Blog Tour & Giveaway: The Guest House [Silicon Valley 02] by Bonnie Traymore!

Excerpt!

Allie

   I’m half awake when I feel a thud reverberate through my apartment and shake the bed. I spring up, and my heart is immediately in my throat.

   Is this what an earthquake feels like?

   Grabbing my phone, I check to see if there’s an alert. It’s 3:17 in the morning, and there’s nothing of concern on my phone, but maybe it takes a while to get the word out. I’m new to California, so I have no idea what an earthquake feels like or if anyone even bats an eye at something like this.

   I hold still for a few minutes, and I don’t feel any more shaking. I reach for my speech processor on the nightstand. I’m deaf, and without my cochlear implant I hear nothing. Now I’m concerned there might be an intruder or some other threat lurking outside my door.

   The small guest house I rent sits behind a stately, expensive home, and the owners have been away for the last week. There’s a boarder who rents a suite inside the main house. I thought he was still around, although it’s hard to tell with him. The guy’s kind of a ghost, and I don’t normally run into him much.

   Once my speech processor is in place, I notice some kind of intermittent scraping noise outside. A tingling sensation crawls up my scalp. They have a dog, and she’s not barking. But then I haven’t heard her at all this week, come to think of it. Maybe they took her with them?

   I peek out the window, poised to call 9-1-1 if someone is burglarizing the house, and I spot my landlord—at least I think it’s my landlord—dragging a large duffel bag across the lawn. It seems heavy, and he’s straining to move it. He whips his head around towards me, and I quickly duck down and out of sight.

   Did he see me?

   My heart starts to race.

   I hear a voice call out. “Hurry up,” it says.

   A woman’s voice?

   I’m terrified of the dark, so I keep the bathroom light on when I sleep. I’m hoping it’s not bright enough for him to see inside my place. I lift the curtain just a hair and look out again. His back is to me, so hopefully he didn’t notice me.

   What the hell is he doing?

   I thought they were away until tomorrow. Did they come home early and I didn’t hear them? But this is strange. And this living arrangement made me uneasy from the start. Maybe I need to look for another place, although the thought of that puts my stomach in knots. It’s a nice unit at a decent price, and the rental market is extremely tight here. Perhaps he has a good explanation for what he’s doing, although I can’t imagine what it could be.

   I double-check the dead bolt on the door, turn off the bathroom light, and get back into bed. I’m not taking my speech processor off though, so I probably won’t be able to get back to sleep; I’m used to total silence. I grab my phone, hold it under my comforter, and start thumbing through apartment listings as I wait for the sun to rise.

He holds out his business card, and she plucks it from his fingers without touching them. “Hope to see you around, Allie Dawson,” he says. That was over a month ago. It seemed too good to be true, but Allie told herself to ignore the nagging feeling in her gut. That was her first mistake.

When she saw Laura Foster’s email welcoming her into a cohort of grant recipients, Allie literally jumped for joy. She was headed to Silicon Valley with a chance to bring her innovative product to market.

But she had no idea how tight the rental market would be, or how cutthroat the competition is for everything from housing to venture capital. So, after a futile search to find a short-term apartment she could afford, she rented a guest house from a chummy real estate agent who approached her at a coffee shop.

But it’s clear now that she should have trusted her instincts. Because there’s something off about her landlord. And his moody wife. And the cryptic Hungarian guy renting his master suite.

Are they after her technology? Did he see her, peeking out the window when he was dragging a suspicious duffel bag across the lawn? She knows what it feels like to see her life flash before her eyes, and she doesn't need that kind of stress right now.

So why is she still living there?

And has she already seen too much?

Innovation, greed, and danger collide in The Guest House, Silicon Valley Series Book 2, a stand-alone sequel to the best-selling hit page-turner The Stepfamily.

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Author bio:

Bonnie Traymore is the award-winning, Amazon best selling author of page-turner mystery/thrillers that hit close to home. Her books feature strong but relatable female protagonists. The plots explore difficult topics such as jealousy, infidelity, murder, and the impact of psychological disorders, but she also includes bits of romance and humor to lighten the mood from time to time. She's an active status member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America.

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