Excerpt: 'Fury of Obsession' by Coreene Callahan

Coreene Callahan, author of Fury of Obsession, book five of the Dragonfury Series, shares a favorite scene from her new release.

Coreene: My characters always have minds of their own. They drive the story and take on a life of their own as soon as I start writing. Some I connect with faster than others. The warriors in the Dragonfury Series are excellent examples of that. I've known who each of them are — what each wants, needs and is yearning for — from the get-go. The heroines in my books, however, are cagier. Harder to understand and pin down. It takes me longer to figure them out. Evelyn Foxe, however, surprised me. She is an exception to the rule, because I connected with her right away. Maybe it's because she and I are a lot alike. Or maybe, it's the exact opposite, and we're nothing alike at all. I'm unsure of the "why" exactly — what made us bond quick and sure. All I know is that I knew her from the moment she took center stage and stepped onto the page. So I guess it isn't any surprise that our first meeting (in chapter two of Fury of Obsession, book five of the Dragonfury Series) is one that sticks in my mind.

It's one of my favorite scenes.

And so today, I'm sharing just a smidgen of our first meeting with you.

EXCERPT

Down on her luck. In hawk up to her eyeballs. Screwed six ways to Sunday and twice on Monday. Sitting inside her had-seen-better-days Volkswagen Golf, Evelyn Foxe pulled the key from the ignition and stared across the parking lot. The windshield encapsulated the Luxmore Hotel like a picture frame. A pretty view from across the avenue fifty yards away. Art deco stone facade aglow in soft light. Arched windows and gleaming steel accents. Manicured gardens curling around a wide-mouthed circular drive. And enough sharply dressed valets to make a rich man drool.

Beautiful. Sophisticated. A haven for the well-heeled and wealthy. A place most people dreamed of spending a Friday night.

Well, everyone except her.

Too bad she didn't have a choice. Do or die. Everything said and done. That's what it came down to: put her three-inch heels to work, cross the parking lot, and enter the playground for the rich ... and sometimes famous.

Three months ago, Evelyn wouldn't have thought twice about entering the posh boutique hotel. She'd belonged in that world. Not wealthy by any standards, but respected by those in the club. Money, after all, made people—particularly CEOs of large corporations—sit up and pay attention. Ravenous greed fueled the fixation, of course. But then, that had been her job . . . to ensure the companies in her portfolio stayed honest. Creative accounting might be the norm in a dog-eat-dog world, but in the end it always equaled bad business practice.

A fact her former employer should've kept in mind inside his own walls.

Grabbing her purse from the passenger seat, Evelyn pulled the Prada into her lap. With a flick, she undid the buckle. A quick toss saw her keys disappear behind the lip of expensive leather. An even faster hunt inside her makeup bag unearthed her lipstick. She popped the top and twisted the base. Bloodred Viva Glam a la Marilyn Monroe. Evelyn's favorite lip color. Ironic in many ways, particularly since she and Marilyn had nothing else in common.

Oh, but wait. That wasn't exactly true, was it?

She and the beauty icon might not share the same skin color, but trouble didn't discriminate. Age. Race. Affluence with a heaping scoop of smart. None of the variables mattered. The norms remained the same. The world kept turning. And misfortune always took its pound of flesh. Which brought her back to the original problem, didn't it? No sidestepping the issue. No getting around the facts. Just straight-up in-her-face reality ... her life or the money.

A shiver ghosted down her spine.

As goose bumps set up shop beneath her fancy cocktail dress, Evelyn fought to stay even. Nervousness wouldn't help. Neither would the anger bubbling inside her. Pragmatism would serve her better. But as Evelyn swallowed past the knot in her throat, glanced in the rearview mirror, and put her lipstick to work, fury tightened her chest.

How dare those jerks.

How dare they be so stupid? So self-serving? So devil-may-care with the charter of ethics . . . and other people's lives? If only the higher-ups had been responsible—instead of helping their largest client defraud investors out of millions in the Amsted scandal—the accounting firm wouldn't have folded, and she'd still have her position. Would even now be inside a struggling corporation's books, finding financial solutions as a senior insolvency and restructuring advisor for Willis, Bower & Bloom. Instead, she was out of a job she loved. And thousands were out their life savings.

Such a huge mess. Nowhere near fair either. Particularly since the scandal had left her with little recourse.

Oh, she applied for new positions all the time. At least four or five a week, interviewing with company after company. Big corporations. Small businesses. It made no difference. No matter where Evelyn went, she couldn't catch a break. Tough economic times? Sure, but that wasn't why she sat in her secondhand car in front of a fancy hotel—jobless, in trouble, and out of options. The name on her résumé made everyone run scared. A bitter pill to swallow considering her credentials and reputation. But try as she might to convince those in charge of hiring she hadn't been part of the corruption—or the subsequent cover-up unearthed by the SEC—no one wanted to give a former employee of Willis, Bower & Bloom the benefit of the doubt.

Which left her with no job. A vicious bookie on her trail. And only one way out—the Luxmore and the wealthy clientele it drew like paparazzi to a celebrity crime scene.

Her heart sank. It always did when she thought about that terrible day. The Implosion, as she liked to call it. The news had broken hard with a New York Times Op-Ed piece. She'd been in Europe, scouring an Austrian corporation's ledgers, searching for ways to save three thousand jobs by restructuring, stabilizing and—

Something rapped against her window.

Evelyn jumped in her seat. Her knees bumped the bottom of the steering wheel. Reflex snapped her focus toward the driver's door and ...

Panic banded around her rib cage. Air left her chest in a rushing puff.

Holy God. A gun. Big, black, and ugly, the barrel hovered an inch from the glass.

© 2015 Coreene Callahan

Find out more about Coreene and her books at www.CoreeneCallahan.com.