FEATURED AUTHOR: PETER W.J. HAYES

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

After a house fire hospitalizes his partner and forces him onto medical leave, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police detective Vic Lenoski starts a desperate search for the woman who set the blaze. She is the one person who knows what happened to his missing teenage daughter, but as a fugitive, she’s disappeared so thoroughly no one can find her.

Risking his job and the wrath of the district attorney, Vic resorts to bargaining with criminal suspects for new leads, many of which point to North Dakota. He flies there, only to discover he is far from everything he knows, and his long-cherished definitions of good and bad are fading as quickly as his leads. His only chance is one last audacious roll of the dice. Can he stay alive long enough to discover the whereabouts of his daughter and rebuild his life? Or is everything from his past lost forever?

Book Details:
Title: The Things That Last Forever
Author: Peter W. J. Hayes
Genre: mystery, police procedural
Series: The Vic Lenoski Mysteries, book 3
Publisher: Level Best Books (September 1, 2020)
Print length: 278 pages

TWENTY QUESTIONS/ONE WORD ANSWERS WITH PETER W.J. HAYES

1. Where is your cell phone? Charging.
2. Your hair? Missing.
3. Your workplace? Desk.
4. Your other half? Home.
5. What makes you happy? Efficiency.
6. What makes you crazy? Inefficency.
7. Your favorite food? Ribs.
8. Your favorite beverage? Wine.
9. Fear? Health.
10. Favorite shoes? Hiking.
11. Favorite way to relax? Music.
12. Your mood? Positive.
13. Your home away from home? Car.
14. Where were you last night? Home.
15. Something that you aren't? Impatient.
16. Something from your bucket list? Ireland.
17. Wish list item? Enstrom’s.
18. Where did you grow up? Pittsburgh.
19. Last thing you did? Slept.
20. What are wearing now? Carhartt.

EXCERPT FROM THE THINGS THAT LAST FOREVER

Chapter 1

Sometimes you walk into a room and what’s inside changes your life forever. That sense stopped Vic just inside the doorway. A woman with skin the color of dark amber lay on the only bed, her bandaged arms shockingly white among the shadows. She was reflected in a large window in the far wall, the outside sky as black and still as the inside of a tomb. He smelled disinfectant and blood. Numbers and graph lines flared on grey-eyed medical monitors. Somewhere in the vast empty spaces of the hospital a voice echoed.

He’d never visited a burn ward.

Never had a partner so close to death.

Never thought a room could seem as hollow as he felt inside.

The feeling was so disembodying that when he reached the bed and looked into the woman’s face, he half expected to see himself. But it was Liz, her forehead and knobby cheekbones smeared with ointment, eyebrows and eyelashes burned away. A bandage covered her left earlobe where her favorite earring, a small gold star, usually sat. It seemed like every breath she took pained her.

He wanted to take her hand but the bandages made it impossible. “Liz,” he said softly, her name almost lost among the beeps and clicks of the monitors. Liquid dripped into a tangle of IV tubes at the back of her fist.

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Liz. Doctor told me I could talk to you.”

Her eyes opened. He watched her pupils widen and narrow as they absorbed the distance to the ceiling and distinguished shadows from feeble light.

“Vic?” A hoarse whisper.

“I’m here.”

She turned her face to him. “You got me out.”

Relief rose in Vic’s throat. “Yeah. But the house didn’t make it.”

“Cora Stills?”

Vic squeezed his eyelids shut and rocked on his heels. He didn’t know where to start. Cora Stills. The one person who knew something—anything—about his missing teenage daughter. Liz on her way to arrest her. Instead, Liz, handcuffed to a radiator pipe as flames lathered and stormed through Cora’s house. Cora’s burned-out car found two days later on a crumbling stone dock next to a deserted warehouse, the Allegheny River emptying westward.

Cora, alive and moving through that tomb of darkness outside the window. Free.

“Vic…” Liz said something more but he couldn’t make it out.

He bent closer.

She forced her words from somewhere deep inside, and as she spoke, he knew this was what she saved through all the fear and pain to tell him. “Someone told Cora I was coming.”

***

Excerpt from The Things That Last Forever by Peter W. J. Hayes.  Copyright 2020 by Peter W. J. Hayes. Reproduced with permission from Peter W. J. Hayes. All rights reserved.

 

 

OTHER BOOKS BY PETER W.J. HAYES

The Pittsburgh Trilogy (The Vic Lenoski Mysteries):

Book 1: The Things That Aren’t There

Book 2: The Things That Are Different

Book 3: The Things That Last Forever

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter W. J. Hayes worked as a journalist, advertising copywriter, and marketing executive before turning to mystery and crime writing. He is the author of the Silver Falchion-nominated Pittsburgh Trilogy, a police procedural series, published by Level Best Books. He is also a Derringer-nominated author of more than a dozen short stories. His short work has appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Pulp Modern and various anthologies, including two Malice Domestic collections and The Best New England Crime Stories. He is also a past nominee for the Crime Writers Association (CWA) Debut Dagger Award.

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