TRUST ME
by
Kelly Irvin
Genre: Romantic Suspense / Christian Fiction
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Date of Publication: February 8, 2022
Number of Pages: 384 pages
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A decade ago, Delaney Broward discovered her brother’s murdered body at the San Antonio art co-op he founded with friends. Her artist boyfriend, Hunter Nash, went to prison for the murder, despite his not-guilty plea.
This morning, Hunter walks out of prison a free man, having served his sentence.
This afternoon, Delaney finds her best friend dead, murdered in the same fashion as her brother.
Stay out of it or you’re next, the killer warns.
Hunter never stopped loving Delaney, though he can’t blame her for not forgiving her. He knows he’ll get his life back one day at a time, one step at a time. But he’s blindsided to realize he’s a murder suspect. Again.
When Hunter shows up on her doorstep, asking her to help him find the real killer, Delaney’s head says to run away, yet her heart tells her there’s more to his story than what came out in the trial. An uneasy truce leads to their probe into a dark past that shatters Delaney’s image of her brother. She can’t stop and neither can Hunter—which lands them both in the crosshairs of a murderer growing more desperate by the day (hour?).
In this gripping romantic suspense, Kelly Irvin plumbs the complexity of broken trust in the people we love—and in God—and whether either can be mended.
PRAISE FOR TRUST ME:
“Irvin follows the characters through twists and turns, writing through the lens of faith and broken faith, while illuminating a bridge across shattered relationships to second chances. This one’s an emotional roller-coaster.” — Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Agency in Publishers Weekly Review
“Trust Me is an apt title for Irvin’s new suspense novel. Kelly Irvin is a master at spinning a complex story web with surprising twists and relatable characters. Highly recommended!” —Colleen Coble, USA TODAY bestselling author of A Stranger’s Game and the Pelican Harbor series
“I found I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough in Kelly Irvin’s latest novel, Trust Me. I promised myself just one more page and I’d stop reading for the night…just one more…just one more. At times I could barely breathe. What a fabulous story! I loved it!” –Carrie Stuart Parks, award-winning author of the Gwen Marcey series
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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote Trust Me two ways. The first was the story with split times—10 years ago when the first murder occurred interspersed with a present-day account of the new murder and the investigation into who committed it. The second was all present day with only one flashback. My editor decided to go with the present-day version. All the 2010 scenes were deleted. It hurt my heart, but it was the right decision. Here’s one of the deleted scenes from Trust Me.
April 22, 2010
Ellie Cruz’s household
San Antonio, Texas
Any minute the door would open. Despite being empty, Delaney’s stomach heaved. Any minute Ellie would open the door, and Delaney would have to tell her that Corey was dead. Murdered. Three hours in an interview room at the San Antonio Police Department Headquarters in downtown San Antonio hadn’t take the edge of the surreal fog that refused to lift. Delaney’s brain refused to let the images fade. They whirled round and round like a nightmare carousel filled with ugly, misshapen zombie horses. Delaney wasn’t allowed to get off the ride. She kept going from horse to horse, memory to memory, looking for a way to shut it down.
Corey’s dead eyes, his pale skin, the blood, the knife that lay on the floor next to him. The sirens. The paramedics. The detectives.
Hunter’s voice on the phone, saying, “We had an argument. Like we do. I’m sorry. I did what I had to do.”
Delaney’s legs tried to betray her. Her knees were determined to buckle. Jess put his arm around her. “Let me do this for you.” His voice was hoarse, his eyes red, and his shoulders hunched, but he still wanted to be the knight in shining armor. “You don’t have to be the one.”
“Yes, I do.” Delaney knocked again, harder. “She’s my best friend.”
“Mine too.”
“Corey was her boyfriend.”
“I know.”
The door opened, putting an end to the argument. Ellie peered out. She wore a white Mexican dress embroidered with bright red, yellow, and purple flowers. Her wild hair hung down to her waist. Her feet were bare. She wore no makeup. Her best look. “Where have you been?” Her face, normally so pretty, flashed with anger. “I’ve been calling and texting and calling. Nobody answers. Not Corey. Not either of you. Not Hunter. Not Cam. What’s the deal? Don’t tell me you went without me. You left me here with my mom and dad while you partied at NIOSA—”
“Ellie. Ellie!” Jess let go of Delaney and reached for Ellie. “Stop. Stop talking for a minute and let us come inside.”
“It’s after midnight. My parents are asleep. We can’t party here.” Even as she spoke, Ellie’s face transformed. Fear replaced anger. She backed up, giving Jess room to move forward and guide Delaney inside. “What’s going on? Why do you look like that?”
“Let’s sit down.” Jess put his free arm around Ellie’s shoulders. “We all need to sit down.”
Delaney shrugged from of his grip and stumbled into the Cruzes’ living room. She’d spent hundreds of hours in the comfy, well-lived-in room, watching movies, reading magazines, gossiping, painting toenails, and arguing about life and love. It would never be the same. Nothing would ever be the same. She grabbed the comforter crocheted by Ellie’s Tía Laura from the back of the couch and plopped down. She couldn’t get warm. No amount of coffee stopped the shivers.
“What’s the matter? You look awful.” Ellie sat next to her. “Tell me. Please just tell me. You’re making me crazy.”
“It’s Corey. He’s dead.” There. It had to be done that way. Simple. Flat declarative sentences. Delaney threw her arm around Ellie. “I can’t believe it, but I found him.”
“No, no, no you didn’t.” Ellie jerked free. She stood. Her hands went to her face, dropped. She strode toward the door. Stopped. Turned. Came back. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”
“Corey’s gone.” Jess stood and went to her. He wrapped in her in a hug. “Come sit down. Let Delaney tell you.”
“No, no, I need to go to him. He needs me.” She wrenched away from Jess’s long arms. “You too are sick, just sick. This isn’t funny. It’s no joke. He’s out there, right? In the car, waiting to come in and surprise me. He figures I’ll be so glad he’s alive, I won’t be mad that he’s such a jerk.”
“Ellie, Ellie, he’s dead. He was murdered. Someone stabbed him.” Delaney couldn’t contain the tears. They ran down her face and wet the too-big, white T-shirt stained with blue and green paint. She’d grabbed it from the co-op’s lost and found when the crime scene investigator said she needed the one Delaney wore. The one with all the blood on it. “I tried to warm him up, but I couldn’t. He was already gone.”
Ellie marched across the room and knelt at Delaney’s feet. “You should’ve called me right away. I would’ve come.”
“You didn’t need to see that. I’ll never forget it. Every time I close my eyes I see him. Like that. I don’t want that for you.”
Huge, noisy sobs racked Ellie’s small body. She laid her head in Delaney’s lap. Delaney smoothed her hair with shaking hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Who did this? Who would hurt him?”
“I don’t know. The homicide detectives grilled me for hours because I was the one who found the body. But I also was the one who called it in. They picked up Hunter as a person of interest. Can you believe that? My Hunter.”
Ellie sat back on her haunches. “He’s Corey’s best friend.”
“He admitted to being at the co-op earlier. They had a fight—”
“They always fought—”
Not always. Sometimes they cleaned shrimp, grilled it, and served it with homemade cocktail sauce so thick with horse radish it cleared her sinuses for hours afterwards. Sometimes they sang classic rock songs at the top of their lungs while cruising Highway 16 through the Hill Country looking for scenic spots to stop and paint. Sometimes they finished each other sentences. Sometimes they passed their last cigarette back and forth while arguing about some obscure artist from the eighteenth century.
“Not always.”
“Don’t defend him. He killed your brother.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Nobody knows for sure except the killer.” Jess slid closer to Delaney. He took her hand. “But you have to be prepared to accept the truth if the investigation leads back to Hunter. Both of you.”
“You think it was him?”
“Like Ellie said, they fought all the time.”
“They bickered like brothers.” Delaney hung on to the difference. Hunter had a temper. So did Corey. They played the temperamental artist stereotype to the hilt. But let anyone say something bad about the other one, and they were the first to defend each other. “Just like Ellie and Corey bickered like an old married couple.”
“Are you saying you think I did it?” Ellie scrambled back a few feet. “Seriously? I was home all evening. Waiting for you.”
“I’m not saying you did it. I’m saying it isn’t evidence that Hunter did it.”
“He was there. I wasn’t. I was home all evening, waiting for you guys. My parents can vouch for that.”
“Good. The police want you to come into the station tomorrow to be interviewed.” Delaney handed her Detective Summers’ business card. “You’re to call her in the morning, first thing. Her cell number is on the back.”
“If I don’t?” Ellie dropped the card like it had xx germs. Rocking, she hugged her arms to her chest. “Will they cart me off to jail like Hunter?”
“They took Hunter in for questioning. They didn’t arrest him.” Jess stood. “I imagine the detective will call you if you don’t call her. I’m going to make you some hot tea. You’re in shock.”
Delaney lowered herself to the floor and wrapped the blanket around Ellie. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither. That saying only the good die young keeps going through my head.” Ellie’s tear-stained face was suddenly haggard. She needed to blow her nose. “He told me once he didn’t expect to live a long life.”
“Why? What would make him say that?” Corey would never have said something like that to Delaney. He knew she lived in fear of losing her only living relative. They all died. Everyone she cared about died. “That was a stupid thing for him to say. Like some self-fulfilling prophesy.”
“He smoked. He drank. He didn’t sleep. He thought pepperoni pizza, Dr Pepper, and Shiner Bock were food groups. He wanted to wring every little bit of life out of every minute and then be done with it.”
“He was selfish then.”
Her gaze unfocused, Ellie stared into space. She didn’t seem to have heard Delaney. “We were talking about getting married. He asked me at Christmas when we went to the Alamo Plaza tree lighting. I told him if he got his act together I would consider it.”
“Oh Ellie, I’m so sorry,” This revelation had never come up in their girl-talks. “You would’ve made a great wife.”
“No. I wouldn’t have.” Her sobs deepened until Delaney wanted to clap her hands over her ears. Wrenching sobs that shook her friend’s body. “I should’ve said yes. I should’ve jumped at the chance. He suggested doing the Valentine’s Day thing on the steps of the courthouse. I said no, I wanted a real wedding. Now I’m left here all alone. If Hunter murdered him, I’ll kill him.”
“He didn’t. No way.”
But if he did, Ellie would have to stand in line.
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Three winners each receive autographed paperback copies
of Trust Me.
(US only; ends midnight CST 3/4/2022.)
CLICK TO VISIT THE LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE TOUR PAGE
FOR DIRECT LINKS TO EACH POST ON THIS TOUR, UPDATED DAILY,
or visit the blogs directly:
| 2/22/22 | Excerpt | Forgotten Winds |
| 2/22/22 | BONUS Promo | Hall Ways Blog |
| 2/23/22 | Review | Reading by Moonlight |
| 2/23/22 | BONUS Promo | LSBBT Blog |
| 2/24/22 | Review | Book Bustle |
| 2/25/22 | Guest Post | All the Ups and Downs |
| 2/26/22 | Character Spotlight | Sybrina’s Book Blog |
| 2/27/22 | Notable Quotables | StoreyBook Reviews |
| 2/28/22 | Review | Jennie Reads |
| 3/1/22 | Deleted Scene | Chapter Break Book Blog |
| 3/2/22 | Review | It’s Not All Gravy |
| 3/3/22 | Review | The Plain-Spoken Pen |
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I would have loved to read the dual-timeline version! When it’s well done, that’s really a lot of fun. I can’t imagine writing a story two different ways. I can’t imagine writing a story once!
Hah! I agree, Lisa. I can’t imagine writing a story once, let alone twice!
What a powerful scene. I can see why it broke Kelly’s heart that the 2010 scenes were all removed by the editor. Alternating timelines in suspense and mystery novels has become a common format and often works well. Still, the end result of Trust Me is a good read.
Agreed, Maryann!
Wow! She wrote her book twice?! Cool post & if this was deleted, what got left must be so good! Thanks for sharing!
Agreed, Kristine!