then, at the doorway:

“We’ve got time for something quick.”

She didn’t wait for agreement. Willow loved the shower. Two crooked fingers beckoned once before she turned toward the bathroom.

Willow lingered in the doorway, fingers grazing her t-shirt’s soft edge, watching Blackburn move through her morning routine. The bathroom’s warm light cut soft lines across tile; the steady rush of water filled the silence with white noise. She liked the discipline that followed the surrender to her Lioness. Her toes tingled as she thought of what she might get.

Blackburn stepped under the shower, letting out a sharp breath as heat struck her skin like needles. She set the temperature just above comfort: a choice, not a mistake. The bite grounded her, a routine reminder that power belonged to her alone.

Steam thickened in slow spirals, blurring the mirror until only shapes remained. The spray beat a strict rhythm against tile: persistent, methodical, enough to mute thoughts of suspension and Hayes’s ultimatum.

Willow peeled off her clothes with little care for order, dropping them by the door. She stepped into the steam, enveloped by warmth as she closed the distance between them.

Inside the shower’s haze, their bodies found each other. Willow just within reach, hands working careful patterns over Blackburn’s arms and along her spine. The touch was exacting, as she’d been taught. Pressure here, release there.

Blackburn angled against the cool tile. It shocked her heated skin, and she drew Willow closer. A slow pull at Willow’s nipples earned an indistinct sound: pleasure acknowledged but not dramatized. Their mouths met in brief collisions more forceful than tender, tasting of salt and coffee.

Water slid over their skin in rivulets, disguising half-voiced needs. Willow’s hand slipped between Blackburn’s thighs; she worked in patient strokes, unhurried, letting Blackburn set the pace with only a word or tilt of hip.

“Harder,” Blackburn murmured, voice pitched low against steam.

Willow answered with pressure and rhythm that made Blackburn’s breath catch. Blackburn held Willow’s arms as release built: a quiet struggle for composure rather than spectacle.

“You’re beautiful,” Willow said, voice low and reverent. The words settled in warm air, observation more than compliment. “So beautiful. I’m lucky to be yours.”

Willow’s fingers worked their magic and Blackburn let go, her body tense as pleasure surged through her like electricity. Her quiet gasp blended with the shower’s muted rush. Water stripped away her tension for one brief minute.

She traced Willow’s cheek with care, feeling the heat beneath her wet skin, then landed a hard, loud slap. “You’re good,” she said, water slipping down her back in warm trails. “You’ve learned so well.”

“Thank you, Lioness.” Willow’s smile was swift and genuine. “I figured out what you like to see.”

Blackburn tapped Willow’s shoulder. Two quick touches, their silent cue. Willow slipped out, leaving Blackburn beneath the steady spray.

Willow wrapped herself in a towel that smelled of fabric softener, slid on her glasses, and watched Blackburn’s outline behind fogged glass. The sting on her cheek was delicious. “What’s your angle for the press conference?” she asked, toweling hair dry.

Blackburn tilted her head back into the stream before shutting off the water with a squeak of old pipes. “There were so many people with their phones out,” she said as she stepped out and reached for a towel. “The truth is out there. And I will just speak to the truth.”

In the bedroom, Blackburn dressed methodically: black suit crisp from the cleaner’s, pale blue shirt smooth as water, collar pressed flat. She grabbed her Halperin compact and swept a light layer of powder across her face. She would be on camera.

“You look sharp,” Willow said from the doorway.

“Do I look honest?” Blackburn asked, searching Willow’s face for doubt.

Willow nodded once. She understood what was at stake.

Blackburn crossed the room and kissed her briefly, tasting toothpaste. “Let’s go.”

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