NoQS Agent Round: HER FINAL WATCH - Adult Mystery

Name: Marguerite Kuhnke

Twitter Handle: @msashton_writer
Title: HER FINAL WATCH
Genre: Adult Mystery
Word Count: 83,000

My Main Character's Most Stressful Relationship is:

My MC’s most stressful relationship is with her mom. As if the family secrets weren’t enough, it’s hard to heal when her controlling mother’s lies keep surfacing. It’s like dodging semi-trucks on the Madison Beltline. Everyone keeps reminding my MC that it is important to forgive and keep the family together. If only she had someone who would tell her mother that making a decision about whether or not to give up your child for adoption wasn’t any easier.   

Query:

Lily Blanchette, Fort Atkinson’s first black lead detective, will stop at nothing to solve a murder. Her current case involves the killing of an undercover cop working to bring down the mob for prostitution and drugs. But Lily’s usual laser-like focus on the case has been disrupted. Two weeks earlier, she learned she was pregnant by her murderous husband whom she’d killed in self-defense. Unsure whether to keep her baby or place the child of this cruel man up for adoption, Lily keeps the pregnancy a secret from her colleagues.

Under mounting pressure to solve the case, Lily arranges a sit-down with a local mob boss only to find out her suspect is also wanted by them. But before Lily can warn her team, she and her new partner, Jeremiah, are shot at, and another body is found. When she discovers Jeremiah has a connection with the underworld, she is pulled into a conflict that swirls around the boss’s son who’s hell-bent on revenge. As she gets closer to finding the killer, she unravels ugly secrets that point to the assistant district attorney and Jeremiah—placing Lily’s life and her unborn child in danger.

First 250:

Detective Ariel Weeks stabbed at the small block of ice until it split into several pieces across the counter. She tossed the jagged cubes into the glass and made her client a drink.

In less than twenty-four hours, Ariel would no longer have to use the name Jasmine and keep men company to protect her cover. All she needed to do was make it through this last night, and she’d be allowed to be who she was; a mom just doing her job.

After gathering evidence and recording all the data she had, it would be hard to detach. Towards the end, she’d learned things she’d wished weren’t true, leaving her stomach in tattered knots.

Back at home, there were two reasons Ariel would never take on another undercover assignment.

Click.

Ariel ground her teeth as the door to Cabin D opened and closed. She could feel Mikey Surace, the mob boss’s son, staring at the backless white dress she wore at his request.

The man who smiled at the sight of blood was standing behind her, breathing heavily.

She turned and handed Mikey his drink. “Your gin and grapefruit.”

Mikey took the drink and pulled Ariel down on the bed next to him. His hand, smooth like velvet, traced over her dark brown skin, along the length of her arm and rested on her thigh. “I had a shitty day.” He loosened his tie, removed his gun and put it on the ottoman.