Shock Jock

Book 9: What Doesn't Kill You

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Genres: Women's Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Maggie's star is on the rise but she's down in the dumps.
Will an interview with a sleazy DJ send her skyrocketing or into a death spiral?

"Hutchins' Maggie is an irresistible train wreck—you can't help but turn the page to see what trouble she'll get herself into next." Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of My Sister's Grave

The cowboy she loves, the one who inspired her blockbuster album, is out of her life. When she lands a guest spot on the hottest radio show in the country, a DJ with the squeaky clean image shows her he's anything but. And after she's sexually harassed on air, a heartbroken girl can't be held responsible for her actions, can she?

Maggie has over 150 reviews and a 4.7-star average. Available in digital, print, and audiobook.

Shock Jock is a prequel short story to the trilogy featuring sharp-tongued protagonist Maggie Killian from the addictive What Doesn’t Kill You romantic mystery series.

Once Upon A Romance calls Hutchins an "up-and-coming powerhouse writer." If you like Sandra Brown or Janet Evanovich, you will love USA Today Best Seller Pamela Fagan Hutchins. A Silver Falchion winning author and former attorney, Pamela and her husband run an off-the-grid lodge on the face of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains, living out the adventures in her books with rescue dogs and cats and enormous horses.

What Amazon readers are saying about the What Doesn't Kill You Mysteries:

"Unputdownable."
“Fair warning: clear your calendar before you pick it up because you won't be able to put it down.”
“Hutchins is a master of tension.”
“Intriguing mystery . . . captivating romance.”
“Everything shines: the plot, the characters and the writing. Readers are in for a real treat.”

“Immediately hooked." 

"Spellbinding."
"Fast-paced mystery." 
"Can't put it down."
“Entertaining, complex, and thought-provoking."
“Murder has never been so much fun!”
"You're guaranteed to love the ride!"

Buy Shock Jock to get your next fix of this addictive mystery series today!

(Books 1-15 in the What Doesn't Kill You Series are available, too.)

Release date: February 4, 2019

Publisher: SkipJack Publishing

Print pages: 36

Sample

Six a.m., July 2003

New York City

The intern or flunky or whatever she is creeps closer to Maggie, pushing flat-ironed blonde hair off her face. She leaves one kohl-penciled eye and a cheekbone partially covered, just so. “Aaron will be ready for you in fifteen minutes, Miss Killian.” She pulls the door to the little green room halfway closed, creating more privacy. “Aaron says when his guests are buzzing, the show will be, too. Can I get you anything?”

Aaron Cryor is the hottest radio disk jockey on the east coast, and his long-running Commuter Zoo program dominates the morning market. He likes to say he’s the anti-shock jock. All about the music, artists, and listeners. No Howard Stern horseshit on his watch. So Maggie can’t trust her ears. Is the flunky really offering what it sounds like?

“Y’all got any Jack to go with that Coke?” Maggie props her elbow on the cheap table, and points with a floppy wrist at the shiny black drink cart. Once, twice. Almost like she’s scolding it or whoever stocked it with children’s beverages.

“Of course. Anything you want.”

Maggie turns her wrist, her pointing finger landing on her lips. She thinks it makes her look like she’s pondering her words, when she knows all along what she’ll ask for next. “I was up all night.” Which is true. She’s still a little high, and she hasn’t showered. She catches a whiff of the party and the after party coming from her clothes. It doesn’t matter. No one can smell her through the radio. Or see her, although she doesn’t look bad yet. That will come in a few hours. “How about something stronger than coffee to get me jazzed for Aaron?” Now her finger taps the side of her nose.

The flunky winks. Or maybe she blinks both eyes. It’s hard to tell behind the curtain of hair. “I’ll be back in a flash.” She disappears out the door just that fast.

Maggie snags a banana from a fruit basket, eats it quickly, and tosses the peel toward a trashcan. It misses. She leans back in the chair, taking scant notice of the bouquet of gerbera daisies from her agent or the intimidation wall of photos of Aaron with his most famous guests. Mariah Carey. Steven Tyler. Garth Brooks. She smooths the black leather arms of the chair, and her mind cartwheels. It’s the kind of chair corporate assholes and their asshole lawyers sit in when they sermonize ad nauseum to her about cutting her already bare-bones touring expenses, managing her partying public image, and the fastest way to sign away her soul. She’s sat in front of enough of them over the last six years, ever since they promised her she was “the next big thing” at the age of seventeen, armed with her GED and the hand-me-down Martin guitar that marked her as a Patty Griffin wannabe. Running too young and too fast before she suffocated on religion. Her daddy warned her that if she was chasing dreams of stardom, she’d end up with a one-way ticket straight to hell.

She’d shown him. 

She’d been fawned over from Austin to Nashville and back for her come-hither eyes and leggy body. Been brown-nosed about her gravelly sweet voice, virtuoso instrumentation, and unique style until she gagged. Been patronized by executives who wanted her to give up what they call the “folk Americana shtick.” But they’d been afraid if they came on too strong she wouldn’t suck them off in their bigwig chairs, with her amazing lips that have become a thing of legends. So she gets to keep playing her music, getting smarter and harder, and it’s almost worth it. 

She hates these chairs.

Maggie drinks the top half off a can of Coke, readying it for the Jack.

The flunky returns with four mini bottles and a small baggie. Her eyes are bright and dilated, her nose bears a trace of powder. “Here you go. Have a good show.” She sets them on the table, pauses to give Maggie time to invite her to the party, then leaves when she doesn’t.

As soon as the door clicks shut, Maggie wipes the glass top of the steel-legged table with her sheer, silky shirt and empties the baggie on it. She prefers repurposed industrial, but any surface will do in a pinch. Using her record label credit card, she cuts the white powder into two lines. She hears her father’s angry voice complaining to their Lutheran pastor when they didn’t realize she was listening. “That girl turned out just like her mother.” But unless she had a secret mother, Maggie doesn’t know how that could be true. For a split second, she sees her pious mother’s pale, pretty face, eyes closed, head bowed, lips moving in silent prayer, her father’s scowling visage beside her. Maggie screws her own eyes shut to block the image.

It doesn’t work.

Holding her long, almost black hair back with one hand, she snorts greedily. She hates the chairs less after the first line, and she can tolerate them after the second. She pours two Jack bottles into the red can. One gulp makes her shiver. Two gulps bring a choking, dry sob and the image of a lean, good-for-nothing-but-sex bull rider—chairs, father, and executives forgotten. Three, and she’s cursing the cowboy under her breath.

“Fuck a bunch of cowboy.” She straightens the heavy belt buckle on the Western belt slung low on her hips. “Daddy of ’Em All, 106th Annual Cheyenne Frontier Days.” It’s become her signature look, ever since she stole it off the bull rider, leaving a golden ticket in its place. Her phone number. Which he’d never used, not once in a year. Not when he’d bashed in his head—she’d been following him on the internet, had seen him winning time after time since Cheyenne, and her—and disappeared to God knows where, but not a casket. She’d checked the obituaries obsessively. Not even when the album full of songs she’d written about him released to the modest fanfare and sales that landed her here, in her first interview with the Aaron Cryor. “I’m the best thing that ever didn’t happen to you, Hank Sibley.”

She finishes her drink as she scans her notes on Aaron Cryor and his show one more time. They’re much more interesting through the lens of whiskey and cocaine. Isn’t everything? But just because she parties doesn’t mean she shows up unprepared. It’s like a charley horse, her want for this—success, money, stardom—and the pain of it reminds her to stay on track. So she knows everything there is to know about Aaron Cryor, from his early days working in Christian radio down to his home phone number, the ages of his pony-clubbing daughters, and his trophy wife Sharon’s 32DDD bra size. Learning how to dig up dirt is one good thing she got from Hank, anyway. She’d taught herself how to search the internet. Two things if you count the belt buckle, and three since he was songwriting fodder. Well yippidy doo-dah, three cheers for the booty call. She downs the last Jack bottle shot-style.

Someone knocks. A woman’s voice calls in to Maggie. “I’m Shelley, Aaron’s producer. We’re ready for you, Miss Killian.”

Maggie grabs another Coke can and drops it in her shoulder bag with baby Jack number three. Party favors. She bursts out the door, smiling with all her teeth. “You sure ’bout that?”